There Are No Girls on the Internet - Elon’s Extortion Play; All-In Goes MIA; LA Protests Flooded With Disinfo; ChatGPT Plays Therapist — NEWS ROUNDUP w/ Ed Zitron of Better Offline

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

This week, Bridget is joined by very special guest Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, to break down the tech stories you might have missed — from disappearing tech bros to billion-dollar AI fails. What Side Are the ‘All-In Pod’ Bros On? https://gizmodo.com/what-side-are-the-all-in-pod-bros-on-2000613146 Senators Demand Meta Answer For AI Chatbots Posing as Licensed Therapists: https://www.404media.co/senators-letter-demand-meta-answer-for-ai-chatbots-posing-as-licensed-therapists/ When billion-dollar AIs break down over puzzles a child can do, it’s time to rethink the hype: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/10/billion-dollar-ai-puzzle-break-down X’s Sales Pitch: Give Us Your Ad Business or We’ll Sue: https://www.wsj.com/business/media/x-twitter-ad-revenue-campaign-lawsuit-a882b5c6?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=ASWzDAimcjU5eU89AMytxSvmFp6PmZhcNpON86osFJupKMQnziyRXOKarL8dMFshDFo%3D&gaa_ts=684c8c2f&gaa_sig=E3KGTOGP-dVC0729K2mM6iwMRj0nLkS5829g4j-aRhDBSGRZxOZmd9Q5yCDlJgb05XH2MlQQUGjrWvXsAf2Y3Q%3D%3D FanDuel bans bettor over heckling incident with Olympic champion sprinter Gabby Thomas: https://www.mankatofreepress.com/ap/sports/fanduel-bans-bettor-over-heckling-incident-with-olympic-champion-sprinter-gabby-thomas/article_b258ffa7-34e0-5f2c-966f-eceb36d2ef1a.html 🎧 Listen to Better Offline: betteroffline.com 📰 Subscribe to Ed's newsletter "Where’s Your Ed At?": wheresyoured.at 📱 Follow Bridget + TANGOTI: IG: @BridgetMarieInDC TikTok: @BridgetMarieInDCYouTube: There Are No Girls on the InternetSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You just understood. That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Marquis come in to you, he's like, you know I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, everyone. I'm Cheryl Stray, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. I'm excited to share that I have a new podcast called Mind Over Mountain. In each episode, I interview athletes, adventures, and adrenaline seekers to discuss the inner landscapes that informed and inspired their extraordinary feats. So we, too, can better understand how to face our own seemingly insurmountable challenges. Listen to Mind Over Mountain every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

Welcome to another edition of our weekly news roundup where we get into all the stories from the internet that y'all might have missed so you don't have to. And I am so thrilled to be joined by honestly one of my favorite podcasters out there, Ed Zichron of the Better Offline podcast, where you've just started a three-part series on business idiots. Tell me about this series. Well, I've noticed throughout my whole life that there have been these people throughout the rungs of power who don't seem to do jobs. And on top of that, don't seem to understand jobs. And it's all come to a head. It's taken a few years. It started with remote work.

It went to crypto, the metaverse, AI, all these people with all of this money who don't seem to know a single fucking thing about anything. And then I went and looked back and I kind of went, oh, it traces directly to neoliberal thinking, Milton Friedman, Thatcher, Reagan, all that good stuff. So it's a three-part saga. It's the longest series I've done in the show. People seem to really like it. I wasn't sure how they'd take it. I just built a studio out in my place in Vegas, and I recorded it there,

so it's a bit tonally different. People are used to, because before this point, I had this sound chamber thingy, where I just stood in it, and I just yelled for an hour. This is much more chilled out, me speaking,

almost like sitting by a camfire or a dumpster fire in this case. That's something that I've always liked about your podcast is that you can often hear the passion in your, in what you're saying. And so I'll be interested.

This will be an interesting change. I also record from a, I used to record from a soundproofed little box in my apartment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's exactly it. Can I really let loose in those little boxes. But I quite like the sit down because I'm just as pissy. It's not like I'm any, it's not like I'm any less angry, but I'm a lot more comfortable.

I think that's what it is. Like I don't have to stand up, which I actually like for addiction reasons. like for projection, but I can handle it sitting down. It's just it is more relaxed and more. I really like it and people seem really happy with it, which is good because usually they just send me pictures of knives. Okay, I have to ask you about this piece in your newsletter, which is terrific. Where's your ed at?

You write so beautifully about what the internet and technology has meant for you personally and how you really would not be the person that you are today, if not for technology in the internet. And that's kind of one of the guiding principles of our show, too, is that the internet has really been at the forefront of who I am, how my younger self-serve in the world, how to show up in the world and become a self-actualized person. But do we still have an internet landscape where that kind of self-discovery and self-actualization is genuinely possible? Yes. It's just that their landmines everywhere now. there are before what it was when I think I think we're similar ages so it was before a little more open and a little more disconnected it was just it was more randomized and it didn't feel like there were so many warring incentives other than those of just individual users or admins on forums now you have every step of the way a different incentive or multiple ones just bashing into each other or trying to have sex on your computer like you're going to a way. website and your phone and your phone will be 150 degrees within two seconds because there's

21 different ad trackers. But then, even with, I feel like algorithms, mentioning algorithms is almost cliche at this point because it's so obvious. But even then you've got people on forums who are actively trying to scam you. And the large problem is, ironically, that while there are all these worrying incentives, the actual people who run the internet have never had any responsibility for it. They've made all the money off of it. It's not like Google or Facebook and indeed both of kind of peeled back layers of protected people from spam and scams. It's not like they've ever thought we should make sure this is good. They did for a minute.

I think they did for like the first 10 years of Google, maybe the first five, six years of Facebook, but they then went, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this isn't going to grow forever. We need to fuck with it. We need to make it worse. But I do think that that self-discovery is still there. YouTube, even though it's a complete nightmare with the algorithm, is incredible. It really is still incredible. I wish anyone other than Google owned it.

Lockheed Martin. Hanwar, perhaps. A more ethical company than Google. Yeah, at least we know what they're doing. I think the YouTube still has this incredible educational side, and you have all of these incredible niches on there. You have guys making covers of songs in the styles of other bands. You have people, I saw someone making like a wood ice cream on there the other day.

Like, there's still this magic there. The magic of the internet isn't dead. And I think that the problem is, is that to get there, you have to go through like barbed wire or barbed why you don't realize it's sharp until it's cutting your throat. The thing that I love so much about this vision of the internet that you lay out is that you're able to make these business decisions

that tech leaders have made hyper personal for people. And I don't know, it was almost like a rallying cry of like, yeah, like never forget how these fucks ruined the, like tried to ruin the internet to make money. Like never forget that we had something that was kind of good and people decided what if we fucked with it? to make money. And that's the thing.

It's these people, their power has come from their relative anonymity. While we know who's searching Nadela and Sam Altman and Sundar Pishai and all of these people, we know who they are. They have mostly just got glossy, they get glossy profiles and they're mostly unknown, when in fact, I think they're tantam out to war criminals. We know who Mark Zuckerberg is, but I don't think people realize Mark Zuckerberg's bad thing he did was not just his outright sexism or stealing the website from the river. Boat Twins, the Winklebosses. It's the fact that it's not just the wigger people that he's led to

getting killed. It's not all of that. It's the fact that at its core, Facebook is a tool that's used to hurt people now. It is used to manipulate and twist them. It does not have to be that way. Literally doesn't because Mark Zuckerberg has complete control of the company. He could tomorrow turn off all monetization on Facebook. The stock would crash, but there's nothing anyone could do. They couldn't fire him. He controls the whole company. He chooses this. And I think what people don't realize is they kind of ambiently know these people suck, but they don't know what they're doing and why they're doing it and the intentions behind it. And I think that educating them on that is important because the more that that happens, the more that people

realize this is deliberate, the less likely they are to get such a free ride in the press. And they only care about the press. The press is such a powerful thing with them because they got all the money in the world. Now they just need, they just have their names. They just have their legacy. So fuck their legacy up. Piss on it. piss on it. You do it on your podcast beautifully, eloquently. Okay, well, because I'm talking to another tech podcaster, I kind of have to start with my dessert a little bit because a podcast that we piss on a lot on this podcast is the all-in podcast. And I mean, your face just there really says it all. And need a shower. Okay. So last week, obviously we talked about Musk and Trump's big breakup.

a slight update there, which is that Musk did tweet that he regretted some of what he said about Trump. Everybody was talking about this. But the all-in podcast, which you might say is hosted by a group of business idiots, you know, it's one of the biggest tech podcasts in the world. It's like four Silicon Valley investor types, one of whom David Sachs is Trump's like AI and Cryptos are. They were notably silent. And all their listeners were like, what's up? Like, why are they not putting out an episode on this? Like, where's the episode? I do love that, though. I do love that their listeners to this day continue to win the Felfare Again Award. It's like, I don't get it.

