CES 2026: Part Four (Wednesday)

Summary

Better Offline: CES 2026, Part Four (Wednesday)

Podcast: Better Offline (Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts)
Date: January 8, 2026
Host: Ed Zitron
Guests/Panelists: Chloe Radcliffe, Adam Conover, Garrison Davis, Hayden Johnson, Ben Rudolph, Matt Binder

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Episode Overview

This episode offers a sharp, often humorous deconstruction of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2026 in Las Vegas, focusing on the absurdities, failures, and sometimes real needs tackled by new tech—especially the surge of AI-based and "LLM wrapper" products. The panel discusses themes of tech’s failures to address real human needs, especially loneliness, gendered tech marketing, and the broader malaise in the tech industry. The hosts also examine the intersection of masculinity, emotional health, and technology.

Main Tone: Irreverent, critical, and highly conversational with humor and candid storytelling.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The (Literal) State of the Show Floor: Freebies, Gimmicks, and Gaffes

[02:07–08:10]

• The episode opens with stories about the "swag economy" of CES—a place where people angle for free gadgets, often to comic effect.
• Chloe Radcliffe recounts being offered pastel "power banks for girls," riffing on the remarkably retrograde gender marketing at play.
• The panel mocks how CES remains stuck in outdated gender binaries, e.g., “pink is for girls, black is for boys.”

  “I love that they're still like, it's like 1995. And, like, what if computer for woman.” — Ed Zitron (07:49)

• Adam Conover shares an anecdote about paternalistic car marketing, reinforcing the persistent, awkward genderization of tech products.

2. Tech’s Out-of-Touch "Solutions": AI Companions for the Elderly

[12:15–18:48]

• Hayden Johnson discusses the proliferation of "AI companions" for older adults, such as orbs that simulate conversation to alleviate loneliness.
• The group critiques how these solutions may actually be more alienating or aggravating than helpful:

  “We invented technology to harass your grandparents.” — Adam Conover (14:14)

• Adam describes the unsettling TomBot—an AI dog puppet booth, and debates whether such tech offers comfort or “just a bummer.”

3. Failure to Solve Real Problems: Cooking Tech & Home Automation

[20:17–27:53]

• The hosts lambast “AI agent” kitchen devices that claim to handle meal planning but ultimately require as much or more user effort.
• Radcliffe notes how wraparound chatbots for scheduling and home management actually add no true value:

  “Except you still have to look at your screen to read what the chatbot is telling you. So you could also just look at your screen to look at your Google Calendar…” — Chloe Radcliffe (25:44)

• Adam: “The iPhone was like 90% of all technological advancements. Yeah, that was possible when it was invented.” (55:58)

4. The Proliferation of LLM "Wrappers" & Market Bubble Concerns

[36:19–32:31]

• Discussion intensifies on the epidemic of companies at CES building “wrappers” around existing AI (like ChatGPT), offering virtually no original value.

  “No, it’s democratizing lazy fucking assholes building nothing.” — Ed Zitron (37:01)

• Concerns are raised about the sustainability of business models simply reselling OpenAI extensions.

5. Smart Glasses, Translation Gadgets, and the Realities of Wearable Tech

[46:30–54:52]

• Garrison Davis gives a tour of the many “smart glasses” and translation gadgets: most offer only slight improvements over standard phone apps, often with usability trade-offs like lag or dependence on connectivity.

  “Why do you want a heads up display if … maybe you need to play app with gesture controls?” — (52:39)

• Hosts agree that, despite the hype, translation and AR features work better on existing smartphones. The true needs have already been met—or surpassed—by existing tech.

6. The Rise of "Waifu Tubes": Sexist AI Companions & the Tech-Loneliness Grift

[59:29–88:45]

• The group dissects the “waifu in a tube” phenomenon: little desktop holograms or tubes offering AI girlfriends (or, rarely, boyfriends).

