It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 65

Episode Date: January 7, 2023

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking música, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle.

Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Sacred 23. Is that a thing? sacred 23 extremely extremely exciting it's finally finally 2023 that means only funny things can happen this year that's your intro to the that's right sophie welcome welcome welcome you crushed it buddy I wouldn't hear any criticism welcome to

2023 well I don't know if I'm going to say they're welcome but it is 2023 so good work enjoy your year of discord as if any year of the last like 10 has not

been a year yeah every year previously was totally normal and not chaotic. Yeah, so... It's all downhill from here. First off, welcome back. We love some of you, probably, presumably. I haven't met you, any of the ones that I love, but I assume that you're out there. How's everybody doing? How's everyone's new year?

Wow. Just an absolute slap in the face to anyone you've met on any of your live events. That's a fan. Yeah. Hey, it's so nice to meet you. Thank you for coming in person for my event. Also, fuck you. That's what you just said.

This whole episode is a series of slaps to the face because it's not 2023 for us. We're lying. We're all lying to them. Yeah. Who knows if we make it that far today? We're recording this on December 19th, 2022. And what is it? What has happened today?

Friends? Also, who are you? Who is on this episode? Well, Garrison's here, as I have already spoken into the microphone. Oh, my God. Do you know who else has spoken into the microphone? Shireen? Question mark?

I'm Shireen Now you have Sophie Sophie, yeah James Oh Is anyone left? Oh, Mia

I don't think I've actually spoken into this episode yet Now you have There she is. Now you have. You've started the day. We did it. That's how you introduce a podcast, Motherfucker. That was so incredibly awkward.

No, it was perfect. Magnificent. As if we had never done a podcast before. But before we get to some of the Q&A stuff, what has happened today when we're recording it? Oh, well, today is the day, is the one day anniversary of me showing Garrison the movie

Strange Days, written by James Cameron. A New Year's classic. Oh, such a good movie. I've not seen it. Oh, you gotta watch it. Robert got an alert on his phone that was just like, memory is one year. One day.

One day. A lot of violence against the LAPD in that film. Jay has triumphed today. That's what's happened. Democracy has happened. Definitely not a pro-LAPD movie. Also, you get to repeatedly

see a couple of now prominent actors' O-faces, which is great. In a slightly problematic context. A deeply problematic context, but a good movie. What actors are in this movie?

Ralph Fiennes? Yeah, Ralph Fiennes is the main character, and he looks exactly like ten years ago What's his name? Ralph Fiennes? Yeah, Ralph Fiennes is the main character. And he looks exactly like 10 years ago Bradley Cooper in this movie. Don't insult Ralph. Don't do that. They both look good. That's what I mean.

No. Okay, well, that's cruel. He's great in it. Angela Bassett is fucking incredible in it. She's amazing. Queen. Yeah. Tom Sizemore is present in the movie. We're just going to go through the entire cast and crew.

That's the episode. Vincent Caffer, Robert. Yeah. All right. My favorite is Vincent D'Onofrio looks exactly like Tim Heidecker's character in that I think you should leave sketch where they're at the UFO themed restaurant. It's uncanny. Great film. I'm glad to know that you're still doing

I think you should leave references in the Lord's year 2023. Well that actually leads into I showed my family it before they left to go see other family for Christmas. How did that go? I sat my family down to watch the second half of season two. And?

Magnificent. Yeah. I love that. It's divine. And that leads into my. Yeah. I love that. It's divine. And that leads into my only prediction for the next year, which is that I will- This is not a prediction. This is a Q&A. Robert, get it together. What are you doing, Evan?

Oh, God. Come on. All right. What's the first question then? What do these sons of bitches want to know? In an alternate universe where it could happen here as a corporate office office does the staff get

a robert evans book for holiday uh presents or a gift card and we can we can actually answer this because yeah factually despite not having a corporate office there's still there still was a holiday gift which i have not actually received mine yet so i can't say what mine is but i know other people have received theirs. Why didn't you receive yours? I don't know, Sophie. I ordered yours first. Well, Sophie, you know, sometimes it'd be like that.

Tracking. It's probably going to be... Yeah, Sophie about to ruin some UPS driver's day. Yeah, chaos. But what did everyone else receive? Dearest Garrison will be delivered by 5.45pm today. Today. There you go. It's okay, Garrison will be delivered by 5.45pm today. Today. There you go.

It's okay, Garrison. I didn't get shit either. Oh. Oh. Boo fucking boo. I actually did buy you something, but it hasn't come yet, devastatingly. What did everyone else get for their holiday gift? Was it a Robert Evans book?

No, it wasn't. No, that would be deeply unhinged. Oh my god. Imagine you're that fucked up. Imagine you're that unhinged that you're like i think you should do that to iheart i have a higher up to iheart send them your book as a gift my uh the second job i ever had which was or third job i guess which was working for this accountant guy that's like like right. He was a retirement advisor guy. He would help old people get their money in order to retire. It was mostly helping him host events at a Texas roadhouse

where we would try to get old people to buy annuities. So I worked for this guy, and the day I started the job, he gave me a copy of his self-published novel, Operation Night Watch, which was about a group of Navy SEALs going rogue to stop drug dealers. And it's one of the

worst things I've ever read. Oh, you read it? I mean, I attempted to. When I mentioned it once on the show, somebody found and bought a copy. That's unhinged. Give that money to someone else. That's unhinged. Yeah, give that money to someone else. That's unhinged.

Oh, he can't be alive anymore. There's no way he's still alive. It was probably on eBay or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That man has been dead for years, I'm sure. We still haven't answered the question. Yeah, I want to get to the point here. We've got tiny cans of mace, two little personal maces.

One for the left hand, one for the right hand. So you can dual wield. I really like it. It's very compact. New pepper spray has been on my to-buy list for like months because mine was expired like a year ago. But I've never actually bought one and so it was perfect. And now it's just so tiny. I can put it in like my fanny pack and just continue on my day. That's right.

How do you know it won't work if it's expired? I just looked it up. I looked it up and I was just like, I don't want to, like, I don't know. It was on my to-buy list. I obviously didn't buy it yet. It wasn't, like, pressing. You don't want to, like, hurt somebody with expired pepper spray. Yeah, it's a propellant that expires.

Yeah. The can itself gets, like, faulty. You've got it. You've got it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there you go. There you go.

Let's see. So we're going to be going through some of the questions that we got for the previous sorry my cats are making also i do like that that person that person really thought that robert was that person that was like hey uh happy holidays here's my book i do get the royalties. You're welcome. You're right, though, Sophie. We should use the corporate cards to buy more copies of my book. That's a good idea. We can just ship them to the sea, though. It doesn't matter where

they go. For the next question, we're using the questions from the previous It Could Happen Here livestream for this, by the way. So if we didn't get to your question, we're getting to some more of them right now. Unless your question sucked. Yeah.

Or was very personal. Yes, that's what I meant by sucked. So do you know of a way to get involved in mutual aid without using social media? I don't really use it for mental health reasons. Good decision there to not use social media.

Continue not using social media. Yeah. A lot of mutual aid organizing or, you know, like requests happen on social media. But, I mean, there's... I guess it depends on how you use social media, I suppose. Like, it might be useful to have a friend that follows some of the social media stuff in your local area, whether that be on Twitter or Mastodon or Instagram, and then can, like, relay to you if there's local events. Or you can just, like, section off, like, once a week you check on just a few of those things, and then you delete the app from your phone again because once you are like plugged into a local community then people can just like directly send you flyers and stuff but you have to

have those connections there in the first place and those connections are really best made by going to things on the ground whether it be you, you know, a Food Not Bombs type thing, whether it be, you know, like a clothing swap. Lots of local events do happen in people's cities. And once you actually go there in person, that's where real community actually gets built. So it's just it's kind of just breaking the ice to actually get to actually go to a few in-person things. And then and then people can send you, you know, direct flyers and stuff if you don't want to be doom scrolling well looking for things you don't have to even have an

account if you don't decide not to you can like view profiles on twitter and instagram without an account like you can't like see the comments or whatever but if you just want to see their profile every once in a while and check in what in what they're doing you can do that online with no account yeah often as well like um well we're doing mutual aid things here it tends to focus on the border a lot or unhoused people and like in both cases you can just show up and you'll meet someone who's helping in most instances and then they can direct you right they can text you or signal you whatever like there were tons of people in 2018 when the migrant caravan arrived who were like much older not on social media often with church groups and they didn't hugely like have um i would say a lot of experience in that kind of area but they deeply wanted to help and they showed up and people were like hey can

you go to costco and get this and they were like yeah absolutely and yeah and we use whatsapp and it was fine and like check around another option to be obviously if you if you have like a like a radical meeting space in your city you can check there um if you don't have those you can even check see if there's any like radical coffee shops or cafes that maybe have like a bulletin board people will often put up flyers for stuff there um just you really have to do start start trying to be like plugged into your actual like IRL local community and that's generally how that goes yeah you have to be more proactive than if you had social media is the main thing yeah you still have to show up either way right like yeah yeah in the end do you know who

else wants you to show up online? Oh. Robert Evans. I don't. These products and services that want you to follow the link. We're now exclusively only sponsored by Robert's books. Yes, the literature of Robert Evans. And here's an excerpt. All right.

