Thank you.
This is WBAI, New York.
Serving the community since 1960.
Won't you have to sing these songs of freedom?
This is all I ever had.
Redemption songs.
Redemption songs.
All I ever had.
Redemption songs.
These songs of freedom.
Songs of freedom.
Redemption songs.
Redemption songs.
Redemption songs.
Redemption songs.
Redemption songs.
Redemption songs.
ENGUSLOCKS.
Redemption songs.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hey, y'all, I'm Kix Bruce.
I'm Roddy Dunn.
And we're Brooks and Dunn.
New York's newest radio station, Country 99.5.
That's a much fun.
And now, 10,000 country hits commercial-free.
Country 99.5.
Country 99.5.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
We're not doing that.
We're not doing that.
No, no.
Hang on.
Let me wrestle control of the console here.
That was a rebroadcast of our April Fool's prank from 2009.
17 years ago.
Can you believe that?
Well, April Fool's is on Wednesday again, so you know what we have to do.
Not anything different or new, but replaying what we did before.
But the first time we did that, we played country music for about 15 minutes.
And, yeah, there was a lot of listener awareness.
Let's put it that way.
This is actually off the hook, in case that's not clear.
Yeah, you can hear.
You can hear it in distance.
It's there.
It's there.
It's fighting the country music right now.
But, yeah.
There it is.
There it is.
Okay.
This is Emmanuel here.
We have Kyle.
Yes.
And out in signal land, we have Alex.
Hang on, Alex.
You're muted.
Okay.
Not April Fool's.
Gotcha.
Oh, that was funny.
What?
You're moving your mouth and no noise coming out?
That's not April Fool's.
That's a dream.
That's it.
Yep.
Oh, man.
I've been waiting all year for that.
Uh-huh.
All right.
Well, it worked out just like I had in my head.
This is a special holiday.
You know, for the first time in this show's history, there are astronauts on their way to
the moon during our show.
That's never happened before.
If you can believe that, that's never happened before.
And I'm not sure if the two of you were even alive the last time this happened.
I was.
I was a kid.
But, yeah.
It happened just less than an hour ago.
I think about a half hour ago.
Artemis astronauts, four of them, on their way to circle the moon and come back.
And next time they do this, they'll land on the moon.
I, for one, think it's awesome.
But what do I know?
Okay.
So, this is our special April 1st edition.
Now, if you're freaking out because of the country music, know that this time it's a joke.
Next time, it might not be a joke.
I think we have a wrap coming up.
Yeah.
Hang on.
No, I'm sorry.
It's just the quiet part of the song.
We're going to break for the fake raps.
There are people, there are entities, there are corporations, there are governments that want this station shut down and changed to something more, oh, I don't know, palatable to the listener.
Something that won't make you think as much as WBAI makes you think.
And that is why...
No, I'm sorry.
I just got caught up in that.
That is why you need to pick up the phone and call 833-WBAI-NYC.
Hopefully, your phone has letters on it.
I'll need to look that up to find out what the number equivalent is.
But that is number to call right now to pledge because our pledge drive actually began today on April 1st.
And we need your support.
We need your support to keep non-commercial radio going here in New York City where we can do things like this.
Where we can have fun but also talk about very serious matters.
And 833-WBAI-NYC.
And now let's listen to what could have happened.
You know, how long would it take to play 10,000 songs?
If a song is 3 minutes, right?
That's how many in 6...
That's like 20 in 60 minutes?
Is that how that works?
That's a lot.
I can't calculate.
I can't possibly calculate that many songs.
10,000 songs.
And I guess commercial stations do that when they switch formats.
Maybe 10,000 is a bit of a reach.
But we owe a debt of gratitude to our good friend Laszlo who worked in commercial radio and was able to collaborate with some people and put this together for us.
It is so polished, so professional.
And it has aged really, really well.
I think it would take 20 days.
That's all?
By my calculations.
I think it would take a lot longer than that.
Maybe, okay, 21 if you're rounding up.
Look, three...
How many...
Okay, how many songs in an hour?
Three minutes.
60 divided by three is 20.
I can do that.
Yeah, I did that.
So that's 20.
So in 10 hours, you would have 200.
In 100 hours, you would have 2,000.
So multiply that by 5.
So 500 hours.
Okay, yeah, you might be right.
Yeah, I used the calculator.
You used the calculator.
But I did it by dividing a bunch.
10,000 songs.
Can you imagine?
Well, again, 833-WBAI-NYC.
