Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Jesse Hirsh: Toronto Mike'd #1343

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

In this 1343rd episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Futurist Jesse Hirsh about Toronto Mike'd, Marc Weisblott, Hamas and Israel, Elon's Twitter, his final appearance on CBC Radio's Metro Morning with Matt Galloway, TikTok, the death of journalism and the public broadcaster and more. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Pumpkins After Dark, Ridley Funeral Home, Electronic Products Recycling Association, Raymond James Canada and Moneris. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail]

Welcome to episode 1343 of Toronto Mic'd. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. A fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times and brewing amazing beer. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oak GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga

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and Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921. Today, making his Toronto Mic debut is futurist Jesse Hirsch. Welcome, Jesse. It is a great pleasure and honour. Long-time listener, first-time guest. My favourite guests are the long-time listeners because I know you get the vibe of Toronto Mic'd. 100%. And to be honest, it was Mark Weisblot's two shows this summer that kind of gave me the courage to reach out and say,

I need to be an FOM. And it was because Mark was so... FOTM. Yes. That Mark was so, you know, honest, intimate. And it really made me feel an accessibility where normally your guests would intimidate me, right? Normally, you know, the way you, you know,

the Brian Linehan-esque interviews are, you know, make me feel like I'm just in the audience. But Mark has this way of, I love Mark and I love your episodes with Mark. And it really gave me the courage to be like, I want to play this game too. Well, I'm glad you did reach out. I wish more people would do that. It gets awkward when I do get the request to come on and I'm like, I don't know if that's a good fit or if I really want to do that. But with you, I wanted to have you on. So it was perfect. But I do wish more people who listen. I got a note from Joel Goldberg, creator of Electric Circus. I like the drop the names, Jesse, you know that. And he's like, yeah, Brad Giffen from Toronto Rocks is a huge fan of Toronto Mike. He's always listening.

You should have him on. I'm like, I wish Brad had said something. I'm glad you said something. Right on. My pleasure. So here's a fun, quick little twist for you right off the top is that until I got an email saying that Jesse Hirsch is on the Zoom and until that moment, I 100% forgot this was remote and I was actually looking for you outside

and i have uh set everything up for you to be here i forgot this was a remote and and to be honest i really want the lasagna so i i if there was any way that i could be there in person i would but i tragically no longer i'm trag, both half tragically and half blessed, no longer live in Toronto. And I rarely make it into the city. But if my performance today is acceptable to you, perhaps next time I am in the city, I could have the second honour of engaging you

in your wonderful conversations. Well, obviously, Jesse, when we set this up, you sold me on the remote. So I guess, obviously, you must have expressed this geographical limitation and I knew you had a good setup. You sound amazing. But I did not remember, like I didn't take a note that, oh, Jesse will be on Zoom. Now, even though I did create a Zoom for this. So obviously that's, you know, the Zoom existed. So at the moment I was fine with futurist, hold on to that word, Jesse Hirsch being on Toronto Mic remotely. But it's funny that it was like 10 o'clock and I'm like, where the hell is Jesse?

And then I saw the email that you're on the Zoom and I'm like, oh, he's not going to be here. So I do have a lasagna for you. And I do have, that's from Palma Pasta, as you know. And I do have fresh craft beer for you from Great Lakes Brewery. And I have a wireless speaker from Moneris. So you can listen to season five of Yes, We Are Open, the award-winning podcast by FOTM Al Grego. And I have a Ridley funeral home measuring tape. I have all of this swag for you, but you're not going to get it, Jesse. I'm sorry.

It's tragic. And let me also say to defend my reputation, I would never be late. Like I used to say that the only prerequisite for being a broadcaster is 100 punctuality right every like as long as you're there they don't care you could say whatever but you know i i would have arrived at least 10 minutes before especially due to the need for the lasagna so so how far out of the city did you move i don't need an address i think you don't have the docks yourself but like how far away from the city did you move? I don't need an address. You don't have to dox yourself. But how far away from the big smoke are you now?

So I'm about a four-hour drive, three and a half if you drive like a pirate. And just outside of Almonte, because I wanted a farm. While I spent most of my life, three and a half decades of my life in Toronto, my early childhood was up in Northern Ontario. So I always had this desire for living in the bush and living in a forest. And my partner always wanted animals. So we have an animal farm. And four hours from Toronto was the only thing we could afford, right? Either it was a one bedroom condo in downtown Toronto or a 25 acre farm about 40 minutes outside of Ottawa. So, you know, I still have access to a city. I still, you know, can get to Toronto not too hard.

But the farms and the animals mean it's also really hard for us to leave because there's perpetual chaos and that chaos becomes dangerous if we're not tending to it. Well, it's interesting a futurist would be you know moving to the country you're gonna eat a lot of peaches like it is an interesting juxtaposition there oh the future is rural okay and and i thought this before the pandemic and thankfully we moved here before the pandemic because the prices went up even further once that happened um but but i think thanks to the internet, thanks to fiber optic connectivity,

it's viable to be somewhere like here and not lose out in terms of Toronto being the center of action, right? You can still connect. You can still do guerrilla hits of like in and out of the city real quick and have the land and have my own private high park you know you sold me you sold me okay i'm gonna play us i'm playing a song in

the background i'll bring it up so you can hear it so jesse you are the second jesse to be an You know I wish that I had Jessie's girl I wish that I had Jessie's girl So, Jessie, you are the second Jessie to be an FOTM following Jessie Dillon from Jessie and Jean. And I'm wondering, what was it like? Did people always sing Rick Springfield to you when you were growing up? What was that like? Yes, and I'll actually point out

that I'm the second Jessie Dillon who's qualified as an FOTM because Dillon's my middle name. Wow. So where you find the third Jesse Dillon may be a bit of a challenge, but at least you've got a pattern going. And what are the odds that the other Jesse Dillon is even a Jesse Dillon? Like, that sounds like a phony radio name. Well, except I i suspect i know with me it was a bob dylan uh kind of honor so maybe his was as well in terms of bob zimmerman uh being

mr dylan's real name that you know dylan is meant to be a bit of a show name yeah and i mean yeah i'm sure he's jesse i was gonna say you know what i was about to say jesse papadopoulos or something but that's that's a whole different jesse so i always say, you know what I was about to say, Jesse Papadopoulos or something, but that's a whole different Jesse. So I always say you can identify what generation somebody is by who is their Uncle Jesse. Is your Uncle Jesse like my Uncle Jesse from Dukes of Hazzard, or is your Uncle Jesse the guy from Full House? Definitely Dukes of Hazzard.

Uncle Jesse was one of the best moonshiners, I think, in television history. And he was definitely someone I looked up to as a young lad. Oh, I still have vivid memories of when he lost his eyesight and then he was bandaged up for several weeks and then they removed the bandages. And I remember they were all so scared in that room.

Everybody who loves Uncle Jesse from Dukes of Hazzard was in the room like, will he ever see again? And there was that moment, like they just paused it just long enough for young Mike to be like worried, like, oh my God, he can't see.

And then I'm crying, Jesse, as I talk about it. But then uncle Jesse says, somebody hand me that juicy red apple in the corner. And then everybody just started cheering and crying. Uncle Jesse did get his vision back. And we need more outlaw family shows like that

you know where on the one hand it's outlaws but it really makes you feel the family values that that come with such a a community everything's good except that confederate flag right but it was contextual i mean i'm as anti-racist as the next, but it was a show set in Georgia. Like, you have to recognize that there are racists and bigots in Georgia, and that's part of the lived experience. Anyway, I digress. Do you have any memory of the country singer?

I wish I could remember his name, but there was a country singer who did a song with L, I think it was with LL Cool J. It was called Accidental Racist, and they talked about you know like he talks about how he was you know had his Lynyrd Skynyrd shirt and had I don't know the confederate flag on it and he was talking about how he was accidentally racist and I was this song was really cheesy as hell but it was like I don't know five or ten years ago but uh I actually

often think that I was an accidental racist because I definitely had the General Lee car toy with the Confederate flag. So I definitely had the Confederate flag in my home and I played with it. I was an accidental racist. Well, I think many of our generation very much fit that tag. And I like to extend that further and think, you know, I'm an accidental settler, right? that further and think you know i'm an accidental settler right i i found myself here in canada and it's my moral responsibility to participate in truth and reconciliation while also recognizing i did a lot of nasty stuff as a kid that certainly falls into the misogyny and racist and all those other things because growing up in the 70s and 80s it was the culture but we're smart enough to change

and adapt with the times so that we you know wouldn't risk such an accusation today we're trying man were you ever a blue jay fan uh yes exhibition stadium many summers were spent in the grandstand those uh uh junior jay saturdays were for two bucks you could get into the grandstand those uh uh junior jay saturdays or for two bucks you could get into the grandstand normally four dollars uh jesse barfield obviously that's where i was going i needed to know if you were naturally a jesse barfield fan one of my greatest moments on twitter was when jesse barfield followed me back granted he followed everybody back but i don't care it was a highlight of my life and i remember that year he hit over 40 homers and i think i probably 86 maybe yeah i in 86 i probably went to exhibition stadium like 50 times like a lot amazing those were the glory years for me you

know lloyd jesse and ge George in the outfield. You know, I, that was my peak as a blue J fan. I'm with you, man. So you talk about 86. So my favorite season in blue J history, obviously the two world series are top of the mountain.