And we're back. Speaking of the internet, Robert, or anyone, I suppose, do you think there's a way to get back to fulfilling the promise of the early internet? No, I don't. I think the early internet was a thing that happened, that in part was the way that it was because our brains did not have any kind of tolerance or were not prepared for it. And it kind of grew up as we became capable of, like, I don't know. Like, the internet grew more social as we got used to it, and I don't think that can ever happen again. Like, those weird little moments where, i don't think that can ever happen again like those those weird little moments

uh where i don't know yeah i my my answer is no i i don't think it'll ever happen again in the same way that like you're never going to get those weird little moments that you you had like the birth of you know yeah uh the printing press or whatever like you know it was a unique moment in history and it's never going to come again. Yeah. Which doesn't mean that something else won't happen. But the Internet's not like the fact that we've all lived through the social media era means even once all these companies go bust, our brains have still been changed by them. Yeah.

Too much to ever go back to posting the way we once did. No, we're too far gone, I think. On a kind of similar note, in a few days, we have an episode from Andrew on digital commons. And that kind of revolves around this same kind of question. So in a few days, we'll have an episode

about this topic, ran by Andrew. But James, you had something? Yeah, sometimes, obviously, the internet is terrible in many ways but like when we talk about like what happened in myanmar that series that robert and i did like that seems to me like it's delivering on some of the promises of of the early internet like it's it's mad that you know a young person uh like who is facing a coup and wants democracy in this part of asia can go online speak to some dude in i i'm these aren't real play like people i've spoken to but like some some guy in his garage in ohio who's 3d printed guns and that person can help the other person on themselves and and defend their right to choose who governs them or if they're governed at all like that is really fucking cool and that doesn't happen without the internet and so you know yeah there's

also from that yeah it's it's not that there's not going to be good things done with the internet or that it can't be made better but it's never going to be what it was because yeah we we simply know too much um let's see what are some inspiring recent examples of cooperation increasing survival odds to show the type that thinks they just need ammo to survive? Another good touchstone for this would be the movie Tremors, which shows that while guns and ammo can be a critical part of a survival plan. Nobody lives without community. Unfortunately, I think Robert actually is correct here. More broadly, this person's consciously or unconsciously paraphrasing Kropotkin, right?

But we have all just lived through a pandemic, and they are still living through a pandemic, I guess, which has changed the world, killed hundreds of thousands, millions of people. like the reason a lot of people got through that a lot of people who didn't weren't able to work or were immunocompromised and couldn't go out as much is because other people helped them like no one shot covid uh and no one fed themselves in the lockdown because they had you know tons of 556 talked away like a ton of mutual aid happened a lot of terrible shit happened as well but that's a bigger example i think yeah

what genres of music have each of you been listening to lately i'm i'm a big classical head i don't care if that is like i also listen to a lot of class I also listen to a lot of classical When you're driving, everything becomes cinematic And it's calming And sometimes words distract me So my go-to is classical To what I would consider classical music

Which is second and third wave ska Oh my god The only classical music in my opinion I am I listen to the clash suede and the manic three preachers more or less exclusively yeah they're the only bands that matter yeah i think if it's not classical i'm trying to like be i don't know i'm like dancing around so it's either like it's like two extremes for me it's either classical and I'm like chill going to sleep or I'm getting ready and I want to feel something.

What about you, Mia? I have the most absolutely dog shit music taste. Brave, brave. But the music that I listen to that I think is legitimately good that's not like power metal or like weird shit is I've been going back to like my youth and my youth is a combination of like surf rock and oh oh oh i was like oh god this is a safe space what also okay also like some shame like what okay like i support you like pat

pat benatar sort of like thatatar there's a sort of era of like lesbian glam rock I don't know you shouldn't have to defend yourself this is a safe space this is my gnawing I don't think we ever agreed to this

I usually listen to a lot of music while writing and researching I just finished up two pretty big writing projects so I've been listening to a lot of music while writing and researching. I just finished up two pretty big writing projects, so I've been listening to a lot of music. Most of it's like ambient electronica, some classicals thrown in there if I need to get a little bit more energy. I've been listening to some Trent Reznor kind of ambient stuff. listening to some Trent Reznor kind of ambient stuff.

And like a lot of, I also listened to a lot of remixes of the Mario Galaxy soundtrack. Wait, what? There you go. Wait, send that over now. No, I like that. Wait, okay, okay, okay. All right. I need to plug a truly awful song.

What? What do you mean? It's like the worst song ever don't give them attention no no no no we got it okay look Donkey Kong has to slam this way it has to be this way x Space Jam x DK rap I need y'all to know

that this exists it is it is incredible it is an otherworldly experience there's also a version of it that's the DK rap but also uh one winged angel oh no well okay i think this wait garrison do you listen to max richter i think you would like max richter he's like he does a lot of soundtracks for shows so his stuff is kind of

like melancholic and piano-y but i think it you might like it i will will look them up. Good name. Yeah. It's spelled richer. I'm pretty sure. I got it. Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah. You should also listen to the Mighty Mighty Boss Tones, who did a wonderful album.

Oh, no, don't. That is the worst song ever. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. No, don't. Don't. So, speak to us.

Check out their 2020 album. Yeah, their George Floyd song is literally a fine. Incredibly appropriate. Deeply appropriate. Yeah. Speaking of listening to things. Speaking of things that are problems. What is the most troubling thing that isn't being reported on or isn't taken seriously by the wider public?

The fact that none of you said you listened to any rap music or any type of music that wasn't just... I thought Tupac was a given, okay? He's a level on his own. I've been listening to Tragical Quest recently. I listen to a little bit of Biggie every now and again, and I got my Moe's Def always loaded up, especially around the new year.

I love listening to Life in Marvelous Times. Black on Both Sides is a hell of an album. I've always been more biggie. There's a guy called Christian Parrish Takes a Gun. He raps by Superman. He's from the Crow Nation. I think his stuff is cool. Most troubling thing that isn't being reported on

or taken seriously enough by the wider public. Besides our musical tastes well i i'm gonna be biased and always say like middle eastern news and palestine and like hair and balance reporting even like syria and uh yemen and all of that stuff i think uh none of that gets enough attention absolutely i'm gonna say fucking scams um like just on a daily basis i feel like my phone gets uh six to eight spam calls scam calls at least and like it's uh and someone was making a note of this earlier because like a bunch of scam stories have been people have been sharing them this year but like there's all sorts of fucked up things like if a relative gets arrested as soon as the police post um the um like the they're the fact that like like publicly posted they've been arrested like the family if they

have numbers that scammers can find will start getting auto dialed by like accounts claiming to be the police saying that like you need to put money in their account now where they're going into general population. And it's all, these are all like low hanging fruit things. Like they're, they're, they're not, they're targeting people who are not very savvy. Often people who have some sort of like mental disability, right? So folks who are kind of living a marginal existence in a lot of ways, as it is, and they are like, it's making it incredibly difficult for, and folks who have

like are cognitively impaired for whatever reason, including the fact that they're elderly. There's just like this, it's never been like this before, the sheer density of scams that people have to wade through. And again, most of you, we've all kind of noticed it getting more common, but you may not have noticed how kind of brutal it's gotten because you're not the target demographic for this stuff, right? That's why they all have like filters in them to try and weed out the people who are savvy enough to know that they're being scammed. savvy enough to know that they're being scammed. But there's a number of things. This is the result of decisions that the FTC made in order to make it a lot easier for people to use shit like auto dialers

and to carry out phone-based scams. But it's just been punted on by every presidential administration in our lifetime as the internet has made it easier to automate this stuff. And the explosion of machine learning tools that are widely available, these kind of AIs that people are joking about right now, like it's all going to create the capacity to more effectively automate scams. I had one that could have gotten me the other day where I got a call from my bank that was listed as from my bank isn't like on it like it was my bank's phone number like it was it came up as them on the and they were like hey you know

someone has there's some some charges can we run them by you we want to make sure and they were like chart things I had not bought they were like wire transfers and shit and they were like oh it looks like you know somebody's gotten access to your account and the call dropped before I could finish it so I called them back and when I called my bank back they were like, oh, it looks like somebody's gotten access to your account. And the call dropped before I could finish it. So I called them back. And when I called my bank back, they were like, oh, yeah, that was someone spoofing our number. They were trying to get personal information out of you. This shit is so fucking endemic. And no one is doing a goddamn thing about it.

There's one anemic attempt in Congress to slightly address it primarily through like education. But it is a massive problem. It's part of what's breaking society. The fact that like everyone is constantly flooded by this low level cloud of people trying to destroy their financial lives. It's real bad. Do you know what else is trying to destroy your financial lives? Oh, the products and services that support this podcast, Garrison. And Robert's book.

