Close All Tabs - How To Prove You're Not AI

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

During a recent phone call,  BBC tech columnist Thomas Germain couldn’t convince his aunt that he wasn’t AI. Being unable to distinguish a real person from a fabricated version is a problem born ...from the sheer volume of AI-generated content flooding the internet — and one that’s increased dramatically in the last year alone. Even world leaders are now plagued by the issue: a glitchy video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sparked an enduring conspiracy theory that he was really dead and his public appearances on social media were an AI-driven cover up. In a world where everything looks fake, how do we know what’s real? Thomas joins the show to explain how we got here, where we might be headed, and a surprisingly analog technique that could save you from getting scammed by a deepfaked version of a loved one. Guest: Thomas Germain, co-host of the podcast The Interface, and tech columnist at the BBC. Further Reading/Listening: I tried to prove I'm not AI. My aunt wasn't convinced — Thomas Germain, BBC The Interface Podcast — BBC Benjamin Netanyahu is struggling to prove he’s not an AI clone  — Jess Weatherbed, The Verge Cascade of A.I. Fakes About War With Iran Causes Chaos Online — Stuart A. Thompson and Alexander Cardia, The New York Times  AI is intensifying a 'collapse' of trust online, experts say — Angela Yang, NBC News Deepfakes, Elections, and Shrinking the Liar’s Dividend — Josh A. Goldstein, Brennan Center for Justice Read the Transcript here Email us at CloseAllTabs@KQED.org Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok⁠ Credits: Close All Tabs is hosted by Morgan Sung. Our team includes producer Maya Cueva, editor Chris Hambrick and senior editor Chris Egusa who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music from APM. Audio engineering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our Director of Podcasts. Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:28 Hey, it's Olivia Allen Price from the Bay Curious podcast. You've probably heard that federal funding for public media has been cut. That's left KQED with an $8 million budget gap. So now, more than ever, we need your support. Please give whatever is comfortable for your budget and help keep programs that you love going strong. Visit donate.kud.org slash podcasts. From KQED.
Starting point is 00:00:59 Do you like these deep dives? Do you want more? It would be so, so helpful if you'd be so helpful if you'd could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Send it to your friends, your frenemies, that one niche micro-influencer you kind of have a parocial relationship with. Maybe they'll respond. I don't know. All right, let's get to the show. When we talk about deepfakes in AI, you know, often what we're thinking about is the idea that you're going to get tricked. This is Thomas Germain. He's the co-host of the podcast, The Interface,
Starting point is 00:01:34 and also a tech columnist at the BBC. His column, keeping tabs, covers tech and how it affects average people every day. So, like many journalists on this beat, he's been keeping an eye on the uptick in deepfake scams. Someone's going to scam you, they're going to try and fool you into thinking that they're someone else. Deepfakes are synthetic media, images, videos, or audio recordings that have been generated or manipulated by AI to impersonate someone else. But I started thinking about, like, what would it be like, what would it be like? like if the shoe was on the other foot? What if you needed to convince someone that you're real and you are who you say that you are? How difficult would that be? So Thomas decided to do a little
Starting point is 00:02:18 experiment. He called up his aunt Eleanor. Thomas and his aunt Eleanor are very close. She was at the hospital the day he was born. And of all of his relatives, she's the one he calls the most. And she's relatively online. She knows a bit about what's going on. Her husband. My uncle is actually a computer science professor. So she gets some of it, but she's not like up to date on everything that's happening. And I wanted someone
Starting point is 00:02:41 who knows me really, really well. That last part is important. Thomas called his aunt and explained the experiment. He would call her back, and she'd either be talking to the real him, her beloved nephew,
Starting point is 00:02:55 or a deep fake, generated by AI. And what Thomas wanted to know was, could she tell the difference? At first, you know, it was like a very fun, like friendly conversation, but there was this weird, like, tension, you know? She said before we even got on the phone, she's like, oh, I'm going to be really upset if I can't tell,
Starting point is 00:03:14 you know, because she's known me since the day I was born, right? His aunt, Eleanor tried a few different methods to suss it out. First, she went on Facebook. Read me like a bunch of jokes that she's seen that she really liked, like, see what my reaction was. And, you know, we're like different generations. We have different senses of humor, so I'm not sure, like, was the test that I would laugh. or I wouldn't laugh. It was kind of funny.
