There Are No Girls on the Internet - Jeff Bezos’ tacky wedding; RFK Jr. hawks wearables; Racist AI TikToks; Minnesota murderer's data brokers; AI bands on Spotify; BarbieGPT – NEWS ROUNDUP!

Episode Date: June 28, 2025

This week, Bridget is joined by Producer Mike to break down the tech stories you might have missed. Weird AI-generated videos depicting Black women in racist tropes and stereotypes are suddenly showing up in our feeds. Bridget provides an update on how the videos have rapidly evolved even since Tuesday's deep-dive episode on the topic: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tiktok-minstrel-shows-are-mocking-black-women-using/id1520715907?i=1000714408197 A band that seems to have been created by AI has hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners on Spotify. Who is behind it? This rabbit hole goes deep: https://musically.com/2025/06/26/velvet-sundown-are-a-seemingly-ai-generated-band-with-325k-spotify-listeners/   RFK Jr is a reckless liar who is destroying our health system, but he'd rather talk about wearable devices: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/trump-science-health-purge/ The man who murdered Minnesota Speaker of the House Melissa Hortman seems to have used data brokers to find her address. Americans should demandA list of legal-but-sketchy brokers: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25977763-1-1/ Mattel struck a deal with OpenAI to explore fun, not at all dangerous ways to put AI in children's toys. This prototype looks particularly promising: https://www.tiktok.com/@filmsmtvofficial/video/7154710464696438043 Conspirituality podcast on MAHA: https://www.conspirituality.net/episodes/259-maha-is-project-2025-trojan-horse Our TANGOTI episode about data shady brokers: https://podcasts.apple.com/ye/podcast/doxxing-101-our-personal-information-is-available-online/id1520715907?i=1000577153294See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. 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 head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

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business. Call 844-844 IHeart. 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 podcast. 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

some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was hungry. 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. 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 installment of our week. Briefly News Roundup, where we round up all the stories at the intersection of text, culture, and social media that you might have missed so you don't have to.

And I am thrilled to be joined once again by my producer, Mike. Mike, thank you for being here. Bridget, thank you for having me. I wanted to first give a little bit of an update on a story that you and I covered together earlier this week about this wave of AI-generated videos that are flooding TikTok right now that feature black people, typically black women, but some black men. in these very over-the-top exaggerated racist ways to the point where I argue they are essentially

the new iteration of minstrel shows for the digital age. Minstrel shows were an incredibly popular form of entertainment in the 19th century where mostly white performers would wear black face to make fun of black people and portray us as stupid and lazy. But they weren't just entertainment. They were also a way to affirm a political and social climate hostile to black folks after slavery. This is essentially what these videos on TikTok are doing just using AI.

And we made that episode. We recorded it about a week ago on Saturday. It has not even been a full week. And already I have seen more and more iterations of these videos on TikTok. One of the hallmarks of these videos that we talked about in that episode was really a deep dive into where these AI generated videos are coming from, the historical context of them, the technological context of how they're being made and what they say about our culture today. one of the points that we made is that AI generated content oftentimes gets more and more extreme. And so in just a week's time, I feel like the version of these videos we were talking about has already kind of been cranked to 11 in terms of the extreme racist qualities that I am seeing in this kind of content. Yeah, 100%. After we recorded that episode over the weekend, I created a TikTok account, which is not something that I had before.

and my 4U page was just filled with those kinds of videos. And the ones that are there today, I looked just a couple of hours ago before we got on the mic here. There's so much more extreme than the ones that you and I were concerned about just like four or five days ago. So just more extreme. And to be clear, they started off extreme. and now they're like so over the top,

I can't believe that I'm looking at a mainstream social media platform like TikTok and not some kind of like video powered for Chan. No, absolutely. So there's one in particular that I saw that I want to talk about now because it honestly not only has the racism been cranked to 11, but it's gotten even more horrifying, if you can believe that. So one of the types of these videos that we talked about in that episode was what people are calling slave talk,

which kind of shows these AI-generated enslaved people imagined if they had social media and they were vlogging their experiences on the plantation. And so that is bad enough, end of sentence. However... Yeah, the premise is insane to begin with. It's noxious. It's terrible. Noxious is a better word.

They have found a way to make it even worse because I saw videos where someone was making these, slave talk AI generated TikTok videos that showed an enslaved person, you know, using AI to demonstrate what their time on a plantation might have been like and having them say, oh, slavery wasn't that bad. I don't actually mind it. Being an enslaved person on a plantation isn't so bad. But they were utilizing TikTok shop to use these videos to sell a solar powered sun hat that has fans built into it. And so it was an enslaved person being like, oh, my time on the plantation is hard, but this hat has made it so much easier. Go to my TikTok shop and my bio to buy this hat.

Now, I will say enough people complained about this video that TikTok took it down. So it's no longer available. They're no longer selling this hat using abhorrent AI generated enslaved people fan fiction. However, this is what I mean. I feel like this really, even just in a few days since we made that. episode about this kind of content, the fact that somebody would put this kind of content on TikTok and then utilize this kind of content to sell a sun hat really just says a lot. I mean, I guess I got to say I'm happy TikTok took it down.

But when I talked about the ways that I thought that this kind of content really said something about how extreme we are willing to go and how AI really allows us to do that at scale, when I made this episode I didn't think it was going to get this dark and it got so dark so fast so dark so fast and something about using the technology

to sell such a pedestrian item as like a solar powered sun hat with a little fan on it is like extra dark like it's it's so almost benign

built on such an absurd marketing premise that it's actually like unimaginably dark. It's pretty bad. And there's just something so dystopian about it. And, you know, I made this point in our deep dive about this kind of content that it really bothers me that this is the use case for AI. We're being told that this is the linchpin of our economy. It's going to be so important. It's going to transform everything. and the way that we are seeing it used is just so small and gross, making what I would argue is AI-generated minstrel show content to sell cheap junk on TikTok shop. I just, we're cooked. It's just it's bad. I will say one pivot of this kind of content that I did see is in the wake of the news that

the United States bombed Iran. So most of the content that we talked about in that episode was about how black women were being shown in this incredibly negative, racist, stereotypical light where we were aggressive, violent, loud, ghetto, all of that. But in the wake of the bombing of Iran, this video went viral that showed what I would have thought was a obviously AI-generated black woman who is supposed to be a soldier who is celebrating this bombing with her other soldiers. and she's saying, you know, blessed are the... She's saying what sounds like a Bible quote, like, blessed are the peacemakers. And so even though so much of the AI-generated content that is flooding TikTok that depicts black women now is negative,

what's also interesting to me is that I don't think it's a coincidence that they chose an AI-generated black woman to be in this video, you know, that I think is pretty clearly AI-generated propaganda to make the United States, like, really excited about the fact that we bombed Iran. And when I saw this video, I thought, well, this is obviously AI. Like, no one's going to think this is a real person. And I have to kind of say, like, the comments of that video surprised me in that the majority of the comments that I saw did not seem to clock that it was AI. And it just, I mean, I'm not saying anything groundbreaking here, but the ability of AI to generate.

