The Daily Zeitgeist - The Creeping Crappiness Of Tech 03.05.24

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

In episode 1635, Jack and Miles are joined by host of Better Offline, Ed Zitron, to discuss…  The Rot Economy and more! Checkout Ed's Newsletter: Where's Your Ed At LISTEN: Pig Feet (Feat. ChildisH Major) by ScHoolboy QSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me for I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just

starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports.

Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeart on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you

get your podcast presented by capital one founding partner of iheart women's sports hello the internet and welcome to season 328 episode 2 of their daily zeitgeist a production of iheart radio this is a podcast where we take a deep dive into america's shared consciousness and it is tuesday march 5th 2024 yeah yeah that is four hey man it's a scumbag buffet because it's two consumable items have their national day national cheese doodle day and national absinthe day so why don't you why don't you bust out the sugar cubes and lighter get your absinthe on and then you know, top it off with some nice cheese doodles. Just to give yourself

a fully balanced meal today. What is a cheese doodle? It's like a cheeto. Like a puffed cheeto. I feel like, so the way you get cheese doodles, you ever see one of those fireworks that like turns into like a shit tube? into like a snake?

Like a little snake? Yeah, a little snake. So that's how those are created. They do that and then powder them in cheese. Yeah. Who says America doesn't build anything anymore? I know. We're the greats.

International greats. I feel like cheese doodles have to be wildly flammable, right? Yeah, why not? What do you suspect? Why not? Why would they be flammable? I don't know. Everything in would they be flammable i don't know everything in america is probably it just seems like it's like 80 petroleum for some reason the puffiness corn it's just corn man it's just well which corn is ethanol yeah that's right it's made with the

other so i uh i googled cheese doodles to find out what they were. And someone had posted in r slash chips, all caps. Wise, why did you change the cheese doodles recipe? All caps. Looks like six or seven question mark and exclamation marks. All caps. This is actually a very big threat of people just whose lives have been ruined by a company changing their life. The economy reaches offline and into your cheese doodle bag as we're gonna get to flawless but yeah before we get into it my name is jack o'brien aka when i get

to the party and i sit in a comfortable chair then i unzip my pants and avoid ringo stare till we get to the climax and we're coming again yeah yeah yeah do you want to sit in a circle do you want to scream winston churchill circle jerkel circle jerkel circle jerkel that is courtesy of Clio Universe. Shout out to you. And shout out to the Beatles. That song ends with him saying, I've got blisters on my fingers. I know.

From jerking off in front of each other. From beating off in front of John Lee. That's right. Yeah. This is, of course, a reference to the fact that the Beatles did jack off in front of each other. And we know that. And I don't feel comfortable knowing it without you knowing it. So there you go. I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray.

It's Miles Gray, a.k.a. Boo in, boo out. Boo in, boo out. Boo in. I'm a monster head. Tastes better than the rest. Blue fecal dread. Monster head.

Still a monster head. Tastes better than the rest. Blue fecal dread. Yeah. My purpose turned in blue. My poop is turning blue. Yeah. That's courtesy of Hugo Bosque

Obviously that was to the tune of Machine Head by Bush And obviously that's a reference to my love of blue ice cream That does affect the color of my Of your poo Excretions Yes Thank you for listening It's also, it's crazy

But Schoolboy Q heard about Heard you say that last week And changed the title of his album to blue lips yeah he was talking about of course both lips the lips going in and your butthole lips exactly my gross gross i say that bit of improv uh yeah sorry about that uh our guests i love i love getting like this uh up top when we have an expert guest yeah just be Just be, make sure they know what they're in for. I'm just pissed off I wasn't told to prepare a song. Oh, Ed, next time.

Next time, man. Yeah, next time. I'll come back on. Yeah. We are thrilled to be joined by a tech journalist, writer behind the newsletter, Where's Your Ed At? His new podcast with Cool Zone Media, Better Offline, is a must listen. Yeah, yeah. Also also how i found out about that new york magazine the cut personal finance expert being scammed to

the tune of fifty thousand dollars cash in a shoebox i think how a lot of people found out about it it's ed's intro Ed Zitron! Ed! What's up? What's up, YouTube? That is exactly where it's from. Every single one. Yeah, dude. Rudy? Rudy, fantastic album. Yeah.

It's Rudy, right? With the ape, that albino ape one? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What a great song. What a great album. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, we're starting on a high note, Ed. I mean, next time, yeah, we will give you ample time to prepare an AKA that either has to do with Fecal Matter or Circle Jerking with the Beatles or something like that.

Or something of your own choosing. You can start preparing now. Just sit in that thing for your next one. What can I put to Bush's glycerin? Yeah. Glycerin. Glycerin. Sometimes they just, like, doesn't that song say got a machine head yeah he's just like it's a

cool title and i'm just gonna be like got a machine it doesn't really than the rest green to the red right green to red machine head yeah not exactly shakespeare no not quite they would like come up with a cool word and then just be like i've got one of those they're not as good as the hives though the hives are just complete nonsense they're my favorite birds like the joker got a smoker and a bong got a gong wow i listened to the latest album recently it was like this is awful lyrically yeah like this i'm like i feel like i'm getting a concussion listening to it which is why i get listening to it right yeah yeah that's what happens is i feel like with uh the bush guy it's a little bit of rostale yeah gavin rostale is a little bit of the bubble like the um 30 rock

episode where john ham is a doctor who's just so good looking that people are just like damn man you are the best doctor ever and he like doesn't know he doesn't know shit he's like hey here try my special recipe orange chicken and it's just chicken cooked in orange gatorade like i feel like gavin rossdale is just so stunningly you think he has people problems oh yeah i think he's just a good looking guy gavin ross? Wasn't he? I mean, people were definitely thirsting over him in the US. In the US.

When Bush first hit, yeah, when Bush first came out for sure. I mean, he looks like a slightly upgraded Jeremy Clarkson. Come on.

Wow. I don't know. I think I, I gave him a lot of credit once he got with Gwen Stefani. He went with Gwen. Oh,

so he is the reason why they haven't made a good album since Retard of Saturn. That's right. Yeah, exactly. Anyways, this is album talk. Yeah. No, Ed, how are you doing? Where are you coming to us from?

Las Vegas, Nevada, where I live. Yeah. Beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada. How long have you lived in Vegas? Three years. Okay. Where did you live before that? California. It was in Oakland. Oh, okay where'd you live before that uh california was in oakland oh okay wow you went from the east bay wow you really followed the

raiders oh yeah well i didn't do it for that reason no would you look at the product on on the field i love it here though yeah you like to go visit the immortal flame of al davis and yeah i just kind of shed a tear right in front of it. The Raiders will to win. Yeah. Yeah. When you go there and do the tour, they all say that stuff to you. It's all that propaganda.