We climbed. What a, what an experience, but that drive of 85, like I was just the perfect age. I think to give a, give a real shit about every single one of those 162 regular season games. I still hate the Kansas City Royals.

Right? The trauma of that series. But, you know. Yeah, I know. I remember the bases loaded triple by Jim Sundberg in that exhibition stadium. It's like, yeah, dude, it still haunts me too. We were up 3-1 in that series.

And the previous year, it was a best of five. So, you know, anyways, we're going down to, you know, we can kill ourselves going down that road. Can you please explain to me, because obviously I need to know how you met Mark Weisblatt, and we have a lot of ground to cover, but what the hell is a futurist? Well, the joke I made was I used to think that futurists were full of crap

until I found out how much money they make, and then I became a futurist, which is to say a futurist is whatever you want it to be. And, you know, normally, so I'm a public speaker and futurists tend to get paid more than if you're a technology guy or if you're something else. And the first thing I usually say up on stage is the future doesn't exist, right? Futurists are like weather people. Their accuracy rate is as low as can be and yet people still take them seriously and like tomorrow, well, it's just going to be today. Like all we ever experience in life is a series of todays. We can remember the past but we can't remember the future. So really, as a futurist, I'm just a storyteller.

And I just help people tell their own stories because I believe that everyone's a futurist and that everyone dreams of a future they desire. And I just help them and empower them to make a map. So at least if you know where you want to go and you can have a strategy of how to get there, even if you don't make it, the journey will probably be empowered. So I'm a futurist cynic or a futurist skeptic, but futurists make a lot of money for doing very little work. And once I figured that out, I mean, you know, again, I recommend anyone listening.

The futurist game is a good racket. I encourage you to get on it. You're no dummy. Listen, I'm going to start referring to myself as Futurist Toronto Mike. Yeah, there you go. And here would be the paradox. Futurist Ontario Toronto Mike, FOTM,

as the leader of the FOTMs, I mean, then you're getting into a really interesting redundancy. Yeah, that's from the Department of Redundancy Department. But I will... I did want to talk about Weisblatt. I'm 100% here to talk about Weisblatt. Okay, let's do that off the top, and then we'll maybe

find a little more about who the hell you are, and then maybe we discuss some of these future issues that futurists like yourself are always pondering and speaking about. Because you've had a long, I mean, I know of you, but,

and I did pull a clip from a certain radio appearance you made in, I think it was like 2018, but I will play that and ask you about that as well. But I just want to say you, after all these years of listening to Toronto, Mike, this is the moment you are now officially Jesse and FOTM. Congratulations.

I am, I am basking in the honor. And for the record, I'm joining a really elite group. Incredibly elite. Again, I digress. One of the biggest moments of my career was when I joined the Westin Golf Club. And I joined the Westin Golf Club because everybody I knew was poor and broke. And I realized that business is based on who you know. And they had this deal where if you're under 30, you could join and pay off the entrance fee over 12 years interest-free.

This is now the second moment in my life where I have joined an elite group and I'm thinking, oh my God, I don't know what to do with this honor and privilege wow okay well before we get to Weisblatt who I think has been on 60 times maybe or something like that hall of famer he's a hall of famer absolutely a first ballot hall of famer and I would like to know uh which like what are your favorite Toronto Mike episodes uh like are is there any episodes that you particularly enjoyed beyond the Wise Blot episodes? So the James B. episodes were ones that I had to go back and dig up

because once I started going into the back catalog, I started asking myself as he talked to so-and-so, and your Pagan episodes I also really enjoy, by the way. And all the much music stuff lately, I've also been enjoying for the recent nostalgia. But the James B stuff I really got into because I was kind of surprised that you had him on. And for me, James B is kind of like one of the pillars of Toronto, right?

And as an aside, he's like- I want the aside, but why were you surprised that I'd have somebody as famous as James B on the program? Well, that's not what surprised me, right? What surprised me is that James did it. And again, this is where I bow to your interviewing skills.

And this is where I will call you Brian Linehan-esque, right? Obviously taking your own spin on it, but you're a really amazing interviewer. And James B. was my babysitter as a kid. So that's part of why I was interested in those episodes. Wow. James B. from Look People was your babysitter, Jesse.

Up in North Bay. Wow. And it speaks to again the what i love about this show is how you weave together these kinds of social networks and connections i also like the bob weeks episode uh you know partly because of the etobicoke stuff and i you know uh obviously have a golf interest so i kind of got into that. So I like the stuff you do with media personalities and media professionals, because I really like how you get into the background. I enjoyed the recent Jennifer Hollett episode, for example, for exactly that reason.

But I also like some of the musician stuff you do, right? Because it gets into musical history and it gets into how music is made, right? In terms of the the nuts and bolts of artistry did you hear the hayden episode last week no no unfortunately i don't know if you're a hayden guy or not but i i would here i'll put this on the record right now you won't find a deeper dive with paul hayden desser i challenge you to find a better better chat i think you'd dig it if you have any interest at all in the artist known as Hayden.

Right on. But to bring it back full circle, I have a huge crush on Mark Weisblatt. And I think even before his return this summer, I think I tweeted out to you guys a few times over the last few years of just the chemistry you both have and mark's performance and i've known mark for many years and his performance on your show is stellar like like and let's put this in context better than anything i've heard on Toronto media ever,

like the professional whatever, right? Whether Moses Nimer City era, whether Peak CBC, like this is, and like yourself, I am a student and connoisseur of Toronto media my entire life. I cannot, because you disqualified, when you asked me the question, you said, you know, anyone other than Mark, but I'm bringing it back and saying, I think the radio you and he produce, the media you and he produce is absolutely electric.

And I'm a huge fan. I'm just, yeah, I'm processing this right now in real time. I mean, obviously, I put him in the FOTM Hall of Fame. So I agree with you. I don't know if I have the crush on him, but I love his content. I wouldn't invite him. As you know, for years, he had an invitation to come over once a month for three hours. Okay, no one else had that invitation.

Maybe during the pandemic, Stu Stone and Cam Gordon had that invitation, but it's a very rare invitation. And I was surprised and disappointed but I understood when he paused everything coming into 2023 because he had been over every month and I got used to the rhythm and then he's like, I need a break. What was it like for you

if your huge crush on Mark Weisblatt who loved the Weisblatt appearances on Toronto Mike when you learned that he was taking a Toronto Mike hiatus? So I was genuinely concerned but I wasn't worried. And I say this because he is doing great work for the Canadian Jewish news and, and I'm Jewish. So I'm connected into that kind of media distribution network. And I've been watching what he's doing and I know that he's been keeping busy. So I wasn't like totally in the dark. Oh my God, what happened to Mark?

But this is why I thought his first return episode and his second return episode was even more amazing media, right? Like the way he just disclosed his personal journey and his struggles. And I sent him an email after saying, Mark, let's talk about magic mushrooms. Because, you know, allow me to make the argument as to why I think that would be therapeutic for you. You know, based on something he said on the show. Yeah, yeah. But to your point, I was disappointed, but I wasn't concerned.

And partly because I've known Mark for a long time and I'm connected with him on all social media. So I, you know, but as a parallel sidetrack, like i think in addition to talking about mark we should talk about 1236 because i would i'm always a huge fan of 1236 and i'm still like i often would send mark like lots of other people when's it coming back right and what's your plans and like because i always thought 1236 was a phenomenon and it was a shame that saint joe's didn't give it the kind of promotion and boost that they ought to but i also would love to see 1236 return you know because i i think mark has this uh joie de vivre he has this criticism of the media and society that i think is thoroughly entertaining i wonder if there's an i you, you mentioned his work with Canadian Jewish News.

