If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again. 
If you need help, stay on the line, and a hacker will assist you shortly. 
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall. 
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call. 
It couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would. 
One big leap on, for the best, expect the worst. 
I hope that's understood, one big leap on. 
Good luck. 
Thank you. 
Well, today you sound a bit tinny, but other than that, you're coming through loud and clear. 
So where are you, Alex? 
Well, that's good. 
I am. 
Well, it's one in the morning here, so it's it's very late. 
That's why it's so dark for you guys, not for all of our listeners. 
And I am off the coast of Spain in one of the Balearic Islands known as Menorca. 
So I'm on the southern coast of Menorca at the moment on vacation. 
Are you fleeing from something or is this just just a getaway? 
No, no. 
Surprisingly not. 
No, it's just a bit of a getaway. 
I've been on vacation for a little bit now and started off in London and we're over in the south of France for a bit and over in Monaco, which, of course, is its own country. 
And now we went over to Marseille and we're spending about a week or so in Menorca and heading over to Italy for a little bit and then and then back to New York. 
Well, we look forward to your return. 
Yes. 
Yeah. 
It's been a while. 
It'll be it'll be nice to be back. 
But I will tell you, this is a very extraordinary place. 
I've never been anywhere like this. 
It's amazing. 
It's dotted with these prehistoric settlements that are shrouded in mystery here. 
Nobody really knows about these people that lived here around 4000 years ago, but yet their settlements are still dotted around the island. 
And it's it's it's a fascinating place. 
It's absolutely gorgeous in terms of the these coves and these waterways. 
People are nice. 
Food is amazing. 
And the sun is hot. 
So I'm I've been definitely enjoying it. 
Well, the sun is hot here, too, as well. 
And it's the fact that we're in the middle of a heat wave here in New York. 
And Kyle and I are back from our travels out west. 
We were in Seattle last week. 
And back in New York, it's good to be back. 
Good to see everybody again. 
And but once again, we were met with a bit of a bit of sadness on our return. 
We've mentioned this before on the radio show. 
And it's been mentioned throughout the New York City area because it really is a big deal. 
It really is a huge deal to those of us in radio, those of us who listen to the radio, those of us who are New Yorkers. 
And I'm referring, of course, to the loss of yet another radio station, WCBS Newsradio 88 station. 
I grew up on station. 
Many of us grew up on. 
And it's gone. 
It's gone. 
And as of Sunday night, it basically was converted into yet another all sports station. 
We now have five of them in New York City. 
Apparently, there wasn't room for two all news stations, but there's room for five all sports stations. 
I don't know what's happening to this country. 
I wanted to share the last moments because I fear a lot of people may not have have heard this. 
And it really it does say something that I think we all need to hear. 
But I thought it particularly interesting, Kyle, you and I were listening to this as it was airing on a portable radio, which is as you know, the way you're supposed to do it with an AM radio, even though we're many miles away from New York City, the signal still came in and a Sunday night gathered around the radio. 
It just seems so old school. 
Oh, absolutely. 
But that was worth in reminiscing. 
And I mean, I think of the countless times I've stumbled upon it from afar overnight when the signal reaches great distance scanning around. 
We've heard this beacon from the city and now that signal will not be transmitting quite as much information. 
That signal will be transmitting the same sports talk that you can hear on a dozen other stations on the band. 
So it's nothing unique. 
But, you know, when we were traveling, let's say we were in Louisiana or Florida or Chicago at night due to a phenomenon known as sky wave interference on AM, you can hear distant radio stations and we would tune to 880. 
I've been doing this since I was a kid, tuning into that station to hear the sounds of New York, to hear familiar voices, to hear what's going on locally, even though we may not be local at the moment. 
It was a tremendous comfort. 
And I really think the owners of that station underestimated how much that station meant to New Yorkers. 
Because, you know, I talk to so many people from all different backgrounds and everybody is mourning its loss. 
Yeah, and I think locally a lot of people might recognize its presence during inclement weather or like hazardous conditions. 
That's where you would sort of coalesce and find out just facts, you know, news about what's going on with a storm or aftermath in your area. 
9-11, plane crashes, all kinds of crises, elections, things like that. 
That was where you went. 
It was the backbone of New York City. 
I don't hesitate to say that because it was something that was always there, 24 hours a day, always with familiar voices telling you just what's going on. 
Anyway, one of those familiar voices is named Wayne Cabot. 
He was the last voice on the air. 
He was a familiar voice to many of us who listened to WCBS. 
I'd like to play the last couple of minutes of WCBS before it went silent forever. 
All of us here knew that our audience is engaged and smart, and we need to treat our audience with the respect that a well-informed, well-educated news consumer deserves. 
That's right, deserves. 
Our news desert is getting bigger and drier. 
And just like we should get a second medical opinion, we need to seek out more and more varied news sources that we trust, because getting your information without the bias and brainwashing in one place has given way to a fight to stay informed. 
With each closing newspaper, radio newsroom, TV newsroom, magazine, and now even digital news operations, the country we love, is diminished. 
So as we leave the news ecosystem after 57 years of all news and 100 years of service on New York radio, we implore you to find that next trusted source. 
Use it. 
Support it. 
In word and deed. 
It is the most patriotic thing you can do. 
And the most satisfying. 
To paraphrase a CBS news legend, good night and good luck. 
You will ask, why does this radio station mean so much? 
Why is the reaction the way it is? 
And I really can't speak for others. 
I can speak for myself. 
My parents split when I was 11. 
We split Christmas. 
And when I was at Dad's house, he gave me a clock. 
And this one had a beam at the top that shined the time onto the ceiling. 
I wanted to make sure it was set correctly, so I went to the station I heard in the back of the car, WCBS, to make sure the time was exactly right. 
And I listened and listened, and before long, I became hooked. 
As a 12, 13-year-old, when I was 14, my dad drove me to the radio station in New York City during morning rush hour traffic. 
And he introduced me to the place I'm now signing off in 2024. 
Ray Martell, here's your last request. 
Chris Alvaro, Ben Mavereck, Ivan Lee, our bosses, pushed for and got the authority to let us have our goodbyes, to have a last show. 
That's something very rare. 
I thank them for that. 
And I thank my dad for driving me into New York City in 1978. 
Parents, you never know what impact these random acts of love and attention may have on your children. 
I'm Wayne Cabot, and for the final time, this is WCBS New York. 
And they were gone. 
It chokes me up just hearing that every time. 
It's one of the most moving moments in radio I can recall. 
And so sad. 
So very sad. 
It's a radio station, but those of us in radio understand the importance of having a voice, having a place that you can tune to and hear what is going on. 
And unfortunately, with companies owning multiple radio stations and not understanding exactly... 
WHSQ and WCBS FM. 
That's the replacement station signed on after about a minute of silence. 
Yeah, all sports now. 
All sports forever and ever. 
These companies, they take over, and they don't get it. 
They don't understand what radio is. 
They don't understand the allegiance that listeners have. 
We get that here at WBAI. 
And in fact, I talk about this often, where WBAI has survived through so many format changes. 
I think I went through all the FM stations a number of years ago. 
But now, I dare say that includes AM stations as well. 
I never thought a station like WCBS would disappear, but it's gone, and we're still here. 
And that means something. 
That means something to our listeners. 
That means something to us as an entity. 
And it's really why you need to hold on to these things, not let them go. 
Remember the idiots who tried to shut us down a couple of years ago? 
There are always forces out there that don't understand what the relationship is between a radio station and its audience. 
And they just look for the bottom line. 
They just look for something that makes sense to them business-wise. 
But, you know, the listeners are the ones who suffer. 
And I dare say in this particular case, that is exactly what happened. 
I was wondering, any of you guys listened to that last broadcast or were aware of it? 
Rob? 
I was aware it was happening. 
I didn't listen to it live. 
But I'm glad you played the clip because I felt bad about missing that. 
And, yeah, as a New Yorker, I grew up with WCBS. 
It was where you went. 
It got my family and I through so many hurricanes, blackouts, the September 11th attacks, and just mundane days as well. 
It was always there. 
It was a mainstay. 
And it's always strange when something so interwoven with your media environment is no longer there. 
You don't really think about what it would be like to not have something like that until you don't. 
Yeah, they did play the Joni Mitchell song, by the way. 
You don't know what you've got until it's gone. 
But it's so true. 
It really is true. 
And just to make it clear here, this is not an anti-change rant. 
Change is often good. 
Often it's the best thing. 
But so are the consistent things, the traditions, the steadiness. 
And sometimes those are cast aside way too easily. 
And we don't think about what the effects of losing these important traditions is. 
Yeah, it might make sense for the moment. 
But, you know, to me, it doesn't make any sense because the station was turned over to ESPN. 
Do they not know that there already is an ESPN station on the AM dial? 
There already is one. 
Now there are two. 
Two ESPN stations on the AM, and a third one on FM. 
And they also have another sports station, WFAN, which is owned by the same people who own WCBS, but is not affiliated with ESPN, and an FM version of that. 
It's ridiculous. 
You know, we're sports crazy. 
We really are. 
Don't tell me that there isn't room for two all-news stations in New York City. 
There's a lot of news out there. 
There is so much news. 
There's no way you could cover it all. 
Look, here at BAI, we always find something to talk about because there is no shortage of content. 
We get that here. 
That's why we survive, because there aren't any commercial entities breathing down our necks, telling us you've got to, you know, make this amount of money in the next commercial break, or else, well, we're going to change to country music. 
No, it doesn't work that way in non-commercial radio. 
Commercial radio, unfortunately, doesn't get that. 
And that's why you have tragedies like this, like the loss of an important station. 
You know, you always want to see things like, you know, the New York Times. 
You always want to see the next issue of that. 
You know, you always want to hear Mr. 
Softee coming around the corner. 
These are old things. 
These are traditions. 
And you might be able to streamline it and make it better and make more money off of it, but is that really an improvement? 
And the radio dial is poorer today as a result. 
I think that's a great lesson, too, for the, like, ideas and sort of being the standard bearer, the mainstay, as Rob put it, that, you know, it takes, there's, we do what we do here at WBAI, and there is a lot of effort that it takes to produce and have a diversity of views in that part of radio, but it's not enough. 