Oh, really? It's just like, you can't be saying that shit anymore. When Maurice Jones Drew was like an exciting guy on your team, it means things have been bad for a while. Yeah. Yeah. Oof. Man. MJD.

Yeah. What is it like living in Vegasgas are you hitting any of the shows is it what i imagine to be just you know rat pack shit every night you and yeah no so i'm a huge homebody yeah i don't like going out. So I'm at home most of the time. But when I do go out, I like to be very precise. I don't like to go out for an evening. I want to go out, have dinner, have drinks, come home. Vegas is so convenient. You can get pretty much anywhere here in 20 minutes. This is great if you're...

I guess I'm addicted to staying at home and drinking Diet Cokes, which is pretty easy to manage. But if you have another addiction, Vegas will find a way to bring it to you oh yeah or bring you to it yeah and so this place drives people insane but it has one of the best food cultures i've ever seen right it's really cool if you are in control of yourself it's amazing if you're not it will burn you to death yeah the economy is like based on you so like people who are in control of themselves get to like have better times than they would otherwise because yes the economy is fueled by all these people with very difficult problems but also it's become a lot more respectable like it's

a lot more like going out to nice restaurants and shows and music now than it used to be when it was going out and making a mistake or five yeah yeah yeah yeah now it's less that it's the strips much nicer fremont street's horrible though i people need to stop saying go to freeze horrible there it's also really expensive now it's a very strange place so it's everywhere it turns out yes but yeah last time i was in vegas i had the thought that this would be a good place to take my kids. Yeah. Which I would not have been the thought I had. At the Luxor, and you're like, oh, yeah, you can go see bodies.

He's a Blackjack typo. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I love this. Sharks. Like, there's a whole thing that's just, there's a whole, like, thread of culture and content that is, like like just all woven throughout the strip that is like aimed at five to 12 year old boys. There's like sharks and Michael Jackson, which they're really into. Well, I mean, yeah, I don't want to put him in the same sentence as five year old boys.

That's true. There is. Yeah, I remember a time when my mom would go with her friends just like they would go gamble. That's true. and just various... What that is. Yeah, various things that I've learned from reading you and listening to your podcast. But before we do that, we like to get to know you a little bit better by asking you either what is something from your search history that's revealing about who you are

or what is something that you've recently screencapped that is revealing about who you are. So my thing is, if you go to my google search history it's like queens of the stone age live 4k and then a series of boolean strings to see if any new bootleg has risen to the top because i'm a huge queens of the stone age fan seen 16 times i love this band i listen to them all the time and i just trolled youtube because it used to be back in the day back in the day and i used the day, I used to go on the internet, get people, email them, have an FTP thing.

You have all this crap. No, it's just all on YouTube now. Right. So like, that is a large part of my Googling and that, and that, and like someone slash earnings. Like I'm usually looking at like random tech earnings, just like reading dross and then sitting sitting there banging my head against the desk being like, how can this company exist? This is a bad company. Right. Just torturing myself every day.

How do you exist? A question from Ed, is it? How do you exist? You're like, Josh Holm. Josh Holm earnings. Hey, I just got a spam phone call, by the way. Nice. Cool. Just a little preview of what we're talking about. Hey, I just got a spam phone call, by the way. Nice. Cool.

Just a little preview of what we're talking about. Yeah, phones don't work anymore. What is something that you think is underrated? Underrated is Vegas's dining scene. I've lived in New York, lived in San Francisco, lived in London, obviously. And I'm used to, well, London I wouldn't say has great dining culture, but I've been around great food cities. And I think Vegas is one of the best in the world. It really is.

What do you chalk that up to in the sense of like go to any place there and it's going to be good or that there's a high concentration of good restaurants? The amount of B-plus restaurants here is much larger than anywhere else. It's generally pretty affordable as well. And there are some really, really, really nice high-end ones. Bazaar Me is one of the best restaurants in the world. And also, every Vegas restaurant has a bit of, like, the service is always a bit of extra fun. Right, right, right. You get a lot out of it.

Why? What do you mean? Bazaar Me. Like, there's usually a little bit of a show. Not, like, something stupid, but they're super charming. They remember everything. The service culture, it's actually a surprisingly working class city very strong unions here which is awesome right and the servers like love their jobs in most even in cheaper places like it seems like a pretty great city for food and yet people come here and they're like oh

it's just it's just all chains and yeah there are chains here there's every goddamn chain it feels like yeah right sure but like the actual food is great and you can find something pretty good and they're like, oh, it's just all chains. And yeah, there are chains here. There's every goddamn chain it feels like. Yeah, right, sure. But the actual food is great and you can find something pretty good even on really, really crowded days. So is this strictly to the strip or are we talking like- No, this is everywhere.

This is everywhere. So what's your favorite- That makes sense because if a theme restaurant got turned into a city, that's Las Vegas, right? Like Las Vegas is a city-sized theme restaurant. It's just cultural appropriation scaled. Yeah, right.

That's right. Wait, so what's your favorite off-strip restaurant? Just so, like, you know, we under, like, just to give me an idea, because I think we all, when people go, they are always looking like, well, what's on the strip? But there's all, like, I've had great Thai food. I think that's just on the, just off the strip. So this is a bar rather than a restaurant,

but the Wine Patio Library. It may just be called the Wine Patio now. It's in a strip mall. My mate, who used to be a sommelier in Bellagio, took me there. And it's always quiet. Even when there's lots of people in there, just the vibe is wonderful in there.

It's nice and chill. And technically, it's not quite off-strip, but Casa Playa in the Encore is pretty good for Mexican food. Okay. My mate used to do the mezcal stuff there, and the mezcal is fantastic. There are lots of fun places to go. Jira, was it? No, Jing in Summerlin is also pretty good sushi. Okay. There are lots of like right

fun places to go and find and summerlin is it's very much a master plan community it's beautiful it's more like santa monica than it is vegas what um as somebody from outside the u.s like what was your perspective on ve Vegas before you moved there? Because it feels, like I sometimes say, I think one of the things that will be in museums about our specific time in history is the Cheesecake Factory menu because it's maximalist and appropriationation which is kind of the main thing

that america does and i feel like yeah like you said that that is what las vegas is but it's it does things well like yeah the the quality is pretty like yard bird inside the venetian is one of my favorite restaurants anywhere it's a a chain there in LA and Austin. I love that place. There's tons of, and there are cheaper places that are great too. The buffets are pretty good. And I'd been to Vegas a lot before I moved here. Like a lot.