  “It is a really good band aid on a multitude of problems because—I maintain—you want to, you want to genuinely go talk to a priest. … Maybe you need some spirituality in your life. Maybe you need more than just how you look or how you feel and trapped in your own head.” — Ed Zitron (124:02)

• They discuss the deeper implications: how these products reinforce gender stereotypes, subjugation fantasies, and the link between male loneliness, validation, and the commodification of women.
• Chloe: “The sort of the, the broadest and most, most foundational symbology of a technology where it says, here's a little woman that lives in a box on your desk…really does symbolize somebody who doesn't see women as equals.” (86:39)
• The discussion broadens to the social roots of loneliness and the need for real introspection, not technological “solutions.”

  “Tech can't by definition fix that because tech is not a person.” — Matt Binder (95:07)

7. Gender, Emotional Health, and Male Loneliness: Toward Real Connection

[106:27–135:13]

• The panel shifts to a profound, earnest discussion about male loneliness, body dysmorphia, and the need for men to support each other emotionally.
• Ben Rudolph shares his experience with fitness as both physical and mental therapy.
• Ed emphasizes the transformative power of male friendships focused on genuine emotion, vulnerability, and mutual support.

  “If you really can't, email me… Signal me…if you really want to talk about your emotions and you’re too scared because your cowardly male friends are not in touch with their things, do it. I don't care. You cry. I…I cry when I fucking need to. I'm fucking sick. You solve this by facing the problem by doing stuff.” — Ed Zitron (110:19)

• Chloe advocates for small, actionable steps: “Ask your male friend a question. Any question.” (116:34)
• Adam acknowledges: “I do think that we underrate how much society—like, all of us together as a society—push men down the wrong path on this stuff.”

8. Broader Tech Industry Disillusionment

Throughout

• The repeated theme is the disappointment that CES and tech at large are increasingly full of trivial, commercially dubious, or even destructive ideas—especially when it comes to actually serving or improving human lives.
• The panelist’s collective tone is one of critical skepticism, balanced with humor and sporadic optimism for genuine, meaningful connections either human-to-human or through technology that truly aids, not replaces, relationships.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

(All timestamps in MM:SS or H:MM:SS format)

• On Outmoded Gender Marketing:
  “My badge says ‘digital content creator.’ That's what you want, right? You want me to create digital content about your $4,000 TV. Right.” — Chloe Radcliffe [04:52]
• On AI Companions:
  “Grandma loves to commune with the orb.” — Adam Conover [13:13]
• On the AI "Solutions":
  “Every AI ad is a guy saying, what should I eat? And the AI says, sandwich. And the guy is like, whoa!” — Adam Conover (paraphrasing Hayden Johnson) [26:46]
• On Tech’s Masculinity Problem:
  “I want masculinity to be tied to analogness again. And I don't… right now, I think masculinity is tied to computer.” — Chloe Radcliffe [27:53]
• On LLM Bubble:
  “CES magnetizes the trends… the funding… it’s just fucking easier to build a company on top of it. Now people will frame this as, oh, it's democratizing building companies. No, it's democratizing lazy fucking assholes building nothing.” — Ed Zitron [37:01]
• On "Waifu Tubes":
  “Dance for me, tube woman.” — Ed Zitron [87:08]
• On Loneliness Tech:
  “It's, it's a technological fake solution to a real social problem that is like preying on both the customers and, and the women who are represented.” — Adam Conover [123:37]
• On Real Connection:
  “Talk to another fella, ask him how he’s feeling. …Don’t focus and say, ‘I need the wife tube.’” — Ed Zitron [109:51]
• On Societal Change:
  "We need to, like, create space for other men to do these things." — Adam Conover [134:08]
• On Empathy:
  “The only way that we make any progress is with empathy and kindness to the people in, to every player involved in this scenario.” — Chloe Radcliffe [136:14]

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Key Timestamps

• 02:07 – Show begins; inside look at CES floor & gendered tech marketing
• 12:15 – Emergence of AI elders’ companions and critique of their effectiveness
• 20:17 – Disillusionment with "AI kitchen" gadgets and overhyped home automation
• 36:19 – The LLM wrapper bubble and its implication for CES/the industry
• 46:30 – Report on smart glasses, translation apps, and wearables
• 59:29–88:45 – Extended segment on “waifu tubes,” AI companions, and the psychological/social fallout
• 106:27 – Deep dive on masculinity, body image, and real emotional support between men
• 134:08 – Final reflections: need for cultural change toward empathy and honest connection

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Final Notes

• The episode is refreshingly honest and often hilarious, but doubles as a serious critique of tech’s direction (or loss thereof), especially as it attempts (and fails) to supplant genuine human needs with superficial digital solutions.
• The panel provides both practical (though tongue-in-cheek) advice and heartfelt encouragement for listeners—especially men struggling with loneliness and emotional health: Talk to someone real, do the work, and beware the seductive but shallow tech "fixes" for human problems.