to generate propaganda at scale, it was worrisome. And I think especially using black women as a symbol of that, I mean, I think whoever created that video chose to have it centered on an AI-generated black women because I do think there's a narrative

that people trust black women when it comes to political happenings, you know, the phrase of like trust black women. And so I think that it's interesting how black womanhood is used as this, easy shorthand when you want to get people on your side of your propaganda video, but also you could swipe up and you can see a video of that same black woman being depicted in an incredibly demeaning, disrespectful, racist way. And so it's like, I mean,

when do we get to have our humanity depicted? It's either we're this mouthpiece for like, jingoistic, rah, ra, American sentiment, or we're being compared to animals in racist AI-generated content. There's no in between. No one is showing our actual humanity in any of this content, I guess is what I'll say. Like when we first recorded that episode about a week ago, it was a problem that people were noticing and talking about like, hey, what's up with all these strange videos? And it's only gotten worse.

It is interesting and commendable that TikTok is taking some of these videos down. But, you know, that's not a solution on the same scale of the people who are putting these videos up, right? Like if there are a thousand people creating a thousand of these videos every hour and putting them up and only the most popular generate enough reaction and calls to take them down the TikTok or whatever platform actually takes action, that's not an effective. solution. So it's going to be really interesting to see what happens with this. Like, it can't just keep going on and getting worse. Something's got to break. What I was doing platform accountability work and like working with the leaders at platforms like TikTok, who I used to sit down with regularly, some of the folks who worked there about their content moderation policies, that was the biggest frustration was that it was like playing whackamol.

And there's no whackamol strategy. Like, I thought we were doing good work. And I'm proud of the work that we did. But, you know, one comes down to come up in its place. And so, yeah, I think that it really demonstrates the need for TikTok to do something meaningful if they want to get a handle of this kind of content on their platform. And we have already seen just in the last few days how much this content has taken off, become more extreme, become more racist, and really ratchet it up what they're doing.

So I think it's great TikTok took this one. one video down, but that's certainly not going to be enough to turn the tides of this. Yeah, and we see that all over the place and not just this category of videos, but like health misinformation, vaccine misinformation, political attacks, like, whackamol is not an effective solution. Wackable is like one step removed from just giving up. So we will put the link to our deep dive into AI-generated digital blackface, I guess, minstrel content on TikTok in the show notes. Check it out. I'm pretty proud of that episode.

So if you haven't listened to it, please check it out. Let's take 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 Mike. Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an a cappella band with their between

songs banter. There's that worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation to the group.

The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but 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 IHeart 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 podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart.

Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-8-4-I-Hart. 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 out of last. 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, 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. Oh, yeah. 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 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. Sike, I'm a comedian. I'm not qualified to give good advice. Join me and my comedian friends as we riff rant and 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 of chicken suit. Hey, cream cream of chicken soup. This is Help from a Hypocrite, the worst advice from the dumbest people you know. Listen to Help from Hypocrite as part of the Mike Coultera podcast network

available on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Now that we've got the easy, breezy banter out of the way, should we get into the news roundup? Well, I mean, speaking of horrible, noxious things, we have to talk about the absolutely enraging tragedy that happened last week in Minnesota, where Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were gunned down in what authorities say was a politically motivated killing.

She will lie in state at the Capitol Retunda this week a day of head of their funeral. I mean, reading this was sort of like the saddest milestone, the saddest most enraging milestone I've ever read. Hortman will be the first woman and one of fewer than 20 Minnesotans accorded the honor of lying in state at the state capital retenda, which something about that really horrified me that in order to be the first woman to have this honor, she has to be murdered in an act of political violence. It makes me sick. And I know this happened a bit ago, but I'm still as enraged about this as I was when I heard about it.

And I think one of the reasons why I'm so enraged is how quickly we moved on from this story. You know, I would argue that a story in which a person committed what is pretty obviously an act of like political violence and terror on multiple elected officials, the fact that that was like over and done within a few days just does not sit right with me. And it really just reminded me how much the mainstream media really just allows right-wing, in person. Luensors to set the agenda. Once it was clear, the attacker was a Trump supporter, the right wing media stopped talking about it because for a while they were like, the shooter was a Democrat, he was a leftist, da-da-da-da. Once they couldn't say that anymore, they just stopped talking about it. And I'm enraged at the way that the legacy media really just followed suit. You know, I knew I wanted to talk about this story today. So I was searching for

some of the news articles written about it. And most of the most recent coverage I saw, was either from local Minnesota press or global press. And I thought, how shameful. Like, aren't we ashamed? Yeah, it is shameful. Like I say, it really, I think, demonstrates how thoroughly right-ring influencers are just able to control the media right now.

This isn't a story that serves them any longer. They thought it was for a little while. Senator Mike Lee made some really regretful comments in the immediate aftermath of the killings. But after it became clear that this was not a flattering story for the right, they just stopped talking about it. And once they stopped talking about it, apparently everybody else did too. And the media did as well.