You know, there's, it's underfunded, and it takes, you know, good newsrooms and staffing, and there is a loss here from that commercial news effort. 
And if it's not viable, I think really should take an honest look at what is becoming, what the media landscape, what the various forms of media are becoming with, like, very realistic views. 
And I think that's something Wayne Cabot was able to speak to in those final moments of WCBS, something that I'm not sure his bosses were nervous about him even saying in the first place about how newsrooms are being shuttered, newspapers, and even digital media. 
We're seeing it there, too. 
And it results in just maybe a single voice or something that is disinformation. 
Or, yeah, disinformation in that standard bearer not being there. 
You have entities that can acquire it and manage it at a certain scale, but do they adhere to the same sorts of journalistic integrity and standards? 
And what is their mission in any way in approximation of what is lost? 
And that's so, so glaring in these moments. 
You become better by comparing yourself to that which came before you. 
And that doesn't always mean that you wipe away what came before you. 
Sometimes you coexist. 
Do we really want to see 60 Minutes disappear? 
Do we really want to not see new sources of investigative news reporting? 
We want to see both. 
We want to see the old exist with the new. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
You had a point? 
Yeah. 
I think this just speaks to the state of commercial radio at this time because one important factor of this change is that this wasn't a sale of the station. 
This wasn't a change of hands. 
The same massive company that owned the station before the changeover still owns it. 
They just decided we'd rather not spend the money on news, on, you know, supporting a newsroom, supporting journalism. 
Let's just, let's just throw this other stuff on there and, you know, that's how we're going to make our money from now on. 
Well, it's interesting you say that. 
It's called LMA. 
It's like a lease. 
In fact, there was pressure for WBAI to do that a number of years ago. 
Fortunately, we didn't do that. 
But what that means is another entity takes over your programming. 
You still retain the license, but they are actually in charge of what goes out over the air. 
So, yeah, this does expire at some point. 
In fact, one of the all-sports stations, 98.7, one of the ESPN stations, they have an LMA that expires at the end of this month and that station is going to change formats to something else. 
So, it's possible. 
880 could come back someday. 
You know, I don't hold out much hope based on the mentality of people who own these places. 
You know, it bugged me from the start when I heard that WINS, the other all-news station, and WCBS were owned by the same company called, it's pronounced Odyssey, it's not spelled Odyssey, it looks like Audacity, but it's not that either. 
They made up a word because they couldn't think of a word. 
That's what we're dealing with here. 
But, you know, to have both of the all-news stations owned and run by the same company, that was a problem. 
But it wasn't a problem that there wasn't enough news, it was a problem that one entity was running both of them. 
And this is the result of that. 
One company should not own competing radio stations. 
That should be different companies. 
And I think that's the problem here. 
But, you know, and Alex, I'd like to speak to this with you because you've been to London many times. 
London is the place where I see the old and the new together. 
And people seem to really get that. 
You know, I can go to London in 20 years and it'll be recognizable. 
But there will be a lot of new technology, a lot of advancements. 
And I think this is true of the UK in general. 
They hold on to tradition. 
And sometimes it's bad tradition, sometimes it's good tradition. 
But it always results in knowing a little bit about history and not just going blindly into the future. 
Do you feel the same way? 
I think so. 
I think I do. 
And I think we see that a lot with, you know, perhaps how the United Kingdom also treats the BBC as a news source and as some place where you can hopefully find some form of objective reporting that can be trusted over and over and over again. 
We also see this on the streets with the London telephone boxes. 
You know, in New York we have no traces of payphones left anymore. 
You know, we have these goddamn link NYC kiosks everywhere that nobody really uses that are eyesores. 
They're getting bigger. 
Yeah, these massive 5G antennas like the one in the East Village. 
They're growing. 
Have you seen this? 
Massive 5G antennas. 
No. 
They're horrible. 
And they have little kiosks at the bottom that are supposed to placate you, I suppose. 
And they're just giant screens blaring advertisements at you as you walk past. 
Just another space that used to belong to the public that is now being sold to advertisers. 
Which is exactly what has happened with the radio station with me. 
I mean, it's sad. 
I'm so glad that you played that clip though, Emanuel, because it was very emotional for me to hear that as well. 
I was wondering how they were going to sign off and being up here in Europe for the last couple of weeks it's been different. 
But I'd love to hear what Wayne Cabot did. 
he talked about this diminishing number of objective news sources and why that's a problem and how you need to find that news source, you need to find that station, you need to find that constant on the dial and support it and how he connected that to patriotism I thought was particularly brilliant and so apt these days as well because we need this well-informed populace to have a democracy and we're losing that ability to maintain a well-informed populace that is not subject to the biases of one particular political tribe or another and finding that station making sure that you have it, that it's a constant in your life, someplace like WBI where you can hear and I think people would not be wrong to consider this station obviously to be a progressive station, a left-leaning station in many ways but we do present viewpoints on both sides of the dial and I hope that we have a lot of objective dialogue and I think we have that on this show in particular I like to think so yeah, I like to think so too I mean it's why oftentimes we fight and picker a bit on the air and disagree about things we don't we don't exactly my point but I thought it was great I really do it was a great sign off we're going to miss that station very very very much and it reminds me and I always hark back to this when you think about the I think the jewel in the FM dial that WBAI is but remember almost 25 years ago now we almost lost WBAI in a very similar manner we almost lost BAI three years ago or whatever year that was it's always happening in one way or another always happening but it was such a threat 25 years ago when those corporate interests took over the Pacifica National Board and the idea was to sell the license to a commercial entity and just think about what the last 25 years would be like without WBAI on the air I think when it comes to supporting WBAI we need to think about the next 25 years and that's my plug that's my weekly plug I think you nailed it though as far as identifying what was being said in those final moments at WCBS because it echoes what we say here at WBAI as well and it shows how when you're in the business in whatever form whether commercial or non-commercial you get it you get the fact that this is precious this is something that is fragile and so important to democracy the source of news finding different voices and just educating yourself and it's always a threat it's always something that is on the verge of being wiped out either politically or commercially and there are so few people that have the privilege of speaking on New York City radio that I feel we all have this kind of brotherhood as far as just being in an experience together so it's it's it's really it's it's a sad day but as you say WBAI is a jewel on the FM dial and of course we only exist because of our listeners and we hope that you support us by going to give to WBAI dot org and pledging pledging whatever you can afford pledge a huge amount so that we don't have to worry about this and can stay on the FM dial pledge tell your rich friends and relatives to pledge to keep WBAI on the air and thriving and it's it's so important it really is all right we have other things to talk about tonight and of course we have overtime coming up afterwards on YouTube at 8 o'clock and that is something that we haven't done in a while because well a lot of us have been away and it's been kind of crazy but in the interim since we've been away what's happened okay so social security numbers apparently have all been stolen yeah I've seen this story many many times now I've seen all kinds of newspaper articles asking was my social security number stolen and how you can find out if your social security number was affected and here at off the hook we have the means for you to do that and basically I'm going to ask you a question do you have a social security number you're all nodding yes then your social security number was affected that's it that's all and they were affected the moment you started giving them to people that were not part of social security now it's not your fault it's not your fault you were told to give it to the banks you were told to give it to the phone company hell I've been told to give it to volunteer organizations who are taking down your name and just add social security number as something normal that people ask for it's ridiculous but it's supposed to be for social security well it's not and you didn't lose it you didn't compromise it the people you entrusted with it did and this company how many of you have heard of this national public data you know the first few times I read the story I just assumed it was national public radio for some reason why they would have social security numbers but no national public data never heard of them before but they're a background check company they're owned by Jericho Pictures yeah okay I this is all news to me 2.9 billion personal records may have been exposed that's a lot more than there are people in the United States other reports suggest the amount of records leaked may have been more than 2.7 billion that's an awful lot either way in an official data breach notice filed in Maine national public data indicated 1.3 million records may have been breached said James E. 
