Offline with Jon Favreau - Biden’s Weather Machine, Leaked TikTok Docs, Elon’s MAGA Ground Game, and Big Porn to the Rescue?

Episode Date: October 20, 2024

Why are FEMA workers being threatened for trying to help clean up after Hurricane Helene? Jon and Max break down the misinformation spreading on social media, including the now infamous girl-with-puppy AI image. Then, they discuss the leaked documents that show TikTok knows exactly how harmful their app is, and check in on Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO is going all out to help Trump’s campaign, but fortunately the porn industry is lending a hand to beat it back.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

One unnamed TikTok executive put it in stark terms, saying the reason kids watch TikTok is because the power of the app's algorithm keeps them from, quote, sleep and eating and moving around the room and looking at someone in the eyes. Yes! How do you as a TikTok executive write that sentence down and then say, I'm doing a great job at work. I'm really benefiting humanity. Documents also show that they went so far as to tweak the algorithm to reduce the visibility of people it deemed not very attractive and, quote, took active steps to promote a narrow beauty norm even though it could negatively impact their young users.

I didn't even know you could do that with an algorithm. Sure, they can do whatever they want. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Max Fisher. Max, important question for you. Would you drink at a bar where all the bartenders are robots? It depends whose robots they are. What about Elon Musk's robots?

So is this like a SpaceX robot bartender bar where the bartender explodes mint martini? Or do we think this is like a Tesla robot bar where the robot... Where the robot just catches on fire. Yeah, it runs over your table and then there's no liability. Probably. We're going to talk about that. We got a lot of news, most of it more serious than that, to cover this week. So we're going to skip the guest and get straight into the headlines.

This week, new documents out of TikTok show the app's makers know exactly how harmful it can be. Wild stuff. Elon Musk goes all in to help Trump's campaign while the porn industry lends a hand to beat it. Did you like that? Okay, all right. Did you like that? I got a lot more where that came from. Yeah, you got to save those for when we actually get to the porn.

You can't, you can't. What's the expression? Blow, blow your, you know what? Let's just move on. Let's just move on. All right. First, a story I couldn't think of an appropriate segue for after that. Hurricane Helene recovery efforts in parts of western North Carolina were suspended this week

after federal emergency response workers were told to evacuate the area over concerns that an armed militia was threatening workers. The Rutherford County Sheriff later arrested a 44-year-old man from the region who'd made remarks about threatening FEMA workers security of recovery workers after misinformation surrounding Hurricane Helene has completely taken over social media. Max, I wanted to talk about this for a while now because it hasn't just had an effect on people's political views or perception of what's happening. That's what we might see like on a national level is where sort of reading all these stories. It is also genuinely made recovery efforts more difficult and hurt the people who've been affected by the storm. I'd like to hear what you think and what conspiracies you've seen. Here's one I can't stop thinking about. Conservative Republican congressman from North Carolina, Chuck Edwards, he actually had to put out the following statement quote while it is true the

federal emergency management agency's response to hurricane helene has had its shortfalls i'm here to dispel the outrageous rumors that have circulated online and then he has number one hurricane helene was not geoengineered by the government to seize and access lithium deposits in chimney rock bullet two nobody can control the weather having to say that it's really i like how each word gets crazier it's like yes yeah hurricanes are not geo-engineered to steal what lithium deposits why would you need to steal why would the federal government need to steal lithium? It's already in America. It's already here. What do we build it? Chips? Phones with lithium? I don't know. I don't want to I don't want to get into it. What else have you seen? Let me tick through a few. One is that there were a lot of viral claims that North Carolina

residents were being told that they no longer own their land and have to vacate. Not true. All these are not true. Another big one is there was a secret meeting among federal and local officials about seizing and bulldozing the town of Chimney Rock. This is where the lithium is, where the lithium is. This is, nobody noticed this. This is in fact, the plot of Mel Brooks's 1974 comedy Blazing Saddles. No, but it's Rock Ridge, but it's literally the plot of Blazing Saddles. Another is the, I know it's the storm suspiciously swerved to hit dams near quartz and lithium mines so that fema could seize those mines not clear how that even connects we are desperate for lithium here i we got to get our lithium uh fema aid limited to 750 a person

for losing your home that's also not true uh here's one our pal north carolina lieutenant governor mark nude africa robinson said that biden was speaking it's a porny show for some reason said that biden was withholding aid elon musk said that fema was actively blocking supplies from reaching people trump said that aid was not going to republican leaning areas which is in fact a thing that he himself tried to do multiple times while he was president but was held back by his advisors and marjorie taylor green saying that the storm was tracking republican areas implying weather control which boy if we could control the weather oh she didn't just imply weather control there was also a post that said of course they can control the weather like duh um trump was also of course saying that

the fema money went to uh undocumented immigrants uh the 750 dollar thing uh trump and jd vance were you know saying that kamala harris said that like you only get 750 dollars that's not true that was just like an immediate emergency right a payment and then they you could obviously get a lot more money there's an there was another rumor that the 750 dollars is actually a loan and if you don't pay pay it back, the government will seize your property. And so they're saying, don't take the $750. Don't take the $750. Yeah, that was another one.

There's this exact same rumor that popped up during the COVID stimulus checks. Yes. Was that it's a loan that you have to pay back. It's the same rumors over and over again because that's what the algorithm likes. And then the Elon Musk thing. So Elon tweeted that they were, you know,

FEMA was actively blocking shipments season goods all this kind of shit he had like a video uh which didn't really prove anything sure and then uh pete budaj department of uh you know secretary of transportation responds to him and says give me a call elon calls him i'm we don't know exactly what was said in that call but clearly pete was like hey you're fucking nuts Because then I told him what was going on. And then Elon responds on Twitter like, thanks for clearing that up. But like the thanks for clearing that up,

of course, just like, you know, one tenth of the views and the millions and millions and millions of views that Elon's post, which is misinformation, which is still up right now,

received. Right. And then he'll do it again. It's just, there's also like a ton of anti-semitic uh conspiracies about jewish officials seizing people's property i believe the uh the public affairs person at fema is jewish i believe the mayor of one of these towns is also jewish and they really play in the hits here it's just wild. How big of a deal do you think all this is?