Starting point is 00:03:38 That didn't seem to convince her. So she took a different approach. She was knitting me a sweater. And we hadn't decided on the color. And like a couple weeks before we got on the phone, I told her that I was saying I wanted a gold sweater, like kind of gold colored yarn. And then when we were talking,
Starting point is 00:03:59 when I was tricking her about AI, she brought it up. And she's like, so if you decided on the color, And I was like, yeah, you know, I think I might just go boring, like, just do like a black or like a dark blue or something. And I think of all the things that made her the most suspicious. Because, like, I was expecting you to go with like a more exciting color. She's like, that, I don't know, that feels like a robot answer. It's so generic.
Starting point is 00:04:23 It can't possibly be you. Yeah, I know. But maybe I'm a boring guy. She still couldn't be sure. So she gave him another test. She asked me for some details. about things from my childhood that you would be unlikely to know if you weren't a member of my family. And I think she found that a little bit reassuring.
Starting point is 00:04:46 But overall, the experience left Aunt Alinor rattled. I think by the end of the call where she realized she couldn't be totally sure, it was kind of distressing, you know, like you're supposed to know your loved ones. How could it be? And we talked for like 20 minutes or so, and by the end of it, she told me, like, I think it's the real you. I just can't be sure. I'm not 100% confident. And at the end, I told her, it is me.
Starting point is 00:05:16 I'm not tricking you. But there were all these little things that she was trying to pick up on. And I think this is really important for people to understand. Throw that out the window. This technology is so good. I promise you, there is nothing that you. can do to tell that you're not looking at an AI. And if you convince yourself that you can figure it out by just like thinking really hard and being careful, you are more likely to get in trouble and get
Starting point is 00:05:44 fooled. This is way bigger than Thomas duping his aunt. It's a real-world problem. Every day, deep fake scams and AI-generated disinformation lead people astray, which is why the general public is becoming so distrustful of everything online. When everything could be fake? How do you tell what's real and what's not? This is close all tabs. I'm Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let's get into it. Kicking this off, as always, let's open a new tab. The Netanyahu Deepfake Death Rumor. In March, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a televised update on the world.
Starting point is 00:06:49 war in Iran. A clip of it was posted on his official ex-account. Something about that video seemed off. There's one moment where he kind of waves his hand in front of the camera. And if you freeze frame it at just the right second, it kind of looks like he's got a sixth finger on his hand. Screenshots of this moment started making the grounds. And if you're just scrolling by and you see this freeze frame out of context, it would probably raise a few alarm bells, right?
Starting point is 00:07:32 It really looks weird. It looks like this weird digital glitch. And because it's a video, it's a little grainy, it's pixelated. So this rumor started swirling around online. Was this televised speech really, Netanyahu? Or was it a deep fake? And people latched onto this because for the longest time, AI image and video generators really struggled with hands, right? They were trained to focus on faces.
Starting point is 00:08:00 Hands were this thing that picked up along the way, and they couldn't get the hands just right. That was true two or three years ago, right? The technology has advanced past that point. It's not true that AI struggles with hands anymore. That isn't really an issue. But this was enough. And it does look weird if you posit the right frame.
Starting point is 00:08:22 Thus, a conspiracy theory was born. Netanyahu was dead. And this was the cover-up. It didn't help that the prime minister's health had been the subject of public speculation for years. He had emergency heart surgery in 2023. And then a year later, underwent treatment for prostate cancer. And then there's the war in Iran. The U.S. and I.S. and Israel.