Lee chief operating officer at identity theft resource organization focused on mitigating risks of identity breaches and theft it is entirely possible that it is that low it's also entirely possible it's higher they said of the number of people affected now the information breached may have included social security numbers names email addresses phone numbers mailing addresses that's according to national public data who states this on their website a third party bad actor may have hacked into the data in December with potential leaks of the information in April and over this summer national public data did not return a request for comment by the Associated Press actually I'm sorry by CNBC so the question here is can you be affected even if you've never heard of national public data what kind of a question is that if only ignorance kept you kept you safe but yeah I never heard of national public data and yet I know that my number is likely affected they are a background check company that provides information either through legitimate sources or by scraping it off the web and because the data is collected more casually I'm sorry yes casually it can be gathered without consumers permission and outside of certain regulations and as a result it may be inaccurate or outdated there's no easy way out of this one we can't all change our numbers and I think it's a lesson in how data is vulnerable and how much we rely on these things there is no way to really know if your number is being compromised or used against you but it is yet another piece of digital information that's out there I think you can change your number you can but we can't all change our numbers well I think you can all change your numbers too and what I mean is depending on who's asking like if you think it's one of these goofy companies like wrong headedly asking you stuff there's business certainly not public data as is their namesake why not pick one of the numbers and make it off by a couple oh I've done that you know and just maybe you know it's one that looks like another number something like that and then see what happens see if they're just outright collecting it or if they're actually running it through some verification system I think they are I I I did lie to the phone company once and I got away with it but I'm not sure I could do that today I would lie in as many places as possible I agree so it's wrong in as many of these pools of data collection whatever business practices they have when they're selling or remarketing them or gaining something some kind of insight but I don't think unless they can really cite some kind of regulation or something why necessarily do you what is the consequence of you failing this kind of check you raise a very good point Kyle who's going to be upset well that's the question I suppose here's the fact credit agencies have this information they have your SSN they shouldn't I think it should only be in the social security administration not credit agencies but anyone who runs a credit check on you whether you're applying for a credit card or loan or trying to get an apartment they're going to look that up and if the number doesn't match they'll probably say something but what I suggest based on your words is that people just make a little clerical error and reverse the last two numbers of their social security number whenever they are asked for it by a non-government agency obviously you know the IRS knows the SSN social security agency and they're going to expect to get it right but you know somebody that you're renting an apartment from maybe won't do that so there's no reason to have your number out to everybody who asks for it go ahead Rob so I did want to mention that there is a site that has been put up with a copy of the data that you can use to check to see if your information is in the breach and how do you check you check by putting in your first and last names the state you lived in and your year of birth and it'll search the database and if you then see a list of places you have lived then you're in there so isn't that true of everybody I mean whenever you get asked to verify your address you're given a choice of four or five addresses and one of them is one you lived in so I assume that's the way it's supposed to be working but how does that prove if your social security number has been compromised your social security is also shown in the results but only the last two digits the rest is asterisks to not put your full info on the screen but it does let you know that the info is in there and know that for sure not for sure so one in a hundred chance they'll get that right yeah but I think we could give this address out for anyone who's ready to write it down if not we'll put this up on social media as well the site is npd.pentester.com slash search that's n as in nancy p d dot p e n t e s t e r dot com slash search okay now with that alphabet soup of letters there do we know anything about the people running this yeah they are they are a security company who have gotten hold of this and put up this tool I see they've gotten a hold of it because it's that out there that people can just get a hold of it that's that's kind of scary that's kind of disheartening there all right interest to you I just stumbled upon this you may not ride an electric bicycle but that doesn't mean you're safe from hackers oh this is a story in Forbes that wants to scare the crap out of you security researchers have revealed critical vulnerabilities that can enable a hacker to take control of the latest gear shifting technology changing or jamming gears from as far as 32 feet away in their makeshift security analysis of shimano di2 wireless gear shifting in bicycles research paper presented during the woot conference on offensive technologies why don't I know about that conference the woot conference on offensive technologies and it spells woot too if you look at the names there that was presented earlier this month Mary Mary M model big homie and john ranganathan from northeastern university and erlince fernandez from uc san diego address the potential security issues surrounding the use of wireless gear shifting technology in modern bicycles okay here's another example of why you don't have to make everything an app you don't have to make everything wireless now people can shift your damn bicycle when you're riding it i don't care if you're 32 feet away or 100 miles away that's just not something we need the kicker is that these bicycles i mean if you're buying a bicycle with these components you're probably spending a heck of a lot of money and to fall victim to this could damage a lot of the components or put your life in grave danger if it's jammed up and you need to be moving so yeah it is interesting because a lot of the higher tech multi speed bikes employ this and sort of like any kind of well I think I noticed it first in cyclocomputers which are the speedometer type things you would have like a little wire running down to a magnet in a lot of the older designs and then they began to take those like little coin cell batteries and use like some kind of wireless scheme and now that sort of evolved even into the shifting to say nothing of powered bicycles why I don't tell me the advantage of this I honestly on the bicycle for god's sake you can't shift exactly I guess because it uses less materials and there's an emphasis on weight I don't know they can make up all kinds of reasons why this is desirable there's less sort of routing of a cable or electrical wire to go from a little controller all the way back to where the actual wheel is maybe it could be susceptible to damage so then it would fail if the wires were exposed and not integrated which takes more design planning that's life sometimes things break it's over engineering yeah I mean totally without coming up with a way to mitigate this or protect it from the sorts of interference or even jamming and I wonder if this comes up during big races and competitive stuff has this been employed for some sort of sabotage well no doubt it will be used as a target of sabotage but it's yet another example of blindly diving into new technology that isn't needed and it has a lot of disadvantages compared to whatever advantages it offers you see the same thing with cars you know you see the same thing with virtually any device where somebody feels it's necessary that this thing be connected to the internet even though there's absolutely no reason it has to be look at least give people the opportunity to completely opt out so that they don't have to deal with your experiments you know that's not that much to ask for go ahead Rob yeah I mean I'm pretty dubious about the internet of things stuff in general but I realize that sometimes okay you'd like a remote control for your TV so you don't have to walk across the room and change the channel you'd like to you know have Alexa or whatever start up your air conditioning so it's cool when you get home but if you are too far away from the shifter on your bike to shift it manually you are not on your bike and don't need to be shifting it but okay I'm going to put this out there I'm going to admit something to all of you and to all of our listeners and because this gets archived forever I'm admitting it for posterity all right there's no turning back there's no turning back so you sure I cannot shift gears I never managed to do it effectively I can only ride a one speed bike I can only drive an automatic transmission car so I am willing to say that this sort of thing might come in handy for someone like me who never figured out the nuts and bolts of how to do the shifting myself that might be helpful for one such as myself it's literally pulling a lever it's just pushing on something the timing of it I would counterpoint you by saying if you would like a digital solution to this it could be in a little computer that is on the bike it doesn't need to be online it doesn't need to be open to online attacks it doesn't need to have to deal with network security I don't disagree with you at all I'm also perfectly happy with a fixie I'm kind of a hipster in that way but no there's no there's no defensible explanation for something like this I was just pointing out that I don't actually know how to shift gears on a bike or a car or anything else I think we can get you past this you shifted the gears in this conversation that's for sure there's no reason really to employ common protocols without some kind of consideration for this especially for systems that are supposed to be the top of the line right well on the last top of the line these are some of the dumbest things ever things that you would not ever expect to do this is like in the bells and whistles territory yeah sometimes you don't need bells and whistles well you should have a bell on your bicycle definitely a bell not controlled by somebody else you can control the bell yourself and Gila if you can ring a bell on a bicycle it's pretty much the same motion as shifting but I'm not trying to shame you I'm just saying that you probably can shift you just haven't successfully done it yet and you know what Rob says is correct it can be done right there on the bike it can be the equivalent of an automatic car an automatic bike it's certainly possible and there are different ways I mean if it was just a button you'd have no trouble doing that you'd say I want to shift now press the button and it would shift for you Alex we see you now yeah I go ahead oh you okay good I was I was wondering I guess I was off camera something and it's weird here it's the internet's a bit spotty this this whole thing seems totally insane to me it sounds to me I don't well first off I'd like to know a little bit more about how the attack would work but I think Kyle's on the right path here in that the protocol itself seems like it may have some kind of inherent vulnerability and I would venture to guess that it would be susceptible to some kind of spoofing or replay attack so that you can send essentially what would amount to the same signal over to the bike and let's say it would shift from fifth gear into first gear or something like that where you could foul up the gears and it seems particularly dangerous too perhaps you could set up some kind of gateway with a 32 foot attack vector that would go across the street so you could say you could have this type of attack set up on 7th Avenue and anybody riding one of these bikes would have their gears shifted back to first gear but that's possible that's really really dangerous because if you're moving at quite a clip which these electric bicycles very often do and then have your gears shifted on you down to a much lower gear that could be extraordinarily dangerous you know and I will tell you one thing that I I'm just saying there are people there are people in Manhattan that will sign up for that service to stop the delivery drivers delivery riders you know they complain that they go too fast and pedestrians are endangered by them so they'll say yeah that sounds good to me let's let's get them into first gear make it mandatory and yeah people will be eager to do that however wrong it is go ahead finish your thought oh no no doubt you know and if this type of protocol let's say is then implemented more widely on on electric bikes like the city bike electric bikes that we find all over the city you know then we have this widespread safety issue that you know that that could affect tens of thousands of people and becomes a real problem because the one thing that I've found being a denizen of Manhattan is that these electronic bikes and often in particular the city bikes are operated mostly by idiots so you know that's that becomes a problem and people should also wear helmets that's that's just my thing yeah and Kyle's as well nobody rides a city bike wears a helmet why why is that yeah and they often have headphones in yeah that's not a helmet that's not going to protect you at all yeah there's nothing cool about brain injuries yeah um okay so this story I believe Rob you you found this story from the Associated Press police officers are starting to use AI chatbots to write crime reports oh boy body camera captured every word and um and bark uttered as as police sergeant Matt Gilmore and his canine dog Gunner searched for a group of suspects for nearly an hour uh normally the Oklahoma City police sergeant would grab his laptop and spend another 30 to 45 minutes writing up a report about the search but this time he had artificial intelligence write the first draft I pulled from all the sounds and radio chatter picked up by the microphone attached to Gilmore's body camera and the AI tool churned out a report in eight seconds he said it was a better report than I could have ever written and it was 100% accurate it flowed better it even documented a fact he didn't remember hearing and other officers mentioned of the color of the car the suspects ran from Oklahoma City's police department is one of a handful to experiment with AI chatbots to produce the first drafts of incident reports police officers who've tried it are enthused about the time-saving technology while some prosecutors police watchdogs and legal scholars have concerns about how it could alter a fundamental document in the criminal justice system that plays a role in who gets prosecuted or imprisoned it's built with the same technology as chat GPT and sold by Axon best known for developing the taser and as the dominant U.S. 
supplier of body cameras it could become what Gilmore describes as another game changer for police work Alex I'd love to hear your thoughts on this yeah sure I mean this also seems really really problematic here and it's a use of technology in a place where it shouldn't be used because it can affect fundamental rights of people we think that chat GPT type technology any of these GPTs or large language models are essentially a very advanced form of predictive text and that artificial intelligence is as we see it today may look and feel a lot like actual intelligence but it is nothing more than applied statistics so we shouldn't be looking in the past at what words came naturally next to each other and generating police reports about incidents that just happened on the basis of statistics or some kind of analysis it's really very very troubling it also seems like well you know another perhaps unpopular opinion in some circles would be that we very often don't find the brightest bulbs on the planet on police forces and it seems like now that the barrier to entry to becoming a police officer has just gotten lower as well and that to me is extraordinarily scary because what we should be expecting of police officers is is a full and comprehensive account that they themselves have created in a literate and logical and comprehensive manner you know and it seems like writing and literacy are perhaps now going to become after thoughts when it comes to policing that to me is the scariest part of the story that that Rob found and shared I can't get over the fact that this is developed by the same people that make tasers that's that's problematic for me yeah that's weird there's so many companies could be doing this and and that's the one they chose go ahead Rob yeah this is amazing that this is even being considered as a thing that might have some possibility of being okay it is so far from okay first of all if you're a police officer and you cannot write a report I would say that is something to be very worried about if the police officer could not describe what just happened and what they did how are they supposed to do that on the stand in court and you know if they cannot write a full sentence that describe something how is that supposed to you know to instill any confidence in the system but also as you said this this large language model stuff is computers guessing and I do not need a legal account of something that just happened to me to be guessed at by a computer just because it read a bunch of other police reports this is terrifying that anyone's even considering this and I think that to answer your question about appearing in court I think somebody will push having the AI chatbot appear in court so that they can answer more succinctly the questions posed to them we're moving into some scary days folks we definitely are we need to stay awake and alert and and pay close attention that's super important um oth at 2600.com is our email address and again I want to encourage people to support this radio station where you hear these thoughts and many others throughout the day throughout the week throughout the month throughout the years go to give to wbai.org give the number to wbai.org and pledge whatever you can to keep wbai going it's super important we are listener funded we don't have commercials and we don't have people who don't understand radio uh about to switch our format to all sports hopefully all right uh we're going to continue the conversation over on overtime uh go to 2600.com to see the link on the main page and or just go to channel 2600 on youtube and you will find us there and you should also find us back here again in a week good night everyone    And welcome to everybody over here on YouTube for Off the Hook Overtime. 