And we are back for one final time for this episode. Wow. This is actually a question that I feel is pretty important that I wish people thought about a bit more, at least within, like, you know, our general sphere. about a bit more, at least within like, you know, our general sphere. Where do you draw the line between fascist politics and non-fascist conservative politics? Well, at the moment in the United States, I don't think there's a line to be drawn because the mainstream of the Republican Party has completely thrown themselves in behind one of or both of two fascists um in terms of like personally i guess it depends on whether or not people support there being like things like penalties on on on or do people like does somebody support banning books does somebody support

arresting folks for expressing political opinions that differ from theirs? Does somebody support, you know, expanding the penalties for petty crimes to include like violence? Like those are all things that can suggest that somebody is a fascist. But at the end of the day, anybody who supports the Republican Party right now is supporting a fascist movement. So I don't feel there's any sort of – I don't draw a line in my head anymore, to be entirely honest, because they alighted the line. I try to be very specific when I say fascist versus just like a regular conservative in my reporting. Like when we were inside Colorado, we talked to people who were conservatives, who were,

who were against fascists and against local fascists in their community and actually doing things to help stop fascists from gaining power within their local community. I think if you look at a lot of the rhetoric around queer people right now, whether it be like drag shows or trans people, that's a specific style of rhetoric that is like innately fascist. Like talking about like there was there was there was a tweet from is his name like Lindsay James. What's that? What's that guy? Yeah. Conceptual James.

Yeah. He put out he put out this little like meme being like don't call them drag queens call them um like like it was like some some bullshit groomer thing like i forget the exact thing but like that that specific style of rhetorical framing is is is like a pretext to extermination and genocide like that escape that is what that is what they're doing. And I think that is right now is what it crosses the line is when they're creating these scapegoat groups that are going to be targeted

and posing these groups as like a threat to civilization. That's where I kind of use that word. It's like fascist. Like that is generally in my research, where I start employing that versus, you know, some random guy who I'm talking to, who, you know, wants there to be lower taxes and less regulation. Because yeah, that position, as we've seen now, can eventually lead to the type of fascist policies but i think that there is when it comes

to like people in your personal life and when it comes to like regular people who are not politicians i think having a little bit more discretion is useful because i think there's still a chance that some people who are currently conservative can not become fascists yeah i i would agree i think in the u.s context one sort of useful litmus test for people on the right is like are the rules of the game more important than the outcome of the game uh like so when you look at like the the sort of fascism we saw around donald trump right like there was a point where the outcome of the game i the maintenance of power right became more important than the rules of the game, i.e. like basic

human rights. And I think that's a useful definition, a useful sort of, is this person dangerous? It might like, I like Paxton's definition of fascism generally. It's not great, but it's, which has elements of what we've said. It's useful. Yeah. Yeah. It's useful.

And I think your scapegoat group one is really key when people are scapegoating people and they don't really give a fuck about how they eliminate those people or stop, quote unquote. When people are seeking to use the machinery of state to eliminate people and ideas that they find uncomfortable by using the force of law against them, they're fascists. Yes. They're fascists. And when people are supportive of ending the democratic transfer of power in order to support an individual that they think embodies their conception of what their country is, those people are fascists. Absolutely. One thing, and I don't think it's usually useful if you're having a conversation with an individual to call them a fascist, even if they're behaving in ways that are kind of fashy. If you think that a productive conversation can be had that might move them in one direction or the other. But at the end of the day, if somebody is supportive, for example, of a third term for Donald Trump, that person is supporting a fascist movement.

And I don't think that there's a I don't think I don't think it matters that like their individual reasons for doing it may be less fashy than someone else's. Like at the end of the day, they are supporting that. And that's that's kind of what matters to me. I think I think it's also worth taking a little bit of a look at what happened in neoconservatism in order to sort of understand what's going on here because i think there was an important sort of fracture a in terms of the fact that george bush like basically orchestrated like yeah like bait like he didn't technically create a coup but he like he he he rigged an

election such as to put him it's like so as to put him in power. Right. Like that's what the Brooks Brothers riot was. That's what that's that's sort of the process that gets us the Bush win in 2000. over the sort of like the the the i don't know the last 25 years of the 20th century there's this interesting pivot where they they make where in order to they you know if you look at like what what is the conservative response to communism in 19 like 39 right it's just like we're going to be fascists right it's like literally we are going to be the nazis but you know but by by the time you get to like like, post-World War II, by the time you get really to, like, the 70s

and 80s, they start realizing that, like, people don't generally like fascism that much. And so the form of anti-communism that they take starts to be this sort of, like, rights-based, like, weird sport, like, freedom and human rights and, like, free markets

and democracy. there there's this point where that stuff meets with like another kind of fascist politics which is the sort of like the the 2001 era state of exception stuff that happened after 9-11 where you know like people start talking about the gloves coming off and this is this is good this is getting into your sort of like like looking at like walter's, like, conception of what fascism is or, what am I blanking on that guy's name? Like, Carl Schmitt stuff, right? Where it's, like, here is a part of the state that can just, like, destroy, like, that has sovereign power and can just sort of trample over the entire legal order in order to perpetuate it, right? So this is, like, okay, suddenly after 2001, like like after 9-11 they were just like people

disappearing into torture dungeons right and you get this moment where on the one hand yeah like because george w bush is one of these people who's like the sort of like freedom democracy people but then beneath him is you know it it collapses very quickly into this we are the torture dungeon stuff and this willingness literally to rig elections and i think that's a sort of important moment because like there's like there are sort of normal conservatives right who still have that kind of like freedom and liberal democracy whatever thing and they're not really that fascist kind of but in some sense it doesn't doesn't matter that much institutionally because the part of the republican party that survived yeah was a combination of the torture dungeon

which is like gina haspel like and then trump who is the the sort of emblem of this like like the sort of like we're gonna we're gonna take the election we're gonna take power we're gonna use the power of the state to just like murder everyone we don't like and i don't know like i think i i i think like you can find individual people who are conservatives who i guess like aren't nazis but the the the the way that neoconservatism fragmented and the way that that kind of state of exception politics and that politics of sort of just like mass torture and then also the willingness to just steal elections like that. I don't know.

That stuff, I think, forms this another sort of core of fascism that's there alongside the sort of queer exterminationist stuff. And there, I don't know, these things fuse together in ways. And yeah, I've rambled for long enough. We're going to do one more question. And I think we cover a lot of upsetting things on the show. Some things that maybe are not, you know, super fun to think about. We also cover some like hopeful stuff as well. But what's one thing that the crew who works in the show do to decompress and clear our minds after, you minds after wading through the trenches of the digital hellscape?

Pass. I feel like we might have answered something similar to this on the live show. I saw Robert playing Cyberpunk 2077 last night, so I know there's at least one thing. It does allow me to pretend that Keanu Reeves is my friend which is nice there you see so he's your friend you just gotta meet him first he's a very nice guy i like to go camping i like to go outside like i like to swim in the ocean and ride my bike and hike and camp and yeah rock climb yeah i second that i i need to go outside and just even like a simple walk or with trees and

hiking i think it really helps me just decompress and be present again hanging out with queer people they like not and intentionally not talking about twitter bullshit just like going and doing something just like very playing around in the grass and just like talking about gay shit it rules it's the self that heals the heart absolutely well uh thank thank you everybody what's your answer me oh see i i i was gonna try to just like nope just just just like, go right past that, wrap up the episode in a nice little bow. Um,

I don't know. I've, I've been trying to get back into doing more kind of, um, art stuff with my camera, whether, whether that be photography or filmmaking, um, in like short form stuff.

Uh, what else have I been doing? Yeah, I don't know. Uh, uh, taking drugs. Um,

Oh yeah. Wow. There it is. Shrooms are healing. Shocking. Taking drugs. Oh, yeah. Wow. Shrooms. There it is. Shrooms are healing. Shocking. Shocking.

Yeah, incredible to say that on the podcast. Now you can wrap it up if you want to. Well, thank you, everyone, for listening to our Q&A episode. That's what I do to relax. Thank you. See, that's the thing to do. That's how you can relax. Actually, there is one person who has tried to skirt past this question. Sophie.

Yeah, Sophie. Yeah, Sophie. What the hell? She looks... What do you want? Sophie, you not only have to deal with, you know, all of the bad stuff that we talk about, but you also have to deal with us.

So what do you do to compress and clear and clear your mind well first of all each and every one of you are the best so let's let's start there uh i really like uh making food for my friends and uh like meeting a friend for coffee and just like walking outside or like finding like a little place that's like a local place and just when and when you go in there's like barely anyone in there but then you get to talk to the people that work there and then order a nice little dessert or something it's that kind of thing I love that I'm like I'm like I have friends that's literally what I read it I said it and it sounded horrible

and then like obviously like having pets and being around animals is really solid but it's also just like having a healthy balance of you know focusing on a lot of the negative stuff but really also putting your energy into

a lot of the positive stories I know that a lot of people feel like it could happen here is tends to lean towards the negative, but I really feel like we're a hopeful show. And I feel like as a, as a network, cool zone media tries to, to,

to lean, lean towards the hope and find, you know, the, the, the good and the bad. And, you know,

that's why we have shows like cool people did cool stuff, which is with Margaret Killjoy that, that really helps balance out a lot of the other things so yeah I think finding the good and the bad eating yummy food with your friends and petting all the pets you can. You know I also

think a huge thing for all of us is taking plenty of alpha brain supplements. I like to take them That'll do it for us Thank you for listening to it could happen here. Have a, have, have a,

have a good year of discord. Welcome. I'm Danny. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series,

Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me in a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture.

Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, crikey, baby. No, I literally Because Garrison's so mean about the UK I literally almost got Garrison all UK themed

Gifts for Christmas I'm going to buy them so many things There was a teapot With the flag it was so horrible I didn't do it because I know you wouldn't use it But it was so funny It could happen here, a podcast. Do you guys want to hear my Boston accent?

Nope. No. Wait, are you from Boston or him? That's it. That's my Boston. Anderson literally started growling as you did that. That's how much he hates the Celtics. It's a crime against humanity.

Everybody gets angry at my Boston accent. Oh, Jesus. I thought it was pretty good. That's Australian. What are you doing just pick one word and say it Boston is the Australia of the Northeast so this episode

we're going to be going through our predictions for 2023 prediction number one Robert might not make it oh no he's spiraling Sophie you predict that every year and it's barely ever true little, you predict that every year, and it's barely ever true. A little piece of you dies every year.

Robert's going to get too drunk and buy a plane ticket to Boston and then get lost and never return. That would make me so sad. I can blend in. I can blend in with my seamless Boston accent. No, no one will be able to understand you. You'll be like a foreign country. Classic Boston.

Crikey is like, why are you just doing Australia? It's Boston. Yeah, the home of the koala bear. It's not my fault that all accents eventually loop back to being Australian. I respect Garrison possibly trying to get back on track. What are we doing today?

What are we doing, Garr? Who are we? We're working up in here. There's the same people on track. I respect that. So yeah. Yeah, what are we doing today? What are we doing, Gare? Who are we? We're trying, we're trying, well, where it could happen here, there's the same people on this one as the last episode. There's Shireen, me, Garrison,

James, Sophie, our producer, Mia, and bad Boston impersonator, Robert Evans. And we're talking about what we think might happen in 2023. I feel, I don't remember all of our predictions for last year,

but I feel like we got most of them correct. Yeah, I think we were right about everything. Yeah. So to continue that trend, what do we think is going to happen this year? I think Elon Musk might wind up sawed to pieces by the Saudis. There's like a solid 18% chance of that. There is a non-zero chance.

You know, okay, the thing that's actually the most sort of surprising me about that is that the SoftBank guy is still alive. Like, as much Saudi money as Elon has blown through, the SoftBank guy lit the GDP of a regular country on fire in Saudi money. It's so funny. Investing in the most batshit companies in the world. It's amazing how bad they are with their money. They managed to lose money by being landlords. Do you know how hard it is to lose money with a landlording business?

There's a German guy who wrote a book about it. Anyways, I think we'll get a really good leak from the British royal family doing something absolutely despicable. That's just a thing that has to happen. But high quality

audio or video, hopefully video. I don't want to see video of what Prince Andrew's doing. And then it will make UK politics even worse than it already is. Not possible. Yeah, that part I disagree with. But yes to horrifying leak from the British royal family. Horrifying leak. Horrifying leak, yeah. I honestly, I don't know how British politics could be worse.

That's fair, that's fair, that's fair. Keir Starmer's going to win an election and somehow make it even worse despite being notionally the left party in the United Kingdom. I got to say, somebody has to get you people on lockdown for the names. Keir Starmer, that's not a name. Wait, are you not familiar with Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition? Unbelievable. I'm livid. Yeah, well, wait. But no, I you not familiar with Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition? Unbelievable. I'm livid.

Yeah, well, we had Boris Johnson and it really can't get any worse. Yeah, I never forgave you guys for letting a Boris into power. Can I get my bad pop culture prediction out of the way? I think Pete Davidson will date a high profile politician in the next year. No, no. Sophie, I have a better one. Pete Davidson is going to date... That's a free space prediction.

Nope, sorry. I have a better one. Pete Davidson is going to date Grimes. That's on everybody's list. I've seen that seven times. I think he's going to impregnate someone. That's my take. That's boring. I think he's going to impregnate someone. That's my take. That's boring. I think that we're

going to find out something juicier. Alright, well. You know, it'd be easy to stick with pretty grim predictions like, oh, there's going to be a mass shooting at a drag show. It's going to happen. Because that seems...

That's less a prediction and more just, like, looking at where the temperature is going. Can I do my, like, hack version of that that's slightly less hack? I think we're going to get an actual shootout between armed fascists and armed anti-fascists in a city that the press actually cares about, so not Portland. That is entirely possible. We haven't had a shootout in Portland yet.

I mean, that's the thing. Well, kind of. No, no, no. There's been an exchange of gunfire. Why don't you all talk at the same fucking time and make Danil's life hard? One of you speak at a time. Because we hate Danil. Welcome to 2023, Danil.

Yeah. I love you, Danil. 2023 is the year we break Danil. No. We have had an exchange of gunfire, though. No, we have not. Okay. I think she means exchange of gunfire, though. No, we have not. Okay. I think she means like.

Oh, my God. It has not gotten better. It has gotten better. We have had a person shooting into a crowd and another person shooting that person. We have had people fire at each other, but we have not had two different people exchange gunfire with each other. Neither have we had groups of people exchange gunfire with each other. Neither if we had groups of people exchange gunfire with each other. That has not occurred yet.

I agree. I think there's a real good chance it does. I'm more worried about the police opening fire on a group of anti-fascists and the fascists joining them. But all of those things are on the fucking table and it gets more likely every time we roll the dice on that shit yeah uh one thing that gives me some hope is how the recent events

in texas have been going um the the size of the community that has been showing up at the last couple of drag events um and how outnumbered the right has been as a general rule. If anything is going to make it less likely that either the police or the fascists fire, it's being tremendously outnumbered. So I don't know. I'm in between hopeful and despairing about like where the future of that's going to be. Here's my hopeful prediction. Crypto.com arena will not be named crypto.com arena that is my hope and dream i do think that crypto.com is well i mean it looks like binance

is on its way to collapsing that's slightly less badly than ftx, but it looks like it's not going to be around much longer. Crypto.com is kind of in a similar space. I think there's actually a real chance that we see the functional death of cryptocurrency. Does that mean my stadium gets to be named a normal thing and not something viciously embarrassing, Robert? No, it's still going to be embarrassing. Yeah, because they paid up front for that, I think.

It's like FTX paid like $150 million up front to get their name on that stadium in Florida. They are trying to change it, but I think they're stuck with it for a little while. Scam stadium. I'd rather be called scam stadium. That would be great. Yeah.

Get a GoFundMe going. The Charles Ponzi Memorial Stadium. I still don't understand how you go from here's office supplies to that. It's so embarrassing. And like doesn't even flow. Okay, we're not doing this right now. Yeah, I think that we should change the crypto.com stadium. We should name it after Bad Dragon, that company that makes

dildos themed after mythological creatures. Based. This is hopeful, but I feel like there's going to be another virus because there are some people that are going too hard in the other direction. I feel like every year there

might be a new virus introduced that we're gonna have to grapple with yeah yeah and with it new racist theories about where it came from yeah but then like but we're like past the point of being able to lock down you know what i mean like i think like that's what's gonna make it stop oh yeah yeah yeah i mean yeah part of one of the scary things about the COVID response is that how politicized the concept of a lockdown or mask wearing has gotten means that there's

effectively no way for US culture to stim the spread of an airborne virus like it's impossible there's not even a chance yeah we don't use the parachute and we can't use it again we we lit the parachute on fire yeah yeah to own the libs yeah i have been wanting to do this for

a long time but i haven't done it because i don't think it's feasible for work but i would love i think people are going to start using flip phones more hell yeah i think like people are going to step away return to tradition yeah because there's even like a psychological study going on right now where a bunch of teens did that and like they've reported much better lives or whatever the shit. So I would love to do that myself. But I think more people are going to go

that route. I saw a graph the other day saying the happiest that American teens have reported themselves being was the early 2000s, right around when I graduated high school. And all we could do with our phones was text each other to buy drugs and play Snake. And that's all kids need is the ability to play Snake and buy ketamine.

Yeah. Hopefully at the same time. Yep. That's what's going to do the arena next. It's going to be the ketamine arena in L.A. Well, do you know who could buy the arena next. It's going to be the Katamene Arena. In LA. Well, do you know who could buy the arena? Rob Evans. Any of these products and services

that support this podcast. That's right. And we're back and this is a section that we're calling death. This is the death segment. Who is going to die in 2020? Can I start this one? Yes. It's going to die in 2020 can I start this one it's gonna be Noam Chomsky

that's who I'm calling I think Noam Chomsky is gonna die I think we are going to have the worst two or three weeks of media that we've seen in years it's gonna make it's gonna make

it's gonna make Pog Patrol discourse look like tame in years. It's going to make... 48 hours. It's going to make Pog Patrol discourse look like tame. Like, we're... People are unironically going to be doing Stalin as a POC discourse again. Me as part of it.