It really feels like a pretty major event we should be talking about. We just, we aren't used to political leaders being killed. in America. It's a very unusual and scary story. And the way that the media has so quickly moved on makes it seem normal and almost expected in ways that are wrong. I think every American should be like really upset and concerned and horrified. I mean, I think you said it. I think that's the point of why you move on to normalize it, to normalize political violence against people who don't go along with the status quo. And I think in some of the commentary that folks have said, you know, Lee included, I think that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to say,

this is, this is, people should expect this. And, you know, we've seen other elected officials talk about how they were afraid to speak up, afraid to go against Trump. I think this is what they're afraid of, you know. And I think the fact that the media, is essentially doing that dirty work for them by saying, you're right, we will normalize it by not acting like it's a big deal. And then it becomes not a big deal. I think that you're right, that this is a different kind of thing than what we're used to seeing in the United States. And the way that we have just so quickly moved into, like, oh, this is normal. Maybe it'll get three days of coverage and we'll move on to something else really is telling. And it also sparked another

thing that we talk about on the show a lot, which is just, you know, I was really thrilled to see that Mamdani won the election in New York. And I'm sad to say that one of my first thoughts was, I hope he has security. I hope he's safe. Like, it, that's not, that's not the way it should be. We should not be worried about the safety of elected officials and political leaders in this way. And one of the reasons I was interested in talking about this on the podcast is because it really brings up an issue that we talk quite a bit about. And that is just the way that our data privacy or lack thereof in this country really does pose a specific threat to women and other marginalized folks in politics, in government, in just like local civic spaces. Because how did

the attacker find the lawmaker's address? Super shady data broker sites that in the United States, because of our lack of any kind of meaningful, functional data privacy laws, allow for anybody's information to be easily found online if you're willing to pay for it. MSNBC published the items the attacker had on him during the murders, and it included photos of a notepad that they found in his car with a long list of people search sites where anybody can basically use them to find the home address of anybody in the U.S. So we know that before he killed Hortman and her husband, he shot State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman, first. So the gunman had notebooks in his car containing the names of more than 45 Minnesota State.

and federal public officials, including Hortman's name and her home address. Senator Ron Wyden said in a statement, the accused Minneapolis assassin allegedly used data brokers as a key part of this plot to track down and murder Democratic lawmakers. Congress doesn't need any more proof that people are being killed based on data for sale to anyone with a credit card. Every single American safety is at risk until Congress cracks down on this sleazy industry, and he is 100% correct. Yeah.

And I mean, this is the most egregious possible example of the sort of harms that can happen when everybody's personal information is just out on the internet available. But there are so many other harms that are more common than murder. Like people have their identity stolen, people get harassed, things that happen so much more routinely that do not. reach this level, it shouldn't take, like, highly visible public figures getting murdered to call attention to this very serious problem. And yet here we are. No, and this is not even the first time that this kind of thing has happened. So back in 2020, this men's rights activist used information that he got from a data broker

site to find Esther Salsa, a judge who was appointed by Obama, who had dismissed his lawsuit challenging the men's only draft. He used that information that he got from a data broker site to find and break into her home and shoot and kill her child. And so if you're listening and you're thinking, well, certainly my home address is not on one of these shady-ass sites. I have never put my address on the internet. I am so sorry to be the one to tell you this.

Your address is probably on the internet. Because how do people's information get on these shady-ass sites? We did a whole episode about this with the founder of an organization that helps women avoid doxing, which we'll link to in the show notes. But if you've ever voted, if you've ever had the utilities turned on your home, if you've ever paid a parking ticket, odds are your information is available for purchase online. And here's the kicker. It might have even been put there for sale by your local government. It is a travesty. It is disgusting. It is disgraceful. And it is dangerous. So the police found a list of 11 data brokers in the SUV driven by the man who murdered the Minnesota State Representative, her husband. And the list naming the data brokers also included notations about which sites were free to use and how much information they required to obtain detailed data about the individuals being searched. This is according to an FBI affidated. So yeah, he just basically was able to go on to

these shady people finder data broker sites to find this information and it led to two people being murdered. This is just so dangerous. I mean, the lack of us having any kind of meaningful data privacy laws in this country can lead to people literally getting murdered. I think part of what makes it so maddening for me is just the fact that it doesn't need to be this way. As a society, we could choose to put privacy protections in place, but we don't. We've allowed tech companies and scammers who profit off of selling these data brokerage services. we've allowed them to convince us that it's already too late. We should just abandon the idea of privacy entirely and embrace digital nihilism.

And I hear a lot of people of like my parents' generation espouse these digital nihilist ideas. Like, oh, my data's out there. What does it matter? Blah, blah, blah. But it does, you know? Like either that or the idea that any attempts to protect privacy would be some version of overbearing regulation. that's going to stifle industry. But that's all nonsense.

Like all of it, we don't have to choose between privacy and innovation. Lawmakers and regulators could put in place workable solutions to protect privacy. But for various reasons, we just choose not to. We don't have to live like this. Like, we deserve better. Yeah, we do. We deserve better. And they're like, in Europe they don't live like this.

And people in California have protections that the rest of us don't have. Like there are models. We, it's, it's a choice to live like this. Melissa Hortman and her husband should still be alive. We don't have to live like this. We shouldn't have to live like this. Let's take 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. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation.

The group. The yarn herds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard. They're open. 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 ad-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 podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-Eyheart. What's up, fam? This Isaiah Thomas.

And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast Point Game is about defining 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 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, 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 Jordanano. 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. Sike! I'm a comedian! I'm not qualified to give good advice.

Join me and my comedian friends as we riff rant and 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 of 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 Hypocrat as part of the Mike Cultura Podcast Network available on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Well, speaking of ways that we deserve better and ways that we don't have to live like this, did you see RFK Jr.'s big plug about wearables? He plugs the stupidest shit. Everything that comes out of his mouth is so stupid, but yes. Okay, so health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced one of the largest HHS campaigns in history, his words, to encourage the use of wearables to track health conditions. You might be asking, what's a wearable? Things like the aura ring, the Fitbit, rings, bands, watches, and even clothes that use tech to track human vital signs. It can track how many steps you take, your heart rate, how many calories you've burned, all that kind of stuff.

So RFK Jr. said that Americans buying wearables are one of the keys to his plan to making America healthy again. He said, we think that wearables are a key to the Maha agenda, making America healthy again. My vision is that every American is wearing a wearable within four years. They can see what food is doing to their glucose levels, their heart rates, and a number of other metrics as they eat it. He also tweeted that wearables put the power of health back in the hands of the American people. This is horse shit. This is absolute horseshit. And I say this as somebody who wears a wearable.