So, I mean, I think North Carolina will be okay. I mean, this is scary, and it is very bad that what should have been a straightforward storm cleanup became, it sounds like for a brief moment, a like Mad Max style scenario with guys and truck technicals driving around like the Taliban. But I think that this is important because it's demonstrative for the threat from social media and what it is doing to our society. Because what is a natural disaster recovery if not a moment where it is so important for people to be able to come together and cooperate, for people to be able to coordinate, work with the state, work with institutions. And I think what we are seeing is the way that social media is the structure of social media undermines that and undermines that ability for people to come together and cooperate, which what is democracy, if not that on a larger scale? It's these attention seeking algorithms that definitionally because they emphasize fear, outrage, tribalism, maximize conspiracies that encourage people to distrust your neighbor, distrust society, go out for your own, you know, fight the institutions. And the threat isn't vigilantism. The threat, and you hear quotes

from people in FEMA saying the threat is that people who won't seek aid. People who will not go out or will not get or won't accept aid because they're afraid. And not, you know, they're not the guys who are going to get into the trucks, but the people say, I don't know, I saw these things on social media. I'm not sure what to believe. So I'm just going to hunker down. And I think because it shows how much of a market there is for this that you have, it's just built in. It's part of our political system now that Republicans like Trump and Vance are going to deliberately fan these flames because they understand that hate, fear and division are good for them in the short term, which is nihilistic and disturbing. It's something that would not be able to do if social media were not structured the way that it is.

And because politics has now crept into every aspect of American life, that even a recovery effort, even a rescue effort could be tainted by politics because Trump and J.D. Vance and some crazies online decided that this would be an opportunity for them to you know gain some political advantage of this also fucking elon and twitter do you see that linda yaccarino during this whole thing uh tweeted be careful stay safe check x oh my god it was just like so and it's also like it's infuriating it's like fuck you and also like really sad because you know for all the criticisms of Twitter pre Elon. Right.

It was a tool. There is a place where you could go to be like, OK, yeah, maybe political content. You don't want to check twice. Right. But like just useful emergency information. Good to have. Now. Right. Can't really do that.

We don't really have that. I mean, I think it's also instructive of the ways that social media as constituted structurally favors not just the right generally, but specifically the far right, because of the way that it encourages social distrust and leads to this us versus them tribalism, this distrust of institutions, and then a desire for someone, a strong man to come in an imposed order that leads people to the far right. So when people talk about are the algorithms politically biased, it's not that, with the exception maybe of Twitter, which we'll talk about, it's not that they are pulling the big right-wing propaganda lever at meta headquarters.

But we know, and the companies know, that the way their algorithms are structured pull people towards these politics in a way that I think we've seen time and again. It creates a feeling of societal collapse. This is also part of the damage. You see all these people who are in North Carolina who could be getting help but are not because they're being told that society is collapsing around you. FEMA is out to get you. And that feeds into a sense of doomerism, which I think is also part of why this is like a really useful kind of microcosm or shenectady for what social media does to our society. And by the way, people who are assisting with the recovery effort, everyone from

Joe Biden, President of the United States, to Pete Buttigieg, to workers on the ground, are spending time knocking down these rumors and debunking these conspiracies. And when they are in a situation where every minute counts, and FEMA had to put up for the first time ever, here's the rumors you're hearing, website, and debunking them, and the White Houses had to do all this stuff. And it's just it is so ridiculous. There's a state lawmaker who said that they were their phones were so besieged by phone calls from panic constituents saying, please do something to stop FEMA from taking my home, that it was harder for them to hear from constituents who actually needed help. I think there is also like there's a left right dynamic to this where it's like the misinformation,

disinformation is much more pronounced and much more harmful on the right. But there is also a little bit of a left-wing element to this too. Something that I saw a lot of on my feed in the first days after this hit were a version of similar misinformation on the left saying this administration is not helping. They're not doing anything. And it was a kind of like general, did you not see this? I don't, it was not. Was it more like, oh, they'll send, they'll send bombs to BB and Ukraine. Exactly. Right. They're sending our money abroad instead of helping out our communities. And then there was another version of it that I think was very prevalent on TikTok that I think you might not think of as misinformation, but is an example of

the kind of misinformation that saturated with saying that, okay, sure. It's true that Biden and Harris might be helping out these communities in the short term. But we all know that they're doing nothing to fix the real problem, which is climate change and which is not true. But that is a version I like. I want to be careful not to draw false equivalency. This is not a both sides thing, but I think it is demonstrative of the way that same conspiracy thinking and doomerism can infect even people who are better intentioned on the left. And just complete distrust and cynicism of institutions. The government can't do anything for us. Speaking of climate change, this whole incident also made me think that, and I thought about this during the pandemic as no one like no matter what scientific evidence research was out there people just decided to believe their own shit sure and for how long now we've

been trying to make sure that everyone believes in climate change that it's man-made that you know what's happening with emissions all this kind of shit and you're like well now that the effects of climate change are here surely right some people will start believing, right? It's going to maybe be too late, but surely. Some of these people around this would rather believe that the government controls the weather than to believe that climate change has caused storms to be more severe like this. I know. Like that's where we are. And so when we, as we continue to experience the effects of climate change and there are climate disasters that just sort of multiply all over the

world, the idea that that's somehow going to spur us into collective action. I don't know. I don't, I don't have a lot of hope on that. Well, it's an idea that outside of those social media bubbles here between you and me, that sounds ridiculous, right? And it sounds like who could possibly believe that. But if you are ensconced within these algorithmic social platform bubbles where you are only seeing the same things over and over again and countervailing information is never getting through, things that seem ridiculous from the outside start to feel more and more true. Yes. Yes. There's also grifting that was going on. Of course.

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue did a study on this. First of all, they found that the 33 posts containing debunked info generated more than 160 million views. Wow. Just on X. On TikTok, so it's not just X, of course,

one video boasting over a million views attempts to sell a manual via the TikTok shop with a section on ingenious ways to outfox FEMA in the next crisis. The advice includes, when talking to neighbors or FEMA employees, complain about how hungry and thirsty you are, and when outside, act like you have no energy and

are suffering. If you look like a victim, FEMA will treat you like a victim and be unlikely to raid your home looking for supplies. This is a manual you can buy on TikTok supporting to Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Unbelievable. Man, poor FEMA. Just the subject of every conspiracy theory. But like the X-Files really ruined them, I feel.