Because I used to go with my mate Phil, who's a nuclear health and safety guy. Oh shit, you went with Phil? Yeah, Phil. The fun ranium. So he taught me to he taught me to play craps as well which is fun

but I used to go and his whole thing was discipline so we just walk around and find fun when I don't know just the tables are a bit rough

and we didn't want to go back to them for a bit and thus my whole thing with Vegas has always been exploration rather than burning my entire bankroll down

and so it's just I've always liked it and the residential places are great My whole thing with Vegas has always been exploration rather than burning my entire bankroll down. Yeah. And so it's just, I've always liked it. And the residential places are great. Like housing is still decently affordable. I'm sure that's going to change eventually like it is everywhere else. But it's a damn side better than California was. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. It's changing rapidly, very quickly all the time here. Yeah. Nothing's affordable in California. That's the difference between us and everywhere else not a single thing what is something you think is overrated in and out in and out the one affordable thing and in california you're saying it's over it sucks i'm sorry that burger doesn't taste good that That's my tummy. Okay. I'm British. We're used to crap.

It's just like the milkshakes are good, but the burgers are just crap. The fries are awful. Right. What are you talking about? I agree with that. California people always tell me, acting like this happens a lot. It's like, hey, how are you doing? I love it.

I know. Okay. Look, you said this yesterday. Yeah. Why did you call me to tell me that? But people will say it's like, Look, you said this yesterday. Yeah. Right. Why did you call me to tell me that? But people will say, it's like,

Oh, it's so good. You got, and I've had it in the original place. We've had the various franchises or franchises, various different satellite ones. And it's just got in there. It's just whatever.

It's not as good as Shake Shack. Yeah. It's not as good as five guys. Yeah. It's much cheaper than both of those. I know a burger van in Twickenham that's better than In-N-Out. You know what I mean? I severely doubt that any burger out in Twickenham is better than anything made in a restaurant or a kitchen versus scraped off the floor.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, too, because most people just say it's fine rather than you got the point of perspective. You're like, dude, this shit is gross. It's fucking me up. And that's the thing. It hurt my tummy twice now. Yeah, that was not good. I've been conned into eating In-N-Out twice. Oof. Yeah. And I was hungry and it was the only thing we could get.

Yeah, it happens. It happens. It's also one of our most popular In-N-Outs. Or one of our most popular in and outs or one of our most popular over-rateds i'd say yeah well especially to people no not in that sense i think it's like anybody who interacts with it is just like it's built up in this mythical way and then it's like the same thing with like chick-fil-a too it's like built up in a way if you're not around it all the time and then you're like all right like yeah fine but i'm not like gonna change my middle name to in and out like people would have right like yeah fine but i'm not like gonna change my

middle name to in and out like people would have me believe yeah the result would be no it's mainly the the thing that's good about it is the price point compared to the quality like i think the fresh produce on your burger is really the thing you're like that is unique about it and the low price point and i mean my main reason for liking it is because of the Bible verses on my cups, which brought me to Jesus. And that's, you know. I thought they were like weird libertarians or I'm thinking someone else. Probably. I mean, it's true.

They just have a little Bible verse. I mean, it's not very specific. They don't have the quote on there. They're just directing you. If you want to take his hand. Hey, while you're eating these fries, have you tried Jesus? Have you?

Have you tried this? Have you considered the fact that this Jesus thing? Yeah. God loved the world. He loved you so much. He gave his only begotten son. He gets us. Yeah.

Yeah. I loved getting that commercial during the superbowl though i love that there was a commercial because it's like who is the person who's like what the fuck is that jesus yeah not familiar and don't care to learn more we'll look him up all right ed let's take a quick break when we come back we're going to talk about what you describe as the rot economy what we've talked about on our show before as like the sense that things that were served by companies are getting like worse just every everything's kind of getting worse so we'll be right back i'm jess casaveto executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult.

And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high-control groups and interview dancers, church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine. Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new, chilling firsthand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives.

Forgive Me For I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these types of abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. MTV's official challenge podcast is back for another season. That's right. The Challenge is about to embark on its monumental 40th season, y'all, and we are coming along for the ride.

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then look no further than to show straight from the source at NFL Media. Do it before it's too late. And we're back. We're back. And we're back. We're back. And the things that we've talked about getting worse on here, there are endless examples, but it feels like capitalism is past 10 years, it has been absolutely palpable that we've broken away from like company creates a good product. You want good products because it's good. Therefore, company profits and continues making good product like has that system has broken. And I don't know, you've talked about it with regards to Google search. I've read about it with dating apps. But where do you usually start when somebody asks you, what is the rot economy?

Where do you usually start? I think Google is a great place to start, but Instagram is as well. So you go on Instagram these days and you think, I want to see pictures and videos from people I follow. What Instagram wants to show you is something else. They want to show you, it else yeah they want to show you it's much worse on facebook i'd say they want to show you a video ad or like a piece of sponsored content facebook does this thing where they only show you like an animated gif of the first two seconds so that you will engage with it right and this is all because facebook has a meta i guess

you call them now no it's it's never going to do it. It's been like three. I'm not going to do it. In this house, we will call Twitter. In this house, we call it Facebook. In this house, we call it Twitter and Facebook. Yeah. And the reason they're doing that

is because these companies have effectively turned against their users. Now their whole thing is that they must show growth every quarter. Growth, growth, growth. And the result is Google search does not show you results that you'd like. They show you results that Google

has regurgitated and messed around so that you'll maybe click a sponsored link or because a company that has done something called search engine optimization has found a link that they can trick Google into showing you. As a result, Google is worse, but Google does not care.

Google doesn't give a rat fuck. They still make money off the ads by showing you. As a result, Google is worse, but Google does not care. Google doesn't give a rat fuck. They still make money off the ads by showing you them. If you accidentally click one, they'll make money off that too. And it's why things are getting worse in so many ways. It's why you find companies that keep doing things, another great example from Google, pushing AI into their Google Assistant, despite the AI not being as good as the already existing Google Assistant platform. Now, they're doing this because they want to show the street that they are in AI. So the street will go,

wow, I want to buy and hold Alphabet stock. Now, you may think, now, but wouldn't this piss off the customers? Yes, but that's why Google has something called a monopoly. They pay over $10 billion a year to Apple so that Google is the default search engine on iPhones. I wasn't aware of that. It's so good.

It's all so good. And what are you going to do? Use Bing? Right. Why don't we use Bing? Is it just because... Because it's just as bad. Yeah.