I'm actually going to look at my phone and see if I can turn that into numbers by looking
at my phone dial here.
Yeah, here we go.
I'm going to sound like an idiot.
833-9224-692.
Maybe somebody could write that down.
That would be very helpful.
I'm usually good at that, but not under pressure.
Okay, so here we are on April Fool's Day having a bit of a laugh.
And, you know, there's a presidential address tonight, too, at 9 o'clock.
Everyone's getting...
Well, you know, it's his day.
Come on.
Let him have that.
April Fool's Day.
It's like a holiday.
And this is the April Fool's address.
Who knows?
Who knows what's going to happen?
Who knows what we'll have to contend with as a result of that?
I don't know if BAI is covering it, but we'll certainly be talking about it.
That's for sure.
Alex, I wanted to ask you last week.
The story just broke last week when we went on the air about Meta YouTube being found liable
in that social media addiction trial.
You know, when I first saw the story and saw that they had been found liable and that
they were being fined a few million dollars, it didn't...
I think $2.1 million and 900,000 in punitive damages, $3 million total, didn't sound like
that much.
But when you realize that's only one case and that there are tens of thousands, if not
many more, to come, this could spell the end of social media as we know it.
Is that a valid interpretation?
Knowing that there's going to be a fake rap coming up in just a second.
In the middle of 10,000 country hits commercial-free on the new Country 99.5, New York City just
got a little Southern.
Oh, man, can you imagine?
Can you imagine?
That's so horrible.
That's so horrible.
It really is horrible.
Yeah.
I kind of love it, though.
I mean, in its horribleness, it's so very perverse, but it is legitimately what could
happen.
And I want to go back to that.
I mean, please, people support us.
We've got a great community here.
Yeah.
We're here week after week for you guys.
And we just read the number one more time, and this time make it sound like I know what
I'm talking about.
833-922-4692 is the phone number to call to pledge your support.
Or you can also go to WBAI.org or give to WBAI.org, give the number to WBAI.org.
Become a BAI buddy, pledge every month, and you'll be helping to keep us going.
Yeah.
So important that BAI buddies keep us on the air.
They really amplify us.
I think you have to think about this in a context, too.
We've been so much better about fundraising.
We haven't been here begging for money for so long now, yet we're here week after week,
every single week.
We do overtime for you guys.
We show up without fail.
And we only ask you guys to come through for us maybe once a year now.
So please do.
And if you don't come through, the fire truck will come and spray you with water or something.
I don't know.
But addressing my question before this song ends, we have to listen to another fake grab.
Okay, yeah.
Go ahead.
So the question about this is, I think you're right, Emmanuel.
I think there's going to be big changes on the horizon.
And it's interesting, too, that these are going to come in the form, the changes are
going to come from jury verdicts, right?
It's taken so long to do this.
And it also means that these platforms have not changed voluntarily.
They've been fighting this.
They didn't settle these cases.
They're going to trial with them, and they lost.
And what the jury found really was that these platforms were not accidentally addictive.
They were deliberately engineered that way.
And there's data that's come out from Discovery all about what they knew about the addictive
nature about these particular platforms.
And they continue to persist despite the obvious harm that it could have caused children and
others.
And so, yeah, I think they're going to get pummeled in case after case.
I think they're going to try to arbitrate a whole bunch of these and try to save face.
But ultimately, whether it puts a large enough dent into the profits of social media platforms
to affect real meaningful change over time is going to be another thing entirely.
I think that they are going to be more careful about the documents and records that they create
as part of the research and development process.
They may destroy records more expeditiously, but I think that ultimately they are going to
have to be more careful, and it's, I think, a testament to the power of the legal system
to affect this kind of change.
It's also a testament to the powerlessness of Congress and the fact that they have not
affected this type of change and have not reeled in social media platforms from doing
this type of thing for so many years through so many levels of manipulation.
Well, you know, it's a huge story.
And when you say the social media companies are going to have to be more careful, how do
you see them being more careful?
And this song is about to end.
Answer right after this.
Oh, they did it again.
You think they're stopping, but they just keep going.
If you can start answering my question, knowing you're about to be interrupted.
Okay.
Excellent.
So how are they going to have to be more careful?
I mean, we're going to have to bring the heartland to the heart of New York City.
Country music is back on the air in New York City on Country 99.5.
We've rounded up 10,000 country hits, and we're playing them all in a row, commercial free.
Toby Keys.
Wow.
Are there really 10,000 country hits?
I guess there are.
Okay.
Talk fast.
Yeah.
Well, they're going to have to be extremely careful about how they document their research.