You have to pause and explain it. That's terrible. You have to pause and explain all of this because nobody, no reasonable person is going to know

what you're talking about. We have to blaze through that and pretend it never happens I want to know what pog patrol is I'm imagining I legitimately refuse to explain that if you want me to explain it you need to pay me more than I'm being paid

okay alright I'm sure someone will DM me now to explain it thank you very much they're the people who are behind all of this insufferable left wing discourse that occasionally breaks through to the mainstream they did round two of Anne Frank white privilege discourse

oh what a throwback jump off a bridge anyway Elon Musk you think Elon Musk is going to die I'm making a Hail Mary Elon Musk. Who is going to die? Elon Musk. You think Elon Musk is going to die? It's not. It's likely.

I'm making a Hail Mary. Elon Musk. It's going to be Musk. Drug addiction. Maybe. Maybe he ODs. Oh, no. Maybe he shoots himself with that fake gun.

He's going to be practicing yoga in his duffel bag when he shoots himself in the back of the head by accident. That's very specific, James. That's a thing. It's almost like you planned that out. It's almost like someone planned that out uh it's almost like someone already did it um what i think uh i think joe biden's gonna die um i think it's just makes sense physiologically like it's like joe died and i have that in my head too i didn't

specifically say joe i said who whoever, I said one of the two people running for president in 2024 that are the clear front runners, one of the two will die causing the election to be even more stupid than it already is. My runner up is Nancy Pelosi. But that's just.

Oh, maybe Nancy Pelosi will date Pete Davidson. She's not a speaker. I'm talking about her biologically. It doesn't matter. She'll be at vineyards she's gonna be thriving and all all that will happen if pelosi dies is that people will sell out of those weird political like action figures we'll just we'll just sell out of all the nancy pelosi ones that that's all that will happen if if no i'm not saying i want her to die or not want her

to die i just think those are the two people that every time I see them, I'm like, how are, how? I feel that way with Boris Johnson. I think that man has lived a rough one. I wouldn't be shocked if he got gout, terminal gout. You know what would be the funniest thing based on it being 2023? What if the king dies a year after the queen? There's a decent chance.

You've seen his fingers. That man's not healthy. That would be so funny. It would be pretty funny if it ended up with Meghan Markle being queen after all just because those people hate her so much.

That would be pretty funny. What I will throw out there, I think there's a decent chance it's Fuentes. I think he's gotten, Nick Fuentes, his profile has increased so much so quickly.

That he gets killed by one of his enemies or fans? I think there's a good chance it's one of his fans. He's already had, no, that wasn't Louis Beam, that was George Lincoln Rockwell. Rockwell, yeah.

Yeah, I mean. I'm a hack and a fraud. Part of why I think that there's a chance of that is the weird sex related drama he's had with a number of his followers like he's already messing in those like wading into those waters um he's he's done shit like going over their rooms with a black light and stuff Like he's had weird, uncomfortable relations, like relationships with his followers that are like distressingly personal in a way that makes me think that one of them might lose it on him. I don't know. I think there's a non-zero chance it's Fuentes.

Yeah, he gets swatted a lot. Yeah, he gets swatted. I'm less worried about, yeah, I think like murdered by another weirdo right-winger, there's a decent chance.

Jason just had a good thing on Fuentes come out today. I think Rudy's dying. Oh. Here's something. Which Rudy? Giuliani. Oh, okay. I disagree.

You think he's gonna live forever? Really? Why? He's either gonna live forever or... He's already dead. Yeah, I think he died four years ago, to be fair. That man is made of wax and melting. He is thriving. Another example of that.

I just read a great interview with him in Cigar Aficionado magazine. My favorite fact about Rudy. So you're not supposed to inhale cigars unless you're one of a tiny chunk of people who think that that's the right way to smoke them. And Rudy's an inhaler. Rudy sucks that smoke right into his lungs. Do you know who else is an inhaler? It's Steven Crowder,

and we know that he's had a series of pretty significant medical issues. I think Steven Crowder goes back in the hospital, and I think he'll survive, but he will have to live in pain. he'll have to be hooked up to machinery to be able to keep going. So he's going to be doing his show while hooked up to medical equipment. I think that is another one of my predictions. Jordan Peterson is not healthy, right?

Is he still – It's impossible to tell what's going to happen with Jordan. There's a Twitter dedicated to if he's going to die or not. It's pretty funny. There's a Twitter dedicated to if he's going to die or not. It's pretty funny. There is a Twitter dedicated to if Jordan Peterson's going to die or not. Good point, Shereen. Speaking of Twitter accounts, I do think this is the year. Kissinger?

Kissinger. Sorry, yeah. Yeah. I think so. No, I don't. It's never Kissinger. It's never Kissinger. Always bet against Kissinger.

Yeah. He's going to stay alive. Yeah. At least to see another election rigged somewhere in the world or a coup. Wait, he's 99. Okay. I think he gets to 101. He gets to like 108.

He carries on way longer. Way longer than what he should. 108, 109 maybe. How are people, because I know several of us have said this in the past, how are people feeling about Kanye? Is he going to make it?

Oh, I think Kanye, there's a decent chance, like absolutely seriously. Absolutely seriously. There's a decent chance that he dies from a number of reasons. Yeah, Garrison and I have talked about this a lot

and we both are on that side yeah I agree with that I think well I think the real money is on does Kanye take anyone with him oh my god what if he takes a Fuentes

what if Kanye and Fuentes go out together? Garrison, there's not terrible numbers on that. That's so likely. That is not a 0%. I just got a single spark of hope in my dead soul. I think this is the year we lose OJ. Oh, wow.

I saw him give an interview the other day and he looked unwell. OJ is just like Kissinger. He somehow keeps winning, even though he shouldn't. Yeah, Sophie. The smart money is never on betting

against the juice. Alright, well. Do you know who else loves Yeah, Sophie, the smart money is never on betting against the juice. Oh, my God. All right, well, do you know who else loves betting? The products and services that support our podcast. The weird gambling things that are auto ads for us. Michael Jordan's dad for a while. Robert, that man was murdered. The guy he found founded the donut shop

is a Cambodian guy he left bedding is this a problem are we on break or is this all before the break who's to say so we have no idea alright we're back any honorable mentions like any last throws I feel like we covered a bunch

I really hope it isn't Britney Spears thank you so much oh my god alright let's see I really hope it isn't Britney Spears. Thank you so much. Oh my God. All right. Let's see. So final predictions for 2023. You know, there is not the midterms, right? There's no significant kind of election this year, at least inside the U.S.

I think this is a prediction that's going to hurt Sophie. I think something really bad comes out about Harry Styles. And I am praying for it. I am praying so hard. That hurts Shireen too, first of all. That something really damaging is going to come out about Harry Styles. Are you going to expose me? I saw that.

The only predictions I saw about Harry Styles was that he was going to come out with a vow of celibacy. Let's go with that instead. Honestly, that is so likely. I think Harrison's on the right track, though. I honestly, that is so likely. I think Garrison's on the right track, though. I think, I don't know. Whether it be Harry

or somebody else, I think there's going to be a huge pop celebrity scandal. Hopefully it's not Harry. Yeah. Well, there was one. I mean, every year there's a celebrity scandal.

I mean, I don't know who's relevant, but Nick Carter. That's right, Sophie. That's right. I don't know if it's relevant, but Nick Carter That's right, Sophie That's right I don't know if it's relevant I think we're going to learn that Nick Carter is going through some shit with sexual assault

Yeah, it was in the early 2000 He Assaulted a bunch of people and The main person that's Isn't there Backstreet Brothers who are Backstreet Boys I'm like Backstreet Boys Backstreet Boys who are QAnoners,'m like Backstreet Boys Backstreet Boys who are QAnoners isn't that correct

oh yikes didn't know that I think someone more relevant than Carter will be exposed another prediction that's like less of a prediction more just like looking at current trends and recent reporting that there will be a big

shift away from, like, a shift away from solar towards nuclear fusion. I think that we're going to, we're going to, I think, I think on... I think the fusion stuff's too far out. I, I, but, no, no, no, I think on the governmental level, whether or not it works or not, there's going to be a big shift towards talking about fusion as the solution to climate stuff. I think that'll particularly be influential around people who don't want to support meaningful climate change mitigation activities now. Like, yeah, I agree with you there.