I went through quite a lot of trouble to find one that I felt like was like the least smart. Like the, you know, if you've got a smartphone, like the opposite, the dumbest. wearable I could find. So I'm not anti-wearable, but this idea that he could gut public health infrastructure and then move that responsibility onto individuals by saying it's our responsibility to buy a consumer product that monitors our health is absolute horseshit for so many reasons. First, philosophically, the idea that health and optimizing one's health means giving hundreds of dollars to a private company for them to be able to access sensitive information about your body and your health is absurd. I am not buying.

that. And so what these products sometimes monitor is so much more than like your heartbeat and how much you sleep. Kevin Johnson, the CEO of security testing and consulting at the company's Secure Lab said, we are not just talking about heartbeat. We're not just talking about your sleep schedule. We're talking about your location. We're talking about most of these apps tie into your contacts, right? So the fact that our FK Jr. is saying that we should all be moving toward wearing wearables in four years and that that is going to be the ideal way for us to keep to take charge of our health, I completely reject the idea that giving more of my private, intimate information to private companies and paying for the pleasure is me taking charge of my health.

And physically, wearables are notoriously not reliable. CNET did a study and found that even good wearables, wearables that you, that like have a pretty good reputation, are often inaccurate. it. So if you're trying to like casually measure your sleep, casually measure your steps, casually measure how much calories you've burned in a day, fine. But if you are relying on a wearable in lieu of actual access to medical testing or information to meaningfully monitor your health, no, bad. It does not work that way. Wearables and the kind of information they provide is simply not a substitute for a robust public health infrastructure.

Yeah, not even close. It's such a joke. I mean, it falls apart in multiple ways. For one, his whole thing is like, make America healthy again, where he wants to return us to some previous, like, state of the glory days of health. Were people wearing wearables during that, like,

previous heyday? No, not at all. You know, his big initiatives are like getting people to not take vaccine. getting people to eat more beef tallow and less seed oils, stuff like that. Like none of these things are going to be immediately visible by wearables. Like wearables are fine. They're great.

You know, people who like them, I use one. It provides interesting information. but it's not going to be the huge difference maker in the health of a national public population. Honestly, it's not even worth me going down the sort of like, it's so ridiculous on its face that getting into the specifics of how it won't work and why it doesn't make sense, it's almost not even worth it. Yes, that is exactly right. That's how, unfortunately, how we have to treat everything that comes out of his idiot mouth.

He just says such stupid stuff all the time. At first I thought he was just like a dumb person, but I no longer think that. I think he knows exactly what he's doing. I think he is performing the like shapes of an informed health official, knowing full well that he is doing so deceptively. His references don't back up what he says. He talks in the same meeting he'll talk about like,

demanding a gold standard for vaccines, and then he'll turn around and pull up a bunch of bullshit about wearables when, like, there's no evidence that where, you know, putting on wearables is going to improve the overall health of some population. There's zero evidence for that. He's just all over the place, and you're absolutely right that, like, engaging in his, the things he says in good faith is a losing battle. It's, like, more whackable. everything that comes out of his mouth is a goddamn mold that needs to be whacked.

So I absolutely agree with you that I don't think he's just like a stupid person. I think he knows exactly what he's doing and this is all part of a larger agenda. There is a very good episode of one of my favorite podcasts in spirituality. I don't recommend other podcasts a ton on this show, but like I will put the episode in the show notes because you need to hear it. It's so fascinating if you care about this stuff. But basically they were saying that Make America Healthy again is really really. all about shifting public health from a public concern to a private concern that will be managed by a network of loosely slash, if at all, regulated private companies, whether it's bogus

health testing companies or supplement companies, and now wearable. So I listened to that episode maybe a month ago, and I was like, that makes so much sense. That makes so much sense. And then, lo and behold, today he's like, oh, you know, everybody should be buying wearables in four years time. Every American should have a wearable. That's really what, that's all it takes to make America healthy again. And oftentimes we'll have these make America healthy again influencers getting a cut of that because those influencers are now legitimately in the administration. So then you have situations like the administration's nominee for search in general, Dr. Casey means, who co-founded a glucose monitoring company called Levels and sells a monitoring app as well as other

kind of bullshit wellness products. And so that whole idea is, shifting the burden and responsibility of health from the public sphere to the private sphere, instead of there being, okay, like robust access to public health, robust access to healthcare, all of that. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, scam testing that is loosely regulated in supplements. And also we'll make a little cut of that on the side. Yeah. And also, these grifters have built their whole enterprise on a foundation, of like flooding the zone with scammy information on social media and just overwhelming people with information and like shiny statistics

and stories that like feel one way even though maybe they don't like actually connect to a deeper impact in terms of health and the thing with wearables is that they produce a ton of information. And it's, it truly is a way of taking that scamy online universe of health misinformation that has so enriched these scummy people like RFK Jr. And the whole network of his friends who sell supplements online, it takes that whole scammy information ecosystem and moves it offline onto people's bodies and into people's health. And it's bad. It's bad. We shouldn't do that. And there's been so much research and reporting

about the fact that wearables, and again, I'm not anti-wearable. I wearer myself to measure my physical activity in my sleep. Like I'm not anti-wearable. But there's so much research about the fact that simply having more access to information about your vitals and your physicality does not actually make you healthier. And in some ways, that level of surveillance actually might be perhaps counterintuitively making you less healthy. Right. And so more information is not always the thing that makes you healthier. And again, even if it were, wearables are not a substitute for having access to health care, being able to see a doctor, being able to get actual medical tests from a doctor, not some sort of scam testing company, actual public health infrastructure.

And I just hate the way that this just turns our health into just another thing these people can grift off, another way to scam. Yeah, I'm not anti-wearable either. I think wearables are very valuable. And, you know, if he were out there talking about the importance of wearables as part of a new initiative that's going to connect people and their bioinformatics with health care providers who will monitor them and help them make health decisions as part of some sort of cohesive plan to improve people's health. That would be something I would want to listen to, but there's no, there's none of that follow through in what he talks about. He's just like, People should have wearables. That's where it begins and ends. Yeah. That's not a health care plan. No, it's not. That's a plan to sell stuff.

Speaking of selling stuff, I have to talk about this story about Mattel and Open AI. So are you ready for an AI enabled Barbie doll or an AI enabled Hot Wheels car? Because Mattel, the toy maker behind Barbies and Hot Wheels, announced a partnership with Open AI that would result in AI products marketed to kids. So to be clear, we don't fully know what the product will be just yet. They're keeping it pretty tight-lived. But I already can tell you this, I hate it. One anonymous source told Axios that Mattel's plans for the AI partnership are still in early stages, so we'll probably know more soon. That source also said that the first product would probably not be marketed to kids who are under 13.