And they're going to be careful about other people being able to figure out what it is
they know about the dangers of their particular platforms.
And I think that ultimately, they're going to have to make these things less addictive.
They're going to have to re-engineer them in certain ways.
And if they're going to continue to maintain the attention and the eyeballs of the current
generation, I think that they're going to have to re-jigger their platforms in many,
many ways.
I mean, this whole crazy ethos that they had back in the day of move fast and break them,
right?
Well, they're finding out now, decades later, that that ethos works a lot less well when
what you break is actually a teenager's brain.
And they're being held liable for that.
No, it's interesting.
I mean, yes, obviously, kids are more susceptible to this sort of thing.
But I see plenty of, you know, grown ass adults who are falling for the crap of social media
as well, being negatively affected by them, you know, by the platforms, by how they're
drawn into all this, I guess, hate and discussion and back and forth engagement, which is the
bread and butter of the social media companies.
So, you know, they have to change their fundamental business model if they're going to survive.
My question is, can they do that?
Or, you know, is it just are they finished?
You know, is it are we moving on to something else?
You know, every solution also is a potential problem.
You know, you can go too far trying to solve the problem.
And I kind of see that here.
Our good friend Cindy Cohen was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Monday.
I urge everybody to watch that if they can.
And she was talking about these issues, about how reining in the social media companies too
much could actually be a bad thing, could be giving power to government entities and making
it so that it's harder for people to speak their minds.
Individual people like us won't have a platform to say what we think because everything will
be will be severely regulated.
I'm curious what your thought is on that.
And also, this is the last, the last of the country music raps coming up.
So let's just plow through that together.
And then we can never speak of it again.
I see my motorcycle.
Let your daddy stand in there.
Preaching to the choir, you see.
Got a lover.
Oh, me and God love her.
God love her.
Me and God love her.
Grab your country hat.
You're in the middle of 10,000 country hits commercial free on the new Country 99.5.
And that's it.
Except for that.
That's it.
That was our April Fool's joke from 2009 that we kind of went through again today.
But let's get back to something serious.
And by the way, this is also a phone intro.
We will be opening up the phone lines in just a couple of minutes to studio listeners.
There's no overtime tonight.
So people listen to the radio station.
We encourage you to give us a call.
We'll give you the phone number in just a couple of minutes.
Don't call it now if you know it already because it's not going anywhere.
So, Alex, you hear the point, though, about how if you force all these regulations onto social media platforms, those regulations affect us.
You know, the age restriction is something that I've been going back and forth on.
And I think I don't like it.
I think I don't like it a lot because it seems to be forcing a lot of people to give up their anonymity because they have to prove that they're over a certain age if they want to participate in a conversation.
Now, just because there are these huge corporations that are predatorial and don't care about their users, don't care about the harmful effects their platforms have on people.
Is that a reason for us to throw away another piece of our freedom just to keep them at bay?
I don't think we have to see it like that.
I mean, I can understand Cindy's point that if we have too many regulations and there has to be some kind of regulatory oversight of those regulations.
Now, there's other ways I think that we can regulate these social media companies as well, perhaps by passing laws that would give individual people like you and I and our kids and whatnot, anybody who's harmed by those platforms, specific private rights of action to sue them additionally over and over and over again in federal court or state court.
There's lots of ways that we can do this ourselves without giving power to a regulator to then use that against us.
And we know that there's obviously there's a lot of function creep when it comes to regulation and regulators love to regulate.
I think there's got to be a way that we can thread the needle between maintaining personal freedom and having some kind of meaningful oversight of social media companies here because we've seen real harm.
I mean, there's real harm. These jury verdicts are going to be extremely powerful.
They're going to be really damning. We know this has been going on for some time.
We know that teens who have been on these platforms have been subject to mental health issues, self-esteem issues, been pushed to suicide and time and time again.
You know, and when the product that they're selling here is essentially eyeballs on the screen, when the product is attention, it shouldn't come to any surprise.
To us that addiction is their revenue stream.
Yeah, I just again, I don't see how we are protected from when I hear stories about how somebody under a certain age won't be able to install an operating system without proving they're above a certain age or having their parents do something for them.
You know, all these regulations, they seem to go a little too far, you know, and they don't necessarily accomplish what it is they were setting out to do.
So that's what worries me because the Internet is priceless as far as what it allows you to be able to do.
Think of the early days of the Internet before all the commercialism took over.
That was something that I think we should aspire to again, and I think we need to try and figure out a way to do that.