Why are these guys not being honest with me as they've done like hundreds of craven obviously, like very much corrupt things? But they are business idiots, by the way. David Sacks, famous for selling fucking Yammer to Microsoft, an internal message to. Shamath is actually evil. Shamath is one of the original people who built the growth team at Facebook under Cheryl Sandberg, Naomi Gleit, Jacob Oliven, I think his name is.

Javier Oliven, possibly. Las Backstrom as well as part of that. All of the original shit heels that made Facebook, how bad it is today, all thanks to Shemath. But yeah, what are those freaks up to now? They're just, they're not talking about the Elon breakup because they don't know which daddy is going to kiss them that week. Like, I don't really know what they're doing.

No, and I have to say it made me really appreciate what you do, what I do, that we have actual press and podcasts that get to talk about what's happening, get to be actually critical of technology. And I guess it just made me realize how much tech press fails. It fails, their audience, like fails its listeners. And that's the thing, though. I think the All In podcast are genuinely harmful. I think they're bad for society.

I think they've done horrible things. I think they're tiny in the comparison to the harm that Kevin Roos and Case Newton do with Hard Fork. Tell me more. I think Hard Fork gives people permission to support the powerful. Casey Newton's boyfriend works at Anthropic. They've had Dario Amaday, or Wario, as I call him, the CEO of Anthropic on there three times.

They've had multiple different Anthropic and they disclose that Casey's boyfriend works there. The fuck is going on there. Every time, I'm bringing this up with everyone because it's insane. It's totally disgusting. And we have the New York Times pretending like this is. somehow okay. They are in the pocket of the AI companies. They regularly, they regularly put Bruce himself is one of the more noxious and genuinely bad for the world people who he did a whole thing on a company that claimed they were excited to replace jobs. They were just going to replace

humans and jobs. When you looked at the articles, it just went out. I haven't built anything. They never built a single fucking thing. They were like, oh, we're going to do a working environment to train models and Cabo Rus is like, God damn, I'm so scared. I'm so scared. He did a piece about AGI. I said this on Blue Sky. It's like, it's like a hundred millionaires or billionaires decided they were going to track down and capture Santa Claus. AGI is impossible. It does not exist with today. We do not even have the beginning of understanding of the intelligence of human beings. So yeah, All-N sucks. All-in's awful, noxious, terrible, poisonous. But Hard Fork is just as damaging. And quite frankly, Nilai Patel over at the verge, fucking speaking with Brian

Chesky and Task Rabbit CEO. Unbelievable. Sundar Pishai goes on there and he gives him 150 word questions. No, it's not just all in. It's really convenient, actually. I'm not saying you're doing this to just say all in is the problem. No, the problem is, is that we have people, like, I run a PR firm. I don't do anything with my, anything related to my clients on the podcast ever or newsletters, same deal, just because to keep them firewall. Sure. We have some of the biggest tech podcasts, which are kissing up to Brian Chesky. They are kissing up to every AI founder. They are literally co-hosted by someone who is going out with someone from the second largest AI company.

This is our tech media. This is our tech podcasting. It's a disgrace. When I, a part-time blogger and podcaster who runs a Pia of him and the most ethical of them, that's insane. What is going on? How is this the world we live in? The answer is business idiots. It's because the people that control these publications

do not actually connect with the means of production or have any real interest or fundamental understanding of the things they're talking about. With the exception of Nilai Patel, I actually think he knows better. I just think he wants to be friends with them. Oh, that's even sadder. The thing that gets to me is like these people are all so wealthy. At a certain point, what's the point of having FU money

if you don't use it to say F you to anybody? I don't think Ruth Newton and Nelai Patel are like, Fuck you money. I have no idea about the all-ling guys. Shumath's definitely rich. Oh, yeah. I think they're like, I mean, what constitutes fuck you money to me, somebody who has none of it? I think it's probably less than what they're thinking. Like $100? $700. No, it's like $100. Like there we go. I think that's a good solid, like, I can't think of even how I'd spend half of it money.

Yeah. Other than to create the All Out podcast and then just like, ruin their SEO, just like, just like, just like do nothing other than like dark SEO operations to make it impossible to find theirs. What a dream. Actually, Lex Friedman. Lex Friedman is the most insane one. He's the top of the tech podcast despite not covering tech.

And he is the worst speaking person ever. He is so bad at talking. I am blocked by him on Twitter for, I have, I have no idea why. I mean, I love him because he goes like, he was asking Donald Trump a question. He was like, politics is a dirty game. And Doltra's like, yeah, very, very true. And he goes, how do you win at that game? And it's just like, me, may, did you not practice speaking before?

Is this your first time? Is this your first? It's like that is Lex Friedman podcast. It's just his first rodeo every time. He's like the guy for Memento, but it's with speaking. Welcome to Lex Friedman. podcast. Oh my God, your Lex Friedman is so good. It's, it's, I, I have only impressions down. I really want to go on Lex Friedman.

Three hours with me and Lex. I think I could have some real fun. Oh my God, from your lips to Lex's ears. Maybe he'll unblock you and then you can just ask. I, what you would do podcast on line. You are, you, you, you, you, right, keyboard. And every, I have the best one though by far did you see the lex friedman destiny debate so he debated this horrible fucking piece of shit sorry no he hosted a debate between destiny's terrible far right twitch streamer and uh norman finkelstein and it was like three i could not watch more than 10 minutes of it but what kept

happening was norman finkelstein who is like uh has some views and some not i don't really know too much about him i don't want to get into it but it would be like destiny going like, what you see, he talks like the roadrunner. And then Norman Ferguson would just go, Mr. Borrelli, your words and your Wikipedia,

they torture me on every day. It's like Satan is pissing in my ears and he'd get his name wrong every time. That was great. Lex Friedman just sat there the whole time, probably being like, who are these people? Why are they in my house?

Why do they, what is this in front of your face? It's a microphone. micro bon God I want to go on his pod so badly oh I want to go on his pod so badly I want to go on Lex Rivman he'll never have me

he knows he knows what's coming no he knows I'm turning up in full Joker makeup like it's also they're like four hours long I don't know who has stamina I can hang for three hours four hours you're like put me in coach I'm ready I'll be there 11 hours

I'll be there just like one next legs we're doing this what else you want to talk about Lex I've got nothing on I had I had 15 hours of sleep in preparation for this I've been preparing

I've been training he's like really like he does like MMA or something they all do some kind of a physical fitness activity as their hobby but you can tell they're like never normal about it they never are doing it in a chill way it's always in some weird way

they all do like really joyless working out as well you can tell that they're just every fucking time they do it, it's like they're either in pain or they're taking like 19 different substances. Well, none of where they drink like, they probably drink the butter coffee. Yeah. Yeah. Real pervert mixtures.

Yeah. These are the people that we want in charge of our like tech ecosystem. Yeah. These are the people that can speak for everyone. Normal, normal dudes. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy. Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends.

Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me.

Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, uh, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard. They're open to change. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open.

Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think IHart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at IHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. What's up, fam? This Isaiah Thomas.

And I'm C.J. Toledano and our podcast Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series

because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys. like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too.

Steve Nass would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers why he got the ball. Like, after you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball.

So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Joe Dono. You might know me as that loud guy who yells out, help on the internet. Help! Somebody! Please!