Yes, there's more. 
More of our revealing discussions. 
Kyle, you seem to have made it over into YouTube land. 
What? 
Hey, YouTube. 
Kyle and... 
Yo, Kyle. 
My name is Kyle. 
Yeah, I know who you are. 
We have Rob T. 
Firefly and Gila, who also appear to have made it not only to YouTube, but through Skype land. 
Is that true? 
Our name isn't Kyle. 
No, that's... 
Our name isn't Kyle. 
Neither of our names is Kyle, actually. 
If we could move past the obvious, that would be good. 
Another thing I noticed is that Alex is not with us. 
Did he leave? 
He did. 
He was unable to join us for overtime this week, but he sends his best. 
He sends his best. 
He did tell us that because he is about six hours ahead of us right now... 
You know, that excuse is getting awful. 
He travels. 
Doesn't anybody not see this? 
He travels to Europe every week just to avoid being on overtime, so he can use that excuse of being six hours ahead of us. 
I've noticed that. 
I've seen... 
He never goes west. 
You never see him in Hawaii. 
You never see him in Japan. 
No, because that would be... 
That would be early, and then he'd be able to be on the show. 
But now, if he goes six hours over there, yeah, then it suddenly becomes late. 
It's like, what, two in the morning now? 
Okay, I'm starting to see through this. 
I'm starting to see through this. 
Years of this, and I'm starting to understand what's going on here. 
We are live on YouTube. 
It's nice to be back, and we sound good, I think. 
And I hope Alex is listening. 
I really do. 
Yes, we are live on YouTube. 
Welcome to the 24 people who are with... 
That just changed. 
26, as I was speaking. 
26 people who are with us right now. 
And if your name is or is not Kyle, regardless, we're glad to have you with us. 
And, yeah, it is good to be back, everybody. 
Well, you are here each week, right? 
You're not... 
We were once back. 
Right, but it's nice to be back on overtime. 
Ah, yes. 
Because in your absence, we don't have the phone, so it's a lot less fun. 
And in your absence, people did miss overtime. 
People kept asking me why we weren't doing overtime. 
And I'm glad to stop disappointing people. 
Oh, I'm also just going to share something from the chat really quick. 
I think Rebel has just offered to buy me a BMX bike. 
Oh, wow. 
So, I will gladly take you up on that, sir. 
If you're buying me a BMX bike, let's go ahead with that. 
Wait, Rebel, how come she gets a BMX bike? 
She doesn't even know how to shift, okay? 
It has one gear. 
It has one gear. 
I was hoping she didn't know that. 
All right. 
Rebel, you could buy me something with more... 
More gears. 
I'd appreciate that. 
So, we all like riding bikes, at least, right? 
I am so pro-bicycle. 
You rode a bike today in the heat. 
I did. 
45 minutes in the heat. 
With shorts, which was different. 
Yeah, but not draped around your head. 
That's not how you're supposed to do it. 
No. 
All right. 
No, it doesn't help with the aerodynamics. 
Should we give out the phone numbers so we can get back in touch with our listeners who we haven't talked to in a while? 
We saw some of our listeners out in Vegas at DEF CON. 
There were. 
We went out there and talked to a bunch of people. 
It's so good to... 
It turns out they talk back. 
They do. 
They're human beings and they have all kinds of thoughts and theories and opinions and it's great to exchange those every now and then. 
But, boy, there's a lot of people out there that have listened or are listening or swear they will listen someday. 
I got to say, I was a little, like, I was kind of overwhelmed. 
It was a lot of people and, like, you kind of don't know if someone's a listener or not and then you're like, okay, what did you listen to that was not inspiring? 
Well, a number of people... 
It did not bring you joy. 
This is no exaggeration. 
A number of people would come up to us and say, I know that voice. 
They'd hear you, Kyle. 
They'd say, I know that voice. 
Where do I know that voice from? 
And we're like, you must be mistaken, sir. 
Please move on. 
Yeah, multiple times. 
But, no, that didn't work. 
After a while, they figured it out that you were, in fact, on the radio. 
And, of course, they know my voice, too. 
I try to keep quiet. 
That's why. 
But there are a lot of people out there that listen to the show, swear by the show, swear at the show. 
Hearing those stories, though, and, like, that, you know, the impact it has just day-to-day or in having listened for a while, maybe the family pet or a spouse or someone is there with you. 
Like, you realize, wow, that... 
And I, as a listener, like, that was kind of what I was doing, you know, making time and listening with others around and staying informed, staying kind of around some of the topics that I enjoyed. 
And I'm just... 
It was kind of thrilling to get feedback in person. 
And, yeah, what a ride. 
It was something. 
So unusual because, as I pointed out in some of the discussions I had with listeners or with people talking about the show, like, you're speaking out into the abyss. 
And I guess that's a little different with the stream and chat being there with real-time sort of updates. 
But that experience and, like, just knowing you're part of someone's routine or their playlist, basically. 
It's, you know, the magic is retained to a degree online where, you know, people can listen anywhere in the world. 
And that's really cool. 
But it doesn't compare to the magic of actual radio where you have no idea how many people are out there. 
You have no way of tracking them or compiling statistics. 
You just wonder, are you talking to five people or five million people? 
There's no way to really know except for interactions like this where you meet people who say, hey, I heard this show a number of months or years ago and I remember it. 
And you realize, wow, people actually do listen. 
And it's always cool to realize that. 
Yeah, it's not really designed for that, like, high-intensity conversation, like meeting people and it's unusual to hear and just totally kind of amazing to realize that and catch up with people and, yeah. 
Our phone number, 802-321-4225, 802-321-HACK is our phone number. 
And we're waiting for the first call to come in. 
Go ahead, Kyle. 
Yeah, I was mentioning it's broadcasting sort of one way. 
But the other thing I realized is people have so many options with this, like this kind of thing of, like, everybody has a podcast now. 
And it really is true. 
The medium has, like, a lower cost of entry and people are able to stream. 
They're able to share. 
So you're kind of also blown away that people are listening to us versus all the other stuff out there they could be listening to, which is kind of an amazing realization. 
Or not listening at all. 
They could be listening to absolutely nothing. 
They could just be listening to albums or something. 
But that's why... 
That they're taking time to be a part of this discussion is also really kind of mind-blowing. 
But that's part of what we were talking about before. 
Just, you know, with radio, you just... 
There's a limited number of voices and options. 
But it's also an identity for a particular location or a particular format. 
And that's, I think, what brings people together when people say, hey, did you hear that? 
Or, you know, even on television, did you watch that last night? 
Yeah, we can see anything we want. 
We can detach ourselves. 
We can all do our own thing. 
Or we can at least occasionally get together and share experiences. 
And I think that's something that we kind of overlook sometimes. 
Yeah, Gila, go ahead. 
And I think the thing that's fascinating about that is that the... 
Oh, Lord. 
The consolidation of so many pieces of the media landscape, which you'd think would be leading itself to a multiplicity of voices. 
Ha. 
But because... 
I'm sorry. 
No, you're just anticipating what I'm going to say. 
I think because the consolidation of so many pieces, of so many people owning... 
Like, weren't there rules about something like this that got shot down a few years ago? 
Yeah, yeah. 
And I think about Sinclair Broadcasting, especially, and what they're doing in multiple markets where they own multiple stations. 
And that so few companies own so many stations that we're in a city where my family used to live. 
There are three stations of, I think, there are three stations of, I think, five local channels that share one newsroom. 
And they're just on air consistently because one, like, the news is at 9, one is at 10, one is at 11. 
And they have, you know, fleece jackets that have, like, the three logos on it. 
Yeah. 
And that just, I don't understand how this paucity of voices and this paucity of change... 
Like, we were talking about this a while ago, right? 
The moments where everybody was watching something together and everybody was experiencing something together. 
And I said, I feel like the last time something like that happened was probably Baby Jessica in 1987. 
Who the hell's Baby Jessica? 
Oh, tell me you don't remember Baby Jessica. 
Oh, is this the kid that stumbled into a well? 
Yeah. 
Okay. 
I'm sorry. 
Wait, did she live or not? 
She did. 
Okay, I'm sorry, Jessica, if you're out there. 
I didn't mean to insult you. 
They pulled her out of the well, but, like, the entire country was watching this baby in a well. 
And everybody was watching the same thing in the same moment and understanding it in the same way. 
And we were talking about this at home and said, does that happen anymore? 
Well, no, I think it does. 
I mean, you have earthquakes, 9-11, Trump. 
You know, these are all disasters that occurred and everybody was glued to the TV at the same time, shaking in terror. 
But I don't think there were any conspiracy theories that were being contemporaneously spread about, say, Baby Jessica falling in the well. 
Oh, you'd be surprised. 
I know. 
You'd be very surprised. 
I probably would. 
Yeah. 
But how did she get in the well? 
Who pushed her? 
You know, all kinds of... 
We're talking about moments that everybody experienced together. 
And Rob said January 6th. 
I said everybody was watching January 6th. 
Like the Challenger disaster. 