Because it's just Microsoft's way of screwing us. Oh, right. It's owned by Microsoft. It's the same deal. And they also use AI with that too, yeah. It is a result of the markets disconnecting from good business. They don't look at companies and say, is this a company that can survive without hiring or firing a bunch of people at once? Is this a company that is in a sustainable form of business,

one that will grow steadily rather than pop and then potentially drop no they're just like growth growth growth growth growth right and then eventually it's like make the product worse and then well the product gets worse and the street doesn't care it's not like they have to put yeah we completely ruined google search in their earnings and they don't care these people don't care the people who are actually investing at the scale that google gives a shit about don't really care they care about they don't care. These people don't care. The people who are actually investing at the scale that Google gives a shit about don't really care. They care about profit. They don't even care about profit.

I don't know why you even said profit there. They just care about revenue growth, market growth, growth at all costs. And it's why things are worse. And it's why Apple shoved out the Vision Pro half-completed because they just needed to show the street that Apple is still making new things. Gives you a goddamn headache. That's like an unfinished product. Yeah, we should talk about that. So, Ed, you know,

reviews tech products and reviewed the Apple Vision Pro and you called it the single most interesting and annoying piece of technology ever made. Yes, pretty much. You much you just like can't type with it yeah so it has an on-screen well in air i guess keyboard where you have to like poke it you have to poke the bits and it just doesn't work very well you can't really touch it you can't use your little fingers on it like you would type a knob keyboard you have to poke at it like

a gorilla right it's very weird and yeah also I tried to use it several times on an airplane recently, and it just gave me a headache. Right. And it's insane, by the way, that this is not a bigger story, that Apple's new thing just gives people headaches. But you know, what the hell? Who cares? The street loves it. Yeah. And the street not being Crenshaw Boulevard, but Wall Street.

Yes, correct. Yes, yes. And the wider markets. Yeah, in the street, not being Crenshaw Boulevard, but Wall Street. Yes, correct. And the wider markets. And it sucks because the result of this, the result of markets rewarding companies that show revenue growth rather than make good things that people like and building companies sustainably is companies are no longer incentivized to innovate.

They're not incentivized to make cool new things. They're incentivized to find ways to grow their pocketbooks. And sometimes it's profit. Sometimes it's just revenue. When did this like inversion happen where we sort of left, we completely jettisoned ourselves from like, yeah, you got to make something novel to earn the money that people are going to give you. I mean, because it felt like there was a time where it's like, like every iPhone doesn't feel revolutionary anymore. It's just, yeah, just something they, they change one thing that people hated about the last one, like, dude, get ready for the revolution or whatever. But when, when did that actually become like, really sort of maybe not articulated, but really, I guess, in a way really measurable or noticeable. noticeable so i think it starts since 2011 with a guy called mark andreessen one of the principles are andreessen horowitz a large venture capitalist firm that is very influential in the valley and

also one of the early investors in facebook a bunch of other companies he wrote a thing called software is eating the world now the people that glanced at it once and said well that sounds good didn't really read it deeply what he was saying in there was that tech companies should not be valued based on their actual financials and what they do and build but based on a vague sense of like innovation and what tech can do for society it was a very strange the promise of tech and the theoretical thing and then around that time as well, one of the other guys, Ben Horowitz, put a thing out saying, basically put out a blog that said, yeah, maybe we don't need to just have companies

that build sustainably. What if we just had them grow as fast as humanely possible? Imagine what we could sell them for. Very out with what they thought. This inspired the venture capital community to start investing in companies, not just based on whether they thought they'd grow sustainably or otherwise, whether they'd fulfill a market thing, like a market need, but only make them fulfill a market need.

Only make them grow to get as many people and live basically on a form of venture-backed welfare. Uber being a great example of a company that has turned a profit maybe two quarters in its existence. And they were propped up by venture dollars. They used their unfair market share because they could just wade in with low prices, cut cab companies out. Not that cab companies were great, but that's what they used. And then Uber just grew and grew and grew unsustainably. And now they're just cutting fares for drivers now. They're screwing the drivers over.

The experience is worse. It's harder to get an Uber, and it's more expensive when you do. And they're still deeply unprofitable. Companies like Uber were extremely prevalent in the middle of the 2010s. There was the Uber for everything thing. But every startup felt like they weren't real companies. They were just stuffed full of venture capital dollars to eat as much market share as they could before they got sold to a public company or merged with another one very rarely. Sorry, real quick.

I need to take a break. My Washio driver is here to pick up my laundry. Oh, your Washio driver. Yeah. Washio was one of them around that time. Yeah, Washio. The laundry for laundry. Oh, your Washio truck. Yeah. Washio was one of them around that time. Yeah, Washio. The laundry for Uber. Oh, yeah.

Laundry for pet goldfish. Yeah. But something happened around the mid-2010s when I think they realized, oh, we don't really need to try quite as hard. And tech just started making promises without delivering them. And the streets still loved them.

These companies still kept getting acquired yeah these ridiculous and a bunch of consolidation happened as well qualcomm kind of hoovered up a lot of the bluetooth technology meta bought whatsapp they bought oculus these these things happened that didn't seem bad at the time but slowly tech was consolidating everything. And then just tech stopped delivering innovation at the pace it did, which isn't really its fault. Sometimes innovation slows, but the valuations kept going up. They kept going up and up and up and up and up.

Yeah. And then it just became obvious that the things that people were valuing these companies on were not really based on reality. They weren't based on them being good. But then the moment they went public, something weird happened.

They suddenly started falling apart. They weren't doing too well. And you'd think at this point, you'd be like, okay, so maybe this would make the tech companies change their businesses to be some kind of profit-generating entity. Oh, no, absolutely not. They just learned how to show growth metrics. Why do you think Snap, a company

that has very rarely made any money at all but now makes i forget exactly i think that are they a billion of revenue but nevertheless but they don't make any profit at all but because they can always grow grow grow and the teens use them oh that's a good company despite the fact that snapchat is one of the more insane apps you opened it recently it's like a minefield of different buttons and noises it's like yeah going to the fucking circus it's insane every uber there's like 11 different buttons that you can hit now trying what version of uber do you want to use yeah right snap like that's part of it right is to like make it unusable so that old people don't figure out

how to use no no it's to it's to try and sell you as much as possible, get as much growth-adjacent matrices, bullshit as possible, and then flog it to the markets. And it works. And it works so well, even though the product is worse, even though customers are less happy.

Yeah. Because that doesn't matter as long as number go up. Yeah. Yeah, right. And they stop paying attention. So to get the growth, usually they have to build something that pays attention to the user, like actually fulf completely decoupled. And it becomes a thing where they're only paying attention to the people who are speaking for investors

or writing things for investors to pay attention to. But I have one other thing that's very sad. The real decoupling was toward the end of the 2010s, which was when venture-backed startups realized, why don't we just do this growth shit early? Why don't we just start growing at all costs

as early as possible? Right. And that's where we are right now. That's why startup investment is around AI. It's like search engine optimization, but for venture capital. People are no longer building companies to serve a market need. They're building companies that they can sell to venture capital. People are no longer building companies to serve a market need.