But there's so much more to me than me. I'm an actor. I'm a comedian. And recently, I've become quite the helper myself. And on my new podcast, Hope from a Hippocrite, I'll be changing lives, helping people in need with my sage advice and thoughtful solutions.

Sike! I'm a comedian. I'm not qualified to give good advice. Join me and my comedian friends as we riff, rant, recommend some of the most legally dubious advice known to man. If I'm calling you, even if you're on your phone, let it ring twice. One ring is too scary. Oh, cream a chicken suit.

Hey, cream a chicken suit. This is Help from a Hypocrite, the worst advice from the dumbest people you know. Listen to Help from Hypocrat as part of the Mike Coutura Podcast Network available on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. Earlier, you mentioned some, I don't know, we'll say false claims that are being made about AI.

So let's get into some of these stories. You probably saw this, and I don't think I have to tell you, but did you know that meta's chatbots are not actually real people? They didn't, if a chatbot is telling you it went to grad school, to learn about therapy, it's probably not telling you the truth because it's not a person. I'm shocked.

So Democratic senators Corey Booker, Peter Welsh, Adam Schiff, and Alex Padilla are asking META to investigate what they call blatant deception from its chatbots who basically lie about being licensed therapist. This coming from exclusive reporting from one of my favorite journalists, Samantha Cole over at 404 Media. Shout up to Samantha Cole. So basically what happened is that 404 initially reported that META's chatbots were creating the false impression that they're licensed therapist. So the senators sent META a letter basically saying like, please stop. doing that. The letter says that meta is deceiving users who seek mental health support from its AI generated chatbots. So basically, when you would ask the chat bot, like, what qualifies you to give me mental health advice? They would say very specific things. They would say, oh, I got my

doctorate in psychology from an American Psychological Association accredited program. And I've had 10 years experience. And they would even get out specific license numbers. So it's like very specific untrue claims, it should go without saying for listeners that these app bots, these AI bots probably did not go to college because they're not human and obviously they didn't go to college. It does seem like meta might have tweaked this because according to 404 now when you ask, like what gives you the qualifications, the chatbot will say like, oh, well, I'm not a licensed therapist, but I am trained to help, which I guess is like a little bit more accurate. They're also not.

Well, did you see the story about that you could get them, like they had things where they'll talk to children about having sex? Yes. Jeff Hawwitz, the goat over a Wall Street Journal with that one. I mean, this is all the fucking result of something I've been saying for a while. Hey, when we don't regulate any tech ever, perhaps they're going to do whatever they fucking want without restraint. I don't know, just an idea. Just a thought. Just a little nugget in my head saying, like, maybe if we don't stop them from doing anything and, in fact,

to encourage them at all times. Maybe they'll think that they can do anything and then do it. And then we're like, hey, here's a strongly worded letter. Fuck you. Yeah. It makes me sad that that's like the best we can do is like these Dems sent a letter that was like, hey, can y'all stop? This is actually not cool.

We would love it if you stop. I don't like it. Please stop fucking. Just like at this point, they should just start punishing. Like, there must be more than a government of any kind. Even people in the government that it's currently being trodden on could do more than this. But I think right now the Dems are just like, fuck, who do we kiss up to now? Yeah.

Oh, do we, we can't kiss their ass? Who's ass can we kiss? The people that vote for us? Ew! No. Never. Ugh. Ugh.

No. We need to find a powerful person. Is there anyone powerful? Maybe Mark Cuban. We kiss Mark Cube? It's just fucking pathetic. This should like have some. The child sex thing should have had someone put in jail.

Like, that is, like, if you make a robot to fuck children, you should be in jail like a paedophile. I don't know. It feels pretty fucking simple to me. What shocks me is that this is like a radical statement within the same media. Oh, that people who build robots that have sex with children should face some sort of, yeah, or try should face some sort of meaningful consequence for that. Yeah, there should be a consequence. And people are just like, yeah, that's crazy. I agree with you completely.

And we kind of beat this drum on the show all the time. where do you think it comes from that in any other context, somebody that did that, you would be like, well, obviously that person can't be out on the street making business decisions. What makes people kind of shrug their shoulders and say, well, it's business. What are they going to do? Tech and money. It's because people, because the 20 years of the tech and business media treating businesses like they're special has led to people treating businesses and tech like that special.

That's it. No regulation means that we have no way of controlling these people. But we had one shot with Lena Kahn and that shot is gone. It will happen in the future, I have hope. But right now, we are getting the consequences of unrestrained tech. And yet you can say on restrained capitalism. The reason I don't say that and people are like, oh, you should just talk about capitalism is people have done a shit ton of that. But right now, when you look at the way the media discusses technology, it's an alarming lack of ignorance, but also an alarming lack of like morals.

Like the fundamental tech behind most of the growth and not the real growth is in like the, the, theoretical growth, the market-inspired vibes, is based on a technology based on stealing, environmental destruction, and just unrestrained communication, just completely insane stuff. You can have any conversation with these bots, and people will say, well, you can't restrict that because then we'd lose freedoms. Yeah, like, we're not losing any right now. And on top of that, what are we saving? Well, they could do this. So we just let them do anything. Just in case we don't try, we don't try and stop them, it is impossible to stop large language models existing anymore. It is possible to punish those who put them out there in an unrestrained

fashion if someone chooses to. We need the AI bubble to pop first. Then they might. In fact, I'd love them too. I think they should all be punished. Do you see this bubble popping? Because I was reading earlier about how, like, this new Apple research paper, basically debunking these claims that like, oh, LLMs, they can perform true reasoning. Like, I feel like people who make money from AI are lying to us about AI's capabilities, lying to us about AGI. Sam Altman was just lying about the environmental impact of AI earlier this week. Do you think we're getting to a point where it's like the lies and the reality might start

meeting each other a little bit? Nope. Emphatic no. No. Nothing has changed in the last year. Nothing. The paper you're talking about was about reasoning models. So the only trick they've had in the last three years, frankly, they had GPD-40.

That was the big thing with multimodal stuff so we could see. It can't think. It can't see. It doesn't exist. It can take in video and look at, it can see visual data and say, I have a reaction to that. Lutte language models are kind of cool. Like what they could do is kind of interesting. Denying that would be silly.

They can't do much more than they can today. and that paper talks about how reasoning models don't fucking reason. They don't have a concept of reasoning. But really, I like to make this real simple. What's the product? What is it? Where's the product? What is the thing that we're all meant to be replaced by even?

You're having art directors and copyrighters replaced with it. You're having screen writers who are having their work looked at by AI. It's kind of like what happened many years ago with HR, with resumes. They found a way to do that, but with words. but other than that, where's the fucking beef? Where's the product? Where is it? Agents don't exist.

Every time you see someone see agent, shoot them. Sorry. I mean, every time you see someone say agent, they are lying. Because they're trying to say agent and make you think, oh, autonomous. They're autonomous. And what they mean is chatbot. Chatbot that can sometimes connect to other systems and can't even fucking do that. That's the crazy thing.

That's the craziest thing. That's why I sound so crazy. Because you look outside, you go and look on the. the work in CNBC, you go look at tech crunch, you go look at all these publications and you see them going agents, agents, agents, agents, aren't the agents coming? They're not coming. They don't work. There was a study that came out of Salesforce, I believe, that said that agents fall apart on multi-step queries. You may think what does multi-step mean? Multi-step means more than one action. You know, tends to be what happens when you do something. Yeah. And they can't fucking do it.

They fall apart. The reasoning paper talked about how these things fall apart if you make them think too much. Yeah, I loved how it said it breaks down when faced with an unfamiliar problem. And I was like, oh my God, just like me. Like, I feel the same. Being there. But yeah, like, no one is. You built the economy on my back.

Yeah. Like, no, yeah, no one is saying I'm going to like change the economy because I break down when faced with unfamiliar or novel problems. I, but also, let's get simple again. Where's the product? Where is it? Because that's my proof. There's no fucking product. Everything is the same thing we were talking about six months ago, 12 months ago.