Starting point is 00:08:45 Israel killed the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Hamenei. In Tehran, thousands gather to mourn the death of the supreme leader. Similar protests were held in cities around the world, including... In retaliation, Iran's revolutionary guard has vowed to hunt down and target Netanyahu personally. The seed of doubt over Netanyahu's health was already planted. Then, the wonky six-fingered video launched the conspiracy theory into the mainstream. This was enough that some large swath of people latched on to this idea that Netanyahu had been killed in a missile strike. And the Israeli government was hiding the truth and making AI videos to convince the world that he was still alive.
Starting point is 00:09:30 To what aim, I'm not exactly sure. It turned into, you know, such like a meme, essentially. Like, the conversation got so big that it was enough that Netanyahu posted another video. This video takes place in a coffee shop near Jerusalem. The camera approaches Netanyahu and the voice behind it says, they're saying on the internet that you're actually dead. Netanyahu, holding a latte, tells the camera, I'm dying for a coffee.
Starting point is 00:10:04 And then he holds up his hand and says, do you want to count the fingers? He did a terrible job with it for a couple of, of reasons if the goal was convinced the public. Number one, I talked to a bunch of people about this and they're like, the worst thing you can do is come out and deny it because it makes it look
Starting point is 00:10:22 like you've got something to hide, right? And there is still something off about the video. It was almost uncanny. He looked super crisp and almost too smooth. It only fueled a conspiracy theories. They shot this
Starting point is 00:10:38 on like a nice DSLR, like one of those big cameras. which is how AI videos look, right? They're trained on high quality content, high quality videos, so they produce what looks like smoother, polished high quality video. So it looked a little bit more like AI than it would have if he had just used a phone to record it. So that, I think, just sent people spiraling even more. Nobody was convinced by this as far as I could tell.
Starting point is 00:11:06 The people who had latched on, if anything, it just reaffirmed their belief that, the bad guys were trying to trick them. Here's the thing about conspiracy theories. Once you're convinced, everything else just seems like confirmation of what you already believe. People took screenshots, zoomed in, try to find inconsistencies in the backgrounds of the video. Joe Rogan, for one, seemed pretty convinced. Look at this. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:11:33 Like the coffee, look how turned it is. Right. It doesn't spill at all. It just wiggles to the edge. He talked about it on his podcast. which has over 20 million followers on YouTube. And of course, that just spread the rumor further. I saw claims that if you zoomed in on the date on the register,
Starting point is 00:11:52 the pixels didn't look right. So surely, it was fake, right? Or that the video itself was real, but it wasn't actually Netanyahu. It was really an actor, deep faked to look like Netanyahu, and the shadows gave it away. Or that when he put his hand in his pocket, The fabric of his jacket seemed to smooth over.
Starting point is 00:12:13 And the thing about reality is it's weird, right? Like if you look close enough at anything, you'll find weird stuff. But especially with digital photography, digital video, the way that the sensors work, like errors are actually inherent to the way that a digital camera sensor functions. So if you zoom in on any video, if you're like watching a clip from this podcast on social media, Zoom in. Take a screenshot and zoom in. You will find something weird. That's just how digital images work. That there'll be some little grainy thing. There'll be some glitch. And I think it's important for people to understand that unless you have serious expertise on this subject, you aren't qualified to make that kind of call. I am not qualified to make that kind of call. I think about this stuff all the time.
Starting point is 00:13:02 For his column, Thomas talked to a few of the world's leading experts on this, including Jeremy Corral. He runs a publication called Riddens, which investigates AI-generated media. And he went through, he analyzed it, he determined it was real. I talked to professors. I talked to some people who were like, you know, real world leading experts on digital forensics is what they call it, like figuring out what the origin of a file is. They said there is no doubt. It is impossible that these videos are AI-generated.