You're probably thinking, oh, they probably don't want harmful AI impacting very young kids. Don't get too excited. they're probably capping it at kids 13 and up because of OpenAI's age restrictions on its API, which prohibits users under the age of 13. Yeah. And also, just because the company says that they're not going to explicitly market some product to kids, that doesn't mean that kids still won't see that marketing and still want that product and obtain and use that product.

For example, vapes are illegal to market to kids. anybody under the age of 21. And yet, many high schoolers still use them. The most recent national survey suggested that 8% of high schoolers are using them regularly, right? And so just because something's not going to be marketed to kids, that is no guarantee that kids won't use it, not by a long shot. Yeah, exactly. So Ars-Tachnika spoke to public citizens' co-president Robert Weissman. who really laid out just how potentially harmful this could be to kids.

He said, Mattel should announce immediately that it will not incorporate AI technology into children's toys. Children do not have the cognitive capacity to distinguish fully between reality and play. Mattel should not leverage its trust with parents to conduct a reckless social experiment on our young children by selling toys that incorporate AI. So when asked about the specifics of what this toy might be like, both Mattel and Open AI were like, it's going to be fine. Trust us. It's all good. Don't worry about it. We got it. Oh, why are we even talking about this then? They said it's going to be fine. Yeah. They were like, it's, we got this. Don't even worry. All right. Next story. They both put out statements where they really glossed over everything. And I will say the statements kind of like said the right words to signal that they're like,

don't want to harm kids with this product. What's also funny to me is like how nothing the statement from open AI is. So in their statement, they promised, quote, to bring a new dimension of AI powered innovation and magic to Mattel's iconic brands. Like, I'm sorry, what does that mean? Like, what does that mean? Like, break that down for me. It really is giving like, it's Barbie, but now she harnesses the power of AI. Or like, but now she's got a new hat. You know, it just, it doesn't, it's like, it says a lot while saying nothing, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Yeah. So curious. what sort of toys are going to roll off the Mattel assembly line empowered with AI,

whatever that means? My God, when I was a kid, my brother had a Teddy Rubskin, which was the most terrifying item probably of my entire childhood. I don't know if people have ever experienced Teddy Rubskin, but it was this nightmare bear that I think you would put a tape. He had a tape cassette in his stomach, and you would put a tape in it. And the tape would play in his... mouth would move in this very

natural animatronic way and then it would play the tape as if he was speaking but it was, you could tell he wasn't speaking. Well, because it's like a stuffed animal but also like it didn't sync up right. Like it didn't look right. And my brother loved this fucking thing and it was

terrifying. I just hope for the sake of the next generation that they're not making some sort of AI enabled nightmare style teddy rub skin where the mouth moves, but it's fucking open AI chat GPT. Oh my God, nightmares. Just like feeding you sycophantic, like narcissism fuel about how much smarter you are than all the rest.

Oh, my God. I mean, have you seen that? I mean, I know you've seen it because we saw it together. The movie Megan. Yeah. So I love Megan. And it was probably the most fun I had at the theater of whatever year it came out. If you had not seen Megan, it's about a toy, like a doll that is for kids, that is.

like AI enabled, but like... It's basically this story. Yeah. It's basically this story, but also Megan is cunty. Like she like... Like, it's this story, but she serves cunt. Yeah. Also, they're making a sequel, by the way. Oh.

Which I will be like first in line to see. I'm sure it's going to be terrible, but I'll be first in line to see. But I mean, so that... I'm glad you compared this because it is very... I think that the movie Megan does... present a version of what this might be like, because we know so much about the ways that AI can be unsafe. For adults even, let alone for kids, Adam Dodge, the founder of a digital safety company that prevents cyber abuse called NTAB, pointed to a lawsuit where a grieving mom alleged her son

died by suicide after interacting with hyperrealistic chatbots. He said, AI is unpredictable, sycophantic and addictive. I don't want to be posting a year from now about how a hot wheels car encourage self-harm or that children are in committed romantic relationships with their AI Barbies. Like, come on.

A hot wheels that convinces a kid to self-harm? No, thank you. Yeah, it sounds ridiculous, but it's not outside the realm of possibility, right? Because it's people who are on the borderline of the danger zone already. who are most susceptible to being harmed by products like this. And I think everybody should be concerned about privacy.

Hopefully, Mattel is going to build in some good privacy protocols into their AI toys, I guess. I don't know. I would think long and hard about buying any of them for any kids in my life. But even aside from privacy, I think those other harms are even scarier. like encouraging suicides obviously about the worst, but LLMs are already causing mental problems for a lot of people. You know, last week on the News Roundup, you and Ed Zetron talked about chatbots falsely claiming to have therapy degrees

and doling out therapeutic advice inappropriately. Who knows what harm might come from that. But there's another story that came out about the same time about last week, about people just straight up losing their minds on Reddit. The moderators of a pro-AI subreddit so that they've had to ban over 100 people who kept spamming the subreddit with claims about how they created a new form of God or superintelligence.

You know, all that sycophantic behavior and flattery from the chatbots just reflecting back what they, what these people wanted to hear, it broke their brains. And Mattel thinks that they can safely put that stuff in the hands of children. I don't know. I just don't buy it. Like, yikes.

Yeah. And I mean, you make a good point. Like, we don't even fully know how AI is impacting adults yet. So why encourage children to be mixed up with this? And I do think it just, I mean, we've talked about this on the show before, but just a sort of philosophical idea of shouldn't something, be protected, like children and play, I think that's really sacred. And the fact that open AI sees this as just another thing to harness, another way to, you know, mine our kids, exploit their privacy, probably use whatever they're able to glean from those experiences

with children to train their AI further for their own benefit. It just feels very exploitative. And I mean, I would have, I would have thought for a society that so often, often gets up in arms about protecting the children. And nobody wants to protect kids more than me. But that is often our rallying cry. When it comes down to it, we fucking hate children. We don't want to protect children. We will not do the bare minimum to protect children.

The bare minimum is don't let Open AI give them this technology that we already know harms adult. And we don't even know that the full scale of that yet. That would be the very least we could do and we're not willing to do it. And so, yeah, I just, I hate this. It reminds me a lot of the way that we know that social media platforms like Facebook knowingly harm kids, girls as young as 13, and continue to knowingly do so because it makes them a profit. You know, I wish that we had a country where tech companies making more money was not as important as protecting our youth. But we don't live in that country.