Maybe he can fold it into that enterprise somehow. I'm just thinking out loud, but I know he comes over, I think, once a quarter now, so he'll be on again before the end of the year. And I'll, you know, try to get some answers from him in terms of what's next for 1236, because I'm not sure we've had any 1236 newsletters in 2023. I can't remember earlier in the year,

but it's been a while. Well, and I took seriously your last conversation, which is he doesn't want to do it alone, right? He wants momentum. And to your point, this is where I'm 100% on your side. If you don't have a business plan, if you don't have a strategy, if you don't have money up front,

it's really tough to get people interested. But I still think that there is a huge amount of momentum and energy he has to it. But to your point, it could not be folded into Canadian Jewish news. I mean, even before the war in Israel, Jewish culture is incredibly combative, complex, and it wouldn't be the right fit with 1236, even though 1236 has a lot of crazy Jews who, like myself, who would be happy to participate and engage in it. But Mark needs a standalone project that he can be proud of. And I think 1236 is bigger than Canadian Jewish news when it comes to reaching and having an impact on the media industry. But don't you get the vibe, I do at least, from our conversations this year, that Mark is basically hoping a wealthy person

or individual or corporation or some entity will hear him in his pleas on Toronto Mic'd and will reach out and say, take my money and do what you do best, the 1236 newsletter. As much of a gamble as it is, it's not crazy. Like it is how media works these days, right? I mean, there are very few people like yourself who hustle to create a self-sustaining business, right? And I would argue that not only does it require the hustle and hard work you have but you are also in the right place at the right time and it would be tough for someone

to recreate your success today right partly because you're doing it and lots of other people are doing it so the market already has incumbents you know so i don't think mark's wrong to make a prayer okay and hope that someone answers it but i think he could also put a plan together because i think there is some you know value to 1236 that would allow for advertisers and other monetization that could you know at least give him a salary now in his last opinion again well everybody uh the uh listenership uh this will conclude the wise blot portion of the conversation. Cause Jesse, I got to find out more about you.

And then I want to talk about some, you know, you mentioned Israel. I have questions about the, the, the platform formerly known as Twitter and, and this, I still call it Twitter.

Yeah, me too. I do too as well. I just won't call it the, the X, but the most recent Mark wiseblood appearance on Toronto Mic, which was, I don't know, I think it was in September. Actually, it was the day of TML.

I know what it was. It was the day of TMLX 13. Because I remember, yeah, we went basically from here to there. And I would have loved to have sat in on his conversation with Steve Paikin that night. Yeah. Anyway, please continue. I have a photo of that summit. uh paken by the way also great

uh he's listening to us right now loves toronto mike then he's a fantastic uh fotm as well so shout out to steve paken here and uh maybe one day uh he'll get back to work who knows but we hope we hope right uh yeah we do hope so in the last appearance by mark wiseblood he talked about nightmares he's been having where he's like uh basically like excised is that a word excised from uh the the the tmu which is the toronto mic universe and removed from the the fotm chat which he by the way jesse if you want in there let me know but mark wiseblood is active in there uh that's where i usually correspond with him these days is in the not Not So Secret FOTM group on WhatsApp.

But he was basically talking about, yeah, having nightmares that basically we have a falling out and I ban him from the show. And then I've noticed since then, and I know Mark's listening, so this is my passive aggressive way of confronting him, that what's happened is, and this did happen, and I legit am fine with it,

but I'm going to explain what I'm not fine with. So Ralph Ben-Murgi was a client of mine, and I produced his podcast, Not That Kind of Rabbi. And then even though Ralph has never said a word, which I find very strange, like he's never phoned me up and said, yeah, I'm moving to this Canadian Jewish news, and we've never had a conversation.

I've talked to him on other matters, but he doesn't actually want to acknowledge this fact to me. But I had, you know, right now, it's been moved from my network to him on other matters, but he doesn't actually want to acknowledge this fact to me, but I had, you know, right now it's been moved from my network to the Canadian Jewish news. And I think Weisblatt was a big part in getting Ralph there. And I think that's all fine and good. I can't compete with the Canadian Jewish news on that front, nor would I want to,

but what Weisblatt can't do is leave that alone. So he's constantly kind of hammering that home. Like he's found like a little bit of like a, he's found a sore spot sort of like an athlete and he's just gonna hammer at it periodically until i kind of like uh start to cry or wince or i have to leave the game so i almost feel like these nightmares that mark wiseblood had this is a long-winded rant here but there's these these these nightmares that mark wiseblood had had that i kind of cut him out and ban him from the show because we have a falling out after all these years. It's almost like he's trying to make it happen.

Like there seems to be a little, like I've sensed like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like I'm going to make you leave me before you, so you don't hurt me. It's like, I feel like he's trying to make that happen. And I'm just calling him out on it now as I chat with Jesse Hirsch on Toronto Mike. It's a bit of target fixation, right? You go where you look. And this is a little bit of us doing a group intervention of saying, you know, Mark, we love you.

You are brilliant. You don't need to focus on the things that you're anxious about. Focus on the things that you have fun doing, which is coming on to Toronto Mike and ripping to shreds the entire media industry poor wrong we love it yeah we have to talk about entertainment tonight canada we've got a josie die quitter gig at indie for chump there's so much we got to cover so yeah and then i'll and and one last thing i'll say about jews in general if you want to segue to Israel. Yeah, because I do want to segue to Israel. Right.

We as a people have in common paranoia. Because one of the best things I've heard to describe Jewish culture is the Jews that are here today are the ones who at one point said, the vibe here is off. Let's scram. Right? Because thousands of years of persecution means that the ones who are here are paranoid and are constantly thinking they're going to be rejected or they're going to be persecuted. So I've never met a Jew who wasn't at some level anxious.

And Mark is, like all of us, particularly anxious. And I think that's why it's good we tell him we love him. Okay. Thank you for that. Now, Israel, let's just solve some world issues here while we have a few minutes here okay i uh produce a humble and fred show and this morning i was doing a hit on their show but just as i was kind of just as i was listening before i popped on howard uh wanted he was surprised that no humble and fred listeners

had written him an email of support because Howard is also Jewish, like yourself. And he thought it was strange that there was zero emails or correspondence from listeners of his program, Humble and Fred, which is a podcast you can subscribe to right now. There's zero listeners wrote in to say, like, we support Israel or how are you doing? Like he was just surprised by this. And I was listening to this and I was hoping I could bring this in and maybe as a futurist, we could talk about what Elon Musk has done to Twitter and how it has become this platform for anti-Semitic tropes and misinformation about what is happening in the Middle East right now.

But what are your thoughts? I feel like the biggest obstacle towards the whole thoughts and prayers thing is that Hamas is a horrific, terrible terrorist organization that committed this atrocity. And any reasonable, compassionate, thoughtful person is disgusted by and denounces the actions of Hamas and would like them to be obliterated from the planet. But Hamas does not equate all of Palestinians. They are not the Palestinian government, even though they rule in Gaza. So you get this whole like, okay, Hamas has got to go. What they did to Israel is horrific. And of course, every reasonable person denounces it, as I do.

I stand with Israel. But Hamas is not the civilians living in Gaza without power right now. I'm just curious for your thoughts on how you find the balance and strike that chord and maybe give howard what he seeks i mean the short answer is it's complicated and the larger answer is you know there's never a good side in war but to respond to your comments i mean it's the same thing as saying we got to get rid of vladimir putin right fuck right which i said it many times yeah but us saying that it's not gonna really have any and not only that to to get into the broader geopolitical context so u.s congress is in complete disarray and one of the things that happened the last two weeks is they completely

cut off ukraine aid and the only reason that ukraine has been able to stay in this war is because of the united states and europe backing them so on the one hand putin gets a victory because congress robs ukraine of all the support it needs and then this incredible intelligence that allows hamas to break through this wall that israel spent years building they get from iran which they got from russia so it's not ludicrous to success to suggest that the war in russia and ukraine just has now a second front opened in gaza which is to say hamas isn't going anywhere like we could say whatever we want about hamas and talk about their atrocities their their authoritarianism, the terror that they unleash on the Palestinian people. But none of that is going to get rid of them

because Hamas is essentially a proxy force of Iran supported by Russia as part of a larger expanding global conflict. So I think it's important to recognize that this conflict in the Middle East is a global conflict. That this isn't about Hamas versus Israel. This is about a larger battle between various interests, so it's not going to end anytime soon. And that's why I think people are hesitant to say anything pro-Israel

or pro-Palestinian, because no one knows where this is going to go. And even though Israel has way more power than Hamas, they're not going to be able to crush Hamas. They're not going to be able to stop Hamas. If anything, they're just going to expand this conflict and it's going to get messier and more people are going to get killed. So war is terrible. And it's hard in the context of talking about war to feel anything good about it other than, man, this is really terrible. And people, innocent people on all sides are going to get killed. If only we could get rid of the assholes and actually have rational people talking about how to resolve Ukraine and Russia's differences, you know, or Israel and Palestinian differences.