They're building companies that they can sell to venture capital, who can pump them full of money so they can sell to a bigger company. And I realize this is all quite complex, but it really comes down to this. People are no longer building companies, or at least a large amount of them aren't building companies to sell something to a consumer they are thinking how can i appear to have the growth metrics that will get me enough money so i can grow this company into something i can sell right yeah and it sounds very cynical but it's what it's been happening for a while but it's now got to a point where the shark the shark has been jumped far too many times and people are noticing they're very upset but it's being

sold not to people not to the people who it's supposed to be serving right it's being sold to this third-party investor there's enough of a product yeah to so

that a user isn't just literally using nothing though they did try with crypto by the way to do it without that right there was so many companies that had no product at all.

Look at the AI companies, these generative AI companies, ChatGPT. ChatGPT allegedly makes over a billion dollars of revenue. Don't know what profit, though. They're not making any. What does ChatGPT do? No one could really answer. It does a bunch of things, kind of, but why do you need it?

Right. What general purposes? It's What general purposes? It's a general purpose technology. Right. I need it to. 80 billion dollars. And this thing, it generates stuff that can be kind of useful, but also sometimes just lies. Yeah.

Just making things up. Because it doesn't know it's working. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. No, it hallucinates. Okay. Yes. Which means that it's actually like tripping and that gives it kind of a cool, fun, druggy vibe. Well, I know why they use that term because it's not technically lying because chat GPT doesn't know anything. Right.

It has been trained on data, but each time it is generating an answer based on a data set. So it can't lie because it doesn't have a concept of truth or information. Yeah. Right. It's just, yeah, it's figuring it out as it goes along don't we all yeah so this whole process like i have not been on the dating apps but like reading that that's something that's been coming up more lately is that like match group i think is like Match.com bought all the dating apps. And they are ultimately, you know, people who have been on them for years are like, they are as bad as they've ever been right now. And the companies are incentivized to, you know, basically get you to pay for a version of their product

that costs money, that is a subscription service. So they give you a free version that sucks, get you to pay for a more expensive version. I guess that's as old as capitalism. But then they're also incentivized to keep you single. If you get married, they lose two consumers. I'm actually really glad you brought up dating apps because they are the perfect rock economy company.

Yeah. Ostensibly, it makes sense they'd want to keep you on the app as much as possible. Using those apps, their goal is to keep you on them as long as possible, as with any app. So really their goal is to fulfill the need of making personal connections. Right. So I haven't been on them over a year like i'm thankfully engaged thank christ it's horrifying out there so glad but these apps used to be like okcupid used to be one where you'd send longer

messages hinge used to be we'd meet kind of normal weird people coffee meets bagel was just strange but it was better than plenty of fish which was a place where you got scammed but nevertheless these places where you they made that is my kink actually is getting scammed so that was cute for me yeah oh my god she took so much of my fucking money but by and large these apps made their money off of the premium subscription which allowed you to do things like send multiple messages, which made sense. And that makes sense because you get a freemium product

and then you'd upgrade. However, because these are all owned by a public company, at least to show growth, growth, growth of revenue, of users, what have you. Well, they realized, what if we had a bunch of microtransactions? So each of these apps has some sort of paid for super like, which means you can really

show someone you like them and then you can pay a subscription so that you can send more messages, do more likes. But all of them have basically copied the Tinder model of the swipe right, swipe left. So you're right. They do want to keep you single because the only way out of them is to pay them a shit ton of money. They hinge at the very least i know that they reserve your best matches unless you pay for them and they're extortionately expensive like two or three dollars per rose or something and that was for the like all the like normal people who didn't have ai generated captions were on there yeah and it was just so straight what i guess it wasn't ai back in 2022 but nevertheless these companies now dating apps are no longer for dating.

Therefore, finding ways to convince people to spend as much money on them or trap them in an endless thing where if you're anything less than Instagram level beautiful, you'll have trouble meeting people. And it's so fucked up because you'd think that they would, you'd think that this would affect them, but no, they're making more money than ever because people have no other way of meeting other people. Our society is not great at introducing you to new friends. It's harder than ever. An adult friend finder was not the website I thought it would be, but it's horrifying because this is every app now. It's the same with Bumble. It's the same with Hinge. It's the same with Tinder.

Tinder has some like $500 500 version i don't know they just i feel like they make these things up just to get headlines but i think it's all owned by match right yes and it's all owned by like one company right it's so they have a monopoly so you can't get out of there there's there's just like this really interesting there's this disconnect right where it's like as consumers are like yo this shit sucks like what the fuck happened right but what else are they gonna do right but then there's like this level of insulation right for the the people that are making the apps and then the venture capital people who are like yo i can make a ton of money on this and there's like this insulation like really from i guess you know there's like the market which is what they're

they're like they have eyes towards that then there's the people that are using the product they could give a fuck about tinder was one of the last quote-unquote good startups i don't think it was a good sean rad is peculiar fella but that was one made before the shift happened that's right tinder in its original form was swiping right and left but i don't even think it monetized at first. Right. But I mean, like, you know, like, and I've heard you talk about this too, is that they're only going by what's being encouraged. And obviously the investor class is saying like, if you make the line go up, we don't give a shit what you're doing. Just make the fucking line go up. User go up, money go up. Yes. So how is it that, you know, like, and I think you've pointed, you know, it's sort of like

partially it's because obviously investors, they're going to encourage it. And also the media is not really, really critical of what's going on. What's like the consumer piece. Is it just to merely say like, well, we're going to boycott this thing or what?

Like, is, or is this completely this sort of all of this activity is happening on another plane of existence where the everyday consumer is like, dude, I'm, I'm completely at the fucking will of these greedy monsters. Well, what it is is monopolies.

Right. It's monopolies and the people in charge don't care. Why do you think flying sucks so much? Because all of the airplane companies are like, we can fuck them on a certain level. We can all agree that these people are little pigs. We're going to make these little pigs pay. What are you going to do? How are you going these little pigs pay. What are you going to do?