They do good work. So to your point about social media, you know, friend of the pod, Charlie Warzel, had a good piece on all of this in The Atlantic, aptly titled, I'm Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is. Great title. Where he writes, to watch as real information is overwhelmed by crank theories

and public servants battle death threats is to confront two alarming facts. First, that a durable ecosystem exists to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality. And second, that the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes but willing participants. What did you think about that? I think that's a really important point. I think he chose a good moment to raise it.

It's a tough one to raise because the interaction between people being fooled by what's on social media and then pursuing and indulging their own desires to believe misinformation is really complicated. And it's very complex the way that you trick yourself into believing things that you would otherwise know are not true. There's a great quote on the piece from Michael Caulfield at the University of Washington, quote, the primary use of misinformation is not to change the beliefs of other people at all. Instead, the vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

And I think that's really true. I think a lot of it adds, some of it, in some ways, it does do people and fool people, but is also a permission structure for you to construct a reality that is more emotionally validating yourself. And when so many people are polarized around their political beliefs,

that's how it feeds into your preexisting views of the world politically. When something like this happens. And on that note, the most damning example that Charlie cited in the piece was one that has gone viral. It's an AI created image of a crying young girl trapped in the hurricane holding the puppy. Like, obviously AI, actually. It doesn't even really, it's not that good, you know?

Parker Malloy, an independent journalist, collected multiple screenshots of Twitter users acknowledging that the AI was fake, but still insisting it was real on some deeper level. One screenshot that Parker collected says, quote, CNN says this is AI. In this case, I don't care. We should look out for our own before the rest of the world, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a little girl

fitting the description that wasn't lucky enough to make it to a photographer for such an image. That's wild. Just fucking post-truth society is where we are. It is wild to watch people reason that out loud but I think it's literally

it's so close to just saying I know it's a lie but it feels true to me that is what she's saying I mean everyone's all worrying about AI is gonna get better like does it need to get better?

it doesn't need to get better I think this is so important that there is the the social media disinformation misinformation that we worried about was this kind of post-truth hall of mirrors nancy pelosi deepfake where nobody would be able

to differentiate what was real and not real but what does nancy pelosi have to do with anything you don't remember the nancy pelosi deepfake from like two years ago where that was i can't remember who it was someone trump aligned who tweeted out a deepfake video of her slurring her words in theory on the floor of Congress. And that was the moment when everybody was like, this is the future. But what we assumed was that people would start by wanting to differentiate truth from false and that what would get past us with things that tricked us as we were trying to identify the truth. But what I think Charlie has put his finger on what has been true for a while or evident for a while is that a lot of it is driven by people just wanting to get information and to circulate information that feels validating to them over wanting factual accuracy for itself.

And I do find myself more and more frustrated with people who indulge in this because it's everybody. And I, you know, systemically, I blame the social media companies because they know their algorithms are encouraging this, their own documents show that they know they're doing it. But individually, I do more and more blame individual people for playing a role in this because we have the information to know better. And it's not just people like, you know, a lot of the people were sharing these AI slop videos, like you kind of picture, it conjures up a certain image of someone and it's easy to think of that person, think, well, they don't, maybe they don't know better, but there are a lot of people who know better. Something we were talking about earlier that I am still kind of torqued about, even though it's not

that big of a deal, but my feed has been dominated for the last week by people absolutely adamant that Kamala Harris is down in the polls, which she isn't, is down in the polls because she stopped calling Republicans weird and held an event with Liz Cheney. None of which is true. Adamantly believe it. People who should know better. And this is a softer version of the same thing, where you're conjuring up a reality out of nowhere because it feels true because what you want is something that validates your... Well, and your feed, right, is algorithmically designed so that other people who think

that are there. So you're like, well, a bunch of people are saying that. Everybody's saying it. And then it's very easy to conjure up a poll somewhere where you're like, okay, well, this poll shows a little bit of dip and this was right after this. And it just happened to be right when she did the Liz Cheney thing. Everything that happened after that, it's like, no one cares.

They just, they just, it's like your own preconceived view of the world is just constantly reinforced. And I think that North Carolina shows why this can be dangerous. Because look, if people are people on the left are yelling at the Kamala Harris campaign because it's not doing enough to validate their hatred Republican she's going to be fine and you know what annoyed but everyone God forbid if she loses the fights about why she lost it was just the pre-criminations oh my gosh the content will just go for fucking years everyone Everyone can just have the fights

while they're in the gulag. Well, you know, with Emperor Trump, you know, everyone can spend their time in the cell yelling at the lefties or the centrists or whoever they think did it. Yes, no, we're going to divide up the camps based on which podcast you listen to. Plenty of time for that.

Yeah. But when the hurricane hits. Right. Well, I think this shows, and there was a Rolling Stone article that quoted a bunch of meteorologists who are kind of like, there's always another group of experts. We're also getting death threats. Some people are like, we must kill the meteorologists. Right.

And there's always some group who it's like, you know, like doctors have been getting this for years. Poll workers have been getting this for years. And now meteorologists are the next group. And these quotes from these people, there's one guy said, people are just so, he just so as a meteorologist based in dc people are just so far gone it's honestly making me lose all faith in humanity there's so much bad information floating around out there that the good information has been obscured buddy welcome to the party we all as look as a reporter i've been here for years well look i mean this is a tough problem to solve you mentioned the social media companies this is not a problem that we can like content moderate our way out of. Correct. All I can think of is Kamala Harris has to win. I know. Because it's bad enough that the Biden administration is trying their best to debunk this and do the recovery efforts on that stuff. Now imagine people like this in power with Donald Trump.

And it's not even the last Trump administration where the crazy was at the top. And then in the bowels of a lot of these agencies, they were just nonpartisan bureaucrats trying to do their jobs. No, no, no, not gonna be like that next time. I know. And so then when a disaster hits, natural disaster hits,

like then what are you gonna believe and who's gonna get taken care of? Yeah. So, yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break. But before we do some quick housekeeping, Cricket's Friend of the Pod subscription

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or through the Pod Save America feed on Apple Podcasts. Also, check out our new series, Empire City, the untold origin story of the NYPD. The series has dived into the militarization of the force, the policing of abortion in the early days of New York, and the very first investigation into police corruption. But as NYPD news continues to break, there's a lot more to uncover. The series finale of Empire City drops tomorrow, so make sure to follow Empire City wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes now and enjoy ad-free listening by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. I have a question.

Sure. Are we a conglomerate? You said conglomerate. I just threw that in there. What is a conglomerate? I don't know. What is a conglomerate? I don't know.