But unfortunately, it's the assholes, thanks to Twitter, who tend to be in power. Okay, nice segue there. I'll just say, so you talked about Iran aiding Hamas and Russia aiding Iran. In Russia, can we draw this, can we connect this to Donald Trump somehow? Yes, 100%.

Because Congress not only cut off aid for Ukraine, but now you're going to see them focus all that aid on israel right so putin made a very magical intelligence stroke and yes the intelligence on israel's uh you know a wall and defenses around gaza was one of the documents found at mar-a-lago right so again unfortunately american politics all of this is out in the open right like the american system is very transparent and that's not stopping trump from being re-elected or congress from becoming a total clown show and and that means putin is the beneficiary and even listen to you so uh so eloquently express that very complicated matter.

I realize that even the notion of like the hearts and thoughts email or whatever sounds so trite. Like it's like, what can we do? And I'm also hoping. Buy a farm. Yeah. Get control of your own food supply. Go off grid. I'm joking.

But that's what I tend to tell people as a futurist. Sorry, I digress. Well, you don't go off the grid. No, because Ontario Hydro is incredibly resilient and incredibly green, but it's also because my first priority was food. My second priority will be off the grid. Although I hate YouTubers

who claim to be off the grid and yet they're on YouTube. No, it is. That is, yeah, that is funny. Now, okay. So, so much ground and you have your high speed. So how high speed, your fiber optic internet there, wherever you are, four hours away from Toronto,

lightning fast. Because I feel like, yeah, if you had that, if I had that and a good bike trail, I might be happy for the rest of my life. So the short story is when we moved here, it was satellite internet and it was total ghetto and sucked. And I, in the nineties, when interlog.com and io.org were the original ISPs,

I started an ISP at Bloor and spadina called lglobal.com and we were also one of the original dial-up isps in toronto so i understood how to set up an isp and a friend of mine here was in the area and i worked with him so basically bell had a hookup eight kilometers down the road we got bell to set us up with a connection eight kilometers down the road and then we ran fiber all the way down the road and gave connections to all the people along the road so my internet's way better than the city i've got over a gigabit speed no restrictions not provided by bell directly we get wholesale from bell and then we then resell it to the people in the neighborhood that's wild that's that's amazing and and again anyone can do this it's all open source and it

guarantees that you can have super fast uh unfettered uninterfered internet wherever okay and you got the goats too yes and and that's the key we we had we raised a cow for a couple of years and we're still eating the beef from it. It's been the year of Munch because that was her name. So it's remarkably easy if you live in a farm ecosystem to be a novice and still produce your own food in a pretty fantastic, magical way. Oh my goodness. So much ground to cover here. That's wild. But okay. So Elon Musk, so you're the futurist, but I had a good friend of the program, Cam Gordon, who just made his return after a lengthy hiatus himself. And he was talking about, you know, he was in the office. Well, you know, her Jennifer Hollett, who got out before Elon Musk bought it, I think. But Cam Gordon was one of the many victims of Elon Musk when he had that day where he basically let go half the workforce or whatever. But it seems like as a Twitter user, I'm still using Twitter every day because I still deem it the best game in town. But every day it's a little

less best than it used to be. But Elon Musk now has created this communications tool where what we've noticed with Hamas and Israelrael this past week it seems to be a fertile ground for information campaign miss sorry misinformation campaigns i wish you could speak to that i mean everything is propaganda but i i think to go back to the original futurist my uh my own source of futurist insight uh torontonian Marshall McLuhan, who back in the 60s sort of predicted that everything would become information warfare. And I think what Elon Musk has done is really actualize that prophecy, right? He's really where Twitter was trying to be a responsible company that made money that, you know,

accorded advertisers, Elon Musk's interest is a hundred percent influence and a hundred percent combat, right? Cause you know, his success is in being the bully and in picking fights. So, you know,

where Twitter was a media platform, it's now a combat platform, right? It's an arena for information warfare at a time in which you know global conflict seems to be emerging so i i don't like elon musk i think he's a knob and a tool but i do think he's a smart guy and i do think that this is still within his agenda which is he doesn't really care about the business of Twitter, although for liability and shareholder reasons, he needs to give

lip service to it. I think he wants its political power. And I think your point about disinformation, misinformation, and straight out information jihad, it's in his interest to have that zoo in his corner, right? interest to have that zoo in his corner right and to have the the forces of twitter on his side even if it includes his opponents right because what's that line have your friends close and your enemies closer and and twitter is a a very powerful facility for him to do because i like you i too am still using it even though i kind of feel it's a dumpster fire, but it's hard to take your eyes away from a dumpster fire.

And I do like, I do try alternatives. I, I spent a day on threads, you know, I tried, you know, Instagram, uh, Mastodon, uh, I can run them down. The only one I liked, but it was missing the people. Like, I mean, it was missing you and all the interesting people on Twitter, but it was missing the people like I mean it was missing you and all the interesting people on Twitter but was uh blue sky so what I do now is I'm still pretty much Twitter but I'm keeping the fires burning on blue sky because I anticipate a day I think I talked to Jennifer Holland about this but I anticipate a time when Elon says okay it's pay to play you

gotta cough up whatever 10 bucks a month to be on Twitter. And on principle, I know Jennifer Hollett was considering that she would pay for it because she, whatever. I actually won't pay a penny. Like on principle, I'm just not going to, I just would rather just walk away than give a penny to Elon Musk for Twitter.

So then I'll just move. I'll take my talents to South Beach. I'll take my talents to Blue Sky and then we'll figure it all out from there. But it's kind of a place I don't want to be anymore, to South Beach. I'll take my talents to Blue Sky and then we'll figure it all out from there. But it's kind of a place I don't want to be anymore, but I can't find a better place to be. I'm the same.

I'm not going to pay a penny, but I'll stick it out as long as that lasts. I am still keeping an eye on threads. And the only reason I'm keeping an eye on threads is I do work at times in the advertising industry and i think brands are going to see threads as a safe and sterile alternative

given that the other platforms you mentioned are not like people aren't there yet and you know meta will cross promote threads uh forever and slowly start to drag, you know, the zombies kicking and screaming over to the platform. And to your point, tried the others. I still think Twitter is a game that Musk is playing. And he's saying all this stuff about charging users to keep his shareholders, to keep the banks that lent him the money happy.

But no, I think he needs it to be a dumpster fire i think he needs it to be an open warfare and and that's why i i'm sticking it out okay so we're talking about threads which is a meta owns threads and meta owns facebook and instagram and i'm gonna just take you back because I do want to talk about your appearance on Metro Morning, CBC Radio 1's Metro Morning when Matt Galloway, FOTM Matt Galloway was the host. So of course I'm referring to your appearance on November 19, 2018. Before I play a short clip about this, could you give us a little context? Like what was your, were you, you were just a regular contributor to CBC? Like set us up and what was going on with Facebook at the time? Let's, let's hear you set the stage here.

I'll do this as briefly as possible because it is a kind of 20 year story. But like yourself, I was a public broadcaster devotee. I love public broadcasting. When I was in North Bay, we only had two channels cbc and tvo so you know andy berry got me on to metro morning uh you know early in the like early 2000s and i would come on uh you know sporadically and then i started doing the tv shows like news morning and news world and basically they knew they could call me at 5 a.m and i'd be there at 6 a.m to do filler because that's what technology is it's just filler um and then i got hired to do

radio not hired then i got the gig to do radio syndication so for about 10 12 years i did all the morning shows across the country every week, including Metro Morning. But do they compensate you financially? Yes. So the radio syndication was decent pay. I think it was maybe $1,000 a week. And you're doing about 24 different stations. So each one is like, you know, 50 bucks or whatever. And then it all adds up.