How are you going to date? How are you going to date? If you want to use Hinge, same deal. Coffee Meets Bagels, same deal. Tinder, same deal. All these apps copy each other. And all of these apps move, they all normalize towards a whole

where they all kind of look the same but have a slight enough difference. And then people will get all of them because they have no other bloody choice. Google search you're gonna do you're gonna use duck duck go you can use bing right idiot no way yeah what you're gonna do that you're gonna use uber you can use lyft because that's your real only choice that's so grim and it gets grimmer it gets grimmer think about your restaurants you know that those doordash and Uber Eats orders, most of these people, they have to give up 20%, 30%. The restaurants have to give up to the delivery apps.

What are they going to do? Not have delivery. Right. And there are companies fighting that, but consumers don't have choices. There is not strong antitrust in this country. No, no, no. They stopped Spirit and JetBlue merging. That was actually good.

But otherwise, what the hell else are you going to do? Are you going to use another one of the dating apps that don't exist? Are you going to use another delivery app? Are you going to use a delivery app which has less stuff on it? Oh, why don't you use Caviar? Oh, wait. Caviar was bought by DoorDash. Right.

What about Postmates? No, that's Uber Eats. Uber now. Fuck, yeah. The Postmates part is gone yeah it's and all of this is making everything worse amazon is full of nonsense now amazon is full of all of these terrible chinese knockoffs which have names like hugel spook and then you look and they all have five thousand five star reviews because they've broken the system because amazon doesn't really care amazon cares you buy stuff and it's cheap enough and they can do it returning my couch from google spook real quick from google give me all the one with the with the lead covering

but the deal holy that's the thing what you're gonna do where are you gonna find stuff online walmart except walmart is now using third-party sellers. Right. Like, it's... Yeah, it really feels like it's broken out beyond tech. Let's take a quick break because I just want to talk about how it feels like this is part of something bigger that's leaked out into basically everything.

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with like you'll read these articles about how economists are baffled and they're like the old rules of macroeconomics no longer apply. Like, just look at the pandemic and the, you know, there was supposed to be this massive recession because fucking everything shut down. And yet we kept these good economic metrics throughout or like the, you know, the stock market never fully crashed on us and we're baffled. And it just feels like the whole thing is part of this system where the people who are at the very top and who are like involved in the stock market are completely insulated from everything going on below. And yes, it's like it's that as much as it is like a problem with tech and tech has made it has been like the thing that has allowed the disease to spread more quickly. It feels like it's good old fashioned,

just like, yeah, like monopolies and like all the shit that was a problem in the early, like 20th century, late 19th century.'s just like you just have these people who are making all the important influential decisions who are 100 percent just decoupled from the people who their decisions affect yes and that is the overwhelming problem and a symptom of an economy ruled by weak labor standards and weak antitrust. Right.

And the market, you're right, it is a problem outside of tech. Boeing being a great example of a company that just wanted basic safety. Tesla, another great example. They are not a tech company. They are a car company. Elon Musk is trying to claim they're an AI company because he tech company they are a car company elon musk is trying to claim they're an ai company because he's just a crook and a liar and that's all he's capable of doing right tesla is a great example as well of just like a stock completely decoupled for it's

a meme stock at this point but it's such a successful me i mean it's a meme stock that has made him the richest person in the world right like that that was yeah now but can you just talk about no way can you talk about like what how people perceive elon musk like my dad will say to me like elon musk is like i mean that guy must be so smart right he like i've even heard this from like people who pay attention who like work in finance and are like i mean a guy disrupted like three major markets in the course of like a couple you know they're the i think the public image of him is this like tony stark you know once a generation genius and like that is how he like he invented tesla in his garage or some shit whereas like you know he how did he actually grow his fortune what is the thing that he's good at i think you've like

compared him to the ceo of google like they're good at the same thing which is creating the illusion of growth that elon is a marketer and his heart he is an operator and a marketer at his heart. He is an operator and a marketer. He is good at mobilizing capital and good at convincing people to put money into other things, unless it's a consumer product. Right. He has never done well with any kind of consumer product. Car, he has done, like, largely because he knows how to hire people, or at least he did before he went crazy. He has always been kind of a shithead. That's also an important thing to know he has never been a a great guy the myth of elon musk being this super genius that invented tesla is also wrong he did not someone i forget who but there's a there's a

couple of people who actually designed tesla's and founded the company elon came in with money he was just he invested you know he invested, and he's been a champion for this. But he's also got lax labor standards, horrible racism problem over at Tesla. This has been what he dogpiled a reporter called Aaron Bieber in 2017, I believe. He has been this guy forever. But what Elon is good at is hype. And he realized in 2013 that the press would pretty much print anything he guy forever. But what Elon is good at is hype. And he realized in like 2013 that the press would pretty much

print anything he said forever. And he used that again and again and again in a way that should not be legal. Like I'm actually really like if we had a strong enough SEC to actually like, surely there is a side

where it's just a guy being like, yes, so we put the first neural link chip inside a person right they they can now see the future and everyone's like yeah let me just put that on cnbc.com that sounds true to me right this guy is a liar but people have printed his shit forever he promised autopilot like three years before it even got close to existing he has made up stuff about about Tesla for over a decade. He is just a liar. But he's realized that this is how shit works.

That people are just, like, people will just fall for this shit. And people will buy his lies. He hasn't really corrected the record that he isn't the inventor of Tesla, despite the fact that he didn't invent Tesla. He didn't invent any of the SpaceX stuff. Right. He didn't invent the Starlink thing. He didn't invent any of this stuff. He's just the hype man. And that was better before he was like,

what if I just posted something Hitler adjacent on Twitter? That'd be great. I actually genuinely think as well, people turning against the tech industry, people being angry at tech, have done so because they've kind of seen what he is, what Elon is, the kind of person he really

really is and how little value he actually has and also they've seen how poorly he's run twitter right right yeah is there like you know like with all this like we all know basically there's just it's all this illusory shit it's just to give the like the the feeling that there's growth but not offering a product that actually drives it and people are investing more and more, but into something that doesn't exist. What does it look like when the market corrects or the bubble pops or will it, or they're so deep in it?

Because I'm trying to, what does that reckoning look like for people like Elon Musk and things like that? Musk, less so, though I think Twitter at some point will have a reckoning i think it is inevitable that this company burns more money than it makes and also with the fact that elon now has to replace multiple members of the board of tesla right but the thing that i think is going to be the reckoning is artificial intelligence because right now they're

trying to put generative ai into everything. A product that no one really knows the reason why it exists. But they're putting it into everything. And the way that this is growing revenue is Microsoft invested in OpenAI and Google invested in Anthropic, the two largest model companies. So that's guaranteed revenue. Those companies have to use

them now. Bookable cloud revenue. As the AI industry grows, so does their revenue. Guaranteed. No antitrust law to stop them from literally just investing in a company that would then invest the money that they just invested back in the company. It's a horrible circle. The reason that I think this might fall apart is because they're also scaling up their data centers to match this demand because AI is extremely compute demanding. It's extremely demanding.