He said it's different now. 
But that was before Baby Jessica. 
That was 86. 
The Challenger was... 
Yeah. 
I said when we were watching the Challenger, nobody was cheering for the O-rings when the Challenger exploded. 
Right. 
When Columbia exploded on the way back, it didn't get nearly the same ratings as Challenger. 
NASA was very disappointed by that. 
We don't watch that sort of thing anymore. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
We don't watch them coming home. 
Who wants to watch this blast? 
Speaking of which, have you guys been following the latest Elon Musk project of sending, what, three civilians up into space and telling them to do a spacewalk and come back? 
This one I'm very nervous about. 
It was supposed to launch yesterday and the day before, but because of a leak and because of weather, they had to postpone it. 
So it's sometime in the future. 
But this is what the future of our manned space program, apparently, is relying upon. 
So I'm very nervous about that. 
Very nervous because I don't trust him. 
I don't trust any decisions he makes and just worried about where this could possibly head. 
Yeah. 
The Falcon 9 booster rocket, which is SpaceX's reusable rocket, is finished being reused because it blew up. 
And everyone is okay. 
But that means that anything they want to do is now in a holding pattern until the FAA fully investigates this and does whatever paperwork they have to do and so on. 
But it also means that, I don't know, Elon's next ego boost is probably going to have to come from a stupid tweet or something instead of another rocket. 
No, but this rocket is about to be launched. 
It would have been launched this morning had there not been bad weather. 
So it's very imminent. 
It's very imminent. 
And he might be having to hold off on one thing, but it doesn't mean there aren't a number of other things that are happening as well. 
Which, you know, it's great if it works. 
It's great if everything is done properly. 
I'm just, I don't have the faith I once did. 
I think we're talking about a couple different launches. 
Yeah, I think so. 
I think there's a call. 
Oh, is there a call? 
So if you want to go ahead and take that. 
Okay. 
I don't hear the ring. 
Okay. 
I haven't done this in a while, so bear with me. 
Everybody watch your ears. 
Oh, there it is. 
That's the telephone channel. 
And good evening. 
You're on Off Look Overtime. 
Go ahead. 
Yeah, hi. 
Can you guys hear me? 
Yes, we hear you fine. 
Can you hear us? 
Yeah. 
Yeah, yeah, I can hear you fine. 
All right, we've established contact. 
Yeah, really glad you opened about WCBS 880, because I started listening to them around 1973, 1974. 
Wow. 
So I was glued to my radio ever since I learned that they were leaving the air. 
And I always thought of Wayne Cabot and Paul Mornayne as the Hawkeye and Trapper John of WCBS, because they took their work incredibly seriously, like the characters from MASH. 
But they didn't take themselves seriously. 
So they were excellent broadcasters, but they had this incredible, irreverent sense of humor and incredibly quick-witted. 
And it's just terrible that the station is gone. 
And all their colleagues, Steve Scott, Michael Wallace, Bridget Quinn, Tanya Hansen, so many talented, gifted reporters. 
And it's such a waste. 
They read the name Sunday night, and I could not believe how many names I recognized, either from the distant past or from the present. 
And, you know, all respect to WINS, I don't have the same reaction. 
I don't think I know a single name from WINS. 
It's great that there's another news station, but it's not the same. 
No, it's not. 
I did email a curator at the Paley Center, and I asked him about acquiring part of the archive of WCBS, because I'd hate to see what happened with MTV and Comedy Central, where the parent company just deleted their archives. 
So he emailed back to me that he was talking to Odyssey about trying to secure part of that archive, because that would be terrible if those idiots just deleted everything. 
Yeah, absolutely. 
That would be a tragedy. 
But it would be totally in keeping with our expectations, because they don't get it. 
They don't understand the magic of radio, which clearly you do. 
I'm wondering, have you recorded anything over the years? 
No, I have not. 
But I heard Wayne Cabot, over the weekend, he was mentioning that he's an archivist himself. 
So from what he was saying, it sounds like he probably has accumulated maybe several hundred or maybe even over a thousand hours. 
Wow. 
So maybe the Paley Center could get in touch with Wayne Cabot and see if he'd be willing to donate or make copies of some of that stuff, because I was particularly moved by their coverage during the COVID lockdown, because these people were all broadcasting out of their homes. 
And it was amazing. 
The broadcast quality was seamless. 
I mean, Wayne was broadcasting from his home in New Jersey, and Paul Murnane was broadcasting from his home in Connecticut. 
And if you tuned in, if they didn't mention, if you didn't know that, you'd never know, because the quality of the broadcast signal was just as smooth. 
It was like magic. 
And you know, that brings up an important point, because one of the strong arguments for shutting down radio stations is cost, is, you know, the fact we can't possibly run another newsroom. 
Well, that's proof that you don't have to. 
You can consolidate in various ways, but still have the people that report the news still bring that out over the air, and at least to the listener, it will be transparent. 
Right. 
And you know what I was thinking of? 
There was a guy, Neil Postman, who used to have a show on BAI. 
I think it was actually when you guys first started with Off the Hook. 
Do you remember him? 
I don't remember him. 
I know the name. 
I didn't know he had a show on BAI. 
No, he did. 
He did. 
Very short-lived. 
But he wrote a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. 
Yeah, and Roger Waters put out an album called Amused to Death, which is based on that. 
But I think that's where we are at this point in history. 
And if Karl Marx were alive today, he had that famous quote, religion is the opiate of the masses. 
I think he'd have to amend it to religion and ESPN and sports talk radio, the opiate of the masses. 
Can you explain to me why there are two ESPN stations on AM? 
In fact, they even have the same programs on for a good part of the day. 
Did they not know there was already an ESPN? 
They already own that other station, so I don't get it. 
I don't understand how that's even excusable. 
You're asking the wrong guy, because I'm the person that would like a 24-hour documentary channel on cable, and I'd like a 24-hour foreign language film channel. 
I've got some news for you. 
I've got some news for you. 
When Kyle and I were in Los Angeles, we went to the famous Chinese theater that shows films, and we saw a terrible film there. 
It was called Cuckoo, if anybody wants to see a really bad film. 
But that's not the news. 
The news is that there were people with some kind of a display in the main lobby, and it looked like they were from the Discovery Channel, and they had something called the Documentary Channel that they were about to introduce. 
So, there is going to be a documentary channel. 
It might not be what we like, because it's run by Discovery, but it's something. 
In Canada, they've had a documentary channel forever, and that's pretty good. 
That is true. 
But this is coming. 
And one other thing. 
You know what I'd love to see? 
How about a cable channel where you could actually watch national newscasts from other countries around the world dubbed into England? 
Like, just go in and see the national network newscast from Finland, Uruguay, Chile, Mongolia, all translated into English. 
I mean, I think... 
We are just going to frustrate ourselves, because I think you and I see the same thing here. 
How about this? 
How about a foreign film channel? 
Nothing but foreign films. 
Subtitles. 
All that kind of thing. 
You know, no commercials. 
Why don't we have that? 
No, that's what I want. 
That's what I want. 
Foreign films, foreign newscasts of all sorts. 
How about this? 
A TV channel just devoted to the 1970s. 
1970s commercials, 1970s newscasts, everything 1970s. 
You never break out of it. 
Then you have another one for the 1960s, one for the 1980s. 
It could be very, very popular, but you don't ever break out of the format. 
You don't have, you know, big bugs in the bottom right of the screen. 
You don't have infomercials. 
You don't break in with ridiculous present-day commercials, and you don't edit the shows. 
You know, that's what I want to see. 
And that's where television can really excel. 
But the people in charge don't get it, and they will never do anything like that. 
Yeah, and the last point I want to make, though, what Wayne said was so true about other sources of news, because the people that call in sports talk radio, I got news for them. 
If the Mets or Yankees, whoever wins a World Series Super Bowl, it doesn't make a goddamn difference to your quality of life. 
But if Donald Trump wins or Kamala Harris wins, the consequences will be drastically different in either scenario. 
So that's what counts. 
Winning the Super Bowl, it's bullshit. 
You know, it's not going to change your fucking life. 
But if Trump wins, it's one thing. 
It's Armageddon. 
But if Kamala Harris wins, it's going to be very different. 
And that's what I don't understand, that these idiots get so obsessed about the results of the season of their local sports team. 
Totally fucked up. 
Well, it's a form of escapism. 
I get that. 
I get why people are drawn to it and why they feel some joy if their team wins. 
But you should never escape, you know, the reality of what's going on in the world. 
Yeah, escape for a bit, but don't forget what's happening that you're escaping from, or it'll really be unpleasant. 
And you'll wind up with some bad choices made by other people. 
It's just bread and circuses. 
It's like it all comes back to Neil Postman. 
We are amusing ourselves to death. 
We definitely are, or some of us are, but some of us care. 
But thanks again for doing that. 
And I have some links that I'll try to email you. 
There are some YouTube channels just devoted to radio air checks, and you might find some interesting stuff there. 
So I'll try to get that out to you in the next couple of days. 
Great. 
Because I was looking for stuff about CBS all weekend, about their history. 
So keep up the great work. 
Thank you. 
Maybe I'll see you at the Paley Center one of these days. 
Yes, definitely, definitely. 
All right, thanks for the call. 
Have a great night. 
You too. 
Take care. 
Well, a lot of people out there who get it. 
Unfortunately, they're not the ones pulling the strings. 
Yeah. 
Wow. 
He mentioned the pandemic. 
I know a lot of sports shut down. 
That was a very interesting observation for me. 
I don't know. 
I feel like I got a lot of insight into what that means to have, especially around the workplace and small talk. 
And I guess there was just this hunger to get back to, quote, normal. 
And as soon as the sports were back, it was just like nothing happened. 
And it is a form of escape. 
I think everybody has different things they enjoy. 
There is, I think, a purpose to the lessons of sportsmanship and the idea that you can be rooting for the same team and maybe not see eye to eye on everything in life. 
But it certainly has taken on such importance that there's a certain, like, amount of, I think, bliss or just blind spots. 
I don't know. 
I don't know how to describe it. 
It's terribly sad when you realize, like, the level of importance people place in it. 