I was going to say empire, but I thought that was a little much, you know. Are we conglomming? I'm telling you, mom. What else is another word for conglomerate? And we're back. So earlier this week, Donald Trump, heard of him? It rings a bell. He sat down with Bloomberg for a lengthy interview in front of the Economic Club of Chicago.

Oh, my God. I know. Exactly. Really wild. You know what? Exactly. Exactly how you think. He got two offline questions.

Not about us, but offline type questions. In a sense, they were about us. One was about the DOJ's Google antitrust suit. And one was about the future of TikTok. I think we have a clip from that interview. Let's play it. The U.S. Justice Department is thinking about breaking up Alphabet,

as Google likes to be known now. Glad he said that. Should Google be broken up? He would not have known Alphabet. I just haven't gotten over something the Justice Department did yesterday where Virginia cleaned up its voter rolls and got rid of thousands and thousands of bad votes and the Justice Department sued them

that they should be allowed to put those bad votes and illegal votes back in and let the people vote. So I haven't gotten over that. A lot of people have seen that. They can't even believe it. The question is about Google, President Trump. Yeah, look, Google's got a lot of power. They're very bad to me, very, very bad to me.

I mean, I can speak from that standpoint. You just talked about Chinese technology, TikTok, and the threat people see to many American children and things like that. Why do you no longer see TikTok as a security threat? I think it is a threat. Frankly, I think everything's a threat. There's nothing that's not a threat. There's nothing that's not a threat.

Healthy outlook. That was wild. So can I, in the rest of his Google answer, he elaborates and he explains that Google has been unfair to him in the sense that when he loads up Google News personally, he does not like the headlines that he sees. That's exactly it. Which is so wild because it made me think these tech companies could be saving billions of dollars on legal fees and lobbyists if they would just send a kid from Home Depot over to Trump's house and show him how to set up his Google News feed. It's easy to do.

I set mine up. You see different headlines. Then you like the headlines. And then Google will live to fight another day. Yeah. Just like you type in Donald Trump in his feed and it's just like, Donald Trump is great.

He's a builder. A big thumbs up emoji. That's it. You're done. Threat? Nothing's a threat. Everything's a threat. Honestly, Alphabet, call doesn't i could save you

billions i'm i wish the guy hadn't said um that alphabet is what they what the parent company he would not have known at all he tries to break up the wrong he's an alphabet and he was probably like oh shit what is alphabet you can see the brain going uh anyway he didn't have any good answers to that so uh it will be cool if he's president again. But I wanted to spend a moment today checking back in on TikTok, which, as a reminder, is still facing a ban in January of 2025. It's coming up. Unless it finds a U.S. buyer, a U.S.-based buyer. Last week, a bipartisan group of more than a dozen state attorneys general sued TikTok over claims that the app maker violated consumer protection laws by designing an intentionally addictive video sharing app and by knowingly lying to the public about the app's harms. The lawsuits contain all kinds of internal communications documents and research data

that were redacted from public view due to confidentiality agreements these authorities entered with TikTok. But while filing the suit, the office of the Kentucky Attorney General committed an error, accidentally revealing the documents that were supposed to be kept secret. I love that. I fucking, as a reporter, nothing you love more. Good job, Kentucky Attorney General's office. What in the leaked docs did you find the most compelling? I have quite a list, but you start.

Oh, this is wild, by the way. Do we want to do like a tier ranking? Do we want to do like a draft style? Do we want to do like a draft style? Favorite details of the TikTok? Just start going. Okay, I have three. The big one, the big headline is TikTok's own internal research found that, quote, compulsive usage correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects,

like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, and increased anxiety. Just go ahead. Just keep clocking into work every day, TikTok employees, just knowing that you're creating something that is deliberately or knowingly harming people. I think the other big two for the lawsuit and talking about regulation, TikTok's research finds that it fails to remove, the platform fails to remove one third of content

normalizing pedophilia, 30% of content leading minors off platforms. So the implication there is potentially to be contacted. 50% of glorification of minors sexual assault and 100% of content fetishizing minors and TikTok's internal guidance actively discourages removing children under 13 from the platform if parents or teachers flag the account as long as the account does not proactively identify itself as under 13, which is nuts. And they learned that kids as young as 15 were stripping for coins on live feeds and other rewards. That's been a problem for a couple of years now. Unbelievable.

So a couple other things. TikTok noted they have a feature that lets parents set time limits on the app. And one document, this is according to an NPR story about this, shows a TikTok project manager speaking candidly about the Time Limits feature's real goal. And they said, quote, improving public trust in the TikTok platform via media coverage, the TikTok employee said, our goal is not to reduce the time spent.

Wow. It's just to improve public trust via media coverage. I missed that one. That is nuts. Yeah. Wow, really saying it out loud. One unnamed TikTok executive put it in stark terms, saying, The reason kids watch TikTok is because the power of the app's algorithm keeps them from, quote, sleep and eating and moving around the room and looking at someone in the eyes.

What? Yes! How do you as a TikTok executive write that sentence down and then say, I'm doing a great job at work i'm really i'm really benefiting humanity documents also showed that the eye documents also showed that they went so far as to tweak the algorithm to reduce the visibility of people it deemed not very attractive and quote took active steps to promote a narrow beauty norm even though it could negatively impact their young users oh i didn't even know you could do that with an algorithm sure they can do whatever they want they also they also quantified

the precise amount of viewing it takes for someone to form a habit i saw that 260 videos which can be seen in under 35 minutes 35 minutes to get all i have to tell you i think that is correct this like radicalized me even more against t more against TikTok. How so? Just thinking about my kids. Yeah. And I'm just like, I don't want them to have the phone and to have this on the phone. And like, you're just going to lose them. Is it more knowing the danger from the platform or is it knowing that TikTok knows that it's dangerous for them?

It's that. Well, that just makes me mad. It's that. Well, that just makes me mad. Sure. The idea of it makes me scared. The idea of them having it makes me scared. This makes me mad. Yeah. It's unconscionable.

What do you think about the lawsuits and their chance of succeeding sort of as a strategy? Interestingly, the AGs are all saying that, you know, they would have done this even if TikTok was an American-owned company. Sure. are all saying that, you know, they would have done this even if TikTok was an American-owned company. So this is not about CCP, Chinese Communist Party control over the algorithm or over ByteDance, all that kind of stuff, national security. This is just like pure addiction stuff. So my understanding is that in this lawsuit, specifically and generally, that the kind of legal kill shot is being able to prove that TikTok was intentionally collecting data on children under 13 without parental consent, which is illegal under federal privacy laws. And that that is kind of the place where they're able to get them.