You cannot just run it on your computer at home. You need specialized chips and you need a lot of them. And so as they massively scale this system that's deeply unprofitable, eventually people are just going to not use it if it's not useful. If it really isn't actually useful. So suddenly you're going to have companies like Microsoft and Google that invested billions and billions of dollars and hectares of

real estate for data centers and they're going to find themselves with their dicks out. They're going to be like, oh

shit, we put all this money into something that no one wants. I think that will have a severe enough correction that things will

get slightly back on track or it destroys the entire tech ecosystem for a few years and everything's kind of screwed there's a big chance of that because this stuff doesn't make any money none of these things are profitable none of them not one of them and if users if users stop using it even if they're

forced to what's left All of this real estate, all of these data centers, NVIDIA's market cap, where the hell does all this money go? It doesn't go anywhere. It will affect the tech industry and it will be bad. And I think people are laughing. People are kind of done

with generative AI already. Like a regular person does not know why they need chat GBT. The $7 million Super Bowl commercial for Microsoft's Copilot AI, they had a thing in there where it was like, do me a logo of a not know why they need chat gbt the seven million dollar super bowl commercial for microsoft's copilot ai they had a thing in there where it's like do me a logo of a classic truck mike's truck if you actually type that into chat into microsoft copilot and chat gpt generative ai can't do letters right it can't do letters so it's like it looks like cthulhu yeah yeah and there's another

thing and there's another thing in there where they're like oh do the code for my open world game these aren't ideas no one's doing this these aren't normal people things that people no one saw that and was like wow i can now make an open world game no one's that fucking stupid or at least if they are they'll do it and then nothing will happen right so i remember this one story where i was like like i talked to somebody who's familiar with markets and was like so much of like the market growth i forget what year it was but was like propped up by ai stuff and so i was like looking i was like so what does that mean because i nobody really knows what ai is how is it being propped up like how is that translating to value and like one of the metrics that they were using was like all about user adoption of chat gpt and how it was like the fastest adoption like faster than tiktok

faster than any social media up to this point and it turned out to be bullshit like it was internal numbers that were bullshit that they were lying about but the thing that was exciting and that got people excited enough to like invest money was the lie and so that's still the thing that just lasts like it really feels like in addition to you know the them being the input of information coming from the investors like they're also controlling it so that no bad news gets circled into that system and it's just this like bullshit economy that just like cycles back and forth in the top and like won't it won't allow that input of information that all of this is bullshit and people people aren't using it, really. Except what's going to happen is this push, this big lie that you're correct about, by the way, is going to have something bad happen as a result of it.

Right. I don't know if you remember back in 2012, Knight Capital. Knight Capital was a hedge fund that, due to an incorrectly installed installed algorithm invested billions of dollars in stocks it could not afford it lost them about 410 million dollars they ended up having to sell for parts yeah something like that is people all the time yeah well it wasn't even fooling the people it was just it never stopped buying that was it's a quite complex thing but the algorithm was off so it didn't have a point when it stopped buying stocks. It just bought way too much. Haven't we all been there? I bought too many

stocks yesterday. I feel sick. Something like that is going to happen though. Gemini, which is Google's generative AI, they had a big problem where you typed in what do the founding fathers look like and it generated a black guy. The concept

of a Chinese George Washington is terrifying woke like anti-woke guys no but that was actually significant enough that sundar peshai the ceo of google had to say something about it right i think something bigger and worse happens with someone who adopts generative ai that destroys a company i think it it does something so significant that that scares the market right because there was a wall street journal story a few weeks ago where they were saying anthropic and open ai were having trouble selling their stuff because of the hallucinations because these mistakes it was making and in the article it's great you can see the journalist trying to be like so how are they going to fix this and the quotes were like well at one point we'll tell the model to not say anything if it

doesn't know for sure and then the next thing was someone saying yeah but the problem is if you tell an ai that sometimes it will just stop answering at all go nah mate i don't trust myself right it's like taking someone's keys away when they've been drinking but that's the thing at some point people are going to notice this doesn't do anything this is not they want this to be the next there's a phrase that no one ever gets fired for buying ibm right they want this to be that but it isn't useful and every person who's a big fan of it it's like well it will be and then you ask how and they're like i am really sorry i got to take a phone call.

I'll be back in three hours. Please don't wait here. I do not have an answer. And it's just, I also think that this is overwhelmingly, this kind of stuff is becoming more and more obvious for the regular people

and they're going to get angry. I'm angry about it. Yeah. No, I think everybody should be angry about it. I just don't know. Like, it feels like they have built this system to insulate them from our anger at this point. Yes.

because yeah I'm definitely a product of having grown up in this system and you know my first memories being like Clintonian you know bullshit and just like not being able to imagine something different but something different is definitely coming I think that it's just you're going to start seeing the Facebook advertising model break down. Online advertising is becoming less profitable and less useful. As that starts dying, the tech industry is going to realize that they've got a big problem. When Meta's market cap goes down and when AI stops generating revenue, when it stops being the buzzy thing that you have to install, that you have to integrate, even if you don't know what it does what happens then what's up mark benioff every time like i think at least once a year we'll say that ai is now

in salesforce and he has done so since like 2016 every year right salesforce claims that has ai in it it is just a giant con at times it feels like that and it feels like i know it sounds a bit conspiratorial but it feels like they're laughing at us on some level yeah well yeah i feel like they're also scared right like they they should be need to so they need to allow google to become a monopoly and like you know just abuse the smaller companies to remain profitable because google is too big to fail because all of these companies are already like that lie that you're talking about that like that crashes the economy like and that is the thing that everybody from the fucking president down to you know the top point two percent of the economy like can't allow to happen. allow to happen. But even then, Google doesn't need to operate like this. They make like $10 billion of profit a quarter. They don't need to run like this. The economy doesn't have to run

like this. Tech companies were plenty profitable before. And there are ways to do the Uber. The thing that really frustrates me about Uber is had Uber been done slightly differently and much slower, it could have been the single most disruptive and important tech company of all time had they done everything they did but made it so that this is the crazy thing had they done like labor rights baked into it yeah would have made them less money would have made them slower short run yeah but just charge them charge people more people would have paid more you would have created a new class of employee yeah one covered one protected a massive change in labor that company would have been worth several trillion dollars just to be clear yeah would have taken them 20 years to get there but they would

have been instead we have this massively unprofitable labor screwing piece of shit company that has the monopoly on cabs because cabs were built on another kind of exploitative system the medallion system right right and it's just things can change and indeed i think they will through awareness alone because when i did the first rock economy episode i've got so many emails people being like oh shit i didn't know. I feel that more people knowing will put that pressure on there. People will stop using these products. And as users stop being interested in like these dog shit products,

things will change. Yeah. Yeah, it's just more about creating enough of the awareness around it because I think most people get caught up in the razzle dazzle of it all. And you see like even the people who, you know, like it's like we're a country that's ran by older people who don't understand technology. So they're not with,

they're not understanding what the borders should be or the guardrails should be. So that creates this environment for people to just completely shift the thinking to be like, rather than, you know, like making a product, what we need to do is like sell one of those companies. Cause that's how people talk. And it's not about making the thing. It's like, yo, man, we got to create a company we can sell. And that's just it. And because of that, there's no value in it. And it merely just becomes about the act of making said company and then flogging it to somebody for a ton of money. I will wrap it up because I know I've gone on and on about this.