But we love to grandstand about protecting the kids. when it's convenient, when it's just a bare minimum, we do nothing. 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 a cappella 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, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The yard birds, right?

That's the name. The Harvard Yardt. They're open. 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,

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Think Iheart. streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. 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 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 I said, 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 George 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 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 hypocrite, 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 of chicken suit. Hey, cream. Cream a chicken suit. This is Help from a Hypocrite, the worst advice from the dumbest people you know. Listen to Help from Hypocrite as part of the Mike Cultura Podcast Network available on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. Okay, so to say to really clear up top, this is one of those stories where I suspect I know what's going on, but I don't have any hard proof yet.

So really, I'm just asking questions about what the fuck. is going on here. You got me? Yeah. And that is the question of, is Spotify pushing AI-generated musicians who do not actually exist, but acting as if they do exist? So I suspect, and lots of the internet suspects, the answer is yes. So we have known that Spotify has had AI-generated music on their platform for a while. It hasn't gotten much traction. It's been kind of a quiet under-the-radar thing because people don't really enjoy 100% AI-generated music. However, now it might be that they are pushing this music in some kind of shady ways, while not disclosing that it's entirely AI-generated and these bands do not exist,

while kind of pretending like these bands are actually human. So Paul Bender, who is the bassist for the Australian band Hiatus Coyote, who I love, released a new solo project called The Sweet Enoughs, and Spotify pushed his new song to all of his followers. So he has lots of lots of followers on Spotify. So Spotify was like, hey, this guy who's at a band that you like has a new solo project, here's the song. Only one problem. This was not his song.

And in fact, he never authorized this. He said it was some of the most insanely clunky, amateurish, bizarre pieces of audio I have ever experienced. And then it happened again the next time with a distorted mumble rap track that appeared in his Spotify profile. That another, which he said, quote, basically sounded like crazy frog-era Euro trash. I'm going to say, that kind of makes me want to, like, it doesn't make me not want to hear it. It's not a genre I'm familiar with, but I am curious about. Crazy Frog era Eurotrash is not a genre you're familiar with?

Yeah. Am I missing out? I think you might be missing out. So in the following days, a fourth track surfaced. So he was convinced these songs were AI generated, and it made him realize just how easy it was for platforms to do this, to create AI-generated music and then push it out to his followers, lying, saying that it was him. He spoke to the Australian outlet ABC and said that he realized how easy it was to create an AI-generated song and upload it to an artist's profile. Within 10 minutes,

with zero hacking or authentication required, a track can be cleared and approved to be released in five to seven days. The whole process is effectively functioning on an honor-based system, which he says is incredibly inappropriate for the music industry, one of the slimyest, most parasitic places in the universe. Yeah, that's wild. I had no idea that. So, like, I could just upload a track and be like, oh, this is, this is the new Ariana Grande track.

Yeah, you could upload a track of you, like, farting into a microphone and being like, the new Ariana just dropped and Spotify will be like, sure, okay, yeah. That's crazy. According to Paul Bender, that's how it works. So this was back in 2020, right? The story gets even we're because now we might have another AI generated band being populated via Spotify's curated listener playlist. The band is called The Velvet Sundown, which even that name kind of made me like something about it says AI. The fact that it's like very close to the Velvet Underground, like it just.

Oh, I went down the rabbit hole. Like there was this great story about this. I don't want to like scoop your thunder here. But so it's the name comes from this video game from like 10 years ago. This like super like low profile video game that was released on Steam. It's like a murder mystery on a cruise ship. And the tagline is something like like you can't trust anyone and nothing is what it seems. and it's like, what a perfect name for an AI band.

This is some like taunting letters to the police. OJ. Simpson, if publishing a book called If I Did It, Nonsense. Like, this is some like, do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Listeners should really read that piece that we're going to link to about the Velvet Sundown. It is truly an interesting, weird little rabbit hole. Okay, so I did not find that information about the band's name, but I did do a deep dive. I am confident in saying that in my opinion, this band is AI generated.

There is just, there is not a stitch of evidence that this band exists outside of music streaming platforms. They say the names of the individual musicians, wink, wink, who are in the band, did a Google on them. There's not a stitch of evidence that any of them has existed ever online. I know that I sound like freaking Charlie and always sunny there is no Pepe Sylvia but I am confident in saying that in my opinion there is no Velvet Soundbound

this band doesn't exist all of the names that they have given to us are made up all the images that they give us are AI generated like we'll put it in the show notes but like when you look at this image it's like this is an AI generated band like these are not real people now that doesn't necessarily mean the band is fake like you bet this could be their like visual style

this is an AI generated band this band this band don't exist I'm very confident in saying this. So this band has more than 325,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. And it's not only on Spotify. It's also on Amazon Music, YouTube, and Deaser and other streaming services. So questions about this band first gathered steam on Reddit and then later TikTok where people were wondering why this random band with an obviously AI generated image and zero footprint across all of social media was being included on Spotify's curated playlists. The Velvet Sundown have 1,533 followers on Spotify, but 325,38 monthly listeners at the time of the publishing of this really good deep dive article on Music Ally. Their bio on Spotify includes a very glowing quote from the music magazine Billboard saying, quote, they sound like the memory of something you never lived and somehow make it feel real, which a Google search suggestion. has never been published by Billboard ever. That is not a quote. It is attributed to Billboard.

Billboard has never published it. And also, again, like if you were making a fake ban, it's like, oh, they sound like a memory of something that doesn't exist. Like, what are you trying to say? I mean, that is like the best description of AI I have ever heard. It really is. It absolutely is. It feels like a memory of something that I had never experienced.

But somehow, it feels real. It feels real. It feels right. So their music is on the streaming platform, Dizer, which is actually kind of helpful because that service has been developing technology to identify AI generated music and tag it publicly. So according to Dizer, some tracks on this album may have been created using AI. So for me, it's case closed, right? So we'll link to this music ally piece that they did a very impressive deep dive.

And they found that on Spotify, essentially, these potentially AI generated bands and songs are getting lots of play from being featured on the Spotify playlist. If you use Spotify, like I do, you know, their playlists are a big part of the platform. In my opinion, it's like the only thing that sets it apart from other music streaming platforms. But essentially, this fake band is being included on playlist that they have really no business being on. For instance, a bunch of their songs are on a Spotify playlist for the OC soundtrack. Remember that Fox show, Orange County? Oh, I sure do.