And that proving that TikTok is harming users' mental well-being or that TikTok lied to consumers, it's one thing to prove that, but Section 230 makes it difficult to bring any sort of legal charges over that. It's worth trying for sure. And they can definitely like rhetorically and morally make a case that TikTok is harming us and harming our children. And there's probably a pretty good case

that that is a big intent of the suit is to bring people's attention to like, we know what TikTok is doing. I was going to gonna say i feel like some of the stuff we just read about those like what we learned from the leaked internal documents right is probably the most uh the the real value of this lawsuit because otherwise it feels like the legal standard is quite high for this right um but when it comes to the ban which is also working its way through the court system, what do you think actually happens there? So it seems like nobody really knows. I mean, there was a Washington Post headline on this that said, yes, TikTok could still be banned.

There was a hearing last month in front of some federal judges. TikTok is trying to get the suit dismissed on free speech grounds. Both sides in the trial asked for, or in the hearing rather, asked for a ruling by December because they want to get through the appeal before that January 19th deadline, which of course is one day before the inauguration. Interestingly, Pew's, a Pew poll found that people no longer believe TikTok will be banned or a majority of people no longer believe it. And support for a ban has slipped. It was 50%, I think it was a year ago, now it's at 32%. 22% to 28% oppose.

So it's still slightly more people support banning it than oppose it. It feels like the support has dropped more than the opposition has risen, which makes me feel like a part of that, at least, is it faded from the headlines. And so there's a lot more people who are just like i don't know right and it does well you know when you're removed from it you start to lose sense with the immediate real world stakes from it and it starts to feel like it's just a platform and it's so easy to have an individual experience with tiktok

that is fine or there's maybe like a little harmful for you, but you kind of think, oh, it's not that bad. I think, should we really ban the platform? But it is tough in our society specifically to think about banning a social media platform because we have had such a norm for so long that the state does not get involved in regulating our media. That is a big, bright red line with the like one exception of obscenity on public airwaves. We'll regulate food. We'll regulate the safety of, you know, the water of chemicals in the air. But we have this idea that you don't the state should not get involved in what media you consume and don't consume. So what's been happening over the last 50 years is our media has been getting more and more dangerous for us and more and more harmful. And we all know that. No one disputes that our media from network news to cable news, to the internet, to social platforms, to TikTok has been getting worse and worse for us and for society. But it feels hard to finally take a stand and say, this is the moment we're drawing the line and saying that TikTok has gone too far in being harmful for the

public wellbeing. Yeah. And I just, it's's interesting i don't think kamala harris has been asked about the ban yeah it's interesting i've definitely not seen her talking about it which is probably she doesn't want to right of course yeah but um i wonder how that would change if uh because obviously biden i mean she the legislation has been signed right but i'm sure that there's like wait you know there's there's punting and i'm sure she has's like, you know, there's punting to do. And I'm sure she has. Where are you on whether it should be banned? It's still tough because I do think that we've said this before. I do think the government owes it. I mean, it's too late.

The legislation's already passed. But I do think the government owes it to people to let the public know, just from a building public trust standpoint, why it is dangerous. And clearly why the government believes it's dangerous is not just what the lawsuit that these AGs are bringing. In fact, their case is what the Chinese government can do. And it's data privacy. And it's also sort of manipulation, algorithm, propaganda. I think they're a little shakier on that from a national security perspective. And they probably got to lean more on the, it's, you know, either they're from the extreme, you know, case of they're looking at your keystrokes, which some member of Congress said after leaving one of these briefings, even though no one was specific to just like,

just vacuuming up a ton of data. But it's a foreign government doing so. Yeah, it's tricky because I think that the, I'm not saying I think that federal regulators have ulterior motives, but I think that the best case for banning TikTok is different than the legal case that the Biden administration is advancing. Yes, I agree.

And that there's a little bit of overlap, but they're mostly quite separate. All right, we're going to take another break. When we get back, Elon Musk. Oh, boy. He's not here. We're just going to talk about him. He'll come on one of these days.

I'm sure. And we're back. Unfortunately, it's time for us to check in on Elon Musk since clearly none of his friends and family are. The world's richest man turned MAGA shit poster has temporarily relocated to Pittsburgh for the final weeks of the election so he can knock doors for Donald Trump,

the man he has unironically told people he, quote, loves and has shown that affection by so far spending a half a billion dollars to help him win. Wow. This is according to a New York Times piece that says Elon has been, quote, manic about the stakes of the election. Fun word choice. I know. And let's not forget Elon's greatest gift of all, buying and using one of the most influential social media platforms in the world to amplify pro-MAGA propaganda to hundreds of millions of users. Elon does have more followers than anyone else on the platform, 200 million. So that's another gift to Trump. We also learned from the times that Musk has worked with the Trump campaign directly to censor anti-Trump content.

In this case, Elon suspended journalist Ken Klippenstein and blocked links to his article about the Trump campaign's J.D. Vance research dossier after the campaign asked the platform to prevent circulation of Klippenstein's piece because it was from an Iranian hack. What do you make of all this? And there's a lot to go through here.

The Pennsylvania move, the half a billion, the censorship, Elon jumping up and down at a Trump rally. We haven't even got to talk about that. The big jump. It is wild to me that this story is just every right wing conspiracy about politics, except it's about the right. And it's true. The major social platform being manipulated by the tall projection to right by the billionaire partisan owner who wants to put microchips in our brain and is backed financially by the Saudis. That's true. That's the thing that's happening. It's like you wouldn't believe it if it was a script. Do we think Elon is hanging out at Comet Ping Pong a lot these days?

He's just running back Pizzagate. Look, I mean, I think that this is not like a newspaper endorsing a candidate or it's not even like Fox News, you know, putting it all on the line for Trump because social media algorithms shape your reality indirectly in a way that is very hard for you to see when you were looking at your feed individually. And we know that Elon is already doing this because we know just you mentioned this, his account alone is pushing a huge amount of pro Trump far right, straight up disinformation lies. And we know from a ton of reporting that his account is being artificially amplified by the algorithm. So even if that is the only thing that is happening in terms of him using Twitter to deliberately manipulate political sentiment, that in and of itself is huge. Now, is it, quote unquote, election interference? I'm not sure I would go that far. There's a lot of people who are making that claim. But it's definitely fucking bad.