Maybe, you know, do something radical, like just not allow companies that do the kind of thing that Facebook and Twitter and whatever else, what they can't resist doing.
Maybe we just make that the problem, you know, not the age so much as just the behavior.
We can describe what they are doing as far as, you know, having their algorithm control what you see and not reflect reality.
Make that the problem that needs to go away.
And, you know, that might lead to something a bit healthier.
Yeah, I mean, I think you hit it on the head when you said the word behavior there, right, because regulation is supposed to be targeting behavior.
It's not supposed to target things like expression.
It can certainly bleed over into expression, and I think that's likely what Cindy was afraid of.
If we give these regulators too much power, there'll be this function creep.
But what we should be talking about here with respect to these very specific issues that we know arise in a social media context, especially with children and with addictiveness, these are known harms.
And you have to regulate the harms.
You cannot regulate the entire Internet.
That's wrong.
We have to focus on the harms and go backwards from there.
And we're asking a legislative deliberative body that has really done really absolutely nothing and far too long, I think, to tackle an issue that is way beyond their comprehension.
So I'm not necessarily too optimistic that we're going to see laws with meaningful reform passed by Congress.
I just don't see that happening.
But I am given some heart by the fact that we can still affect change from the legal system, or rather within the legal system, from the ground up.
Well, you know, one of the things Cindy said that really stuck with me was, do you really want to unleash another Brendan Carr on the Internet, you know, with regulations there?
And I say resoundingly no.
That is exactly what we don't want to do.
Anyway, so maybe we can open that up to listeners, or if listeners have anything else that they would like to add to the conversation.
Our telephone number is about to be activated, 802 is the area code, 321-4225.
That's 802-321-HACK.
I got the number right, didn't I?
Okay, good.
I'm having trouble with phone numbers.
Too many phone numbers.
So if you're listening to the radio right now, that's something we would like to ask people who listen to the radio, because you're important people.
You give us a call, 802-321-4225.
I think we have a phone call.
Let's take the first one.
Good evening.
You're on WBAI.
Go ahead.
Yes, is this?
I did, I did.
Sorry.
Is this?
I did, I did.
Sorry.
I knocked something out.
What is your problem?
Okay.
I don't know who that is.
You hit the button, right, Kyle?
Yeah.
Next time you hit the button, can you make a motion?
Because it looked like you were asleep.
I didn't know.
You were so cool, calm, and collected.
And if that's the same number, don't pick it up.
No, it's a regular caller.
Okay.
Okay.
802-321-4225 is our phone number.
Yes, Alex, go ahead.
Oh, no, I was going to say just pick up and hang up again if we needed to, but let's
go to the caller.
Oh, nice job, Alex.
Okay.
I stepped away for a minute.
You've got nothing to say?
Okay.
Do we have a phone?
You had your chance.
You had your chance.
Do we have a phone call or not?
Yeah.
Okay.
Good evening.
You're on Off the Hook.
Go ahead.
Oh, nice job.
Hi.
Let me turn down the radio.
Yeah, turn down the radio.
This is Rebel, it must be.
Yes.
Um, I'd like to mention that, um, hold on.
I got to get prepared to go.
There is a website called TelephoneWorld.com and, um, okay.
Got to get online for this.
TelephoneWorld.com and what they do, I don't know if you know about this website, but they
have old phone, uh, they have old phone sound and old phone recordings and old things like
that.
And what I found was they, they said that they have the only step or the one step switch
left in the United States.
Now, this is a step switch that is not, has not, it's not like one of those step switches
that they just forgot to cut over or something.
It's something that they just put there for some reason.
It's in Florida.
I won't get the exchange out, but, um, if you call it, um, it does some interesting things.
Emmanuel?
Yeah, I'm listening.
Okay.
Uh, I'm going to cue this up.
I'm ready to record, not a recording.
It's live.
It's not a recording.
It's not on a recording of a website.
It's a live switch.
It's a step switch.
It has a, it has one exchange and okay.
And it has.
Rebel, we, uh, we really have to get moving.
I got a three way for this.
I got a three way for this.
Well, that's, that's your personal business.
What, what, what, what I'm, no, what I'm going to do is, uh, three way you to the, um,
site.
No, I'm not going to do that.
Maybe we set this up before we make the phone call next time.
No, no.
Okay.
All right.
Um, here, um, you have to, okay, this is a busy, um, signal on a step switch, and this
is not a recording.
This is an actual switch in Florida.
You have to wait for the, uh, the, the, the clicking in the, do I?