Oh, agents are here. No, they're not. Stop lying to me. Like, that's the thing. You actually, like, people love to come to me and say, well, actually, Microsoft's called AI. No, they don't. They do, but it doesn't do much more than it did a year ago. The only way Microsoft is able to make, and Google is able to make money on AI is by forcing people to pay for it.

forcing people to pay for Google Workspaces. They raised the price. They raised it months ago, but they only just emailed everyone about it. People quite pissed off. And that's the thing. That's what really is cooking my brain right now, is I still have people in the tech media who say, well, AI's here. AIs the

biggest, most smartest thing ever. Look at coding. Yeah, I looked at coding. I had a guy called Carl Brown from the Internet of Bugs on the other day. The whole thing is, people think that software engineers just code. They think that that's their whole job. They think that that's all they do.

On top of that, the code that's written by these things is not reliable enough to just sink into production. It may speed up some workflows, but even then, what workflows does it speed up? And it's pumping the internet and software companies full of shitty software. And on top of that, none of it makes any money. It loses so much money. It loses billions and billions of dollars, and it makes no money. Microsoft is going to make $13 billion in 2025. You may think that sounds like a lot, but they've spent hundreds of billions of dollars in capital,

in the last three years. It's a fucking farce. It pisses me off every time I think about it. And people are still, to this day, trying to smuggly back, Oh, Ed, did you see? And it's usually something that doesn't exist. It's like, Ed, check out this. We made this new life form.

And it is just the Ninja Turtles movie. And it's just, what the fuck I mean? It's like arguing with a child, except children have more fundamentally sound logic. Every day. Every day with this bollocks. I remember going to South by Southwest a few years ago, and the thing everybody was talking about was NFTs.

It was like NFTs everywhere. And then going the following year, and it was like, we never did that. What are you talking about NFTs? Like how quickly this was, we were being told this was like the big thing. This is the big thing. But they couldn't work out how to do that. NFTs. If Google and Facebook and meta and all them have actually found an NFT thing that more

than one person would buy, they would have done NFTs. If they thought buying and selling pigeons was the next growth market, every, Sundar Pishai would be saying you cannot underestimate the pigeon opportunity. Fucking Jensen Huang of In Video would be breeding pigeons right now. In fact, that's actually the most insane thing. So our economy, the US stock market, is about 35% made up of the magnificent seven stocks. I always fuck this up as Tesla, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia

someone else. Microsoft. I think you said Microsoft, but we'll let it fly. Nevertheless, whoever they are. 19% of that is Nvidia. Invidia's entire I think like 88% of their revenues based on selling GPUs

for AI. What do you think happens when that stops happening? And also people are saying, well, though they're growing so much quarter over quarter, are you fucking telling me that in a year's time, based on growth rate, this will have to happen. InVidio will be selling $100-something billion of GPUs a quarter, which means that all of the rest of the companies in the Magnificent Seven

will be sending them $100 billion a quarter. Is that going to happen? So everyone's going to raise their capital expenditures? I'm the crazy one for saying this isn't going to happen. Anyway, when I'm right, people are going to eat shit. Well, I do have a question. I mean, it kind of relates back to what we were talking about with the tech podcast landscape. It's why do you think, I mean, is it just money and influence and proximity to power that keeps the people who ostensibly should be telling this story, telling the truth about these things that you're talking about from doing so? Like, why are so few voices saying these things? I think there's a few things. One, I think people are way too differential to the powerful.

They are also under-trained, under-mentored. They are not rewarded for doing a good job. They are rewarded for keeping the status quo, the status quo. the status quo is AI, so everyone's talking about AI. They are as masked heads across all publications, almost. They are told, don't harsh the flow. They're not told those exact words, but they can't sit there and be like, hey, it's all this bullshit. It's all these companies are making more money than ever, but the things they're talking about are lies.

They can't say that. They have to be like, well, why are they talking about AI? They can't be lying to us. We can't start there. We couldn't possibly suggest that. So there's this natural deference that everything starts with, but really just basic education of finance and business is just not fucking there in most of the tech press. There are some that are good at it. Few of them.

Very few of them. Kevin Ruse is actually one of them. He knows better. The fact that he chooses to do this is truly disgusting. Same with Casey Newton. Casey Newton's one of the best business journalists or he used to be before he did whatever this is. And you've got people at Alson Morrow at CNN, one of the best business writers. out there. She's saying everything I'm saying it a little bit better in some cases.

She's been on the show already. There are people saying this. It's just for the most part, no one wants to harsh the flow. No one wants to lose access. And there are an alarming amount of people, Neil A Patel, who want to be friends with the rock stars. If you've ever seen almost famous, that, that wonderful scene with Buster Scrugs, the kids, Phyllisian, Hoffman. Oh, um, it's like, uh, yes. Well, no, is it? Lester Bags. Lester Bags, yes. Lester Bags, Buster Scruggs, I've got to, I'm, that's what I'm calling myself. I was like, Buster Scrubs is someone. I don't know.

That's someone though. That's someone though, my brain working, both brain cells, dueling to the death there. No, it's, you don't make friends with the rock stars and people want to be friends of the rock stars. They want to be the first one to get to hear the latest thing that they have to think. I know that sounds very like 90s cliche, paranoia, but look at what's happening and tell me otherwise. The fact that you, and it gets back to the business idiot thing, though, because you have this editorial substrate, these editors, are just like, they don't know fucking shit, but they know what the powerful say generally is right.

Even if it's not, even if it hasn't been right. They just, they want it to be right. And it's much easier to sit there and be like, yeah, it's going to be big now, especially when the whole economy's doing it.

You might think, I don't know, as a journalist, though, when the whole economy is based on something kind of flimsy, maybe you want to tell people about it. No,

no, no, keep, got to keep out of Disneyland open. And the thing is, they are gambling, honestly, both me and them are gambling.

We're gambling. I'm not gambling. I'm basing it on logic. But they are betting that they are right and that the powerful will prevail with AI. The AI will suddenly turn into this thing that does not exist. The AI will become, despite the fact that agents don't do what they're meant to. The large language models are terrible at taking distinct actions. That large language models are unreliable and hallucinate. And on top of it, none of this shit makes money. It's horribly unprofitable and people don't want to pay for it. They think that all of that will get fixed because Numbos is going up right now. Because NVIDIA keeps selling GPUs. That is the only. real metric that is keeping this bullshit alive, because it sure isn't fucking business. There is an analyst, something Beck, I think. Laura Brandt at Yahoo Finance wrote this up. He said that he estimates Amazon will make $5 billion in AI revenue this year, not profit, revenue. They spent $105 billion or planned to on capital expenditures in 2025. The fuck is going on.

What is going on? Why are we hearing this and being like, sounds good to me? Or it's the early days. It's the early days. No, it is not. We are three years in hundreds of billions in capital expenditures. More money than has ever gone into any movement ever in the tech industry's history has gone into generative AI. And we are where we were in 2023.

And people need to wait the fuck up. It's embarrassing. It's very embarrassing. And when this ship bursts and it has to. It has to because putting aside all the technology, you really think people are going to buy. I think it was like $40 something billion of GPUs last quarter So next one they're going to be 48 I guess And then a year it's going to be what like 80 something

Is that going to happen? Is that going to keep happening or is it going to slow down Because they also don't have anywhere to install them right now Because data centers don't pop up like weeds No one looks at reality. It drives me insane. But Robert and Sophie let me yell every week. So I may...

Robert and Sophie of Cool Zone Media, friends of the show and I'm going to say Friends, IRL. We actually did a mini-series collaboration with them about online harassment called Internet Hate Machine. We love Robert and Sophie at this podcast. No, those do encourage me constantly. Robert and Sophie over at Cool Zone, they're fantastic. They're very supportive.

They fucking see it. It's just, I'm ranting, I realize. No, I love it. And it's honestly nice to talk to somebody who rants about this shit as much as I do, I guess. because it is very frustrating to sort of tell the same story over and over again and feel like no one's listening. You were talking about the sort of connection of business reporting. Did you see that piece in the Wall Street Journal this week that really shed light on X's new strategy to woo back advertisers? Oh, yeah, whether they're just suing them?

Yeah, just like threats and extortion and like threats of lawsuit. So for fucking cool. Yeah, very cool. I mean, like, it reminds if you've ever seen one of my favorite movies, Goodfellas, that's what mobster Henry calls like real grease bullshit. Like this is real like mobster threat of extortion. Verizon should have just been like, go fuck yourself, Elon. Exactly.