Oh, yeah. It's bad. I think the Times piece said this too, like there's no analogous situation in history of someone that rich controlling that much power in terms of amplification, you know, able to like sort of pump out propaganda than this. And willing to do it. And willing to do it. And again, it is even, it's weird to say this, but it is a step worse than Fox News. Yes. Right? Absolutely.

Fox News now is even worse, but back in the day, it was conservative propaganda loosely fact-checked sometimes. Right. There were some standards. They weren't great. There was some shame. Not much. And news before 5 p.m. But Elon,

I finally muted him. Oh, I did it years ago. Well, Elon, like, I finally muted him. Oh, I just did it years ago. It was, well, I was like, let's check in on what the crazy guy's saying.

But it was like, it was too much. And it's like getting too dark and too crazy. And just like, it's disturbing. It's disturbing. And I'm not learning anything new.

Like, I want to know what the other side is thinking. And I want to know what the conspiracies are. But like, it's like, I get it, man.

It's like, replacement theory all the way down. End of the worldacies are, but it's like, I get it, man. It's like replacement theory all the way down, end of the world if Trump doesn't win. The New York Times piece also is interesting in that it shows how Elon went from, I don't want Joe Biden to win again, but I don't know about Trump,

to like, okay, I want to secretly help Trump, even though it's like lesser of two evils, to like, I actually love Trump, and help Trump. Even though I don't. It's like lesser of two evils. To like, I actually love Trump. And I'm going to jump up and down. Like this is a man who has been radicalized. Nothing in the world has changed. Elon's brain has changed. Yes. From using this product.

He's kind of like your classic Obama Trump voter. Where it's like clearly there was just like too much social change. Too much social progress. And something in his brain broke. I think something that is easy to miss about part of the harm that Elon is bringing because it's so out in the open and so in our phase is that if you think back to 2016, there was so much far right rhetoric, so many far right ideas and misinformation that was associated with the campaign. But it was kind of filtered through these like small to medium influencers like Milo Yiannopoulos. And there would be this kind of disconnect where it's like the Trump campaign wouldn't

say it or they would go only so far. And then this loose collective of like far right Reddit trolls on Twitter would amplify it. But now we have the most the most followed voice who is pushing this every single day, day in and day out. And I think that does a ton to, I know this is the most overused word in the fucking world, to normalize it and to move the Overton window by just saying, it's like, well, it's in the equivalent of the CNN chyron on Twitter every single day. And part of this that really disturbs me is Musk's price for helping Trump.

You read about the government efficiency commission that he wants to run, which is just going to be Trump's special commission for firing all the regulators. And Musk has said that the two regulatory agencies he really wants to target for purging the regulators are, here we go, the EPA yeah of course and the faa well why because he gets a lot of fines at spacex because he's launching exploding rockets into this

guy so he's that's it i needed to open about it so okay maybe whatever how you feel about climate change do you want the planes to fly don't vote for donald trump it's so bad the whole so that i do think that the the on the propaganda side on the like using his platform to help trump like that is all uh it's not only nefarious but i think it's effective yeah um i will say the elon moving to pennsylvania uh personally going door knocking and sort of basically the trump campaign has outsourced much of their gotv operation the get out the vote operation the field operation to elon's super pack um and elon super pack is also like gobbling up other super packs too on the right and they're trying to like all and what i have heard not just from strategists, but people who have talked to

people on the Trump campaign, like Trump strategists, is that the weakest part of their entire campaign, the operation, is this Elon PAC field operation. Yeah, it's like a fucking mess. Well, that's good news. I know that is good. It's like a small silver lining. And they were like, someone actually, I heard someone say like, if we if we lose it'll be this like they feel very confident about a lot of things but they worry about the and the washington post just had they're getting wrong oh the washington

post had a great uh story about this that just popped before we started recording but it's like you know you don't you can't build a field operation with like a month to go like these are things that like people you people you take years right and elon's like you know they're hiring people last minute to go out there the app keeps breaking down uh elon's management style is like turning people off they're knocking on doors of like people who the apps tell them to go to like harris supporter doors and it's hard to recruit people like the whole thing is just a big mess i did see there was some story about hundreds of door knockers got stranded somewhere because Musk personally intervened and was just like, no, you're out. Which is it's like these are not Twitter engineers who you can just fire on a whim.

You need these people. It is going to be an interesting test on whether door knocking actually works, which I know is a live debate. Yeah, no, I know. I know. But I think this is probably not going to work. Which is not to say like, Trump, still a coin flip election, Trump can win,

right? But if he wins, I don't think it's going to happen because of Elon Musk's door operation. And I think, in fact, it shows how has Elon been at Tesla? How has he been at Twitter? Now he's running, now he thinks he's, he like gets involved, gets manic,

screams at a bunch of people, doesn't know what the fuck he's doing, thinks he's a genius at everything, isn't. He's a showman. But I will say this, there's another super PAC associated with him that's running ads.

And this stuff is also nefarious, much like the Twitter stuff, which is they are running one ad in Michigan that says, talks about how Kamala is a steadfast supporter of Israel. And they're running it in Dearborn and Arab American and Muslim precincts. And then in Pennsylvania, in Jewish areas, Kamala is pandering to the Palestinians and she's secretly campaigning for Palestine.

Yeah. Same place. That's so gross. So cynical. So cynical. I worry about the Jill Stein vote in Michigan. I really am. Yeah.

Yeah, no, everyone's. I was there when we went canvassing, and I heard from someone who's very well-connected on the ground and doing some stuff saying that they're worried that they have heard both from Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, who are like, I can't votelim americans who are like i can't vote and jewish americans who said i can't because she's because biden and harris are yeah i know i know welcome to the israel palestine conflict i know it's tough um what do you think about the um

the greatest free speech censorship scandal since uh since the hunter biden laptop affair so this is okay to explain what's going on, it's not just the thing that you mentioned earlier about independent sub-sac journalist Ken Klippenstein getting his account banned because he tweeted out this link to the Trump docs that were hacked by the Iranians. It is, like you said, it's a Hunter Biden thing. It is retaliation for the platforms choosing to, I think it was suppress, was it suppress or just de-emphasize on the feed? I can't remember. Oh, it was, it was, this was the Hunter Biden thing.