Starting point is 00:13:33 Like this thing that sort of looked like Netanyahu had a six-finger. Even if you watch the clip instead of looking at a first-year-old, freeze frame, you can kind of see there's like a shadow on his hand, and that's what it is. It looks weird if you take a screenshot at the right second, but the video itself, it's very clearly real. This was not enough. And I think that is kind of part of the problem, is that we've lived through an era where there's been an assault on expertise, right? That, you know, real conscious, intentional efforts to discredit traditional. forms of, you know, authority on truth.
Starting point is 00:14:13 Thomas also talked to Haney Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley, who's known as the father of digital forensics. He pioneered this field of examining files and figuring out if they're real. He's one of these guys that's constantly watching this stuff. And he says you can see the progression of AI and deep fake technology. If you look at some of the recent global conflicts, If we go back to the beginning of the war in Ukraine, it was almost all real footage. Like every once in a while, you'd see something AI generated, but for the most part, it was all real. Fast forward to the conflict in Gaza, and, you know, it was starting to get to the point where there was more AI-generated content.
Starting point is 00:14:59 It was a little harder to sort the reel from the truth. You get to when the U.S. invaded Venezuela, and it was about 50-50, right? You're seeing as much fake stuff as real stuff if you just go out and look at a random video on the subject on the Internet. By the time we got to the war in Iran, there's more fake footage, there's more fake clips, there's more miss and disinformation than there is real stuff. A few weeks ago, we dove into the sloppaganda coming out of Iran. those AI-generated Lego rap videos dissing the U.S. They're clearly not real, but they still push specific narratives to the American public. But there's another kind of AI-generated media at play here.
Starting point is 00:15:47 Videos that look real, but portray events that never happened. Like AI-generated footage of Iranian missiles, sinking U.S. ships and bombarding civilians in Tel Aviv. In less than six months, we had this dramatic shift. where I think people in power who've got like, you know, a game to play, they've got something that they want to try and convince the public of. They've realized that this technology is something they can put into play. There are whole operations that are ready to get off the ground at a moment's notice to like fill the world with fakery and lies.
Starting point is 00:16:22 I think that is a real serious problem. I mean, even for journalists, even in the media, like it used to be, if you saw something that was recorded with a camera, you know, in the not too distant past, it was almost certainly real, right? Because it took so much effort, especially for video, so much effort to fake something in a convincing way. Now I can do it like while I'm washing the dishes. I could reach over and hammer something out of my phone and generate a fake video. For the average person, I think this means that you are constantly inundated with nonsense. You are being exposed to lies on a near constant basis.
Starting point is 00:17:05 Like, it's not just that the image looks real. It's not just the video looks real. It's like the thing that's happening is so close to real life, right? And if you're a person who watches a lot of short form video and social media, if you're like scrolling through Instagram Reels or TikTok, the chances that you have seen a piece of AI content and been fooled that it was real, I'd say in the last week are extremely high. Actual footage, meanwhile, has been written off as fake and AI.
Starting point is 00:17:38 When the U.S. bombed in elementary school in Iran, killing 120 children, some people online questioned by their footage of the aftermath was authentic. It didn't help that the true photos and videos were mixed in with AI-generated depictions of what happened. It's one thing for digital forensics experts, like Hani Farid, to sift through all of the slop and determine what's real. It's another for these experts to get the public to actually trust them. It leads to an information ecosystem, you know, a landscape of truth, where everything is up for debate. Nothing is set in stone and everything is suspect.
Starting point is 00:18:18 And that leads to some new ways that power can be abused and people can be taken advantage of. The conspiracy theories over Netanyahu's death have not stopped. The follow-up videos and public appearances after the coffee shop debacle only fueled the rumors further. In March, Netanyahu appeared in a video with Mike Huckabee, who was now the ambassador to Israel. Mr. Prime Minister, I want you to know, the president asked me to come and make sure you were okay. Yes, Mike. Yes, I'm alive. If anything, it only convinced people that Huckabee was also a deep fake. On X and TikTok, people did the same exact thing they did to previous videos.