Oh, my God. Which, by the way, I watched it. every episode. I had the soundtrack. They put out a CD for that show. That's how deep into the trenches I was into this. So the OC was a show that was sort of known for its music and like big important moments of the show would have like a song and that song would be like the hit song for the rest of the week. So they have a playlist that's like an OC playlist which includes all of the famous musical moments from the show like Phantom Planet, Image and Heap, Jeff Buckley, Oasis, and 22 tracks from the Velvet Sundown.

So that means that 13.3% of the entire Orange County playlist on Spotify is Velvet Sundown, a potentially AI-generated fan that don't exist. Which is also, it's especially impressive music ally points out, given that the show The OC ran from 2003 to 2007, while both of the Velvet Sundown's albums to date came out in 2025. That's suspicious. It's one of the really interesting things that hit, me as I was reading about

this band because it's just a very interesting story and it's nice that it's not like fucking up kids or like destroying democracy so it feels like kind of a nice thing to engage with but I had never thought about the power

that the people who are creating these Spotify playlists have like it's a lot of power to shape what music people are listening to and I guess I had just never thought about it. I don't know, maybe I'm late to the party,

but I kind of feel it's like an under-the-radar thing. Oh, there is absolutely a lot of power in terms of curating these playlists. I've heard from bands who will randomly get a song added to a playlist, and it's like that song represents, like, more streams than they've ever had in their career. Now, Spotify don't have the best reputation when it comes to paying artists, so I don't know if that, like, that probably translates to, like, here's $2. because they don't pay artists very well. But if this whole saga with this AI-generated band

that doesn't really exist is to say anything about it, I think Spotify is probably trying to find a way to see if they can sidestep human artists altogether, right? Like, one little pesky thing about humans is that we really do prefer to be paid for our work. And so I think if they're like, how could we cut out this whole humans liking to be paid for their labor thing? it. And obviously Spotify would be doubling down on AI because their CEO, Daniel Eck, just announced a $702 million investment in Helsing, a German defense tech startup that

develops military drones and AI battlefield software, which, you know, when I think, when I think Spotify and like music and streaming, I think military drones and AI battlefield software. Sure, who doesn't? Why does everything have to be military drones? Yes. Everything is. military drones. Everything is AI and military. It went from everything's computer to everything is AI and military drones. God damn. Okay, well, can, will you indulge me? Can we talk about Jeff Bezos's wedding? Do you think he has some drones? Oh, I haven't heard about any, but you know they're in the mix somewhere. All right. Yeah, let's talk about Jeff Bezos's wedding. Is it going really well? Does

everybody love it? It's going, I mean, I'm loving gawking at what a train wreck it's been. So Jeff Bezos is marrying his partner, Lauren Sanchez this week, which by the way, for people who watch Housewives, she, like, when I first saw her picture, I was like, damn, is that Mia Thornton from Housewives? Look up a picture of Mia Thornton and look up a picture of Lauren Sanchez. They could be sisters. They look so much alike. Wow. So the wedding is scheduled for June 26th through June 28th in Venice, Italy. So first of all, just have to applaud what a tacky menagerie of fucked up

rich people bullshit this whole thing has been. Like, when you look through the way that Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos met, it's very scandalous. When you look through who's coming to this wedding, like the whole

thing is just a, I mean, it should really put to bed that wealthy people, like wealthy, wealthy, wealthy people have taste, have refinement, have poised, because this is the tackiest menagerie I have ever seen. And I love a tacky menagerie. Like I'm not even saying this as somebody who's looking down on this. But even for me, I'm like, wow, these people are trash. And you know who else agrees with me? The entire country of Italy, because the Italians are celebrating these nuptials by welcoming them with waves of protests. Yeah. The Italian,

Italians are people known for rejecting all things tacky. I mean, do you know how tacky? I mean, as an Italian, do you know how tacky you have to be for the Italians to be like, you need to leave? This is too much. It's too gaudy. It's too much. Yeah, it's too gaudy.

It's too much. Yeah. As an Italian-American, you have to really work to earn that. So activists with Greenpeace, no space for Bezos, and a UK-based group called Everyone Hates Elon. it's a pretty good name for their group. They have all been making their displeasure known this week with a large banner on Frolden St. Mark Square reading,

if you can rent Venice for your wedding, you can pay more tax, which like, fair point. Like, honestly, like, I would love to see,

I would love to see somebody disabute that. Like, freaking, I've, like, understatement of the century. Like, what if instead of renting Venice for their wedding,

everybody in America got health and insurance. Yeah, or like, yeah, we eradicated poverty. We eradicated childhood poverty. So they actually have already had one victory, and that is forcing Bezos to change the venue for the wedding reception. Organizers for no space for Bezos told the BBC that they had gotten the venue moved to the Venetian arsenal after threatening to fill the canals with inflatable crocodiles, flamingos, ducks, and unicorns so that none of their, I don't know, super yachts or whatever could get through. I mean, I have to say that does actually sound kind of fun. Like maybe not the dream wedding that Bezos and his bride had imagined,

but like, I hope they still filled the canals with inflatable crocodiles, flamingos, ducks, and unicorns. I think that might be nice. Ooh, I almost wonder if we should do a deep dive into Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez's relationship, because it's too, I'll just say this for folks who, if you know, you know, it is so juicy. like one of the juiciest bits of it is the fact that the text messages that they were sending to each other, while Jeff Bezos was fully married, were published by the National Enquirer. And I mean, it's like one of my, like, it's a text that I have sent in Jess many times. I love you, a live girl. It's one of the texts that Jeffrey Bezos sent to Lauren Sanchez when they were like running around behind their partners his back. Alive girl? A live girl. That also was like, what? What's the alternative?

Like, what kind of girls were you running around with that were not alive? I have many questions. I guess it was a dig at his wife? I don't know. So, yeah, maybe we should do a full deep dive into their relationship because it's fascinating to me. But in getting them to move where their wedding was going to be, the group No Space for Bezo said, we are very proud of this.