Yeah, it was links to- It was the story. I think they, I think they just, I think they de-emphasized. I think that's, okay. But it was links to, I think specifically a New York Post story. It was a New York Post story, yeah. About Hunter Biden's laptop got found and someone took the files off of it. New York Post wrote it up, which was itself a reaction, correction, maybe an overcorrection from 2016 when media outlets published a bunch of stories based on Russian hacks of John Podesta's emails, Hillary Clinton emails.

And those were everywhere. And then after 2020, everybody was like, let's not do that again. So let's not make too big of a deal out of the Hunter Biden laptop stuff just because we have it. And people on the right have been using that as evidence that the media is biased against them and is suppressing news that is self to Republicans. I think this is not going to shock you. I think this is worse than the Hunter Biden thing, not just on the merits, because I actually don't know how important these documents really are. They don't seem like that big of a deal, but because a social platform being deliberately partisan in its moderation is worse than what happened in 2020, which is social platforms trying to do the right thing and arguably may have been unintentionally partisan. Right. And also, you know, the Trump people get this wrong, but like the Hunter Biden thing was when Donald Trump was president. That was his administration. So it wasn't Joe Biden. And then what the Biden administration tried to do was about COVID misinformation, which again, was not

supposed to be partisan. And they weren't ordering platforms to suppress it. They were just telling them, hey, we saw this post. And again, there's a whole suppress it. They were just telling them, hey, we saw this post. And again, there is a whole debate to be had about if there's hacked material, should the hacked material be allowed on social media platforms? It's a tough question. Right. And you can decide, no, we're going to take it down and it's not allowed. But then you have to do that. It has to be a standard across the board right and like let's see if they're if if kamala harris's campaign was hacked tomorrow and uh they reached out to elon at x do you think they would take that down yeah i guess we'll see i guess we'll see well we might not i hope we don't um we should know before we move on that uh elon is still keeping his day job

uh this week at an event up the road in burbank musk unveiled his long-awaited cyber cab which is just a self-driving car that looks a bit like a mini cyber truck uh at the event up the road in Burbank. Musk unveiled his long-awaited CyberCab, which is just a self-driving car that looks a bit like a mini cyber truck. At the event, Musk also unveiled a prototype of Optimus, a humanoid robot that Tesla claims will eventually use AI to complete daily tasks and were used at the event

to serve drinks at the bar with the assistance of a human control person. Yeah, they didn't tell people that in the time. They said it's a robot. They said it's a robot with AI. And it turned out there was a human controller. It was all smoke and mirrors. What do you make of the cyber cab and the robot

and the whole event? So the cyber cab is just a Waymo car, except later and not as good. Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say. We already have it. So Waymo is only in four cities, for people who don't know. We have it in LA. It is a self-driving car.

It is a little surprising when you see one. I kind of felt like no one told me that we're here yet and doing self-driving cars. I know, and I'm just driving my kid to school and suddenly he's like, Dad, there's no one in that car and it's moving. And I'm like, what the fuck? No one told me about the Waymo?

There was a video that was circulating a couple days ago of a Waymo randomly parked just in the middle of traffic. And there was some poor traffic cop went up to the car and kept trying to wave it forward. I know you really feel for him because it's like, what else are you going to do? But also, it's a car. It doesn't understand waving. So Waymo is from Google or Alphabet. Yes. We have to tell Trump.

And they have been around for a little while. And they have all of these safety data points that are pretty... Someone said this, I can't remember remember who that it drives like a um like a kid who's getting like like you know in driving school and it's like student driver kind of thing that's sort of how they go because it's like gas and brakes it's overly cautious which is probably what you'd want sure you're driving yeah i think so um now elon musk for years for about like six years has been saying uh the tesla self-driving car is right around the corner. It's happening next year and it's going to lead the industry. And it just kept getting punted and punted and punted. And still, some of the stories about this event were like, it was like bumping into shit.

It got stuck in a tunnel. The guy, he really is like Trump. It is smoke, mirrors, a big show. He knows how to put the show on. He's jumping around. He's doing stuff. And it's like, also, you know, she's like a bunch of senior executives at Tesla have been, like, leaving over the last. Yes, they've been leaving in droves.

Yes, it's been. So, an important thing to understand here is the reason that Elon Musk is as rich as he is, it's not because Tesla sells a lot of electric cars. It's not because of SpaceX. It's definitely not because of Twitter. The reason that he is so rich is because of this promise that he is one day going to launch a self-driving car that is so amazing that it completely dominates the future self-driving car and self-driving taxi industry. And the reason that that is the thing that makes him rich is that Tesla's stock price is where all of his wealth is. And Tesla's stock price is not pegged to Tesla's sales of electric cars, which are declining as a share of the overall market. It's pegged to this promise that one day we are going to create and dominate this market. And investors are, they're split on Tesla,

but a lot of them are starting to wise up to the fact that this is never coming. And therefore, Tesla is wildly overvalued based on its actual profits and costs. And its stock price dropped, I think, a little over 10% right after this big demo that was supposed to be his big lifesaver. Because Tesla has been, I'm not going to say he's not been doing well, still makes a ton of money, still incredibly rich, but it is not living up to the promise that, as you said, he has been hinging the company on for years. And the more clear that becomes, the more the stock price is going to drop and the less rich he's going to be. And I think this is why he's doing all the Trump stuff. Yeah. Because he knows he's going to need help.

Well, also, his approval rating among Democrats has fallen to 6% in the last NBC News poll. 6%. So Mark Zuckerberg. That is what he has done. And like, who do you think's buying a lot of the Teslas? Right. Maybe most of the Teslas. Yeah.

I would bet, or used to be probably Democrats. As someone who used to spend a lot of time at public LA charging stations, it is a lot of rich Republicans who own Teslas because- I could see that. they start talking to you whether you want them to or not. And the number one thing they tell you is that they're going to move out of California because the gun control is too strict here, which is clearly not true.

See you later. Bye. Anyway, so Elon's just crushing it. We'll not be getting into self-driving Tesla anytime soon. Or a personal robot because they don't work. They fake the personal robot. That's a crazy thing to do in front of investors.

And they knew it was fake too. John, what would you have your personal robot do? My personal, ooh. Let me tell you what Elon Musk said he would have his do. Babysit his kids and be his friend. Jesus Christ. It's so on brand. I mean, his kids and be his friend. Jesus Christ. That's so, it's so on brand.