So it's good money. It was good work but you're freelance right so there's no guarantees there's no whatever but i played the politics i played the full cbc politics i made friends with who i thought were the right people right and i you know like mark weisblatt really tried to rip the shit out of the rest of the media and industry and so people liked that there was a critical jewish voice kind of doing this sort of stuff but facebook kept fucking with me every time i talked about facebook their pr people or even their general counsel would like make a complaint and this went on for like a few years and every time they did it i got more critical

right like come on you want to go let Let's go. Come on, bro. And so the syndication boss hated this because bosses at CBC hate controversy, hate drama, hate letters from the editor. And, you know, I kept fighting with her. And eventually she like she took the job away. But Metro Morning and Matt Galloway were like, no way. Jesse's our guy. And Matt championed me. He was like, we don't want the replacement person you have we're sticking with jesse so that was maybe a

year or two years before the incident you were talking about okay and so i was no longer really getting paid much but i was still doing metro morning because it's a great show and i love matt and he's a great guy yeah um but facebook kept fucking with me and every time I said something they'd push back and so I felt like CBC was not backing me up and I felt that CBC was hypocritical and throughout those 20 years I was very critical of everything CBC like I love public broadcasting but I hated the people who were running the CBC. And I was constantly criticizing their decisions behind closed doors. So I had a lot of steam to let go.

I'm a pretty spontaneous person. And entre nous, I was moving to the farm anyway. So it didn't really matter if this bridge was going to be burned. So I kind of thought of it as a kind of quitting, even though as far as they were concerned, they were firing me. Okay, very Wiseblood-esque of you, actually. Okay, so this is November 19, 2018. Do you remember what the reason for your appearance on Metro Morning with Matt Galloway that morning was?

I think it was something Facebook, but I can't remember the details. No, definitely something facebook i know i can't but here let me play this and maybe it'll and for the record before i went on matt came to me like he always does and he says let's forget about the script right so before we went on he sort of indicated to me that we were going to improv okay so let me let me obviously as a broadcaster myself who has never had any mainstream media experience let me just ask you what exactly that means like so did you were you pre-interviewed so i had to do my own pre-interview right because at this point after 20 years they

didn't want to allocate a producer but yes i had to give them all my answers ahead of time with questions and if i diverged from those answers i got in shit now with the regions i could do that nobody knew but if i did that and the bosses in toronto heard i would get in trouble i think this is very interesting because you know we i've always you know i've had mac gallery on the show and we talk about it is a highly scripted show that's why it's so crisp and uh you know there's no it's not like you know, I've had Matt Gallery on the show and we talk about it. It is a highly scripted show. That's why it's so crisp. And, you know, it's not like, you know, your morning zoo show or whatever, where Humble and Fred are going to improvise on a bit for five minutes or whatever.

Like, it's all very kind of heavily produced, if you will. So it is interesting, though, that you, so Matt Galloway, before this interview, he knows the questions and he knows your answers to the questions. And I guess until he says to you, you know, leave the script, you're expected to just regurgitate that prepackaged script that you provided. Yes. Although my attitude was always, it's the host show. I go where the host goes. So if the host takes me off script that's

not my fault and matt always went off script like always because he knew i enjoyed it and he knew he could get away with it because he's the golden boy right so they were like if it was any other host if it was a fill-in host they'd get in shit but matt could get away with it and he did and we had lots of fun and made great radio throughout the years and i can imagine not to speak for matt and matt can speak for matt but i would think because just having done what i've done now for 11 years i it's a lot more fun when you're unscripted like i can't imagine how boring it would be to kind of like duplicating script like it's like well you know and imagine if you have six minutes not an hour

like that six minutes goes by so fast and if you're the host you want to ask the questions you want to ask not the lame questions that some junior producer came up with right it's like yeah it's like working in assembly line now i i would much rather uh leave the script so matt galloway says to you leave the script which must have made youay says to you, leave the script, which must've made you happy because you just want to have your six minute chat with Matt. And that's like right now, I will point out to the listenership.

I don't have any of your, and I don't know what you're going to say on this program. I don't know where I'm going to go next. I'm just sort of reading these. And nor do I know your questions. And that's what makes good radio. You don't know.

I have several more Mark Wise block questions to come. You have no idea, but let's listen to this. What did I pull here. I have several more Mark Wise block questions to come. You have no idea. But let's listen to this. What did I pull here? Okay, it's about a minute and 40 seconds. It's just the tail end of your six minutes. So let's listen to Jesse on Metro Morning.

Already the hypothesis around genocide has tremendous evidence to back it up. And it's not just Myanmar. It's around the world. The way in which chauvinism, the way in which ethnic violence, the way in which manipulation of the political process, it's happening in every single country and Facebook is culpable. Facebook is the tool by which these tyrants are doing it. And it's not so much that Facebook itself is responsible. That's the point. They don't have a clue. They've had their head in the sand, but nonetheless, they need to be reined in. And so what happens now

with this company? I mean, these stories keep coming out and presumably there will be more of them so i don't think this is a story of individuals i don't think that individual canadians or individual users can do anything so i'm going to do something controversial i'm going to flip it back to cbc why does cbc trust facebook why does every outlet on cbc tell its listeners to go like them on facebook or not just cbc but other journalistic entities as well but we're cbc tell its listeners to go like them on facebook or not just cbc but other journalistic entities as well but we're cbc so i don't care about the other journalist entities why do the people at cbc mandate that cbc personnel promote facebook why does cbc continue to engage in commercial relationships with facebook now that it's clear to us that facebook is a threat to

democracy and cbc as a public broadcaster should be strengthening democracy so i would like to hear from the senior managers of this corporation which i do not work for very clearly and further every time i've appeared on this show to talk about facebook facebook has complained to cbc and cbc has not defended me or it's not defended our right to have these conversations although metro morning we'll start having them yeah right and and and that to me is is the hypocrisy of our reporting on Facebook, that we talk about it, but as a company, we do nothing. Jesse, thank you. Hopefully, I'll come back.

But if not, thanks, everybody. Jesse Hirsch. All right. Acknowledge you call him Mr. Metro Morning. Yeah, give me your reaction listening to that now. I don't know if you probably haven't heard that in quite some time, but what are your thoughts? I was a lot of fun. i don't regret it one bit that was a a really good time and the

response i got from that was overwhelming right like the amount of kudos the amount of like not just from cbc people but from you know all across the political spectrum you know it was definitely a great way to go out and i was pissed and i was pissed that you know again at the hypocrisy of cbc and the fact that we were never allowed to talk about cbc like you were so not allowed to talk about the company the mother corp ever and that to me is so anti-democratic that it's the public broadcaster. Why can't the people on the public broadcaster talk about the public broadcaster critically? Anyway, I digress.

I thought you made a compelling point. Why do the people at CBC mandate that CBC personnel promote Facebook? It was an interesting point. Now, did you ever appear on CBC Radio again after that appearance? So, not on Metro Morning, but yes, on CBC Sudbury. Because my homeboys at CBC Sudbury, they got my back and they still occasionally put me on to talk to the good folks in Northern Ontario.

CBC Ottawa had me on a few times as well. But I was there are a lot of people in CBC who told me that I was persona non grata, that they were not allowed to call me, they were not allowed to bring me on because I was always a freelancer. I just had relationships with different shows and different outlets and they'd put me on. And at that point, it pretty much stopped completely.

And that was fine by me because I literally spent a couple of years where if my parents were listening to CBC, I gave them shit because I was really hurt and traumatized. And are you, well, you're obviously doing hits for Sudbury and Ottawa. So you've come around on appearing on CBC, but it's interesting because David Common is coming in as the new host of Metro Morning. And do you anticipate you'll ever get a call again from Metro Morning to talk on a tech issue?

No, no, definitely not. And I was good friends with everyone at Metro Morning, except for the boss. And the real boss was actually not, was away at the time, which is ironic. And she and I get along quite well. David Common, I think, is a very interesting and another golden boy who was anointed

at a very early point as being, you know, one of the future talent of the CBC. So I will actually tune in. Ismail, who was the current host between Matt, I liked quite a lot and I worked with in Winnipeg. So I assume he's moving up in the corporate sector. Well, he's doing weekends. I think he's doing weekends.

Oh, maybe the early mornings took a toll and he decided that, you know, that was a little much. So I like yourself. I mean, I loved Andy Barry and I loved Matt Galloway. I had trouble warming up to Ismail on Metro Morning. And I heard from people who would hear him in Winnipeg. You said like, oh, like we miss him here. You're lucky to have him.