Well, that does sound like a step, uh, busy signal there, but let me ask you, how are you
accessing this?
I'm calling it.
If I'm calling it on my Google voice number, I'm calling you from my cell phone now, but
I'm calling this, these numbers on my Google voice number.
And what I'm going to do call now is a loop test.
Okay.
And, and how are you finding these numbers again?
On telephone, there's a, what's that called?
Telephone world.
Okay.
It's a, they have, they said it's the only step switch in the United States.
Um, and what I'm going to tell you, you're going to hear the step switch ring now.
It's in Florida.
It's north of Orlando.
It's by, I forgot the name of the phone company.
Complemento telephone or something?
No.
Century link.
I think it's called.
Hold on for the ring.
Okay.
This will be the last one.
The step switch.
You got to wait.
It takes time to go back in time.
Hey, somebody picked up.
Oh, I heard someone picked it up.
So you're saying you actually called somebody who has a step.
No, you know what?
It's a test number.
Okay.
Well, somebody is part of the test, I guess, if they picked up.
Rebel, this is fascinating, but we only have a few minutes, so we have to move on.
But thanks.
Thanks for the call.
And again, Rebel usually calls overtime.
In fact, Rebel always calls overtime.
So we're going to move on from, from this particular phone call and hopefully get another
phone call.
Uh, that's not an idiot and, uh, and it's not Rebel.
And the two things are totally different things, by the way, just in case the first
caller was an idiot.
Uh, 802-321-4225 is our phone number.
Um, Alex, you were motioning?
I was motioning to, to hurry Rebel along.
That's all.
To just shivvy him along.
Oh, you're issuing commands.
Okay.
Oh, fine.
Yes.
I will do what you say.
Yeah.
And, uh, yeah, just shivvy him along and off.
I think we've got to give the airwaves to, to new callers.
Well, I'd like to do that, except we're talking about it and we can't pick up the phone.
And let me say good evening.
You're on, off the hook.
Hi guys.
How are you tonight?
Good.
How are you?
Very good.
Okay.
A couple of things about government regulations.
I remember back in 60s, there was a show called Dark Shadows.
You guys know it was so addicting that kids would run home.
I was 11 years old when that show was on the air.
Uh-huh.
So you know what?
This whole thing about being addicted, it's up to the parents to control the kids.
You know, right now, if you got, if you, there was a company that has a software for a calculator
in California, they're getting out of that area because even if you've got something that
has nothing to do with social media, every operating system, even a radio that you have
to give, the radio has to ask the age just to log onto the operating system.
Isn't that crazy?
No, that is crazy.
That is crazy.
And imagine if you had to prove your age to listen to the radio.
I mean, you can hear a lot of things there that will affect your mind, you know, and
could be considered unhealthy.
But, you know, do we want to go that far?
The radio I'm talking about is a software-defined radio that would be used for amateur radio,
something that allows you to go from 100 kilohertz to 1,000 megahertz.
Right.
It's a software.
That software has to talk.
So anybody selling a software, even if the software is not supposed to communicate with
a server, it has to be able to.
Any software in California now has to verify your age.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
That's the thing that I think is a real threat.
I mean, have a software out there that doesn't need to communicate.
Sometimes you don't want to keep your software to go out to the internet.
You want to keep it local.
Right.
Connected to the internet should not be the requirement.
Right.
But that's a requirement now because they want to make sure.
I mean, this is where, Alex, as a lawyer, you know that when things creep, who wants
a topic?
Jefferson said, if you give up safety or something, you know, you give up your freedom for safety,
you have neither.
I mean, that's what we're doing in this country.
He's got you there, Alex.
Yeah, there's something to do with that.
Was it Ben Franklin who said something like that?
I don't think anybody knows who really said it or what they actually said, but the thought
is there.
Yeah, the sentiment is, you know, you shouldn't exchange security for liberty, right?
Or exchange liberty for security, whichever one you want to do.
And I think that's the right sentiment here.
Yeah, and this goes right back to what we were talking about, caller, which is that you
should be regulating the harm, not necessarily regulating the wider internet.
That it's, you know, a big problem of these types of regulations.
I can understand why people are hesitant to have them in place.
But when we have such active harms that are affecting a really impressionable class of persons
in the society, like children, then I think that we have some kind of almost moral imperative
to act in a way that reigns in these companies or causes them to change their behavior.
We can't let it go on this way, but I think we can do it in a reasonable way that doesn't
hamstring us from a liberty standpoint.