Yeah, yeah. Like a shield. I have a China take, which is that. Okay, so. All right. It's really hard to get good information about exactly what so okay one of the things the thing that's been happening as a sort of result of the protest is that the ccp's done like i don't know they're doing a traditionally really stupid ccp response which

is that they've they've they've they basically flipped their policy like on its head on its head in a lot of places there's been a lot of like they've gone very quickly from mobilizing state resources to like keep people in lockdowns mobilizing state resources to forcing people to go to work and it's really unclear exactly what like how bad like the the covid wave they're gonna get is i i actually i don't think it's gonna be as bad as like the really there's there's a lot of predictions that are like like a hundred like a million people are gonna die in like six months it's like no i don't think that's true but i think if covid actually does get into the sort of like China has this very large population of like very, like very, very not vaxxed like old people basically, like particularly in rural areas. And if COVID gets into those people and those people start dying, I think we're going to see shit in China that makes like the current protests look like a fucking joke.

Like I think we're going to see like like people like like i think we're gonna see like like people like like party officials are gonna be getting like dragged through the fucking streets like it's i don't know like i this has been one of my long-running beliefs about chinese society which is i don't think you can actually kill a million people in china and not or like like even even like a like 40 or 50 000 people i don't i don't think you can have the government just straight up do policies that kill that many people without stuff going really, really fucking wild really quickly. And I think people are underestimating the extent to which, especially in these rural areas,

if those people start dying en masse, I think shit's going to get fucking wild. Yeah, that's my that's my i that that's that's that's my that's my 2023 china hot take all righty all righty i bet someone does something horrific with a 3d printed gun of some kind oh no yep somewhere and there's a whole bunch of panic and then yeah that was the next thing I was going to say. My prediction was going to be there was going to be significant pressure on a federal level

to ban the production of 3D printed guns. Yeah, and on an international level. Yeah, because I think there's a really good chance it happens somewhere in Europe in the same way that, like, you had the Bataclan massacre kind of done using re-militarized, demilled-like prop guns. I think there's a good chance that we get something maybe out of Germany with a high body count that pushes internationally for restrictions and crackdowns.

Anyone have a prediction on who Trump will pick as his running mate? Ooh. Sarah Palin. I think it could be me Bring it back Honestly though If you're on the ground in Alaska Almost every single person Because Jamie was just working on a story for us

That's based in Alaska They like her there They're like she's not that bad We don't get it She's so popular oh no yeah so i i don't know who who trump's gonna pick i on there's so many people he could that feel like too obvious or too much like they're they're too popular that they could threaten trump's like like sing singular brand because i i i don't think he wants another big

voice i don't want someone to be slightly passive i don't think he wants another big voice i don't want someone to be slightly passive i don't think he'll pick like he's not gonna pick like marjorie yeah exactly i don't know which one but i think he'll pick a black republican i think that's larry elder that's yeah whoever the quietest larry elder is too loud yeah i don't think he can't herschel walker I don't think he'll be somebody he can't control. Herschel Walker. Herschel Walker. Oh, God. Garrison, don't speak that into being.

I don't. But also. I can imagine that. That is my prediction. But Walker lost, and he does not like losers. Which is why he hated John McCain, who lost Vietnam. I think I'll probably. I think I see him picking a woman. Oh think i think i see him picking a woman oh i think i see him picking a woman which is which will be good

for his optics i just i i just don't know what i just don't know of a woman that's either like high profile enough but still quiet enough that sarah palin no palin can't be quiet he's not gonna do love and sarah palin it doesn't matter what they love what matters is that no Palin can't be quiet people be loving Sarah Palin it doesn't matter what they love what matters is that Trump doesn't want somebody who could who has the potential of distracting attention from him and she's been a big enough media

figure in her own right that I think he'd be worried about it no they hate each other now I'm just saying that's the vibe I'm getting from what i think he what i think he thinks will help him like a black man that can speak kind of the same way kanye speaks to his audience like maybe before the anti-semitic shit but just a black man republican i think is what will happen i i think i don't know he has two flanks that he can be hit

from in the republican party and one flank is just like the anti-vax flank. And then his second flank is like someone who tries to like tap into the evangelical voters who were kind of pissed off at him. And I think I mean, I feel like I think DeSantis will probably go after that. Yeah, but but I but I but I think I think I think he's going to pick someone either to show him up in the anti-vax front or he's going to pick someone who every evangelical knows and who no one else has ever fucking heard of. I think the latter is more likely with those options. Or somebody from his family. I think he's that. Is that allowed?

That would be really funny. Oh, Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. Yes. That would be so funny. donald trump and donald trump jr yes no it's gonna be a vodka it's gonna be a vodka no it would be yeah i think she's too woke she's like i think it would absolutely be a vodka yeah um because she's on the dark side he doesn't have an ounce of respect for the rest of them um i think he doesn't want to fuck them that's why that's that's actually not unlikely. If he is going to pick a woman, I think that is actually, that's who I would predict. My money is still on Herschel Walker.

But I think that is not a non-zero chance. Or he goes somebody that's not even remotely in the game at all. Yeah. remotely in the game at all yeah that's likely that's likable in you know either a religious community or you know somebody that's on tv but isn't somebody that's on tv and in your face um but yeah so like he's not picking like a kimberly guilfoyle or anything like that which would be so fucking awful oh my god i thought about it it's really bad for all of our ears but uh yeah so i i don't know it's gonna be bad okay can i can i ask a slightly like related election take on that do do you do you guys think that uh mike pence is gonna run against trump no no no he's making a stick about it no why no of course not i don't think he'll actually run i think he'll

just um if there's somebody that he deems that's like you know a true republican and a true conservative um then he will pence will back to santa back the shit out of that he'll back i feel like it's gonna be i feel like there's gonna be another person who's not the santa's who's gonna like i agree there's gonna be another person who's not DeSantis who's going to emerge. I agree. There's going to be another person. DeSantis, that man on a stage, he has no charisma. Robert and I don't think he's going to run. We don't think he's going to run.

We think he'll wait it out for the next one. I don't think he's going to run if Trump is running in particular, especially if Kanye is still in the news. It's too messy and he's young enough that he doesn't need to win this time and he's and he's so unfortunately well liked in the state of florida that like he yeah he's got a swing state he's safe he's safe there but he's smart enough to know that like going up against trump even if he wins could get enough stink on him that it fucks him over forever in the future as opposed to just holding on. He'll be 46 in 2028

which is one of the youngest, would make him still one of our youngest presidents. Yeah. And he could spend four more years just like sniping at whoever. Yeah, just being a real big old piece of shit. Word. Giant turd. Yeah.

Well, I hope none of us die next year. I hope none of us die next year I hope none of us die and that's how my anxiety brain works I had to say it so it's not true you know what I mean that's how my anxiety I'm sorry I just had to thank you Shireen I appreciate that I too I too

wish that yeah we got some work trips planned y'all don't catastrophize no okay that's fine um yeah is that it i think i think that's that that's twitter will die twitter.com will not be a website that's a very likely in a most yeah i think there'll be a big shake-up uh with uh there'll be a big story about health care and uh and how certain people are not diagnosed over other people and it's going to become a huge thing and there's going to be a huge story about that at some point.

Here's hoping. Yeah, I mean, there's been little baby stories about certain things, but I think it's going to become a global issue. Yeah, and we will see more bullshit about migration than we have done. Climate change is getting worse. Everything that drives migration is getting worse. And it will continue to be this fucking straw man that Republicans use. So we're already seeing like y2k and

early 2000s nostalgia and the bizarre thing is is that there's not much of a culture after that because around that time is when we started to reset into like 80s nostalgia so i'm wondering what the next nostalgia cycle is going to be i think like like uh things like like like in britain like the whole like landfill indie culture that came around in like the like late first decade of this century yeah yeah you're right you're right i think maybe like hippie 70s i i saw a video of of a youth i'll just call them a youth. Wow, Sophie. A youth trying on one of those cursed stretch comb headbands. Stop it. Those things fucking hurt.

You're going to hurt yourself. You're going to poke something. It's going to be bad. They're not cute. No. You don't want them back. We don't need that. The wristbands.

Lifting wristbands. Wristbands are already back. I already keep seeing them. And the little plastic bangles, back. The butterfly clips, back. The snap ones? The ones that snap? I've seen the snaps.

Yes. Oh, God. Please don't bring back. Hear me out here. Go ahead. New metal. New metal's coming back. We're going to do it.

We're going to get new metal. We're going to get early 2000s goth bullshit coming back. That's already started. My prediction is that ska will continue to be the most relevant genre of music in American culture. A fact

unchanged for 30 years. Alright, well, thanks for listening to our predictions episode, everybody. We'll talk to you. Bye. We'll talk to you. We'll be back. You know,

podcast. Will we? It's daily. Serene, stop talking about our deaths. Yeah. I'm sorry.

Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters,

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. varnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God, things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to

understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hey, I'm Jack B. Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Thank you. Stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Things fall apart. The center will not hold and journalists will make

a pretty good living writing about it all. It's a good time to work the dystopia beat. The pillars of our society have been crumbling for most of my adult life and probably yours too. One exception to this up until recently has been the tech industry. When the rest of the economy shit the bed back in 2008, big tech roared into the gap to prop up the groaning timbers of capitalism. Sure, the housing market was in free fall, huge numbers of people were out of work, and American infrastructure was crumbling like a twice-baked pot brownie. But then Steve Jobs magicked up the iPhone, and the iPad, and the App Store. Google brought us Android, and a dizzying array of smart and connected devices

followed. Companies like Uber disrupted massive industries and, briefly, made hailing a cab the cheapest it's ever been, although they did this by lighting massive piles of VC cash on fire. It was in this period of what would prove to be a rational exuberance that I started my career as a tech journalist. That was the job title my boss gave me, and it's what everybody else in the industry called themselves. In reality, most of us were just extensions of big tech's PR agencies. All the big tech news websites of that era— Slash Gear, InGadget, Boy Genius Review, and the place I worked for, i4U News, made most of their money off the back of a peculiarity in Google's search algorithm. The gist of it was this.

If a bunch of websites all published articles that were basically rewritten press releases about, say, a new gadget, or rewrites of someone else's report on rumors about an Apple product, Google would assume that this was a hot topic, and they would bump everybody up on the algorithm. You could make a tidy profit just paying a handful of writers to rewrite press releases or copy reports from some of the few sites doing actual tech journalism. And this is where I got my start in reporting. I wrote 10 articles a day, five days a week for several years until Google fixed their algorithm and wiped my silly little industry out in the blink of an eye.

It's fine. In this case, we kind of had it coming. It was nice to get paid to sit home and write, and the experience putting out a shitload of words every single day that were polished enough to print was pretty good for me. But it wasn't journalism. And so, while I was doing it, I started seeking opportunities to actually get out into the world and do original reporting. And that's what first brought me to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 2010. CES, as it's known, is a tech industry insider event for analysts, manufacturers, and media.

They come and they show off new products and gadgets and apps, and journalists walk around and look at everything and then write articles about it. Companies spend millions of dollars every year on massive multi-acre showrooms for their products and dream up ludicrous demonstrations of their new tech. One that sticks out to me from, again, about 13 years ago is watching some company or another charge an electric car inductively. That means there was nothing actually plugged into the vehicle. They just parked it like you would put your phone on an inductive charger, and they charged it that way. The whole process was so energy intensive that it dimmed the lights in the Las Vegas Convention Center, which, if you've

never been inside of it, is about the size of a small city. The spectacle was always the best part of CES, and with all the money pouring into big tech, it was a great place to be a reporter. Every big booth had free wet bars and piles of free swag. I left every year with a sack full of USB drives and thousands of dollars in products to test. There was so much goddamn money everywhere that even a dumb kid like me with no real connections could do okay.

Collapse was always and has always been present at CES, however, looming in the background over doomed product categories and vast, tottering businesses that didn't realize they were already dead. I'm thinking primarily of R.I.M., the people who used to make Blackberries here. Another good example would be Motorola. In 2011, their booth was one of the largest at CES. Now, Apple was, and still is, the biggest name on the block when it comes to making consumer gadgets. But they don't go to CES, preferring to hold their own annual event to announce new products. This has

always irritated the people who run the show, and so in the early 2010s, when Android started to blow up as a rival to Apple's iOS, a huge deal was made about Motorola's Droid line of phones. They actually had to license the name from Lucasfilm for obvious reasons. In 2010, Motorola won the Best in Show award for their Droid phone, despite the fact that they hadn't actually brought a working example of it to the show, something that kind of pissed me off at the time. Now, today, Motorola's basically dead. It's a shadow of its former self. It's been bought and sold several times as companies like Samsung and HTC beat the piss out of it on the open market. Other famous collapses from CES's past include the entire 3D television market. If you can remember those heady days after the release of the first Avatar movie, the tech industry blew billions in R&D and ad money trying to convince everyone that people

would actually sit down in their actual ass living rooms and wear fucking 3D glasses to watch movies or TV. It was preposterous and obviously doomed. I have fond memories of harassing PR hacks on the show floor, asking them, isn't this just a big con from the entertainment industry to make it harder for people to pirate media? Are there any actual signs that regular people will pay thousands of dollars for one of these things? At one point, a rep from Samsung, I think, tried to show me a glasses-free 3D TV. It only worked if a trained professional told you precisely where to stand in order to view it. I laughed so hard I snorted whiskey and lukewarm Starbucks onto a stack of glossy product brochures. Despite how

obviously doomed it all was, the internet filled with fawning articles about all of the exciting new 3D televisions that were surely going to be in homes in the very near future. Now, because the internet moves quickly, most of the websites that did tech news back then are dead, and the ones that remain are filled with busted links. But you can still find monuments to the failure of 3D television if you know where to look. Take this excerpt from a PC World article on The Best of CES 2010. It's titled, The 3D Revolution is Here, and underneath a broken link to an image that is no longer available is the line.

I don't think it's a false start this time. The 3D product plans for the coming year represent the initial salvos of the coming 3D revolution. Panasonic's 3D demos were among the most convincing, but the best implementation I saw, unfortunately, is one that won't be coming to market anytime soon. Sony showed us its 24.5-inch 3D OLED HDTV as a technology demo only. Now, in retrospect, I think the hilarious failure of 3D TV technology is actually what prepared me more than anything for crypto. If you actually just go over that paragraph I read a little earlier, you could replace the words referring specifically to 3D TVs with various shit coins or blockchain-related tech, and it would more or less work. The thing that set me off with crypto was how similar the claim was

that, like, this thing is obviously legit because look at how many people are talking about it. It's got to be real now because suddenly it's all over the news. This is why folks like Sam Bankman-Fried bought the naming rights to stadiums and stuck FTX and Crypto.com up as publicly as they possibly could. It was all a con to convince casual observers that the crypto market was a serious thing they should invest in. It's one of those things that really made me think a lot about the role journalists play in hyping up nonsense like this. And you can see it in 3D TVs and crypto and a bunch of other spaces. like this. And you can see it in 3D TVs and crypto and a bunch of other spaces. A big part of what convinces people that this stuff is real is suddenly they start seeing articles everywhere talking about it. Suddenly the press all over the place is talking about

the price of Bitcoin or talking about this new thing as if it's going to actually change people's lives. And so folks who maybe are not super high information media consumers just assume that, okay, I guess this is here to stay. It's a danger that still exists. All of this brings me to CES 2023. Collapse looms larger over the proceedings this year than at any other prior event I've attended. Prior to the pandemic, attendance at CES had topped out at around 200,000 people. Last year, though, only 40,000 showed, which is probably still vastly too many folks to cram into hotel conference rooms and casino restaurants during a pandemic. And yes, CES 2022 was a super spreader event. Korea particularly

had a problem as a result of it. The show itself, for decades a central event in the global tech industry, seems to be teetering. It is not alone there. The top 10 big tech stocks lost a combined $4.6 trillion in market cap in 2022. That's significantly more than the GDP of the United Kingdom, around $3.2 trillion, or the state of California, $3.6 trillion. At CES, the rot is most evident in the utter lack of any kind of hype beast product this year. So far, I've seen a flying hydrogen car, or at least I've seen 3D renders of one. Also, it's meant for Formula One-style races, not actual civilian use. The guy at the booth somewhat angrily told me the anticipated retail price was around $3 million. The Macca flying car

was one of many products that I looked into at CES Unveiled, which is one of the headline events of the show. It's basically a bunch of manufacturers and booths showing off their gadgets to an audience of journalists who drink heavily from an open bar, walk around, and prod things. In years past, smartphones and tablets and other consumer gadgets tended to be the main focus. But all that kind of stuff is boring as hell now. The smartphone market has stabilized. It's just not as exciting as it used to be, and CES knows it. The big hype it unveiled was around a mix of electronic and autonomous vehicle technology and virtual reality.

Now, at present, I'm not in a good position to thoroughly analyze the specific promises made by individual autonomous driving companies at CES. I'll just note that TechCrunch, normally all in for hype about this kind of stuff, published an article last October titled, It's Time to Admit Self-Driving Cars Aren't Going to Happen. Here's a relevant quote. Ford announced that it would be winding down Argo AI, the company backed by itself and fellow automaker Volkswagen, focusing on developing full level 4 autonomous driving technologies. Ford explained their justification in doing so when they released their Q3 earnings a few hours later, noting that not only were they shutting down Argo, but they were also essentially deprioritizing L4 technologies altogether, to instead focus on advanced driver assistance systems with internal resources. Ford CEO Jim Farley justified this by saying on the company's earnings call Wednesday evening

that profitable, fully autonomous vehicles at scale are a long way off, and we won't necessarily have to create that technology for ourselves. Now, obviously, autonomous technology will of course have niche applications, automating transport of heavy loads at job sites and mines where routes are predictable and controlled. But mass adoption of full level four autonomous driving technology is at present a fantasy. The same is true for one of the other major product categories that CES unveiled, virtual reality metaverse nonsense. The fact that Facebook lit 15 billion dollars on fire last year chasing Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse dreams has convinced some people that the idea is inevitable. This excerpt from a MarketWatch article published