And how much of that has sort of bled over from the business aspect of it because it is a business. 
But, Kyle, you know what's really frustrating to me is that at least here in New York now, we have five all-sports channels, five all-sports stations on AM and FM. 
First of all, okay, I want to hear sports. 
Which one do I listen to? 
Is it 6.60 AM, 8.80, 10.50, 98.7, 101.9? 
Yeah, I know all the frequencies. 
But which one do I listen to? 
Why do I listen to one over the other? 
Explain that to me. 
It's not because of a team because, guess what, the teams get broadcast on other stations as well. 
WCBS had the Mets. 
Yeah, it used to annoy me because I'd like to hear the news. 
And instead they had a Mets game on, so they were already doing sports. 
So, you know, they broadcast games on different stations. 
That's not the issue. 
You don't need a 24-7 sports station for every possible version of sports. 
But the thing that really gets me is that they're all talking about the same thing. 
They're all talking about the Mets and the Yankees and the Jets and the Giants. 
They don't talk about UEFA. 
They don't talk about FIFA. 
They don't talk about international sports. 
They don't talk about anything I'm interested in, all these sports channels, and there's nothing that I can relate to. 
And I have different interests, you know, but I'm still interested in organized sports to a degree. 
You know, I don't want it to take over my life, but how come they're all talking about the same thing? 
This is what the problem with radio is. 
And it's not just sports. 
It's music as well. 
Listen to the way music is programmed, and you'll see that the stations that take chances, they don't survive. 
The only stations that continue to be bought and sold are the ones that do the same thing everyone else does. 
It's a crazy business model. 
It doesn't work anywhere else. 
But in the world of radio, don't take chances. 
Just do what everybody else tells you to do. 
That's how it works. 
Except in non-commercial radio. 
Go ahead, Gila. 
So there are two things I was thinking about. 
And the first one is how I've always noticed that sports journalism, be it television or radio, is the one place where journalists don't even have to pretend to have a veneer of objectivity. 
Obviously, I moved to the New York area from Minnesota, and the Twins and the Yankees were playing a series. 
And I was in Minnesota when it started and in New York when it ended and busy hearing people talking about the good guys and the bad guys and how ugly the stadium was. 
And I was fascinated. 
But also, there's this service where you can buy CDs of the – it was, like, for DJs. 
And it was, these are the songs that are going to get radio airplay in this particular month. 
And you could buy them, like, it was a subscription service. 
And it was, like, this is what it's going to be. 
And it was fascinating. 
It was, like, that's what I call music, but before it had come out. 
And this was 20 years ago, and it was already that regulated. 
So, I'm – and again, it's the paucity of voices and the streamlining of who and what we get to hear. 
Right. 
Which becomes frustrating. 
It's not a government control. 
It's a business control. 
No, it's a business control. 
It's people who have no courage and no foresight to do something different, something outrageous and courageous. 
Remember PIX 101.9? 
Does anybody remember that? 
That used to be a new wave station in New York City. 
It was – it had a cult following. 
And they were on the air for years, but reality caught up with them, and they had to turn into something more commercially acceptable. 
Same thing with WLIR. 
I could go on. 
I could go on and on. 
It's just – it's so frustrating. 
But fortunately, we have non-commercial radio, has its own problems, and we've lost a number of stations to all kinds of other entities. 
But let's take a phone call. 
And good evening. 
You're on off the govertime. 
Go ahead. 
Yes, Emanuel. 
Calling for my nice new Bluetooth headset. 
How is the sound quality? 
Does anybody hear anything? 
Yes. 
I'm not picking up. 
I'm just picking up like a buzzing noise. 
Just like this – yeah. 
It's really – Oh, let me get closer. 
No, no. 
Rebel, we hear you fine. 
We hear you fine. 
Don't go crazy. 
No. 
We're just messing with you. 
There are some phones that sound really good, some cell phones. 
And I think if you're calling from one company to a phone on the same company, you get extra bandwidth. 
And I don't think that carries over the voicemail, to answer your question. 
Kyle, did you have a theory about this? 
Okay. 
No. 
I was going to say something. 
Yeah. 
Just often it's when both devices and networks are compatible with that sort of enhanced – I think it's HD voice or something. 
Yeah. 
Which is about time, you know, with all this like 5G crap going on, it's about time we have some decent clarity in our voice signal. 
But voicemail and voice messaging itself, it's probably – or visual voicemail as it is, the translations and all of that. 
But they are obviously interested in just getting the information and not clarity. 
So I could easily see that being an aspect of it that suffers in comparison. 
Right. 
But somebody is calling me from a Verizon phone and I have T-Mobile. 
Their voice sounds perfectly clear and everything. 
And when they leave me a voicemail, their voice doesn't – it sounds cell phone-like. 
What happens when you call them? 
Uh, I don't know because I don't – I haven't really kind of – Because they never pick up? 
No, that's not right. 
You should – you got to keep trying, man. 
No, actually – Don't give up that easily. 
I don't know. 
You know what? 
You know what I did? 
I went to a cell phone show, the Verizon cell phone show. 
I called their demo phone from my phone and the voice sounds clear. 
It sounds – when I call them, the voice sounds, you know, clear. 
You know, and when I had it, I called my own cell phone, it sounds clear. 
But when I left voicemail, it sounded like a cell phone. 
So, that answers that question. 
But does this Bluetooth headset – like, the last caller sounded pretty good. 
Do I sound just as good as the last caller? 
You sound as good as you've ever sounded. 
Okay, now, remember – remember what – what was the star button and the pound button for in the 70s on the touchstone phone? 
Well, the official – the official explanation in the phone book was reserved for future use. 
Oh, it said it in the phone book, really? 
It did, yeah. 
Well, people wanted to know what the hell these buttons were for. 
So, it said reserved for – I can't give you a phone book right now. 
But if you go back in time and go to the 70s or something, you'll probably see it there. 
And, you know, they kept that promise. 
They used it in the future, which is now the past. 
Okay, now I'm looking on the speaker phone. 
You actually sound better. 
That's a little better. 
Yeah. 
I sound better? 
Yeah. 
No, I'm not the speaker phone. 
This is the regular phone. 
Oh, what do you mean regular phone? 
Now I'm on – okay, now I'm on the speaker phone. 
Are you calling us from a landline? 
No, no, I'm not calling us from – I'm calling from my cell phone. 
But I'm on the – the speaker phone is – I'm on my cell phone. 
What do you mean you're calling from the regular phone? 
You have extensions on your cell phone? 
No. 
How does this work? 
Okay. 
I'm calling from my cell phone on – and it's in speaker mode. 
Right now? 
Right now. 
Okay, you're on speaker. 
Okay. 
And what was the other one you did? 
Okay, the other one I did is – this is regular mode. 
This is regular, like, talking, holding it to your – Well, that sounds better. 
Am I right? 
Yeah. 
That sounds better. 
That sounds better. 
We just figured this out now, that talking directly into a phone is better than talking on the speaker? 
Well, this doesn't sound good? 
No, it sounds a little crappy, actually, if you want my honest opinion. 
Okay, now this sounds better, right? 
Yeah. 
Okay. 
Hold on. 
Let me put the Bluetooth back on. 
It's like going to the eye doctor. 
It's really annoying. 
How does it sound now? 
Well, you weren't saying anything, so it didn't sound like much. 
You've got to say more than that. 
Oh, no. 
No, this is the hip-setting. 
Okay, it doesn't sound as good as it did before. 
When I said it sounded good, you should have stuck with that, because that's as good as you're going to get, I think. 
Okay, well, then I have to – all right, then I'm going to have to do this thing. 
I'm going to turn this one off. 
This is Overtime, where we test Rebel's phone connections all night long until he gets it right. 
All right, now, all right, now this is the regular phone, or this is the regular, you know, telephone. 
Well, you sound better, but not as good as before, but maybe that's because I'm annoyed now. 
What do you mean not as good as before? 
I don't understand it any more than you do. 
I just know that the sound of your voice is beginning to make my blood curdle. 
It's a weird thing. 
What else? 
Let's touch the number. 
I don't know how much we're going to take. 
Let's touch the number. 
Do you want to hold? 
Close. 
Rebel, it's been fun, as always. 
We'll talk to you in a future week. 
We have to open up the phone lines for other people, though. 
Good luck with – By the way, there's a 2600 meeting – oh, not this weekend, but next weekend. 
Next Friday. 
All-in-one computers. 
You know, I suggest people get all-in-one computers, like the computers that do not have the tower, where everything's in the monitor. 
Okay. 
Because it looks like a computer terminal. 
You can run Linux on it. 
So, yes, you can run Linux on lots of things. 
Yeah, I know. 
But if you have, like, an all-in-one computer, like an iMac or something, like where, you know, it looks like, yeah, like Linux, that's where I want to go. 
I think, yeah. 
I mean, hackers tend to have a lot of things on their desk. 
Do people still buy iMacs? 
It does help. 
Some hackers don't like anything on their desk, though. 
Do iMacs still come out? 
Are iMacs still a thing? 
I think there's something like that, yeah. 
All right. 
Wow. 
Yeah. 
It's a massive charge. 
It's like the screen, the CPU, and you hook the keyboard. 
It's easier to use the Bluetooth for the keyboard and mouse, or you could hook things up into the USB. 
You even have USB ports in the back as a monitor. 
Lots of advantages. 
Good to know, yes. 
Yes. 
Thank you for this advice. 
Yeah, Dell has a good computer. 
You know, Dell has a computer. 
Dell, they're still around, too. 
I feel like I'm talking to Rebel of the Past. 
All right. 
Yeah, Dell has an Ethernet port. 
It has a headphone jack, and it has USB-C, all in the back of the monitor. 
What about a modem? 
Well, it has an Ethernet port. 
That's why you could do Wi-Fi 4. 
Just testing, just testing. 
Okay, well, Rebel, thank you for that advice, and we'll talk to you again soon. 
Good night. 
Bye. 
All right. 
802-321-4225 is our phone number. 
That was educational, entertaining, and enlightening all in one, I think. 
You know, for those interested in the beginnings of touch-tone telephony, it might be interesting to note that the debut of tone dialing in this country happened in 1963, and Western Electric made a push-button phone that had only 10 digits. 