It's, I mean, just the insight to the mind. Anything human that I need to do? My human tasks. My emotions.

Can it, can it carry my emotions? It's really the window into his soul that the thing that he needs to invent a robot for his parenting friend.

Not like mundane tasks so you can spend more time with your family and friends. No, no, no. Instead, it's the opposite. more time with your family and friends. No, no, no. Instead, it's the opposite. It's be my family and friends, take care of my family and friends so I can spend more time

because I've alienated all of them. Posting. Yes, that's right. All right. One last thing for all you porn enthusiasts. If you're perusing

your favorite adult content and you suddenly see Donald Trump's face on your screen, don't be alarmed. Or do be alarmed. But know that it's actually a good thing.

And no, we haven't found the P-Tape. We are talking about an anti... You really went for it with this one. You know, some of these are mine.

Austin had a few in here too. He had the P-Tape one. Really gotta hand it to him for that. Anyway, we're talking about an anti-Trump super PAC that's planning to run

10-second ads on select porn sites in swing states for the final two weeks of the campaign. The ads, which will play before videos, an amuse-bouche, if you will, feature a photo of Donald Trump alongside the words, Trump's Project 2025 will ban this video.

Enjoy it while you can. And then the ad encourages users to Google Trump porn ban, something I'm sure everyone watching that video will definitely immediately want to do. Don't Google anything with the words Trump and porn in it. You're getting to the good part. Then you start, it's just. What do you think the autocomplete is? Seems like some tough multitasking.

When you type in Trump and porn, what do you think is the third word? You know what, let's try it and porn what do you think is the third word you know what let's try it we're gonna do it let's try it right now trump porn oh you know what it doesn't show you the autocomplete because of google's because of big tech censorship fuck see it's everywhere um anyway wally nowinski one of the founders of the pack uh told newsweek quote half of the trump coalition is really into things like project 2025's abortion ban porn ban and the conservative half of the Trump coalition is really into things like Project 2025's abortion ban, porn ban, and the conservative agenda, but the other half is like barstool sports bros who just want to be left alone.

We've been saying that. Tommy's been saying this forever. Really? Oh, yeah. The Project 2025 porn ban is a real way like this whole discourse about Democrats' problems with younger men and them slipping away. Like the Project 2025 Mike Johnson, weird, creepy, right wing Christian shit.

Christian nationalist. Christian nationalist shit is not appealing to a big segment of young men who are not like, you know, just traditionally conservative. It makes me think a lot about an interview that you did a couple of months ago with two political scientists. I can't remember who it was. And they were talking about trying to poll on Project 2025. Yeah. And they said that it was really hard to get poll responses to it because they would ask people like, what do you think about this element from Project 2025 or this element? And they would always say, you're making that up. Yeah.

It's not real because it is so hard to believe. So anything that can kind of pierce through people's disbelief that there's no way they're really going to ban porn. I even find that hard to believe. And I know they would do it. I mean, I do believe it, but I have to really think like, would they really do it? Yeah, I guess they would. I have. I've told the story on Pod Save America. So forgive me if you've heard it before but um so is that your that's the spinoff

that's the spinoff pod yeah um a friend of mine i'm gonna get it right because he was annoyed how i described it last time a friend of mine who does not talk about politics a ton with me okay and you know is broey okay i will say all. Texted me out of the blue and was like, Project 2025, page whatever. I cannot fucking believe this. This is crazy. We got to do this. And it was like the first thing he talked to me about this election. And before I even knew what the page was, I was like, let me guess.

That's the page with the porn ban. And he said, yes. So did he find it because of one of the porn ads? Did you ask him? No, this was a while ago. So this is with the porn ban. And he said, yes! So did he find it because of one of the porn ads? Did you ask him? No, this was a while ago. So this is before the porn ads. But I think this is not a bad... Look, it's not going to hurt.

And it's cheap, apparently. It's about a thousand percent cheaper than running comparable ads on YouTube. And certainly cheaper than putting these ads on television. Should we promote the pod on porn? We should. So the challenge here is Pornhub, the big porn site,

does not allow political ads or even ads. Yeah, so they have had, but there's a lot of other porn sites that still get, like they said in this piece, like tens of millions of views that they can put these ads on. So it's a little tricky thing to do, but they're

doing it especially because it also works because in some some states have uh now have age verification to just go on any point so if you go to like texas they'll like you can't log on there'll be this whole thing so they were going to just do it for those states and then project 2025 happens and they're like oh this is a gift it's perfect now we can do it everywhere now we don't have to go like specific red states that are doing this. It gives people something to talk about, at least, or to think about in terms of in the terms of the stakes of this election that are maybe not the normal stakes that we are hearing on the news that are, I think, very important, but maybe not registering for everyone.

It's also a signal to it's not like, yes, I guess you could be a single issue voter and that issue could be porn. But it's a signal to people that like, oh, if they're going to ban porn. What could be next?

That's like, I've heard about abortion being banned. I've heard about the IVF stuff, the birth control, now porn. Like, this is fucking weird.

Yeah. So have you encountered the ad on a lot of the porn that you're viewing? Do you tend to see it very much? Well, what I'm looking at right now uh as i do the show which oh yeah i always watch a little porn while we talk uh i have not seen it but we'll see

that's what's up on the screen that makes sense yeah that tracks yeah um anyway that's our show for today wow what a place to end what a place to end if you're listening on youtube uh if you're listening on youtube or watching people listen on youtube i think they do both okay If you're listening on YouTube, if you're listening on YouTube or watching. People listen on YouTube. I think they do both. Okay. If you're listening or watching on YouTube, whatever you do on YouTube, please remember to like and subscribe. We got a new YouTube channel. It's very exciting.

And tell your friends to like and subscribe. We're trying to build subscribers on the YouTube channel. Yes. Great new art for offline too. The design team here has done a fantastic job. So if you haven't seen it, it's worth going online just to check out the art. There you go. And then you can go back to your porn. All right, we'll see you back here next week.

Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau, along with Max Fisher. It's produced by Austin Fisher and Emma Illick-Frank. Jordan Cantor is our sound editor. Charlotte Landis is our engineer. Audio support from Kyle Seglin. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer, Reed Cherlin, and Adrian Hill for production support.

And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Dilan Villanueva, who film and share our episodes as videos every week. Thank you.