So that's what I found very shocking is that it's kind of working. So essentially for folks who did not see that piece, the Wall Street Journal reported that their new strategy to woo back advertisers is to threaten them with lawsuits. And so it kind of works like Verizon, which had not advertised on X since 2020, pledged to spend at least $10 million this year, and if they didn't, X was going to sue them.

The same with Ralph Lauren, the fashion brand. They agreed to start spending more money and ads on X because of this threat of lawsuit. The Wall Street Journal said that at least six companies had either received lawsuit threats or were motivated in part by pressure tactics and have struck ad deals with X. And yeah, I mean, part of me kind of gets it because if you're running a business, who wants to be tied up in a lawsuit with somebody like Elon Musk? Oh, this is quite literally, this is quite literally a numbers game. They went, this will be cheaper.

This will be cheaper. They're probably not wrong. And they are right. Yeah, it just is interesting that some of this kind of sounds like straight up extortion. One of the things, yeah, I mean, and I also feel like how embarrassing is it that you would have to extort these brands to want to do business with you, these strong arm tactics. It is embarrassing. but here's a real simple point that goes back to what we were just talking about. If we had a functional business press,

we'd be able to fucking chain these companies. The business press should say, you got extorted by Elon Musk. What are you doing? They should describe this story as extortion, but they're afraid of getting sued. Now what, like, this is the thing. Right now, the problem is that the right wig is willing to, like,

throw a bunch of money at shit. There are rich liberals. They just don't fucking care enough. They don't think they'll be sent anywhere. It's depressing. I mean, the idea of like praying for a rich billionaire to save us is kind of fucking ridiculous. But none of these companies had to do this. They could have all rolled over.

They could have rolled over. They could have also made it difficult. If one of them had made it difficult, I don't think they're going to sue Verizon. Verizon could actually materially harm Elon Musk. All of them could. It's just that they go, nah, it's not worth the fucking problem. 10 million, that's we could, and they can probably deduct that off of taxes somehow. It's just, it's very, it's very depressing.

very, very depressing. It is. And I think when I look at what's happening with civil society organizations that find themselves in the same arena with Trump, with a Musk, like Media Matters, a media watchdog group who Musk is suing, like they're engaged in this big back and forth lawsuit. And he's suing them for basically doing their jobs, producing research into how X is moderated. There are organizations that don't have the money to be like, we'll, we're not going to back down.

And then those are the organizations that are actually standing. up and being like, we're going to fight this. This is bully tactics. We're not going to, you know, roll over. It's interesting that the companies that have money and power roll over immediately, just play ball immediately. And the organizations that don't, those are the ones who have to take the pressure and be like, yeah, we have to stand up to him. Again, functional business press. There's never been, or at least if there has been, it's been very weak, any real corporate accountability in the media. There is reporting that's quite excellent. Look, the Wall Street journal Jeff Horwitz, part of the team who did the Facebook files, incredible reporting there.

But there's not people just saying, hey, this fucking sucks. Fuck you. What you're doing with a large enough platforms. What I'm trying to build. Because the thing is, these companies have more money than God. All they have is their names. That's why Verizon did this, because Verizon went, we won't get that much blowback in the press, but we'll get a ton of easy riding with the markets.

The markets will love this. And they probably did. It's $10 million, which is nothing to Verizon. It just sucks. And I know that there's far more than we do. government, like a government of some kind that stops extortion in some way. But lacking that, a functional business media would say, and it used to exist, you go and look in like the 2000s, they used to rip the shit out of people. It was awesome. But that just, it went away. And I think

it's really easy to say, well, they're protecting advertisers. It's really easy to say, well, we don't want to piss off the advertisers. We couldn't possibly. No, it's far simpler. They want them to win. They support the powerful. They like the companies. They want to keep saying nice things about them. They don't want to say mean things about them. Because then the companies wouldn't like them.

It's really fucking sad. People love companies. Not regular people, the media. Yeah. They want to be the ones that tell you the story of the powerful, far more than they want to hold anyone accountable. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guide.

Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me.

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It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game.

We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us every. everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson,

we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers, why he got the ball. Like, you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah. You figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court,

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This is Help from a Hypocrite, the worst advice from the dumbest people you know. Listen to Help from Hypocrite as part of the MyCultura Podcast Network available on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. this is going to sound like a very weird analogy, but one of the places that I sort of got my start in media was celebrity journalism. And it reminds me so much of this where...

It is that. It is exactly that. I mean, you don't want this celebrity to be mad at you because you want to get the exclusive. You want to get the pictures. You want the access. So all you can say is fluffy bullshit about the celebrity. It's like why celebrity journalism is essentially dead when it used to be like juicy and good. Well, I think it still exists in England, sadly, because the way they do celebrity journalism is they commit crime.

They're like going through like a runaway garbage. They do like a Mrs. Doubtfire situation to get one story. It takes them seven years. They become your child's best friend as a means of stealing your mobile phone. No, it's, it is like gossip journalism, except it's not even good gossip journalism. Good gossip journalism still exists. I say good, in a qualitative sense, morally, pretty horrifying. But it's, it is everyone wants to be friends with the rock stars. They want to be the first one to talk positively about something because people love reading positive news.

Not that you give them anything else, not that you ever talk to your readers or see what they think. One of my favorite things to do, by the way, go on the verge and go and read any AI story. Read the comments. The comments, they don't like AI. They're not enjoying this. It's almost as if real people are really disgusted by this stuff. but it is gossip journalism. It's, you will talk to reporters and you will say to them, hey, so you're covering like AI, for example.

And what are you writing about OpenAI? You seem to know all of the guy's names and all of their histories. What about the finance? They lost $5 billion in 2024. What do you think of that? They go, oh, I don't deal with the numbers. Oh. I'm not a finance journalist.

Can you fucking count? And they can, but they just, they don't want to touch it because when you start thinking, this company Open AI they seem to burn billions of dollars and they don't have enough they don't bring in more they lose more money than they bring in and they need more money

than anyone's ever had before is that sustainable no need to think about that they released a new model type it up send Sam Altman made a blog send because they want to be the part of the party

and then there's this bullshit where they're like oh yeah well it's clicks you want to get clicks but the readers want this the readers want what you give them you can sure readers might not like you if you don't cover the most popular thing but you don't have to cover it in this tripe way no you don't have to be fawning like that's i don't think anybody's any reader is demanding that i think that there are some that do and they're very loud and people are stupid they're like oh well people in the valley say fuck them fucking asshole fuck you if you're an investor or an engineer in the valley and you're like no you need to talk positively about ai why do we have to prove ourselves to you you're selling me to me. You sell to me. I am the buyer. You are not the buyer. I don't have to prove myself to, oh, you don't understand it. Fuck you also. If I don't understand it, you're doing a poor job explaining it. It's not my fucking fault. Chat GPT is changing everything. How? How? Instead,

reporters just go, chat GPT is changing everything. It is growing faster than anything before. They're completely right. So did the coronavirus. Like, I'm just like, look, We took the coronavirus seriously in a very different way. It's just, it's frustrating because I was not trained in economics. I didn't go to a well-known school. I didn't get great. I got decent grades in university, but like I got terrible grades in high school. I'm not like, I don't consider myself a super smart person, but this stuff is out there.

It's obvious. It's very obvious. Even if you load chat GPT, try and make it do your job. It don't work. Don't do it. I have a spreadsheet heavy job. I would love a computer to do it. it for me. It refuses. It's funny that you mentioned this. I sunk a lot of time into trying to get

chaty BT to do a spreadsheet related task. And it was just a waste of four hours. I should have just done it myself. My favorite one I did recently. So this is this company called Manus, M-A-N-U-S. I call Mainus. That's what I'm calling them now. Manus. So they claim to be like the first agentic platform. And so what you do is I ask them to be like, get me a list of every article that has run, who's mentioning me, in the last two years. It took 10 minutes, and every single step, it coded Python to do. You could see it, just like burning resources, and it came back with 10 articles. Oh, God.