It had only 10 buttons. 
It had one through nine. 
It had the zero hanging out by itself. 
It did not have the star or the pound sign. 
Those were introduced on the Western Electric 2500 in 1968. 
And if you have a phone like that, it's probably worth a pretty penny, a phone that only has zero in the last column, and nothing, no star, no pound. 
But also, there is a fourth row. 
There is a fourth row called ABCD that goes down the far right next to three, six, nine pounds, because, well, that's how phones work. 
Basically, each button is a combination of a tone from each column. 
Each column and row. 
So, that obviously leaves another row at the end. 
And that was what silver boxes were used for. 
But that's another story. 
We have another call. 
Good evening. 
You're on Off the Hook. 
Over time. 
Hey, guys. 
How are you? 
Good. 
How are you? 
Pretty good. 
This is up from Queens, Howard. 
Oh, yeah. 
A friend from Queens. 
Our friend from Queens with the dog. 
That's right. 
I was going to say a couple of things. 
Number one, I can't believe what they did to CVS. 
Now, they've got 50,000 watts of crop code all over the country. 
Thank you. 
Exactly. 
You got it. 
That's a clear channel. 
They're in Long Beach somewhere. 
They've got a great antenna because they're right there in the salt water. 
That thing puts out a signal all over. 
880. 
It's a clear channel. 
No other station. 
When I was in Europe back in the 90s, and I lived in Greece for a while, you could hear CVS 880 at night coming into Europe. 
You could hear it in Europe? 
Holy crap. 
I had no idea. 
Oh, yeah. 
It's a clear channel. 
It's got a great signal. 
And if you drive down to Florida, you can hear 880 all the way down to Florida. 
Right. 
All the way down I-95. 
At night, anyway. 
Not during the daytime. 
These guys really, guys who are all just really rooted. 
And I've got to tell you, I listen to a sign-off. 
I remember as a kid, when they switched from music, and they had some game shows, it went over to news in 1967. 
That's right. 
That's right. 
1967. 
So, what can I tell you? 
They actually silo-capped in the same VS on three different stations at the time of the AM dial. 
That's what happens when the FCC changed its rules and regulations, saying that one guy could own more than one station in an area. 
And the FCC would never allow silo-capped it. 
Yeah, it used to be, I think, five stations total, and you couldn't own more than one. 
Unless it was AM and FM, and it was grandfathered in, like WQXR. 
Right, but there's one thing. 
The FCC said you had to have different programming on your AM signal and on your F-S signal, so you couldn't have the same programming. 
Right, right. 
I remember that. 
That was in the late 70s. 
Uh-huh. 
Yeah. 
You know, I can understand why they did it, because, hey, it takes a lot of energy to run the newsroom and everything. 
But I'm surprised they, you know, somebody should have bought that station. 
It's just a shame. 
Just for what, it's called RF pollution, okay? 
It's called RF noise. 
That's all it is now. 
Yeah, yeah, it is. 
I, you know, I can't imagine that it has anything near the amount of support that WCBS had. 
And to give up the call letters, I don't get that at all. 
Why would you give up WCBS, these iconic call letters, and replace, does anybody remember what the call letters are of the news station? 
I think it's WHSQ, and I don't understand why. 
Let me get that back or so. 
You know, the call letters don't mean anything. 
You can ask the FCC as long as no one else has it. 
They'll give it to you. 
Right. 
You can make up any call. 
But the only requirement is that east of the search of place, your station starts with a W. 
Every station's got to start with a W. 
The last three letters, you can pick. 
Right, but the thing is that there are some grandfather stations, like KYW in Philadelphia, three letters and a K. 
So if you give that up, you don't get that back. 
You're probably right, like KDKA in Pittsburgh. 
Exactly. 
And WOR, W-O-R New York, three letters. 
If they gave that up, they would never get three letters back. 
Well, if no one else took it, WOR is not going to give it an A-B-C. 
Right away, you take A-B-C, which is not a bad station. 
It's pretty far to the right, but I listen to them. 
They're not owned by the same people as the American Broadcasting Company. 
So all I can tell you is this. 
W-I-N-S, I never really liked. 
I liked CVS, but I always thought W-I-N-S was a lower-class station. 
I agree. 
Yeah, I felt the same way. 
And their signal is not nearly as good as well. 
Well, that's because of the antenna. 
They have to protect. 
They have a station. 
I forgot who they're protecting. 
But at night, they have to protect the station, I think, north of them. 
See, CVS was one of the very few stations in the country that had. 
And you have to protect any other station because they had a clear channel. 
But when you have such a station, you have to change your pattern so you don't interfere with a station nearby. 
Right, unless you're a clear channel on a station like 880 is and continues to be. 
You know, it would make more sense, even if they're going to stick with keeping W-I-N-S and losing WCBS, swap the frequencies. 
You own both of them and have all news on the better frequency. 
That would make more sense to me. 
I'd still be upset that WCBS was gone. 
I've spoken to a couple of engineers and everybody's shaking their head saying, from an engineering point of view, this was a ridiculous move. 
You're right. 
They should have left CBS the same, taking W-I-N-S. 
Because CBS, not only here in New York News, but if something happened, you know, like a 9-11, whatever, it was a great station for nationwide coverage. 
So I can't see how the FCC said this was okay. 
But guess what? 
There's nobody home with the FCC anymore. 
Hey, Rob, you have something to say? 
Yeah, with what you were saying about the call letters, unfortunately, the CBS, the WCBS call letters are probably never coming back. 
And I'll tell you why. 
Because in 2017, CBS unloaded their radio business, selling it to Entercom. 
And part of the deal was that Entercom would be able to continue to use the WCBS and the CBS trademarks, which are still owned by CBS, which is now a Paramount subsidiary. 
So if somebody, say, wanted to start their own radio station down the line and wanted the WCBS call letters, they would very likely have to fight a legal battle with Paramount over the WCBS trademark, which Entercom did not have an infinite license to use. 
Yeah, you're right about that. 
But understanding one thing, you cannot own a call letters. 
Those call letters are owned by the federal government. 
If they give you the letters, you can't say, I have a right to those call letters, because the call letters belong to the public domain. 
So if the FCC wants to do it, well, you're going to have to fight the FCC or sue them. 
Yeah, you likely would have a fight on your hands still. 
But the thing is, even if you could get those call letters from the Fed, you probably still couldn't call your station WCBS. 
You probably couldn't use the CBS trademarks, because Entercom, who bought it from CBS only. 
You're right. 
You can't use the trademark, but you could have CBS. 
Yes, but if somebody would, I mean, I can't see why somebody can't come back and say, we want to hold news and make a deal. 
But you're right, that's probably never going to happen. 
But I'm really surprised someone didn't step in and buy, you know, 880 and keep running the thing. 
But you still have a news network. 
It doesn't make any sense. 
It absolutely makes sense. 
You know, you mentioned a news network, the CBS News Network. 
I wonder, does that even still exist in New York? 
I mean, Odyssey, whatever the hell their name is, A-U-D-A-C-Y, what kind of word is that? 
They own WINS. 
They own what was WCBS. 
Why can't they simply air CBS National News on the hour on WINS now? 
But odds are we won't even have CBS News in New York anymore. 
You probably won't have CBS News. 
Look, I don't know, but that's above my pay grade. 
But getting back to it, it was just, from an engineering point of view, it was the worst thing. 
And also, that ABCD and your touch tones, they use that now in amateur radio and other things to control certain stuff. 
Like if you want to turn on off transmitters or whatever else, they'll use the ABC tones. 
Smart, okay. 
So, yeah, it's a 4x4 keypad. 
And those ABCs have been around for years. 
It was just something that the phone company was going to use for controlling, you know, customer control. 
Because you also have MS tones, which are your 7900. 
Right. 
So those are not used anymore. 
Right, right. 
Yeah, but everybody remembers, the way I describe it to people, just listen to that Pink Floyd song on the wall where they make the long distance call. 
Those tones in the background, those are MF tones. 
Everybody gets it when I say it that way. 
But as far as the 4x4 buttons on touch tone, I made reference to silver boxing. 
The way that used to work was you would call. 
This was before long distance information cost any money. 
It was free to call information anywhere in the country. 
So you would dial 1-202-555-1212. 
You'd get information and then you'd lean on the D key and you'd get a pulsing dial tone and you would be able to speak to anybody else who did the same thing for free. 
So anyone else who called that number and hit that D key through the pulsing dial tone, you'd be able to talk to them. 
Well, I didn't realize that. 
But you know what? 
What I remember from calling the operator long distance is blowing 2600. 
Uh-huh. 
Blowing 2600 and dialing any way you wanted to using MF. 
Well, you know, it's past the statute of limitations. 
Yeah, I think you can confess now without having to worry. 
Nobody understands the technology anymore, let alone we'll be prosecuting you for it. 
Well, that's not even around anymore. 
At one time, having a blue box or even whistling 2600 was against the war. 
I'm not sure about that, but it could definitely rankle some feathers somewhere. 
Back in the good old days, they didn't like it. 
But hey, listen, it was their mistake. 
They put all the signaling tones in band. 
Yeah. 
You know, what's interesting, I lived in a crossbar number five when I was growing up. 
And it turns out there was a bug in my particular crossbar where you could dial numbers that began with one or zero. 
And one in, say, 20 times, they would go through. 
So I would dial 914, which is the area code for Westchester. 
Then 183, which is the international gateway. 
And then four more digits to fill the phone number. 
And either it would go to an error or it would go through. 
And if it went through, I got a different kind of dial tone. 
And I could send MF tones on that dial tone without having to blow a 2600 hertz tone. 
And that was cool. 
It was... 
Well, what probably happened is they dropped you into an overseas trunk line. 
And then, you know, you didn't have to use 2600. 
I was able to blue box without doing the 2600 hertz part of blue boxing, which is what all the blue box detectors would jump on. 
They'd see 2600 hertz. 
They'd say, aha, there's a phone freak there. 
Go get him. 
But I never did that. 
I'll tell you what. 
I found a local number. 
I was in a crossbar five also. 
I'm not going to say what exchange it is. 