Yeah, because, you know, it sounds a lot like the Patriot Act, you know, that we have
to do this because, you know, these bad things are happening and it's going to affect everybody
else in a negative way.
But we just have to, you know, buckle up and take it.
I think there's got to be a different solution, especially when you can identify the bad actors
and we can easily, they're the ones that are in Congress answering questions and not telling
the truth.
So, you know, make it harder on them.
Don't make it harder on the rest of us.
Yeah, but here's the problem.
Look, we can design a software.
The whole idea of designing, you want people to be hooked on your product.
It's not like drugs.
Look, you can have two kids.
One kid says, hey, I hate it.
Another kid says he loves Facebook.
I don't like it.
I'm not a big Facebook user, but I remember as a kid, I couldn't wait to get home.
I would run home and I would not even do my homework.
My parents would say, why are you watching TV?
Why are you watching that stupid thing?
Because I was into a certain actress.
So, you know what?
Anything can be addicting.
Well, that's true.
Maybe not as dangerous as what we're seeing today, but certainly, yeah, the point is taken.
I think that people can go overboard on many different things.
And they try to shut that show down because the church was saying, well, it's all about
witches and warlocks or whatever.
Dark shadows?
Really?
Oh, yeah.
Dark shadows.
If you remember, it had Barnabas and Angelique and all of those.
I was a big Dark Shadows fan.
It was a topic show.
Wow.
And, by the way, if you don't believe me, just Google WABC was being pressured to take
it off the air by the church because the church said this was evil.
Wow.
Because it was, you know, blood is hurting people.
You have a way to solve that problem.
You go to court and you sue them.
Got guys like, it's hurting people.
You have a way to solve that problem.
You go to court and you sue them.
Got guys like you, they can take them to court.
But that's what the system is all about.
But really, it's up to the parents to keep an eye on the kids.
Yeah.
Just like it was up to my parents.
You know, when I was growing up, they would say, no, you're not going to watch that today.
Alex, I'll let you have the last word here.
Yeah.
Yeah, sure.
Look, I can appreciate these sentiments from the caller.
And I think what you're really driving at here is we have to have some kind of personal
responsibility for what we allow our kids to do and act.
But I think, on the other hand here, you also mentioned, and I think this is the overpowering
point, that addictiveness here is not something that happens by accident.
It's not a glitch.
This is deliberately designed.
These systems are deliberately designed to be addictive.
These apps are built like some kind of behavioral exploit kit.
There's infinite scroll.
There's variable rewards, notification pings, you know, red buttons and things that have alerts
and an algorithm on top of this that learns exactly how to keep you personally from leaving
by crunching on your data and your behavioral analytics over so many years.
It knows you better than you know yourself.
So this isn't some kind of, quote unquote, social media feed.
What you have here in your hand is something quite literally akin to a casino that's wired
to your dopamine system.
So that's why it's addictive.
That's why it's harming children.
I think we need to continue to think of it as something as dangerous as that.
All right.
We're going to move on.
Thanks for the phone call.
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802-321-4225.
Is there anything on your mind?
Alex, you heard Kash Patel got hacked, right?
What do you think about that?
I did.
I mean, does it surprise anybody at all?
No, no, of course not.
Were you shocked about this?
I mean, my understanding of this as well is that I think this particular inbox, I could
be wrong about this fact, but I believe that this particular accountant inbox was breached
at some point before as well.
And so I think he then probably just changed his password but failed to set up some kind
of two-factor authentication.
So, I mean, I just never, I'm never going to underestimate the crazy things that are going
to happen to people in this administration.
It's just, I think it's par for the course.
Well, you know, just poor security habits is something that you don't just shake off.
And I think, you know, was this a government account or was this his personal account?
My understanding is it was personal.
Yeah, I believe it was a personal account.
But I mean, from the standpoint of, okay, is it going to make, you know, so much of a
difference to have this out there?
And some of his data was exfiltrated.
Well, it might.
I mean, he's the damn director of the FBI, right?
It makes him look like a fool if that was even possible to convince anybody who hasn't
been convinced.
And just from like an international standing perspective, when the head of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation of a country, the nation's premier law enforcement agency supposedly gets
his Gmail hacked yet again, it's just not the best way to win friends and influence people
from an international diplomacy standard.
No, this was accomplished by the hacker group Handala.
And they basically issued a statement saying that Kash Patel will now find his name among
the list of successfully hacked victims.
Okay, that's a good way of saying it.
They published a series of personal photographs of Kash Patel sniffing and smoking cigars, riding
in an antique convertible, and making a face while taking a picture of himself in the mirror
with a large bottle of rum.