There was over 100 in the last two years. And I'm like, okay, there's more. You've missed a lot. Came back with another nine. It's just like, I love living in the future. But that's the insane thing. If I was an investor, and I saw this, I'd be free. fuck out. I'd be like, oh boy,

we're all doing this. It's like finding out everyone at the party, but you shit themselves. That's a good analogy. It really is. And you're just like, do I? Should I? Is everyone else doing this? Is that good? And they're all like, I love it. And you're like, I'm not good at her, but, uh, I don't know. I'm just, I'm so tired of it, but I do think I will prevail.

I don't own any stocks, by the way. That's my other thing. That's the other thing people love to be like, oh, you're just doing this because I got no, I got nothing. Nothing to lose. No, and that's the scariest thing. I'm doing this just the love of the game. Well, Ed, I have to tell you one thing that AI has been doing kind of successfully is really polluting our discourse with like fake social media images. Yes. Out of L.A., I have to say, like, so many of the obviously AI generated images showing L.A. this past week as, like, a flaming, burnt out hellscape of urban wreckage, which is pretty different from the actual photos I've seen of folks protesting. And I'm from D.C. I remember very clearly in 2020, people, when I would be like, oh, live in D.C., people would be like, oh, I've seen pictures online of like, isn't D.C. just on fire now? Like, so sorry about your city.

And I do, I mean, I want to talk a bit about what's happening in L.A. because it has been a whirlwind of disinformation. Both AI generated and not. Like, one of the images I saw was a still image from the movie Blue Thunder, the action movie. Like, the way people will slip in these images where it's like, I know this image. That's not L.A. And I think that that's more prevalent than the AI slot. Totally. A thousand percent. One of the images that is, that I see a lot is this picture of a palette of bricks where it resurfaced in the protest in LA, where someone posted it to X saying, it's civil war.

Democrat militants are flooding the city with palates of bricks. So the image is actually, it's not AI generated, it's a real picture of bricks. But the bricks are from like a materials wholesaler based in Malaysia. But that same exact picture was floating around D.C. in 2020, and it was supposed to be evidence that like paid protesters

and George Sorrows are. are floating into Democrat cities to cause violence. And I think that you're so right that even though there are these AI generated images that are meant to create a certain narrative about what's going on in cities when there's protests, I do think it's more like cheap fakes where the image is real, but just the context around it is not correct. Yeah, and I think that there's also a bigger problem, which is, how can I put this? people who are not racists, people not on the right wing, have no unity or solidarity behind any given message.

I think that there is a large part of them that will throw anyone under the bus for their own safety. And on top of that, I think we're way too attached to this concept of objectivity. I think people are too scared to say the truth, such as, I don't know, they're marching fucking soldiers against US citizens. That's fascism, like, seems like a fairly obvious one. but the New York Times is like, men with guns approach people. Something on fire. The New York Times has got to be one of the biggest offenders. They're so passive.

It's them, but it's also people in power. It's the Democrat senators are like, we will hold them accountable. How? I don't fucking know. But people are like, oh, we need a Joe Rogan of the left. We need to put tens of millions of dollars into politics that talk about podcasts that aren't Podsave America. How about that? How about we need to put my idea and have a newsletter going out of this on Monday is like, I don't know, look at what the right or even the center right has. Look at like the Bastille media, for example. There are parts of Bastille is like a racism chart. You got Dave Portnoy. Yeah. But you got things like the yak, which are kind of like unclear about their goals or anything. But it's just five guys just sitting around being like, wow, that's sports. And like, they seem to like each other. And people are like, how the fuck do they do it? How do they build these things? It's like they found five people. who are entertaining to watch and they gave them a lot of money and build a big fucking

studio that looks good and they stream regularly and they give them lots of money and lots of promotion how do it possibly work here's my idea weston kabuki they're a podcast with june juniper trans woman i've been a guest on the show with one of my proudest moments i love wk point is find them or someone like them and give them like five to ten million dollars build a studio give them national production, give them fucking advertising budgets on radio and TV, really push it. Those people will begin to move

people left. The reason that people are so freaked out by fucking trans people, other than being incurious morons, is they're not used to seeing them. You show a trans person just fucking existing and talking and having fun. People are going to go, I've seen one of them before.

That's a regular person. They just happen to be trans. You normalize this stuff by making it normal. And you want to have a Joe Rogan of the left, heavily fund someone with those principles and then let them cook. Let them build a network. Instead, everyone wants to go and try and, they're like, well, what if we, we're going to, here's a pitch deck. We need $4 million for data. Did you see the Democrat pitch deck, by the way? I did see that pitch deck. It came from a group called the Speaking with American Men Project and they said they were willing to spend millions of dollars,

up to $20 million, to better understand how to appeal to the modern man. Well, meaning, sure, but let's just say I don't think it was well received. So fucking funny. I love, like, they need like two to four million dollars just for data. If you put that in a pitch deck, they should kill you. Straight execution, no trial. Poison.

It really raises your question of, like, what are we doing here? What are we doing here? Like, it is, and I also think, to your point about sort of not needing the Joe Rogan in the left, there's only a certain amount of people who are going to sit down and listen to a political podcast, right? And so, like, you really need people who are, like, doing sports content or makeup content, beauty content, muckbangs, whatever it is,

like, wherever people are already at, I think that's where you have to meet them. And I also think that we're good at that on the left always. I think that we, yeah, we want to spend $4 million just researching the issue as opposed to actually doing anything that's going to be meaningful or useful. I think it's that. And also, Joe Rogan is just an app, like, Just to be clear, gonna do a little throat, Clearing Joe Rogan's horrible the people who has on a horrible. But if you actually listen to him, same with Theo Von.

It's like, you never sit there and go like, God, this guy's really talking down to me. You don't sit there and think, fuck, I wish he'd ask. I think that people in general really do not understand that we as human beings regularly forget things and regularly don't understand things. We regularly are just like, fuck, what's a...

How to stop? What is it? Like a really obvious thing. And Joe Ogan goes like, computer, interesting. Jamie, pick up a picture of a computer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's just like, you don't get the sense that he knows anything, but he makes, he asks decent questions and he gets decent answers. He's able to keep him going for three hours somehow.

And he is affable and friendly and happy to see them. There's, I don't know if you call it charm, but it's at least they seem to like enjoy each other's proximity. It is, it becomes political, but it is not inherently political. So people get all tied up and how do we recreate? that by getting someone who's a good interviewer and giving them lots of money and also look at his fucking same with the ovan look at their production look how good that production is look how nice it is why don't you build that oh what pod save america fuck pod save america fuck them i'm sorry every fucking time every time it feels like nothing's happening it's so condescending did you see

the david cross john favro interview no that was my so david cross had john favro on his podcast. And so he ghostroated his book. And there's like the three of them goes through him. And there's the guy, I don't remember. He's like, John Favro and John down here. And John Favro has no idea what the fuck to do. And it's just like, yeah, if you, if your big book that you're releasing for your very important podcast that you care is ghostrian, how am I meant to think you care? Yeah. How am I meant to, how is anyone meant to equate? Oh, how do we get young men? How do we get young we don't have anything like that that has the budgets of a Theo von or the yak or anything Bastille.

Look at SB Nation probably the closest we've ever got. And Vox just mostly enjoys taking money away from them. And that's the thing. These organizations don't exist because no one wants to fund them. They want Joe Rogan of the left, despite realizing that it took years and years to build Joe Rogan and a shit ton of money that he had and other people gave him. Right. If you actually fund these things and put money behind them, in all of these cases, I don't know if they are sincere, but they certainly fucking come off that way.

And it's probably fake. They're very good at lying. I think they're probably sincere towards the beginning. What if we had a very well-funded, kind of like leftist? And the term leftist is even a problem because it's like, well, what is a leftist, miserable little pile of secrets, I guess? Like, I don't fucking know. How about you get together a diverse group of people who enjoys being around each other and

they chat fucking shit in a really glossy good video forward thing with a good social team that knows how to cut them. They do fun things. I choose the yak because it's like the weirdly centristy. Mm-hmm. They just kind of enjoy like big cat in them. It's fine to watch. Like I don't really love it.