But I was in a crossbar five, and you could dial... 
There was a number in the 99 numbers, like, you know, 9945, 9950, 9970. 
Then you had, you know, the loops. 
They had a number. 
You dialed in. 
And all of a sudden, you've got a different tone. 
You can use a blue box and dial anywhere in the country. 
Yeah, good old days. 
Those were good old days. 
But now everybody can call anywhere for free. 
So I guess we won. 
You know what? 
I guarantee you the phone company, the people back in the good old days, they used to go answer everybody. 
They've got to be rolling over. 
What happened? 
Now it's free. 
You know, the phone company used to drive two or three dollars for a one-minute phone call to California. 
Now, you know, whatever. 
It was long distance to call from Long Island to Queens. 
That was long distance with New York Telephone. 
By the way, of course, you want to call Interstate. 
It cost more to call Interstate than it was to call across the country. 
That's true. 
That's true. 
Interlata, I believe it's called. 
New York to Nassau County. 
A three-minute call, of course, you wanted if you called L.A. 
I remember the number 35.5 cents a minute. 
I don't know where I'm getting that from, but I just think that was on my phone bill. 
35.5 cents. 
That's for a fairly local call. 
If I called from Queens to, let's say, the Bronx, you know, from Queens to the Bronx or Queens to certain parts of Manhattan, it was 35 cents per minute. 
Maybe that was it. 
Maybe that was what I was saying. 
Good old days. 
So, yeah, so, you know, change in technology can be good. 
This is an example of how it's good. 
But understanding the technology and having the hardware still able to be demonstrated, that is something we should never let go of. 
Well, they have a museum. 
I think they have a YouTube channel. 
Some museum guys should trade all the different equipment on YouTube. 
Yeah, so there's a bunch of them. 
Getting back to the good old days, all I can just say is that, you know, the phone company, I can't believe how stupid they were, because the phone company used to make a big issue. 
We don't, we won't want you connecting anything to the phone line. 
They should allow people to connect. 
They should allow other companies to connect. 
So the phone company fought and looked what happened. 
Well, they thought they could be a monopoly forever and keep control over how many phones we had in our homes and every aspect of telephony. 
And their luck ran out. 
Yeah, so now we have all this competition and different companies. 
And guess what? 
AT&T is no longer even, they're not one-tenth of what they used to be. 
Yeah. 
You know, they lost. 
All right, listen, thanks for your call. 
Say hi to your dog for us. 
And we'll talk to you again next week, hopefully. 
Maybe I'll do it this week. 
All right. 
Take care. 
All right. 
Do we have time for one more? 
I think we do. 
802-321-4225. 
I would say it was definitely like a wake-up call for what companies were operating those networks, just as far as security goes. 
There was a lot of lessons learned. 
And I think, and I'm not saying what companies are competing now have mastered any of it, but there's certainly a heightened awareness and sense of responsibility around, especially telecommunications networks and internet. 
And just like the imperative to not let all kinds of stuff occur without some level of management, because, you know, they had examples of the free-for-all. 
But I think, like I alluded to it, there are still serious problems with some of the established network. 
Um, and, and despite that heightened awareness or like emphasis on security. 
Rob, Gila, any, anything from, from you guys? 
Oh, just that, that was, that was a lovely call in the, uh, I'm always up for long discussions of old phone freaking stuff. 
Um, yes, that, that is a delight. 
Cool. 
Uh, we have another phone call. 
Okay. 
Uh, we have another phone call. 
Good evening. 
You're on also cover time. 
Go ahead. 
Hi guys. 
And Gila, it's Johnny Fusion. 
Hey, Johnny Fusion. 
How are you? 
Hey. 
I'm doing good. 
I'm doing all right. 
So there's a lot of talk on about radio tonight and I have a radio story, not from me, but from the guy I inherited the hacker gene from my dad who always worked in computers since the sixties. 
Okay. 
Well, do tell us. 
So he worked at rough and ready Island, which is a Navy base just outside Stockton, California. 
And it basically handled all the communications for the Pacific fleet. 
And, and, and there was a piece of equipment that he used, like it's all top secret and stuff, so I don't know exactly what it was, that there was a slight possibility that the local radio station would interfere with it. 
And, and so on his say, so that radio station had to change its broadcast frequency. 
Is that the whole story? 
Well, you know, and then he got a nickname, they called him super bird, more powerful than the FCC. 
But yeah, he was just involved in, and I remember that happening. 
I didn't know my dad was involved at the time, you know, cause they had to do all this advertising that on this date, their frequency is going to change. 
You can be on a different spot on the dial and stuff. 
If it was Kjoy in Stockton, I don't remember what the frequency is, KJ-O-Y. 
Wow. 
And what, what year was that? 
Oh, it was, it was the seventies at some, it was somewhere in the seventies, in the late seventies. 
Well, there's, there's certainly lots of examples of that, um, need for all kinds, for radio experimentation and, uh, the overlap between commercial interests and, um, of course, government activities. 
And that's, I guess something engineers, I've learned more about that being involved with, with off, off the hook and just how much goes into the, um, the propagation and the maps and just like where you fit in the frequency and how it all actually physically works. 
It's really, um, just sort of to most people magic, but it, it takes a lot. 
Um, and you are working within a busy environment, both technically and, um, as far as programming and, and all of that and how that all like connects and happens amidst a lot of change and just transforming of some of these, some of these stalwart, uh, entities is, um, itself kind of, uh, an education, just witnessing, bearing witness to it all. 
And, um, the small part that we might play, I think just makes it that much more magical for us and just, um, I don't know, noteworthy. 
We're, we're certainly aware and like affected as I mentioned that the, so many examples of it, um, being heard from afar and also locally and stuff. 
Johnny, can I ask what, uh, what city are you near? 
I'm in, I'm in the Bay area. 
So near San Francisco. 
Do you ever hear a station on the FM, uh, dial called 91X? 
I actually don't have a radio right now. 
Oh, you do the radio for this. 
Yeah. 
91X. 
Yeah, my radio's in storage. 
Well, it's, you should get out of storage because a lot of good things on the radio from what I hear. 
Yeah. 
It really helps you hear what's in there. 
When we were traveling, uh, I was exploring the radio dollars I'm known to do. 
And 91X is a station that is super powerful. 
You can actually get it, uh, from San Diego all the way up to San Francisco. 
And for FM, that's, um, that's, that's something, uh, unusual. 
It comes from Tijuana. 
It's actually in Mexico, uh, but it's an American station. 
Uh, and, uh, you know, I think I've seen a billboard for it. 
You probably have. 
You probably have. 
They can get away with things that you can't do on American radio. 
Uh, and, um, it's, it's so incredibly powerful. 
No, no American station could ever be that powerful. 
I don't think. 
Yeah. 
You know, that's the whole thing. 
You know, supposedly the bandwidth, all the frequencies belong to the people. 
Like there are, they're public, they're public, but the FCC controls what, you know, so it's not chaos, basically, and everyone's stomping on each other, which is fun, but it's interesting how, as the government, like all the spectrum belongs to the people for the people's use, but they, you know, they carve out little sections that say, no, this, this is off limits. 
It is a dynamic and, and messy environment. 
I would just add, I mean, it is, even as it is managed, it's, uh, changing and there are, uh, a wide range of types of interference, uh, intentional and otherwise unintentional sort of, um, things going on in the midst of all of that. 
And then like, we're talking about the ownership schemes and programming, it's all, um, uh, not necessarily fixed. 
I mean, it is, uh, on paper and in the way we think of it, uh, being controlled by bureaucracy, like the FCC, um, but it still has its chaotic moments, I'd say. 
Johnny, any, any final thoughts? 
We're going to be wrapping it up now because, uh, we're, we're, we're kind of tired. 
I agree with Gila. 
They need to break up these big media conglomerates. 
It's super bad. 
Yeah. 
Well, yeah, it's, you know, we're like, I've seen the, I've seen like the clips of Sinclair Broadcasting and all these local newscats. 
Word for word. 
Speaking from the same script. 
Yeah. 
It, it tends towards, um, monopolistic behaviors and those do not really end up going so well. 
In this case, um, you are talking about what is in the sort of, uh, the, the consciousness in the, in the, the fabric of our conversations and if it's mediated in that way without sort of a little bit more of a mix because of the ownership schemes, it can be tremendous, tremendously harmful and in unintended ways. 
Johnny, always good hearing from you. 
Good, good talking with you. 
I hope you're working on some, some new articles for, for 2600. 
Um, I don't have any ideas right now, but like, I thought my last one actually got rejected, but then I got an email saying that it was in the current issue a couple months ago, but I never, I never got the acceptance email. 
Hmm. 
That could happen sometimes, but, uh, usually it doesn't. 
Yeah. 
Just that, just that it was published. 
Okay. 
That was a pleasant surprise. 
Thank you. 
I'll, I'll get to work on something. 
Cool. 
All right. 
Well, you take care and we'll try and survive this heat. 
All right. 
Bye now. 
All right. 
Take care. 
And, uh, yeah, I, I, I think the heat is affecting us because it's, we're kind of sluggish here and, um, you might hear the fan in the background, but that's, that's the fan. 
It keeps us alive. 
I did get up to, to open the, uh, vent. 
Yeah. 
I think that's the word I'm searching for. 
Let some oxygen into the room because this room has no AC. 
Yeah. 
But, um, this room does have AC, but we, uh, because we're professional radio makers, we, we turned it off while we were broadcasting and, uh, it's now what 80 something degrees in here. 
So I am just, you know, sorry that most of the listeners, actually everybody who's on YouTube, except you guys, um, doesn't get to see how red my face is right now. 
It's pretty, pretty, pretty red, pretty red. 
All right, folks. 
Um, great, uh, talking to people. 
Good to be back. 
Rob Gila, Alex, wherever you are. 
Good talking to you again. 
Kyle, of course. 
And, um, what? 
Nothing. 
We'll, uh, you want to go? 
He's right to us. 
OTH. 
Are we going? 
OTH at 2600.com. 
We'll, we'll go right after the show. 
Uh, we'll, uh, we'll talk to y'all later. 
Have a good night. 
Have a good night.