We are no buddies. We have no money, nothing. and were just citizens who started organizing and we managed to move one of the most powerful people in the world, all the billionaires out of the city. Now, a Greenpeace organizer said that it wasn't so much about protesting these two specific people, but more what they represent. The richest live in excess while others endured the consequences of a climate emergency they did not create. And I have to say, living in D.C., we were going through a historic heat wave. And I did have this moment where I was reading about this wedding and the, huge environmental impact that it is that it will definitely play and just like getting this note from

my local government that was like oh and a heat wave the best temperature to set your air conditioner out is 78 and I was like the hell you say 78 my ass and I just had this moment of like why are brokies like me expected to sweat it up in our one bedroom apartments with our window units and our box fans while he's able to have this lavish voluntary wedding display with seemingly no regard to how it might impact the climate. I will say, I love how people are kind of generally protesting Jeff Bezos. Like, there are specific issues and specific groups that people are protesting about, like the environmental impact of this wedding, which is massive. Bezos's aerospace investments, but also just like generally anti-Bezos being in Italy and anti-Bezos in general,

just like, we don't like him. I saw, we were watching that video that was set to the Bo Bermen song, Jeffrey Bezos. And it was a video of them just unfurling a massive banner that said Bezos with a big red X through it. Just like we don't like him. Get him out of here. Yeah, there's, even

like the names of their organizations that you just read. It's funny how personal these protests are. It's just like we don't like him personally. We don't want him here. And I get it. I do hope that once

the honeymoon is over that some of this energy gets channeled into like demanding change in the global system that just keeps funneling an ever increasing proportion of the world's wealth into the pockets of a handful of oligarchs like I love seeing the signs and messaging that focus on taxes for that reason you know like the one that just says Bezos with a big X over it I get it that is satisfying but like the ones that focus on taxes uh and climate feel like they had the more enduring political message, like forcing him to move his wedding to a more secure yet still intensely opulent than you. It's a nice reminder that these people are not all powerful, but I think like a real victory for the people will be getting him to

pay his fair share of taxes. So you don't think the slogan, Bezos, colon, we just don't like him. That's not, that's not compelling to you. It's a good start. I think it's a good start. It gets the people going. But we can't stop there. Bezos, colon, he rubs us the wrong way. So the guest to this wedding include people like Bill Gates, Oprah.

Of course, Gail, she's never going to, like, turn down an event like this. Climate activist Leonardo DiCaprio, which like, come on. Barbara Streisand, Eva Longoria, Robert Pattinson, and Orlando Bloom. Allow me a quick diversion on Orlando Bloom. So Orlando Bloom was very recently, up until recently, in a relationship with the singer Katie Perry. They have a child together.

And I don't know who at the Daily Mail has it out for Katie Perry so much because this Jeffrey Bezos wedding is really being used to highlight that her relationship with Orlando Bloom is over and that the reason why that relationship is over is because of the fallout from her panned space flight that she took with Jeffrey Bezos.

It honestly kind of sounds like Bezos is like ruining her life. This is how Ola magazine reported on it. Katie Perry's recent journey to space may have only lasted 11 minutes, but the aftermath has gone on for much longer in her personal life. The pop star and her longtime fiancee, Orlando Bloom, are reportedly facing a rough patch after an explosive argument over her blue origin spaceflight. An explosive argument. So that's spaceflight.

was poorly received, we'll say. And it sounds like, according to these, like, gossip rags, maybe, like, ruined her marriage. And now she's being publicly excluded from, like, the rich asshole spectacle wedding of the year. Like, I know people are down on Katie Perry right now for whatever reason, but it genuinely sounds like Jeff Bezos is ruining her life. Damn, so she wasn't even invited to the wedding.

She got to go to space, but then it was like, you can't come to Venice. Yeah. I mean, that will be another good deep dive. is that spaceflight. I did read an article where she was like, oh, I wish that, I think our big mistake was letting the video footage that we took from the spaceflight go

public. And it's like, well, literally, what did you think they were taking video footage for? Like, what are like, of course people were going to see it. Like, what did you think? Yeah, it wasn't like a scientific mission. So this wedding seems involved. Wired reports that exclusive private parties are planned at

secret locations in smaller islands of the lagoon. And it's an event that will leave its mark on Venice, including in terms of the environmental impact and the possible inconvenient it could create for the city's transit infrastructure. Guests will arrive on 80 private jets and travel aboard more than 30 already reserved water taxis, yachts, and gondolas. According to some official sources, flights from New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, and Dubai are planned, not to mention luxury yachts coming to Venice with moorings already planned between different points. So there is an argument that this wedding could potentially

help Venice's local economy. Conveniently enough, can you guess where that has been reported that this wedding actually is a good thing because it's going to help support Venice's local economy? The Bezos Daily newsletter?

I mean, essentially, the Washington Post, which is owned by Bezos. The Post declared that about 80% of the products and services come from local Venetian suppliers. I don't know if that's true, but it does kind of feel like me saying, there are no girls on the internet reports that Bridget Todd is actually really nice to everybody all the time and is super smart. You know what I mean? Like, convenient that the paper that you own says your wedding that

everyone hates is actually good. That is nice. That's a, you know, they've just got their own take. But in all the pictures of famous celebrities arriving at this wedding, I will say like, you can kind of see from the pictures that everybody is sort of like, oh, why am I like, like, I don't know if I should be here. But the picture of Tom Brady, but there's like, hat really low. Oprah doesn't look too, like nobody looks thrilled to be going to this wedding. And it does sort of make me happy that people are really spotlighting the ways that, you know, celebrity, even celebrities that say the right thing sometimes really just care about other rich celebrities. Like they don't really care about us. They will go to Jeffrey Bezos's wedding.

You know, they will probably be at a table with Ivanka Trump, who is definitely going to be there. the Kardashians are going to be there. I don't know. I hope this is, if that picture of Ellen DeGeneres from the Grammys with all of these different celebrities that like famous celebrity selfie, if that was the welcoming in of celebrity culture of the digital age, I hope the images of celebrities sort of shamefully attending this like spectacle, this like rich asshole spectacle, is the nail in the coffin of celebrity worship online.

because I do think that like the tides are turning because nobody wants to sit in their hot ass one bedroom apartment during a heat wave and watch Jeffrey Bezos yacht in and fly in every celebrity on the planet for his tacky ass wedding. Well, Mike, thank you so much for being here. Be sure to follow us around the web. I'm on Instagram at Bridgett, Marine, D.C. I'm on TikTok at Bridgett, Marie, D.C., and we're trying to grow our YouTube presents. So if you like YouTube, check us out there.

at There Are No Girls on the Internet. Thanks so much for listening, and I will see you on the Internet. 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, 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.

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