It's just, I'm frustrated because the solutions are actually really obvious. Solutions are the wrong word. The starting points are very obvious. You don't need four million dollars to figure him out. Actually, I disagree. Well, for research. You need four million dollars for something else. Yes, you don't need research.

You need money. shove money into fucking million dollars of advertising budget a year minimum just fucking create magic do you think all of the top podcasts on on the podcast charts are there because just because they're good or is it because they're famous people or had a bunch of money it's really easy to do this you could do this tomorrow if you really fucking wanted to you could choose someone and just be like that person's going to be it and they're like oh who will be the job who cares who actually cares start creating content like the Theo Vons, the Yaks, the Joe Rogans of the world, that resembles people who aren't just white guys. There are tons of entertaining, trans people, tons of entertaining, trans people,

black women like yourself. It's just like there are tons of people you could just fucking pick. Put them together, throw the money. What if it doesn't work? Yeah, I agree. Let's do nothing then. Yeah. Let's just sit here.

Let's pay another consultant. That's a better. McKinsey needs their bucks. Yeah, like a better way to spend the money. And having come up in some of these sort of. Democratic establishment circles. They love to be like, oh, we need to solve this problem,

but we are not interested in failing. We're not interested in spending a little bit of money. If it doesn't work, that's that we can't try anything else. It's so self-defeating. Also, it will work. I will. I'm sorry. I'm a dumbass.

And at CES, I popped up like a five-day-long talk show at CES. And I cobbled it together as I went. It was some of the best fucking. brought, I'm not being arrogant it. It was some of the best fucking broadcast I've heard and I made it. And I made it with no planning. And it was because I thought, I know these people. I know questions to ask them.

I'm not even positioning myself in any way. I'm saying this took, I think the combined cost of that, just to say some stuff, like $16,000 total. That was with a, with a gear equipment, hotel rooms. And that was because it was the CES. Like that's the thing. Like you can, and I budgeted that myself, by the way. But that's the thing.

it isn't actually that expensive to do these things and if you put real money into it you could do something fucking incredible and you could absolutely, do you think people want to hear Joe Rogan interview these people? No. He's not a very good interviewer like. I don't know if I agree.

Tell me more. I don't think he's a smart interviewer, but I think Rogan is able to ask these questions that put people at ease and he gets detailed weird answers out of them. He is able to relax them, Probably because there's one brain cell just pops on and on like a light bulb question. And he's like, yeah, I heard like, oh yeah, I saw the Grinch the other.

Yeah, I knew a guy like that. And it's just like, Joe Rogan doesn't know a single guy. Like he's just, he stays in that studio. But his studio is really nice. They get fun clips. Tim Pool horrifying, horrifying. Horrifying. And he is just a gender setting for like literal entities.

Again, huge amounts of money. Tons of cash. And yes, there's grifts there, but God damn, put the money into it, throw the money into it. You want to know why people don't really know about a lot of these issues? It's insane that I, me, a part-timer. And one of the first people just be like, aren't fucking business people stupid? You ever look at these business people and they're just saying fucking stupid shit? I should not be dynamic for saying this.

But it's proof. And I mean this in a positive way. There's tons of opportunity out there. There's so many ways. And if you bankroll these things and make them aggressive and fun and support them legally, as well as giving them the social proof and the advertising budget, people are going to want to listen to that. You can make them positive. They don't even need to be about serious stuff.

But shit, when labor issues come up, you say, yeah, we're pro worker. Ooh, I think workers might like that one. Well, why are we angry at people? Because the business idiots, there are things you can, and it's not even something you need to do disingenuously. I choose Western Kabuki because all of those people, I think if you're not. you tried, Caleb Wilson, one of my closest friends, do a football podcast with him. I think if you tried to force Caleb to hold an opinion that he didn't want, he would kill you. But that's what you want. But again, the Democrats would see that, me like, whoa,

whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you mean you don't like John Fettman? Yeah, they would find some, like, this isn't, this is too folksy, needs to be more scoldy. They've got their, they've got their purity politics except for like trans people. Then they're like, whoa, okay, we don't have beliefs. around these parts. No, totally. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide,

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Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. You love me. I need something. jokes to make me seem funny.

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Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-Eyheart. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast, Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game.

His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows. Without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this. series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall.

And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court licking his fingers why he got the bar like, you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah. You figure it out real quick. Oh, yeah.

Get your ass up and down the court. And you're going to get the bomb. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jared Adano. You might know me as that loud guy who yells out, help on the internet. Help! Somebody! Please! But there's so much more to me than that. I'm an actor. I'm a comedian.

And recently, I've become quite the helper myself. And on my new podcast, Hope from a Hypocrite, I'll be changing lives, helping people in need with my sage advice and thoughtful solutions. Psych! I'm a comedian! I'm not qualified to give good advice! Join me and my comedian friends as we riff, rant, recommend some of the most legally dubious advice known to man. If I'm calling you, even if you're on your phone, let it ring twice. One ring is too scary. Oh, cream a chicken suit. Hey, cream... Cream a chicken suit. This is Help from a Hypocrat, the worst advice from the dumbest people you know.

Listen to Help from a Hypocrite as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network available on the IFAR Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. At our back. I have a question. So am I mistaken? You're like a sports guy, right? Like you're into sports? I can be, yes.

Okay, I have a story that I want to ask you about. Do you know much about Sandool? I'm familiar. Okay. So I saw this story last week and I don't know much about sports. Actually, this is the only sports that I know anything about, which is track, who ran track in high school. But Gabby Thomas, she's this Harvard educated.

Black Track Olympian. She won a gold medal in 2024 during the Summer Olympics. She is awesome. We love her. But she experienced this like very scary hostile behavior from somebody who basically was trying to, according to them, throw her, like have like get in her head to the point where she was not able to compete. So they could bet against her. Exactly. So last week she posted on X that a man followed her around the track and took pictures as she signed autographs for fans who were mostly children and shouted racist personal insult at her. So this dummy who did this also went on X and bragged, yeah, I made Gabby lose by heckling her and then it made my parley win and then posted a screenshot from the betting platform

Fanduil. So when I saw this, I was like, well, I'm sure the betting platform would probably be very interested to know that one of their betters is in his own words, like trying to influence the sport that he's gambling on. And Fandul found him, booted him from the platform. It was like he's never going to be able to be on this platform again. They said, bandwold condemns in the strongest terms, abusive behavior directed toward athletes. Threatening or harassing athletes is unacceptable.

That's good. It is good. So I have to say, like, I look this guy up on Twitter, even though he deleted the tweet that was bragging about harassing Gabby. This is somebody who, like, clearly is very interested in sports betting. And I found this very alarming stat from ESPN. A study commission last year by the NCAA found that abuse. by angry sports betters is one of the most common types of harassment college athletes receive making up at least 12% of publicly posted social media abuse. And I don't know. It just really,

I don't think I had really checked in on how the rise and normalization of online sports betting has, like, the way that that has kind of like shaped our online discourse, if it is in fact is linked to a rise in online harassment of athletes. Like I found that to be like, actually genuinely kind of alarming. So Arefusson, who is the other co-host of the 60-minute drill, the podcast to do with Western Kabuki's Caleb Wilson, did a great piece about this last year. I think all of the sports gambling companies,

I think all of them should be shut down. I think all of their executives should be put in prison forever. I think it is one of the most socially corrosive creations of all time. I think I live in Las Vegas. I believe that gambling should be, if it is allowed to exist, which is a moral question to itself, it should be so heavily regulated that companies like Fanjubes,

should be criminalized. Instead, they are growing like wildfire. I think that man in question should be in jail for a long time. I think in fact, if we had any tooth, he should be done for attempting some kind of tortious interference. He should be, like, make up illegal

fucking thing and start pulling him for criminal proceedings because that's how you actually make an example of people. It's horrible as to say. But if you go and chase a black woman trying to do a job because you want to make a little money, you should have to, you should get your life kind of ruined by the legal process. Even if you, even if you win, there should be a social punishment for such actions.