Starting point is 00:19:01 Zoomed in, slowed down, cropped screenshots, and looked for any anomaly that could confirm their theories. The picture you're seeing right up here, that's not his ear, fam. I think that is a truly historical moment. This is, according to everyone that I asked, the first time that the leader of the major world power has like openly gone out in front of the public to try and convince people that he's not an AI. And I think it's a sign of a very rocky period that we're about to enter. What does this mean for media literacy? Our ability to parse the truth from fiction? Well, it definitely does not bode well for the information ecosystem. It's really easy to take
Starting point is 00:19:52 advantage of public distrust and write off real evidence as fake and AI. We're going to talk about liars and disinformation in a new tab. After a quick break. But first, we wanted to remind you that close all tabs depends on listeners like you to keep us going. You can support us by becoming a member at donate.kwed.org slash podcasts. Okay, after the break, we're coming back to bunnies on a trampoline. Stick around. Support for KQED Podcasts comes from the Exploratorium, presenting Life in Space. Explore the science of how life, human, or extraterrestrial, might survive in space. Now through September 13th at Pier 15.
Starting point is 00:20:36 Tickets at Exploratorium.edu slash space. Support for KQED podcasts comes from Star One Credit Union. Give your savings account the love it deserves. When you keep your money with Star One, you keep more of your... money. Star 1 Credit Union in your best interest. We're back. Time to open a new tab. The Liars Dividend. A while back there was this video of it looked like night camera footage and it was bunnies jumping on a trampoline. Yes. You remember this? I got duped by that. I have a sense of whimsy. I thought it was real. I fell for it too at first. You know, I saw that and I was like, wow, like maybe the world's okay after
Starting point is 00:21:25 all like there's still you know there's still nice cute things happening no turns out it was fake millions of people saw this that doesn't matter right it's not going to affect your day or your life that the bunnies aren't real but you're seeing stuff that is a little bit more consequential that is maybe affecting your beliefs about how the world works or what is happening and i think this adds up to a lot of people being led astray in ways that are really really subtle. Because anything online could be fake, people have become suspicious of everything. And that creates a situation where if there's ever any reason to doubt that something is real, then it immediately falls apart. This is a media phenomenon called The Liar's Dividend.
Starting point is 00:22:17 Legal scholars coined the term back in 2018 in a paper about how deepfakes, truth decay, and cognitive bias affect the information ecosystem. They thought it was bad back then. They could not have predicted today. Anyway, so what exactly is the liar's dividend? It takes time or resources to verify that something is real. It's free to cast doubt. It's free to say that's fake, right? It takes no effort at all. And once you raise those suspicions, you could take advantage of that, right? I can say, oh, that's fake news. That didn't happen. And that gives you. people in power the ability to cast doubt on anything that isn't convenient for whatever their goals happen to be. We've reached the point where you cannot trust your eyes. That ship has sailed.
Starting point is 00:23:09 It's over. You can't tell whether you're looking at an AI video or not. You certainly can't tell whether you're looking at an image. They've gotten so good that our physiology does not allow you to deal with this problem. You don't have to be a major world leader to be affected by this. Before he wrote about this deep fake situation, Thomas worked on the story about a safety tool that wipes your personal information from Google's search results. Like every other tech journalist, he's really passionate about privacy. So he was chugging coffee, writing this article.
Starting point is 00:23:45 I got myself all worked up and I put in my family group chat, like here's a link to this setting. Everybody needs to go turn this on right now. And my mom was like, is this really you? Like, are you, is someone like taken? Like, that's, and in her defense, it is weird behavior. Right. That's a strange thing for me to do.
Starting point is 00:24:03 You have to use this Google setting right now. That's something that's going to happen to you, right? You're going to be talking to someone. Something will be strange, right? Maybe you'll be in an emergency. Maybe you'll get in a car accident and you call, you know, your wife and be like, I really, I desperately need Amazon gift cards right now. It's real.