I mean, that, you know, that's a good look for an FBI, you know, head, don't you think?
Oh, Lord.
Again, let me remind you, we've got the presidential address coming up.
Why would you give a presidential address on April Fool's Day?
Why would you do that?
I mean, it's always going to be known as the April Fool's Address.
You know that.
And people will know, is it the address that the April Fool gave?
You know, it depends on where you put the apostrophe.
Or is it the address that was given on April Fool's Day?
You know, you could have just either given it yesterday or given it tomorrow.
I don't know.
No one listens to my advice.
Well, maybe this is his version of plausible deniability here.
So if he said something on April Fool's Day, he could reel it back in later on by claiming
it was an April Fool's speech.
He didn't mean it at all.
It was all a big joke.
But he never really seems to go forward or through with anything anyhow.
So it really wouldn't matter.
I don't think he even needs that.
You know, if you were there to whisper in their ears, they would be getting away with
so much more than they are.
Because yes, that is an intelligent way to do it.
Okay, we have another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Go ahead.
Speak up.
Is anyone there?
I hear activity.
Hello?
Hello?
Okay, we have to move on.
All right.
802-321-4225.
We're getting all kinds tonight, aren't we?
And we have another phone call coming in.
Let's hope this one is able to use the mouthpiece of the phone.
And good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Go ahead.
Yes, how many of you do that?
Okay, Rebel, now you are banned.
You are banned next week or the next week we take phone calls.
I don't get it.
It's so easy.
Don't call twice.
It's a simple rule that we have.
It's not an unreasonable rule.
There are other people.
All right.
802-321-4225.
Let's take this phone call.
And good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Go ahead.
I have the Comics Code from 1954.
Sounds pretty interesting.
You have the what now?
The Comics Code.
Comics Code.
I don't know what that is.
It is.
Well, I'll read the first two points.
Crime Shall Never Be Presented.
This is regulating comic books.
Oh, I think I've heard about this.
Yes.
Started in 1954.
It's about 20 points.
But, for instance, no comic magazine shall use the words horror or terror in the title.
All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated.
Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.
And it goes on.
It's easy to find.
Wow.
So, what was the fate of this?
How long did it last?
Marvel Comics turned its back on it, I think, in the late 2000s.
The Wikipedia gives you a good rundown of it.
And it's called the Comics Code.
So, yeah, it's called the Comics Code Authority, CCA, was formed in 1954 as an alternative to government regulation.
And that was right in the middle of the McCarthy era.
So, I guess everyone was trying to think of ways to be a little bit more oppressive.
Yes.
All right.
Thanks for that.
Marvel abandoned it in 2001.
Wait, it took them that long to abandon it in 2001?
Oh, my God.
I had no idea.
Yeah.
And, you know, Robert Crum had been out for decades before.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
Well, thanks for that enlightenment.
And we're definitely going to look into that some more.
You will.
All right.
Take care.
So, Alex, let me throw this to you.
So, this Comics Code that the listener called in with, you know, comics, a lot of kids read comics.
A lot of the minds are affected by what they read.
How do you argue against this kind of a thing?
Well, it can go too far as well, these types of things.
I mean, I – but this is also, you know, akin to some kind of coalition to form a – it's almost like a conspiracy to self-censor in many ways.
It's how I would see this type of thing, right?
It's saying, like, we don't need a government regulator to do this.
We're just going to do it ourselves, and we're going to police this as an industry.
We're going to come together and form something on the basis of these principles.
But, you know, that centralization of power over expression to me is really quite dangerous.
It doesn't matter if it's in the hands of government or it can be in the hands of a private party.
It's still a centralized power over people's ability to express themselves, which is something that should never be curtailed, whether privately or governmentally.
So – but it's an interesting concept, too, though, about coming together and forming these types of coalitions, you know, maybe by contract or by pact, so that you can get things done together that the government cannot get done.
It's a pretty cool concept, but it's also pretty scary in many ways, too.
Yeah, and there's no shortage of people willing to do something like that, you know, curtailing freedoms or things that you can read.
So, all right, we have another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on Off the Hook.
Go ahead.
I'm a long-time listener, first-time caller.
I got two questions.
Go ahead.
Okay, first question is kind of a large scope thing.
What do you think the long-term damage literally to humanity is of people watching a screen that's essentially an illusion and doing this so many hours a day?
I mean, it's bad enough we've been watching TVs and film for how many decades now, and people seem to have their experience based on TV shows or movies, not an actual life, if you will.