And he was so good. I'm not sure he, for some reason, it never quite jived. No, I think he never got into the vibe. And it is a vibe, right? And I think he never got into the vibe. And it is a vibe, right? And I think, unfortunately, the management at CBC do everything they can to kill the vibe. And the people from the regions are really scared

of Toronto headquarters versus Andy Barry, who gave no shits, and Matt Galloway, who he's just worked so hard, they can't fuck with him. Yeah, and he's so very good at this as well. But David Common is also a listener of Toronto Mic'd. So he has pledged to make his Toronto Mic'd debut before the end of the year. So we'll get a deep dive with David Common,

the new host of Metro Morning. Go ahead. And can you ask David on my behalf why they don't have you on Metro Morning? It's true. My phone never rings. Well, very, very few MSM outlets have ever reached out, if I think back. Anytime I appear, it's because they've randomly asked that cyclist cycling by the camera.

And it's like, it just happens to be me. I have a few hits here and there. Or I liked it. I did an episode about, maybe you heard it, but it was like 30 years of 680 news. And my neighbor Bojana made the news because Richard Southern, I don't know who took the video. It might've been Mike Apple,

but video was taken of my neighbor Bojana just freaking out that Mike Apple and Richard Southern were at her door. And that made city news. So that's what it takes to get me on the MSM. But who knows? Who knows? Okay. Maybe they know I'm it takes to get me on the MSM. But who knows? Who knows? Okay.

Maybe they know I'm just going to talk about tears are not enough. So don't, you know, he's not going to, not only will I not script it, but I'm like, if I want to talk about why Randy Backman is not a part, because this to me... I love that interview, by the way.

And that particular question, I found really quite insightful. That's the difference, I think, between, I don't know, the national and Toronto Mike. I'm not sure they're asking about 1985's Tears Are Not Enough on the national. But that's why their ratings are going down and yours are going up. That is true. Okay, we're going to talk about the, you know, with a question mark, the death of public broadcasting. So that's a good segue there.

I'll just say that if anyone hasn't listened to Randy Backman on Toronto Mike, and I now say Backman, I've been educated, okay? But if you haven't heard Randy Backman on Toronto Mike, you should because when you find out why Randy Backman was not a part of Tears Are Not Enough, this should be national outrage. Like there should be think pieces

on this left, right, and center. I feel like the media, the journalists in this country are asleep at the wheel. What say you about journalism and maybe even more specifically public broadcasting? Are they dying? I think they're dead. I think they've been dead for quite some time. I think we're living in a zombie apocalypse where these institutions that should have been put to rest are still living. I think the biggest reason that journalism is dead, and don't get me wrong, I love the role of journalism in democracy.

And the reason I'm calling it dead is I want to see the phoenix rise from the ashes. And you and Mark Weisblatt are great examples of that. Because I think journalism is dead because objectivity is dead. Truth is dead. And that doesn't mean that truth won't come back. I now refer to truth as negotiated meaning, right? That by default, we're going to come up with different meanings. And in order for us to find truth, we need to discuss and negotiate and come on something

together, right? Hamas has a completely different truth than Israel, and they could try to kill each other over those truths, but what they really need to do is negotiate and find some common ground, which unfortunately those two assholes are not going to do. But my point about journalism is there is no objectivity, and most of the people on the internet know that, right? Because everyone on the internet has a perspective. Everyone on the internet is subjective. Everyone on the internet is coming from where they're coming from,

and we respect that authenticity. Versus when Peter Mansbridge says facts, I throw up in my mouth. Like, what a con, right? Like, you know, I'm not saying i want cbc to be more opinion but i am saying i liked it when matt galloway shares his perspective right i liked it when ralph ben murgy had a show where he was allowed to be ralph ben murgy right like i think public broadcasting should reflect the diversity of canada not through objectivity and sterile kind of, you know, whatever, but by allowing people to have the kind of arguments and discussions and disagreements

that we see on the internet all the time, right? CBC could do it in a way that's coherent, right? That isn't pure cacophony like Twitter has become. But I think journalists need to re-evaluate what they're doing. Bloggers did it 15 years ago. Influencers are doing it now. And the people I follow on TikTok, the news people I follow on TikTok, give me far more value than anyone at the cbc or anyone and anyone else in the ms media journalism kind of wherewithal the journalists quote unquote i like are people like nora loretto who tend to be mocked and ridiculed but they have a perspective and i like people on the left and the right and the center who present that rather than people who are trying to resuscitate objectivity, even though it's dead. Make sure I come back to that, to TikTok,

before we say goodbye today. I want to ask you about TikTok and their dominance over there in the social media world. But death, I mean, you're being hyperbolic, right? Because you're talking about how it's dead. But I mean, we just had some very good journalism surrounding the Greenbelt scandal, for scandal for example like it's not from the narwhal who i would argue is and and i think a lot of right-wing people would agree with me that the narwhal is as much propaganda as they are journalism now i think the narwhal is an

amazing example of what journalism should be but i'm hesitant to give ctv or cbc any of their or the toronto star any of their credit right instead i think we should be empowering canada land narwhal the tiee a lot of these you know your company and your show right because you produce a lot of shows these are the things i think we should be supporting with federal legislation and federal subsidies right not the jerks and and and uh nepotists who are currently in our media that we call journalists because i i i i just can't go there well you're singing my song now by the way have you ever been confused with you mentioned canada land have you ever been confused with jesse brown uh more jesse wenty ironically okay which you know

given that he's indigenous and i'm not versus jesse brown's jewish so you'd think that people would think that jesse hirsch and jesse so yes i have been confused for jesse brown but more jesse wenty which i find puzzling but i'm'm honored because Jesse Wente is a fantastic human being. Right. Okay, so public broadcasting being dead. Now, you know, obviously we can, tonight we can watch The National and we can tune into CBC Radio 1 News at noon

and we can subscribe to these podcasts and get what I think is fairly uh objective news reporting um i'm obviously you're the futurist here but uh that doesn't sound like a dead public broadcasting go ahead i i disagree with your assessment that they're objective okay i find the cbc to be outright propaganda and you know i'm a left winger and this is where right wingers agree with me right so when you have people from both sides of the political spectrum saying that the cbc is government propaganda and centrist and not objective because their definition of objective is self-serving but even when i worked there i was never allowed to say what I felt or to share my perspective because

they have a very clear guideline on what is acceptable and what's not acceptable, and it's getting even tighter. But do you feel these guidelines change depending on which party is forming the government, federal government in this country? No, because the CBC is not political, right? They're not pro-liberal. They're not pro-liberal they're not pro-conservative they're pro-government right it's like the anarchist saying it doesn't matter who you vote for the government wins and i'm not saying that that's accurate but i'm saying cbc is in favor of the status quo period right they're not interested in bringing in dissenting voices they're not interested in bringing in perspectivesenting voices. They're not interested in

bringing in perspectives that are outside of the status quo. And I'm not saying they should platform racists, but they should allow for the conversations that are happening in Canada anyway to happen over their airways. And not to get off track, but allow me to share an example from my personal history. Yes, please. Are you familiar with slashdot.org? Of course. So there was a time when slashdot was the biggest website on the internet and the slashdot effect, when they linked to you, you were instantly popular. Yes. So at that time, I was running an open source software company and we were installing Slashcode, the free and open source software that Slash.us to run their website. And I was targeting media companies. I was running a Slash site for USA Today. I was running a Slash site for Sportsnet and I was running a Slash site for CBC's Counterspin

hosted by Avi Lewis. So we were the first show in Canada, certainly at CBC, where as soon as the broadcast was done, we had the entire show on our website for people to watch. And it was a slash dot website where everyone could post comments and meta moderate and vote up the comments up and down on all the stuff that CBC was into. This was so successful that Tony Berman, who was then the head of CBC News, had me and his son, Jeremy Berman, build a slash site that would be cbcnews.ca. Soony berman wanted all of cbc news to run like slash dot and this was before social media this was before like this was early days of friendster and myspace sure and this would be fully interactive right like every single news post you could comment moderation meta moderation and Claude Gallipo then the head of IT at CBC

said over my dead body no open source software will ever run at CBC and he killed the project would not allow it to move and so I say imagine if CBC had an interactive website before anyone else did. Imagine if CBC had trained Canadians to be moderators and meta-moderators the way Slashdot had thousands and thousands of... Then you could have CBC competing with Facebook. So that's the public broadcaster that I think could have survived. But the public broadcaster that thinks it's their job to just broadcast. And not engage. And not be interactive.

Is a zombie. I'm sorry to say. So what is the future of CBC? And then after I hear what you have to say about that. I do want to get back to my good friend. Steve Pagan. And what's happening at TVO right now. Speaking of public broadcasters.