Starting point is 00:24:23 If your loved one calls you and urgently tells you that they need those gift cards, it's probably a scam. But maybe your partner is calling to ask for the password to the family Netflix account. Your best friend lost her passport while on vacation and needs help getting a new one. Or your nephew tells you that he actually wants a blue sweater instead of the gold one you started knitting. These could be real. But how do you know? That's a thing that's going to happen more and more. because we're living in this world where everything is suspect.
Starting point is 00:24:54 And if any little doubt comes up, suddenly everything falls apart. So what is the solution here? Are AI companies or social media platforms doing anything to help differentiate between what's real and what's generated? Industry leaders and academics have been pushing for a kind of digital watermark that would be embedded in the file itself, like planting a flag that says AI generated. And that flag would be planted.
Starting point is 00:25:23 deep in the pixel data. It would be really difficult to remove. Google Gemini already does this. It's called Synth ID. So the dream there is we'll get to a place where like all of the big AI companies or companies that are making these tools will participate in this program and there'll be some level of checking. On the flip side, there's efforts to build a similar thing into cameras that when you take an image with a camera, you take a photo or video, it would embed something in the file that says this was taken by an actual
Starting point is 00:25:56 camera. It's like this is an image of reality. So far, that technology is not here, right? We haven't gotten to the point where that is widespread enough, that it can be usable. And hopefully we will arrive at a point where there's some kind of technical solution or at least technical amelioration to this problem that will like help you sort through it. But, We also just need from the social media companies. I think a lot of critics that I speak to say they need to be doing way more to label AI content right now than they are. On a lot of these platforms, you can upload a piece of footage or an image. They don't really care whether it's AI, right?
Starting point is 00:26:37 The platforms where we're getting all over information could be doing a lot more to let you know that something that you're looking at is suspicious. But they don't have a financial incentive to solve that problem. Right. So I think what it really comes down to is we need regulatory approaches to this that will help at least do something to point people in the direction of truth. Not an easy problem to solve, but we haven't really even tried yet. Okay. Well, in that case, how do you assure your loved ones that you're really you? Let's open our last tab, how to prove that you're not a deep faith.
Starting point is 00:27:17 So, this YouTuber, Jim Browning, makes videos about exposing scammers. He recently went super viral with his three-finger test. Can you, like, hold up three fingers in front of your face or anything? Oh, come on, that's too much. The reasoning? This would disrupt any face-swapping deep fake program and make it glitch. Can you do that? Too much to watch somebody.
Starting point is 00:27:47 Well, make sure you're not AI. Is that unreasonable? I mean, can you do it? that in front of your face. Well, is that enough? No, it's not in front of your face. The scammer then abruptly ended the call. And in the comments, people were like, this is it.
Starting point is 00:28:03 This is the perfect test. This is how to stay safe. But the truth is, this trick has been outdated for years. I could tell you some things that you could look for. Some telltale signs for audio and for video. but I'm not going to because if I gave you those tips, it would actually hurt you more than it would help you. Because in a week or in a month or in six months,
Starting point is 00:28:33 they're going to put out another AI model and those tips that worked last week aren't going to work now. There is no giveaway that you're watching an AI video. We've passed that point. Deepfakes are astonishingly good and they keep getting just a little bit better. Luckily, there is one way to protect yourself and your loved ones, and you don't have to be that tech-savvy to do it.
Starting point is 00:29:01 It involves gathering up your inner circle. Older relatives, close friends, partners, nibblings, neighbors, basically anyone who could feasibly get this panicked emergency call from someone pretending to be you. You should set up a secret word that you both agree, on, that if there's ever any doubt, you can ask the person for that password, and they'll give it to you and you know you're talking to the real person. Because I have spoken to people who've been scammed, right, where they get a phone call and it is their husband or their child. I talked to this woman who a scammer set this up and called her and she like swears to this.