during CES is representative. You can see the same thought process that led people astray with 3D TVs and crypto. In the long run, the metaverse will be a major substitute for in-person conventions like CES, said Jun Nichiguchi, CEO of Toraru, a Japanese company developing its own metaverse. So one of the barriers to any kind of popular metaverse is the fact that VR is actually not as immersive as it needs to be. The technology does a pretty impressive job of convincing your eyes that you are in fact somewhere else, and this is pretty neat. But the rest of your body is inevitably standing or sitting awkwardly in a room somewhere. This has led to a whole host of products that are in development right now that attempt to engage the rest of your body and basically trick it into believing that you're

somewhere else. I tried two products at CES that were meant to do this. The first was the TactSuit X from B-Haptics. It uses haptic feedback technology, which is the stuff that makes your phone buzz when you press a button on your touchscreen. Companies like B-Haptics hope to use advanced versions of the tech to mimic physical sensation. This would make the metaverse feel much less awkward and dissociated, and also provide a whole new market for online sex workers. There are several of these suits at CES, and all of them seem to have won innovation awards, or at least they're honorees in the CES innovation awards, which is a thing that basically anyone seems to get if they make something expensive enough and bring it to the show. To be frank, I think these suits are bullshit. The one slightly cool thing about the suit is that the gloves, it had like gloves and a feet component. I was able

to test the gloves and the actual chest suit thing. The gloves do a pretty okay job of emulating a physical keyboard, or at least a small keyboard on like a smartphone style device. Now, that is not a cool enough thing for someone to pay hundreds of dollars and deal with the hassle of wearing heavy battery-powered gloves every day. The B-Haptics folks eagerly showed me how their suit could simulate hugging and touching another human being in VR, and this seemed to be the major selling point they saw for what they were bringing to the table. I actually tried all this, and it was among the saddest experiences of my life. Hugging someone in a haptic suit through VR feels like having a dozen or so

N64 rumble packs activate up your chest and arms. If you touch a virtual person's shoulder, your hand will buzz and vibrate. Now, buzzing and vibrating are not sensations I attribute to physical intimacy with a physical person. I actually found this attempt at mimicking the sensation of human contact much more disturbing than the lack of contact in most VR experiences. The tech industry has also pinned a lot of hopes on augmented reality. I think this is closer to being realistic, but there are still a metric fuckton of vaporware and snake oil products, often marketed as increasing accessibility. One example would be the Luvik. This is a device you wear around your neck. It's roughly the size of a pair of headphones. It's supposed to buzz on one

side or the other of your body to let you know when to turn, all the while delivering audio map directions for you. Luvik's press materials highlight what a win this is for accessibility, saying, Luvik is a device designed to solve the challenges of those who have difficulty with spatial cognition. It is an IoT, Internet of Things, device that is worn around your neck and uses tactile notifications and bone conduction voice to guide the user along the way naturally. Now, this tech does identify a real need, but I'm sorry to say it does not work at all. I tried this thing. Luvik's people put it on me and ran through a walking route of New York City.

I couldn't tell which side of my body was being buzzed, so that was useless. It just felt like a smartphone was ringing on the back of my neck. And the speakers weren't loud enough to hear directions. Now, when I mentioned this, the people told me, well, there's too much noise in the conference room for you to hear it. Of course, New York City being famously quiet. And then there's the stuff that I suspect was just outright snake oil, rather than being broken like the Luvik. This is probably best embodied by the electric circlet I saw there. It's supposed to stimulate your brain to reduce your stress while you sleep. They advertised, I think the number was 80% reduction in stress while you sleep.

This is not a product I feel the need to review. Some claims are not worth taking seriously, and this is one of them. So far, I've seen little at CES that struck me as likely to be a massive financial success, but there were some potentially groundbreaking products on display. Unfortunately, nearly all of these were in the realm of health and medical technology. Let me explain why this is troubling with an example from the show. The most potentially influential device I saw there was called ViralWarn by Optiv. It is a multiple-use breath analyzer self-test that will tell you if you are positive for COVID-19, RSV, or influenza. It just lights up if you're positive for one of

them. They promise that in the future, it'll tell you which you have, but that's still useful, right? Still a hell of a lot better than anything we've got right now. Rather than sticking a thing up your nose, you just blow into this thing like a breathalyzer. It's about the size of a key fob, and you can charge it with a normal USB cable. It can be used dozens of times before being reloaded. Optiv's rough price point is around $100. If this thing works the way they say it does, I cannot exaggerate what a big deal it would be. Imagine being able to blow into a little device and know in a couple of seconds if you're safe before you go into a store or a bar or a party, know in a couple of seconds if you're safe before you go into a store or a bar or a party,

go see an elderly relative for a birthday. Lives could be saved by this thing if it works. And to their credit, the good folks at Optiv immediately told me that this was not on sale yet as it was still waiting for FDA approval. I take this as a good sign and I sincerely hope it works as well as advertised. But products like this do present a problem for the tech press. When I'm at a show like CES, it's generally easy to determine if something has promise. If I step into a booth for a company advertising rugged speakers, well, I can drop those speakers from a height, I can drop stuff onto them, I can throw them, I can test if they're rugged because I can try to break them, and if I can't, then they're rugged. Likewise, I can strap on a VR suit and I can tell you if it makes the experience more immersive. Neither I nor any other

members of the press can tell you how well a medical diagnostic device works in the same manner. This isn't anyone's fault, but as connected tech and AI are included in more healthcare devices, the potential for snake oil and for dangerous failures to generate mass hype increases exponentially. I want to be clear that the medical devices I have seen so far at CES do not strike me as suspicious in any way. Company representatives were extremely good at explaining what stage in the FDA approval process they were at, and I saw some really cool shit. My favorite was probably a new streamlined AED from LifeAZ. At $1,000 or $35 a month with a 4-5 year shelf life, this thing makes having a defibrillator on hand affordable

for regular people. It's extremely light and small and can be easily carried in a backpack. I do have a little bit of medical training and I tried this thing out on a dummy in test mode. I can confirm it appears to work like any other more expensive AED. The device is still awaiting FDA approval, but it has been approved and is being sold in France and Germany, so I feel pretty good saying this thing probably works the way LifeAZ says it does. And then there's my favorite product from CES Unveiled, the Nanshi Domestic Violence app from Athbash, which is a French company. This was first suggested to me via one of the most awkward PR emails I've ever received. Forward, media alert, groundbreaking domestic violence reporting app launching at CES 2023. And when I got it in my email, it just said, forward, media alert,

groundbreaking domestic violence, which, fun thing to get in your inbox. In fairness to their very nice PR lady, there's probably not a non-awkward way to title an email about this kind of thing. The app itself is really innovative, though. It provides you with options to record voice or video and to take photos of documents or to photographically document your own injuries. All the data that you save is stored off-site. So you take a picture or you record audio and it's immediately off the phone and off the app. You actually can't access it without contacting the company directly to get it. All of it is stored on the cloud and it's also on the blockchain, which is used to verify data integrity,

making this probably the first blockchain-related product I've ever heard of with a realistic use case. Nanshi seems to be pretty well thought out from the top to bottom. Once you start recording, you can swipe away from the app and it will keep recording without being visible anywhere on your phone. So if you're in a fight with a domestic abuser and they take your phone away, they will not see that you're recording, but it will keep recording. You can also change the logo and name that the app displays itself under on your phone so that it won't say that you have Nanshi anywhere. You can make it look like basically anything you want. It really does seem like they've thought this through, and it's about the best version of this kind of thing that's possible. There's more. A particular note

at the show was an unpowered mechanical exoskeleton I got to try on. It doesn't increase your physical strength, but it does allow you to sit while standing. The manufacturer, Arkellis, sees this as a way to let workers stand on factory production lines and in retail stores all day long without straining themselves. I feel profoundly mixed about this product, more so than anything else at CES. On one hand, it works really well. I got to try it on, and it's kind of a marvel on the mechanical level. You can still walk perfectly well with it on, but you can just kind of sit at any point, going limp, and it's actually really comfortable. On the other hand, it costs $3,000, which means very few retail workers are ever going to see one.

So far, its primary use in the real world has been helping to keep auto workers comfortable while they shotgun more cars out into a world with far too many of them. It's all very emblematic of the way CES makes me feel these days. many of them. It's all very emblematic of the way CES makes me feel these days. Inside the roiling sea of snake oil and broken shit are some really cool ideas, but they're all wedded to an industry that has mostly forgotten how to do anything new. Over the coming days, I'm going to look at a new smartphone from Samsung. It rolls up, I guess. Check out more VR haptic devices, none of which I expect to work very well, and I will hopefully get to lift some heavyweights wearing a powered exoskeleton. That one I'm actually looking forward to. I am open to the possibility of finding stuff that's cool here. But at the end of the day,

nothing I've seen and nothing I'm likely to see has changed my overall impression of where the tech industry is today. It's a big bloated monster slowly bleeding out before our eyes. today. It's a big bloated monster slowly bleeding out before our eyes. CoolZoneMedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at CoolZoneMedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen

to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your

podcasts from. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.