But the actual thing that I think this comes back to is a societal problem with the concept of business itself. I think that they, we have lionized big companies over good companies. Yeah. Yeah. I go, I run a small PR firm and I have, and people for years were like, you need to scale. And I'm always like, why? And they're like, cause that's what big, good company's big. Yeah. It isn't. And I think we, we lionize managers and management,

but I think, especially the pandemic proved this, it's very obvious that the managers and the CEOs don't do the work. Right.

And I think there is a labor awakening. It's slow, but it's happening that will change almost every step of everything we're talking about.

Now, this whole conversation has been, you know, having worked at and run Cracked back this whole conversation has been, you know, having worked at and run Cracked back in the day and just, you know, it started out as this website that had these really good articles because we had like a handful of really talented people and we kept like bringing these talented people in to focus on making the good product. But there was also

these people who were like focused on doing the ads in the sidebar and like making those ads trick you into thinking you were clicking on content and that is what the entire internet became like the people who made the content got choked out and the people who do the sidebar fake ads that trick you into thinking you are clicking on content where you're actually clicking on something that is going to fuck your computer. And yeah, you know who got rich off of Reddit,

a community entirely made up of free contributions, Sam Altman. Right. He made $400 million. Yeah. Like that is the guy, not the moderators, not the Redditors

who made the internet better for their Redditing, I guess you'd call it. No, Sam Altman, a guy whose only role at that company was to put money in at one point.

Right. This is something that I feel like if more people are aware of, they will turn on the tech industry and they bloody well should. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And saving us. Yeah. Such, absolutely. Well, Ed. And saving us. Such a pleasure having you, man. Where can people find you, follow you, read more from you? So you can find me on X the Everything app at Ed Zitron, E-D-Z-I-T-R-O-N. X the Everything app.

You can find me on Blue Sky, Zitron.bsky.social or.app, I forget. Just type in Zitron. I should come up. Yeah. And you can find the podcast blue sky, zitron.bsky.social or.app, I forget. Just type in zitron. I should come up. Yeah. And you can find the podcast betteroffline.com. Click podcast, and it's got all your links that you could need. And the newsletter is whereisyourair.app. Is there a work of media that you've been enjoying?

I've been listening a lot to Queens of the Stone Ages and Times New Roman, which I realize is a band I've now mentioned too much on this podcast, came out late last year. It's an amazing album. Not mid last year. It's an amazing album, but I stopped listening to it for a few months because I'd massively overplayed it and then just got right back into it. I love that band. It's like their second best album. It's really something.

What number album was that? Was that the fourth? Seven? Oh, wow. Man. Okay. I think after the one that Dave Grohl drummed, was that the four, seven, seven. Oh, wow, man. Okay. I think after the one that Dave Grohl drummed on, that was sort of the one I stopped.

Yeah. That was the second one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Miles, where can people find you?

What's work media. You've been enjoying it. Find me on the at based life forms at miles of gray. Yeah. And then you can just find me, you know, doing that stuff there. Also, if you like basketball, check out Jack and I's basketball podcast. Miles and Jack got mad boosties.

If you like 90 Day Fiance, catch me on my 90 Day Fiance podcast for 20 Day Fiance. I just watched the one with MFISA. It was horrible. Oh, man. The way George, man, he's he gets a criminal. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

He's a scammer, too. Now she's a bodybuilder. So, you know, shout out MFISA or at least was it constantly. He's a criminal. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. He's a scammer, too. Now she's a bodybuilder. So, you know, shout out MFISA. Or at least was doing that. Let's see. A tweet that I like. Natalie at JBfan911 tweeted, I don't care if I have microplastics in my body. You know what else is in there?

Love, joy, kindness. They will take care of the microplastics. Just a grim tweet because there was that uh recent study that was like there's not a placenta on earth that doesn't have microplastics we're mostly microplastics yeah yeah we're all plastic we're all plastic yum yum yum yep all right you can find me on twitter at jack underscore o'brien uh i enjoyed this tweet uh john frankensteiner on march 2nd tweeted happy lou reed day and it's a interview with vulture where vulture said sirius's impending merger with xm is anticipated to boost earnings do you own any stock in the company and lou reed responded

what are you a fucking asshole i'm here telling you the truth about music and you want to know if I have stock in the fucking radio? You fucking piece of shit. What did I do to deserve that? Can I read one that's thematically relevant as well? Yeah. This is from AtDrill, of course. Yeah.

AI. Sorry, I'm not allowed to speculate upon the sexuality of 1970s game show hosts me this is like talking to the smartest man in the world holy shit you're so smart oh my god how do you do that how'd you do that uh you can find me on twitter at jack underscore o'brien you can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien. You can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist. We're at The Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook fan page and a website, DailyZeitgeist.com,

where we post our episodes and our footnotes. Footnotes. Where we link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode, as well as a song that we think you might enjoy. Miles. Oh, well, look. What song do you think you might enjoy. Miles, what song do you think you might enjoy? I mistakenly thought that, you know,

the Schoolboy Q's album Blue Lips came out on Wear Blue Awareness Day, which was about raising colon cancer awareness, erroneously. That's why. But either way, the album did come out, and I think it's a fantastic album. It's different than his other albums. I would say it's his to pimp a butterfly,

because it's not just full of trunk exploding like you know just you know bangers uh but this track uh the whole album is great but i'm just gonna point this one out it's called pig feet check it out it's featuring childish major this is from the school by q album blue lips so yeah get into the whole album get into the whole okay we will link off to that in the footnotes. The Daily Zeitgeist is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That is going to do it for us this morning. Back this afternoon to tell you what's trending.

And we'll talk to you all then. Bye. Up the Raider Nation. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me for I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church.

Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry.

Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast presented by elf beauty founding partner of I heart women's sports.