Starting point is 00:29:40 She's like, I know it's fake, but it was my son. It was his voice. It was perfect. and they're really convincing. And if you're going to get scanned, what they're going to do is there's going to be some emergency that you need to deal with right now. You're not going to be in your right mind. And it's like a solution that's so simple.
Starting point is 00:29:59 It's kind of nice in a way that with such a frighteningly high-tech problem, the solution is just speaking words out loud. This charmingly simple solution is more important than ever. Because unfortunately, there's no going back to the days before AI. But while this codeworthing is great for keeping Grandma from blowing her life savings on a deep fake scam, it doesn't help you parse through all of the deep faked and AI generated content you come across online. There are still countless ways to get tricked. I think it will reach the point where for a lot of people, there is no source of truth.
Starting point is 00:30:40 Everyone is trying to trick you. And I think there are a lot of grifters who will take advantage of that. I think there's people in power who will see an opportunity and they will seize it. You'll be able to spin whatever kind of narrative you want because if you've got people who trust you, you can say, well, the things that I'm telling you are true. And anyone who criticizes me is they're all part of the lie. My optimistic view is it will get so bad that there will be such a desperate need for trusted institutions that people will step in to fill the void. and people will seek out sources of truth that they can rely on, and we will rebuild an ecosystem of trust.
Starting point is 00:31:25 So I think the advice that I would give you is, like, go find that one person on the internet, someone who's sincere, who you trust, who you feel has your best interest in mind, or maybe an institution, maybe there's a publication you like, maybe it's local news. Try to find sources who you can go,
Starting point is 00:31:47 to who you can look to when there's a question because your eyes and your ears just aren't going to cut it anymore. That being said, when it comes to these personal relationships, sometimes you do need a little trust. Thomas said that he and his aunt Eleanor don't use a code word every time they talk on the phone. Fortunately, this hasn't caused any strife between me and my aunt so far. I told her that I wasn't actually trying to trick her that it was the real me on the other end of the line. But I hope that this experience was unsettling enough that if there's ever any reason to doubt, if it's ever like, hey, I'm in trouble, I need money or I forgot my password, I hope that she will question it and try and figure out whether it's really me. Because at some point, someone is going to try and fool all of us.
Starting point is 00:32:42 Yeah, so when she gets that chaotic text that you actually do want the gold sweater after all, she'll ask you for your code word. And I do need $600 in Walmart gift cards as soon as possible. So if you do get a call begging for gift cards, it never hurts to double check and ask for the code word. That's it for this deep dive, but stick around after the credits for some bonus content. Okay, let's close all these tabs. Close all tabs is a production of KQ80 Studios and is reported in hosting. by me, Morgan's son. This episode was produced by Maya Kueva and edited by Chris Agusa,
Starting point is 00:33:25 who also composed our theme song and credits music. The Close All Tabs team also includes editor Chris Hambrick and audio engineer Brendan Willard. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Mahas Sanad. Jen Cheen is our director of podcasts and Ethan Tovin Lindsay is our editor-in-chief. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio, artists, San Francisco, Northern California local. This episode's keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epo Maker I-75 keyboard with Fogredin Red Samurai key caps and Gator on Milky
Starting point is 00:34:02 Yellow Pro V2 switches. Thanks for listening. You know, one of the people I interviewed for this story said, I purchased 25 acres in Vermont. So when the world falls apart, I'll go live on my homestead. You know, maybe they've got the right idea. I don't know. I don't have 25 acres in Vermont money myself. So I'm stuck here with the rest of us schlubs.
Starting point is 00:34:29 You know, we're going to have to deal with the fallout. Hi, I'm Sasha Koka. I host the California Report Magazine. We bring you in-depth personal stories about your neighbors, your communities, and the issues affecting all of us as Californians. But the future is powered by you. If you've been listening but haven't donated yet, now is the moment. Make your gift today at Donate.
Starting point is 00:34:54 8.kweed.org slash podcasts.

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