I mean, so many things that we quote.
The second thing is – and I keep hearing this.
I'm semi-retired now, but from colleagues in different parts.
It's something called the digital control grid.
It seems to have the mark of, you know, three-sixes on it at this point from what we're hearing.
I looked many years ago in Switzerland.
The bank of international settlements is not in the neighborhood.
I mean, so talk about control of the currency someday.
Everything that you do will be like on some side of them.
Are you getting further away from the phone?
We're having more trouble hearing.
I'm driving in rural New Jersey, hard to believe.
Okay, be careful.
I remember – just that I had a friend in the Air Force many years ago.
She was in the Air Force, and they literally had a screen that showed every flight in the world on a given screen at any given time.
This was in the late 90s, right?
Wow.
And it was verified.
Of course, it was, you know, it was considered classified back then.
And, of course, when 9-11 happened, my friends said no.
They knew where those flights were.
That's a whole other story.
But the idea of illusion with humanity, but more to the point, the digital control grid.
I keep hearing about this.
What do you guys know about it?
And terrific program for decades.
Well, thanks for calling.
My pleasure.
Alex, I'm going to throw that to you.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
I mean, I've got thoughts on what the caller mentioned, but I don't know what the digital control grid is specifically, which was his last question.
But I think in terms of the long-term consequences of staring at a screen and basically, you know, just watching fictitious things that are probably even at this point algorithmically generated story arcs.
Well, yeah, there's we already know that there's mental health and self-image issues.
You know, there's long-term mental health issues linked to higher rates of anxiety, depression, body image, FOMO.
We're losing out on social skills.
We're losing out on empathy.
We have distorted versions of reality and really fragile egos because of basically these lies on the screens.
I mean, I could go on and on.
I mean, I think addiction and attention deficit disorders that are on the rise from this are other long-term consequences.
I mean, I think there's just so many.
We could spend hours on this.
Kyle?
I think what the caller is talking about is probably a theoretical way of talking about many different types of systems that we experience.
And I think it's helpful to kind of name things for ways of thinking about things.
And some of it may be sort of metaphysical.
Some of it may be based in fact or science or anecdotal evidence over the years.
But it's something we've noticed.
I mean, even some of the media texts that we consume have referenced that I'm thinking like of the literal Matrix series.
That's from fiction, and yet our world resembles it more and more.
And what I would say is that these devices and the capabilities with the tools should just enable us to live more of our actual life.
It should enhance that lived experience more so than taking over.
Okay, we have one more phone call.
Only a few seconds.
Go ahead, caller.
Hello?
You're on the air.
Go ahead.
Okay, there's nobody there.
Kyle, can you continue talking then?
I'm sorry.
I thought we had a caller.
And we're done with calls for tonight because we have to go in a minute.
Well, that said, this went way too fast this week, I think.
But, you know, historic episode of Off the Hook.
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And now, in closing, let's think of the astronauts on their way to the moon.
Wow.
I'm going to put on an iron shirt and chase Satan out of Earth.
I'm going to put on an iron shirt and chase the devil out of Earth.
I'm going to send him to outer space to find another race.
I'm going to send him to outer space to find another race.
Satan is a evil host man, but him can't choke sit on a man.
So when I shake him, I last in hand.
And if him slip a gun with him hand, I'm going to put on an iron shirt.
And chase Satan out of Earth.
I'm going to put on an iron shirt and chase the devil out of Earth.
I'm going to send him to outer space to find another race.
I'm going to send him to outer space to find another race.
Oh, yeah.
Him, if he drop him, fuck and run.
Him can't stand up to judge a son.
Him, if he left you with him gun.
Dig off with him bomb.
I'm gonna put on an iron shirt and chase Satan out of earth.
I'm gonna put on an iron shirt and chase the devil out of earth.
I'm gonna send him to outer space to find another race.
I'm gonna send him to outer space to find another race.
Satan is a evil host man, but him can't choke sit on a man.
So when I shake him, I last in hand.
And if him slip a gun with him hand, I'm gonna put on an iron shirt and chase Satan out of earth.
I'm gonna put on an iron shirt and chase the devil out of earth.
I'm gonna send him to outer space to find another race.
I'm gonna send him to outer space to find another race.
I'm gonna send him to equalrica.
I'm gonna send him to outer space.
I'm gonna send him to outer space.
Move here with your gun.
Put self left here with your gum.
Move here with your gum.
Put self left here with your gum.
If you walk me a mountain
Everything