Not only for doing it to a person, but for a person of color within any industry, already kind of like fighting against the racial horrors of America, you should, it should be so scary to do that that you shouldn't do it. Instead, the black woman is the one that has to be scared. And the guy, oh no, I can't bet on Fangio. I bet you can bet you can bet on draft kings. I bet you can just go into any fucking casino but there's never there's never actual real consequences because I don't even

even looking up the story briefly I don't see much horror around this this should be like but I guess what should be front page news right now the Gestapo or the like it's just horrifying every day in new horror

yeah I stand by the thing about the sports betting companies being killed well I'm curious like it is wild that rather than basic consequences for what I think is like just an obvious social negative. These companies have been able to amass more and more power. They become more ubiquitous.

And they're all over college campuses. And I don't have any data around this, but I can only imagine that the consequences for young men and boys is like not great. Well, think about it. That's the other thing with the whole, oh, what we're doing with young men. It's like, I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't have legalized sports gambling and made it hypermasculine. and also as the right wing sunk as much money as possible into big strong men looking strong

and blaming woman and people of color for everything, not spend money on everything and just sit back and go, isn't the world nice? I don't know, the whole man thing as well is really, and this is a very male-dominated. The sports gambling thing is male-dominated. You've got people that do YouTube channels about how you can scam your way through palais. It's just like you have this media cluster around it that's, growing as well. It's just proof that a lot of modern business doesn't have

any morals at all. And we don't have governments that believe, thanks to Ronald Reagan and his ilk, that we don't have like regulation or things that would stop businesses from growing rapaciously. And I mean, my whole bit is that growth is behind every fucking problem we have. The desperation for growth

and everything is fucking up everything. And sports gambling is it too, but it goes to Joe Rogan on the left thing. It's like they grew into an opportunity. I don't think that I think it's an easy way out to blame right wing podcasts for turning men against the Democrats when the

Democrats just offered nothing to anyone ever and in fact threw everyone under the bus and now they're throwing young men under the bus which I mean you can do that maybe it's right I don't know but you don't seem to be trying to appeal to any voter right now just going like

ah! Did you see that? That's terrible. Someone should do something to you're a senator. I know. but what could I possibly do? I attend Senate hearings. Fuck no. I got nothing. I'm not busy.

I just don't want to go. Strongly worded letter. You know? It's the tool in their toolbox. Yes. You know right wing people love to read. Kill me. Oh.

Ed, this is honestly talking to you about these stories is, I don't know, This is a different kind of episode than you usually do because I feel like you. I'm sorry. I just kind of like. No, I do not apologize. This is exactly why I wanted to have you on. And one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is literally whenever AI comes up,

even tangentially in any episode we do, someone in the Spotify comments will be like, you should talk to Ed. Like this is like a hand like there are a handful of people who are like whenever anything comes up. Like listen to Ed, talk to Ed. So thank you for. And also to those listeners, Bridgett. supported better offline from the literal beginning. Not just should talk to Ed.

Bridgett has been there very early. She deserves tons of credit. It's not like she has been behind. She's been ahead. Oh, well, you know, I remember when you, when y'all announced you were doing the show, I was genuinely so excited exactly because of what you were just talking about, how especially in the podcast space,

there are just so few people who are having these conversations who really want to kind of shed some light on all the, ego and lies and bullshit and scams that I feel like has become so normalized in the space. I could probably count on two hands how many voices I think are out there

in the podcast space specifically who are doing that. And there needs to be more. And also, I don't think enough of them love technology because that's the fundamental thing. I'm pissed off because they took something from us. I'm pissed off because I like the computer and I love the people like, yeah, the whole cool, the media thing is the result of the internet,

my whole following is the internet, my life's the internet. the drill crying tweet if you've seen that one. Now get the fuck out of my office. And I think that that is missing from a lot of tech cynics as well. It's just that they want something to be mad at rather than

they're mad that something was taken. Also, if all this money and power went somewhere good, imagine how much better the world could be. I don't even mean that in the vague, vacuous, non-profit-flavored, oh, even the world be good. It'd be more fun.

There'd be more exciting things. We could have more solid, who could love each other more. They could be more interesting and fun art made. There could be more support for social issues. Instead, it's just this fucking smudge on the world right now where nothing's happening, hundreds of billions of dollars going into fucking nothing.

It's depressing, but it can be better. And it gets better by taking their names. Don't let them, don't let, make Google Search hate them. I fucked up part of Google Search. That's one of my proudest moments. How, though, tell me. So I did an episode last year called The Man Who Killed Google Search. or the man that destroyed Google Search.

And there's this guy called Propagore Raghavan. I found his details in the Department of Justice antitrust trial. They had all these emails. And I basically found the story of this guy who was the head of ads called Propagar Raghavan, who rap-fucked this guy, Ben Goams, pushed him out. And literally the emails are like, Ben Goemes or Shashi Thakur, I think, one of the engineers, goes, I'm just worried that all Google cares about his growth. To the point that when I read that, I had to go and check the URL to make sure I was not being

prank. but it was my biggest story and now Prabagal Ragavan has been given a technical title he's like a chief technologist he was the head of everything and now he's the chief technologist they put him out back they put him in an office without a door handle inside

he's still in that office yeah eight hours a day all right Prabagall you can leave now your stock's still vesting mate but don't talk to anyone don't plug in your computer piece of shit I'd love to meet that guy but he hates me

and he should That's incredible. I mean, you said something. I mean, I like you, I love technology. The reason why I make a tech podcast is because I love tech. I want it to be better. I want technology to be something that feels good and free again. I like genuinely remember how it felt to stumble upon weird corners of the internet that you could just tell we're labors of love, like weird flash sites and shit like that. And I mean, you can really tell when someone who is talking about the internet who does so for a living doesn't. come from a place of loving tech and like being crazy about computers and crazy. Yeah, I do think it's like cranks who hate everything. They don't actually want it to be good. They want something to complain about. Or, or they don't love technology. They love the tech industry.

Which is a sick position. That is gossip journalist. I think that's the majority of them. It's scary. And I'd love to be proven wrong. Well, Ed, where can folks listen to better offline? where can folks read the newsletter? Betrothline.com.

It's, I bought that website for a reason. Betrothline.com you can find all my crap there. You click the links. You'll find my profile. You find my everything. And it has the big skull on it. That's how you know you're in the right place. And we're selling merch now, which I'm so happy with.

I was just going to say the merch is good. It's banging. It's so good. I don't, the only reason I'm in Las Vegas, it's really hot. Otherwise I'd be wearing my hoodie. Like, it's fucking, like the zip-up hoodies are fucking banging. I love it. I love that we have.

good merch. I wouldn't accept it. We're going to do challenge coins. Yeah. Is that your cat in the background, by the way? Yes. I've been trying to keep him from jumping up because he pisses me off when I'm trying to do stuff. People like, oh, I can't. I'm like, get the fuck out of my camera shot. God, I love him dearly, but he's a pain in the ass. Wait, what is his name? Howell. Howell, well, Ed and Howell, thank you both for being here. Thank you for all of your work. If you want to follow me around the internet, I'm on TikTok at Bridgett Murray. I'm on Instagram at Bridgett, Maryn, D.C., and we're on YouTube if there are no girls on the internet. Thank you much so much for being here, Ed.

We will see you on the internet. Thank you. If you're looking for ways to support the show, check out our merch store at tangoity.com slash store. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangooty.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangooty.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd.

It's a production of IHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. Edited by Joey Pat. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio,

check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel,

help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano.

It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoffs. moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was funny. You just understood. That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Mark keep coming to you. He's like, you know I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. I'm Cheryl Stray, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. I'm excited to share that I have a new podcast called Mind

Over Mountain. In each episode, I interview athletes, adventurers, and adrenaline seekers to discuss the inner landscapes that informed and inspired their extraordinary feats. So we, too, can better understand how to face our own seemingly insurmountable challenges. Listen to Mind Over Mountain every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There are times when the mind becomes a difficult place to live. This is David Eagleman with the Inner Cosmos podcast. For Mental Health Awareness Month, we'll talk with singer-songwriter Jewel about anxiety. I started living in my car and then my car got stolen.

I was having panic attacks. I was agoraphobic. This is a month of deeply personal and honest conversations about what happens when the brain goes off course. Listen to Inner Cosmos on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.