But what's the future of CBC? I don't see one. As much as I don't like this, I think Prime Minister Pierre is going to win the next election with Justin Bieber losing finally. Again, I'm a lefty, so that is not something I'm in favor of. But I think the CBC is dead because they've ignored the Canadian right all this time and i think when the canadian right comes to power it'll be a very popular policy to defund the cbc

if i'm going to be honest i'll say maybe cbc radio survives but i think everything else unless they start showing their relevance is not going to survive i like how how you called him Justin Bieber. Well, everyone wants us to think he's Pierre Trudeau. Well, I think he's much more comparable to Justin Bieber because he's an influencer. He's a celebrity. That's the only reason he's won elections is because, you know, he's riding off his dad's coattails and everyone thinks he's cute.

I think we'd be better off with Justin Bieber, quite frankly, but I digress. And it sounds like futurists, again, you're like the weather forecaster. You might be right, but you're often wrong and that's okay. But the as long as CBC Radio continues to

exist, I think I might have my itch scratched. So good to hear that. But TVO. I'm really worried. said yeah I said I mean they were on I had John Michael McGrath and Steve Paikin sitting here in the basement talking about they at that point they had been out a

month I think and they were talking about how it's in the best interest of the the progressive conservative party that the the government the provincial government in Ontario it's in their best interest to get TVO, to settle with TVO,

because they can highlight all the good things going on. Meanwhile, as a realist and a consumer of such, I'm thinking, you know, you got the Greenbelt there going on. It was really rocking there, still rocking. RCMP says they're investigating now. And you've got the Ontario place thing. I'm like, why would the Doug Ford government ever want to end end this strike now let's hear from futurist jesse hirsch i tragically i

think you're 100 right and i love that episode uh that you had and in particular i loved how you kind of impromptu produced uh an episode of their podcast embedded into the toronto mic podcast and you like how I did it? I'm like, oh, and if you were recording today, what might you say? And then let's go. Okay. So I encourage anyone who hasn't heard that episode

to dig into the crates and give it a listen. But I love Steve Paikin. I think he's a national treasure. I think he's one of the best political moderators in the country. Again, I don't think he's objective, but I think he's one of the best political moderators in the country. Again, I don't think he's objective, but I think he's fair. And I think he's really good at moderating political debates because he's not objective. But with all that ass kissing out of the way, I think he's incredibly naive when it comes to what's happening with the provincial government i think all his arguments were really smart and sound that all these cabinet ministers would love to come on his show and get attention

but it's the premier's office that is running the show right and it's the premier's office that controls the provincial government and the premier's office wants nothing to do with steve bacon or tvo so i'm really scared because i love tvo and i love bacon's show and i love i love all the people who work there i really respect a lot of the folks who are on strike i think they are consummate media professionals yes indeed so you know come on doug i have friends who bought hash from doug ford back in the day come on man this won't be so much. Give them a break. But I'm skeptical like yourself.

Shout out to Etobicoke, where I speak to you from right now. I suspect that if you were to have a Great Lakes beer with Steve Paikin in a private off-the-record chat, you'd realize he's not nearly as naive as he might have appeared on the very public Toronto Mike podcast. And not only that,

I know of no one other than Steve Paikin who have made the argument that Doug Ford is a smart guy as convincingly and repeatedly. So look, Doug, everyone thinks you're an idiot, except Steve Paikin. So give him a shot. He's doing the best for your reputation anywhere. And as I said to Mr. Paikin on this program,

if you're looking for any clues whatsoever that maybe doug ford is not the biggest tvo fan perhaps the fact that he's the very first premier in this province since bill davis created tvo to not talk to tvo while premier like maybe that's a clue every single other premier has talked to TVO while they were in office and Doug Ford has not. Maybe he's not as big a fan as you think he is. You are right that I'm a fan of hyperbole. So allow me to say Doug Ford is pissing on the graves of the Bill Davises of the world and all the other progressive conservatives who created the public institutions

that we so depend upon today. Well said. Now, I just checked the clock here. Holy smokes. You're going to have to make a return visit. I'm not going to suggest you can catch Mark Weisblatt and his 60 visits, but I do have many topics, but they're

sort of evergreen, so I feel like we might have to do this again before the end of the year, but I do, I'm not done with you. Mission accomplished, because I want the lasagna, so I promise that if I can't come on again, I will come down to the studio so that we can do this in person and I can get

my Palma's lasagna, which I've heard so many good things about. You'll love Palma pasta lasagna. Now we'll tie it to something else. Like maybe you have to come to town for, I don't know, speaking engagement or something like, well,

I'll make your life as convenient as possible. So obviously you won't be making that four hour trek just to sit in my basement for lasagna, but we'll do that. Although for the record, my auto mechanic, Eurotech, import auto motors is in South Etobicoke near new toronto so again we can make it happen we'll we'll marry these things but

i'm not quite done with you yet i do want to talk about tiktok and a couple of other things but i also want to let the listenership know that there's a podcast from Raymond James Canada called the Advantage Investor Podcast. Whether you already work with a trusted financial advisor or currently manage your own investment plans, or I'm going to add in a new one, which is you have no investment plans because you're broke. This is the other category, but the Advantage Investor provides the engaging wealth management information you value as you pursue your most important goals so you're obviously going to subscribe to i know you are uh jesse you're going to subscribe to yes we are open that's a maneras podcast that will inspire entrepreneurs like you and i but you're going to subscribe to the uh the advantaged investor

from raymond james canada and i don't know uh how far that drive for you is to Milton. It's probably also four hours if I do the math there. But Pumpkins After Dark is an award-winning Halloween event, and it's in Milton, and it's through Halloween. And you can buy your tickets now and get yourself to Milton. It's a great event. 15% off if you use the promo code TOMIKE15. By the way, since you listened to Toronto Mike, I'll just say yesterday's episode was different than almost all other episodes. I did something completely different yesterday. So I don't want to spoil it

because something happens at the 30 minute mark that was kind of... And this is the Kevin Frank-ish episode? No. So that's how prolific I am. And this is actually, it was yesterday with a gentleman named Andrew Jadaro. And I won't spoil it, except anyone who's heard me drop the name Ardo knows.

Ardo was my very, very scary boss when I was 15 years old working at the CNE. And I worked for him for three summers. Scariest man I ever met. We were all scared shitless of Ardo. And we kind of do some regressive therapy regarding Ardo. And I don't want to spoil it, but it's one hour, different than all the other episodes.

I dropped that yesterday. And can I ask, what did you do at the CNE? I was a game booth attendant. Which game? So it's funny because this does get discussed in this episode, but the game was called Papa Ball, and it was a great failure and i don't know if that's on me or not but this was an uh an expensive new game because to get these licensing thing at the cne you have to introduce like exciting new things or whatever and uh arto

brought in this game called pop a ball and i worked there and i don't think it lasted longer than like five years at the cneE. It was not a successful game. So there you go. More talk on that, by the way, in yesterday's episode. I'm eager to catch up. Okay. And you are a futurist. And I can only imagine that you might have old electronics in your...

What do you got there? Like a barn? The electronics I keep in the house because the barn unfortunately is a little too wet sure um but i got you know original game boy most of what i have is audio video but does it work like the game boy yes amazing batteries uh the last kid who was over here i think drained them um lots of old like mixers analog analog. My dad has a tape, like audio from the 60s, right? The kind of magnetic tape recorder, which he refuses to allow me to take.

So I'm waiting for him to die to add that to my collection. But it's a lot of old cameras, old, you know, to me it's all junk, but to your point, you don't throw it out, right? No, you don't throw it in the garbage because the chemicals end up in the landfill. It's bad for everybody. But if you go to recyclemyelectronics.ca, you can find a place near you where you can drop that off and have it properly recycled.

So shout out to recyclemyelectronics.ca. You know what I've resisted doing? Now, I have two children on this platform, and my wife was on it for a while. And it's a popular platform. You might heard of it it's called tiktok but i've actually never created an account or installed tiktok i've resisted the temptation but you're a big tiktok guy right and i'm an addict so you know i would start by saying if you have an addictive personality, don't use TikTok unless you're interested in adding a new addiction to your repertoire. Because it is a very addictive service because the algorithm is configured differently than the rest of social media as we know it. Even though Instagram, for example, is now mimicking and moving towards the logic of the TikTok algorithm.

But I find as a social media platform, it is far more efficient, far more entertaining, far more conducive to my research and news interests. So I just feel that it's a powerful intelligence tool, eclipsing Twitter, even though Twitter still has some value. And I am hooked to the point that I have to limit it to like lunchtime or a specific time. Otherwise I would end up all day on the thing and be really unhealthy. Okay. But this is a juggernaut. I mean, even though I'm not on the platform, you can't miss the zeitgeist and TikTok, it it rules the world and basically all the ad dollars that had gone to facebook and google are now migrating over to tick tock and and it is a juggernaut and it's again remarkable how powerful their ai is how powerful their algorithm is which as an aside

is why you know donald trump and then later the biden administration's attempts to like ban tiktok or force tiktok to sell to an american company is all futile because it all depends on the ai which is coming out of china so all the data has to go back to train that ai so all the national security concerns are not only legitimate but they're not going to be resolved with something as trivial as a ban or changing the ownership of the american subsidiary so it's a bit of a pickle where on the one hand it is by far the most powerful social media platform in the world and on the other hand it is kind of in the pocket of the chinese communist party so you know what you're gonna do well what what are you gonna do like like i mean so you're you're you're saying it was addictive for you but

you're still uh participating right you're still engaging because the value i get from it is tremendous hey i and i mean this as an intelligence tool well like tell me tell me i should be on it like uh i mean i've only resisted like tell me tell me i should be on it like uh i mean i've only resisted it because i felt like i was too old to be on tiktok because there was a sense of like oh this is for my 19 and 21 year old like i really did feel like they don't want a guy pushing 50 on this thing but you're telling me that's why as geezers we need to fight ageism right we need to make sure that as we age, we're not discriminated against, you know, because we're old. And the youngins, they love to do that every generation. But no, TikTok's for

everybody. And the main reason I use TikTok is it gives me the information and media I want to know. And the example that we used earlier of the war in Israel, right? The moment that that blew up, war in Israel, right? The moment that that blew up, my TikTok was giving me amazing analysis, firsthand video, like the music festival that got raided by Hamas militants. I was seeing, you know, really compelling video of kind of what was happening on the ground. So, you know, TikTok is what Twitter used to be, but even better because the algorithm is so eerily accurate. And the way in which it just zeros in on your interest is a little alarming, but again, empowering because you're getting the information and even intelligence that you want when you want it. Okay. So you've talked about the algorithm there and the intelligence. And before we say goodbye for your first appearance,

and again, you will have another appearance, hopefully in person. I think you'll dig the vibe in person. But although this was great, you sounded great. So I enjoyed this. I was going to say I did the vibe on Zoom, but I agree the vibe in person will be even more. I can rough you up if you start. I don't know if I need to rough you up.

I can do that. I can't do it. It'll be a Zoom. But I just want you to, and again, this would probably be another 90 minutes unto itself but i have also resisted you know going into this whole uh threat of ai artificial intelligence and the chat gpt and all that like i have i'm kind of treating it a little bit right now like i treated nfts and cryptocurrency which is like oh i know enough about that that i don't feel like drilling in.

And you know me, I'm kind of like you and wise, but when I want to drill into something, I'm all in. Like I'm obsessed with tiers are not enough, but I've chosen to kind of stay on the peripheral and just see what's going on there without like worrying about it. But should I be worried that AI will basically replace Toronto Mike,

host of Toronto Mike? No, not at all. Oh, good. Like 100% chance, no. AI is just puppetry. And you're correct in being skeptical of the AI hype cycle. Automation is real. And automation is profound and transformatory,

but it's led by humans. It's controlled by humans. It's controlled by humans. It's employed by humans. The idea that AI is going to come alive or be intelligent or do these things is 100% rubbish. All the scientists who work in this field who are credible laugh at the idea. The people who promote this concept are business guys like Elon Musk and Bill Gates. But the actual scientists, the actual cognitive scientists, the actual psychologists, the computer scientists, they are like, A, no, no chance. And if there is, not for 50 years, maybe 100 years.

So instead, what we're going to get is a lot of vaporware right a lot of stuff that promises us the moon and fails to deliver while algorithms become even more effective at sorting and ranking information that they cannot comprehend that they do not understand and that it's all the wizard of oz right there'll be this god that looks like a god acts like a god but it's actually mark zuckerberg behind the curtain saying don't look behind the curtain and unfortunately a lot of people are fooled by these myths of ai but you are correct your instinct uh uh it should be reinforced stay on the sidelines and let the hype pass and has the hype passed can we now put a fork in the the nft hype now that it seems to be in the rearview mirror like these nfts and i remember the

and i i watched the odd thing on it and i can't remember what they were called the monkey images okay so the the the apes the apes right the apes they were not monkeys they were apes come on my right bored apes yes okay the bored ape yacht club which was a brilliant scam the perpetuators of that made a lot of money but it smelled like a scam like am i like again i i'm not unfoolable but i have a pretty good you know like naturally cynical kind of view on different things and i it smelled like a scam and much like i won't give elon musk a penny for twitter i would not give a penny for your bored ape images and i don't i never understood where the value was and is it is it done now the nft praise i hope so but i don't think so the value of nfts fundamentally was

copyright which the internet hates and creating a platform in which you could enforce copyright i.e digital rights management in a way that empowered hollywood so i think hollywood is going to make one last ditched attempt to make nfts a go i think they're going to tie it to concerts they're going to tie it to live events and they're going to use it as a way to prove like a receipt that you are the ticket holder that you are the person entitled to you know whatever copyright or whatever event item but i don't think it's going to fly i think it's going to be dead on arrival because the momentum, the mainstream acceptance was never there. And I don't think it's going to be there because the

internet hates copyright, right? If the internet allows us to pirate, we will. And I think the entertainment industry still has not, just like journalists haven't figured out that objectivity is dead, the entertainment industry hasn't figured out that copyright's a problem, not an asset, not a solution. Futurist Jesse Hirsch, you hit it out of the park in your Toronto Mike debut. Kudos to you. It's been an honor. I look forward to coming and hanging out in person. But can I say that you undersell yourself? I think one of the consequences of doing over 1,340 shows is you have created your own education. Like you have literally talked to all the smart people that you're interested in, all the people in the industry that you're interested in. And the end result is the superhero that is Toronto Mike.

So while I think it's important to be self-effacing and humble, you also need to start coming into the self-awareness that you have created this kind of magical superhero. Right. The same way that we both think Mark Weisblatt is a kind of magical superhero, right? That, you know, deserves the power and respect and recognition that I think is now starting to come your way. Well, Jesse, if I knew you were going to close with that, I wouldn't be starting the song already.

I'd give you another 20 minutes for that. That was amazing. And thank you for those very, very kind words. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being so patient. There's still a lot of interesting people left to speak with and your evidence of that. And yeah, you just filled me full of confidence.

And I got a little swagger in my step today, thanks to your kind words. So thanks for being an FOTM. Right on, my pleasure. And that brings us to the end of our 1,343rd show. You can follow me on Twitter and Blue Sky on that Toronto mic. All right, Jesse, what's the best way? I know you're Jesse Hirsch.

There's no C in Hirsch because there's another Jesse Hirsch with a C in it, but you got no C in Hirsch. Correct, and Jesse Hirsch with a C in it. But you got no C in Hirsch. Correct. And that Jesse Hirsch hates that I dominate his search rankings. It's funny because Google sometimes tries to, like, tell you you're wrong. Like, you might say, we're assuming you meant this Hirsch. If you meant the other Hirsch, then click here.

Like, it's like it's trying to, like, tell you you're wrong. But you are Hirsch, then click here. It's trying to tell you you're wrong, but you are Hirsch Sands C. And Twitter is probably the best place. Okay, that's well. I'll be tweeting at you when this goes live in 2.5 minutes. Much love to all who

helped make this Real Talk possible. That's Great Lakes Brewery, Fresh Craft Beer, Great Lakes. If you're in ontario there's no other option palma pasta delicious italian food they're in mississauga and oakville but you can go to palmapasta.com raymond james canada subscribe to the advantaged investor manaris subscribe to yes we are open recycle mycyclemyelectronics.ca. Pumpkins After Dark, get on that. It's October 12th, for goodness sakes.

Halloween's almost here. And Ridley Funeral Home, listen to Life's Undertaking with Brad Jones. See you all next week. Checking my calendar in real time. Isn't that thrilling? And I'm going to learn that we have a bunch of great guests,

one of whom is Sam Roberts live in the studio. I wouldn't let him zoom it in. So Sam Roberts will be right here. Can't wait for that. See you all next week. Everything is coming up rosy and gray

Yeah, the wind is cold but the smell of snow Warms me today And your smile is fine And it's just like mine And it won't go away Cause everything is Rosie and Gray