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TL;DR / Episode “Vibe”

CES is full of gadgets pretending to solve the human condition with AI, but the dream—and the hustle—is emptier than ever. Human connection still needs humans, not tubes with waifus.

Transcript

[Chloe Radcliffe]

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[Ed Zitron]

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[Chloe Radcliffe]

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[Ed Zitron]

Call Zone Media Summoned through a portal to the podcast Dimension, I am Ed Zitron, and this is Better Offlines coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show. Better Offline it's goddamn Wednesday and we're here at the goddamn Palazzo Hotel in beautiful Las Vegas, Nev. Week with an open bar, tacos and a comfy place to relax for reporters covering the largest And I don't know, most offensive technology show in the world, I'd say. And we're here all week with two episodes a day. And we've got an all star cast bringing you the best and well, mostly the worst from the show floors at the Las Vegas convention and Venetian expo centers. And my first contestants are joining me on nice and damp from the show floor. That was actually in the notes before that. Chloe, I apologize. I've got.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I just spilled half a can of liquid death all over myself. And this.

[Ed Zitron]

I poured an entire can over this table yesterday. It like exploded because it froze. Anyway, Mr. Ongueso Jr. Edward Ongueso Jr. Jesus Christ. I'm keeping going. Thank you for joining me. Tech bubble newsletter, of course.

[Hayden Johnson]

Thank you. Thank you. Happy to be here.

[Ed Zitron]

And you've got star of is this thing on. Chloe Radcliffe, stand up comedian as well. That's right. Flawless intro. And of course, stand up comedian, host of the factually podcast Adam Conover.

[Adam Conover]

Hello. Thank you for having me.

[Ed Zitron]

So it sounds like you've all been on the convention floors and based on the little I've heard, real banger day. Chloe, you got some free stuff.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I. The very first booth that I walked into was a dongle that basically makes you be able to airdrop between Mac and PC things. Oh. And I, yeah, super useful. And it's like adorable. I truly was magneted over because I was like, the word dongle is really funny and I wonder if I can make some jokes out of that. And then I saw it and was like, oh, this actually kind of rocks. And I have. I feel like an asshole saying I have an assistant, but I have an assistant and she uses a PC laptop but a Mac phone. And I was like, oh, I think I would like to buy this for her as a gift.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And so I was asking about the price and they said they were like, oh, well, we'd love to send you some free product. Let me send a. Let me take a photo of your badge, whatever. And truly my eyes like popped out of my skull. Went cash dollar signs rolling through my eyes and I was like, I can get free things.

[Ed Zitron]

The con is on.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Ye. And so then I started trying to go over and like, like show interest in things that I might want. And most of them did not fall for it.

[Ed Zitron]

Just walking up to the 87 inch TV.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Wow, that's so nice.

[Adam Conover]

I love that.

[Ed Zitron]

Just like kicking, just looking eyes with them.

[Adam Conover]

I love this.

[Ed Zitron]

Give it to me.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I. My, my badge says digital content creator. That's what you want, right? You want me to create digital content about your $4,000 TV. Right.

[Ed Zitron]

You like this? You.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Gave it to me.

[Ed Zitron]

So aside from people not giving you stuff for free, anything interesting?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

There was. Well, so I really got gummed down. I spent too much time on the accessories area.

[Ed Zitron]

That's fine. Those were also things.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

They were great. There was one actually, a booth that was. Had a super useful, like, travel, a wireless charger that, like, flips out. It looks like a. Like a makeup compact, actually. And there's a wireless charger for your phone and a wireless charger for your AirPods and a little baby one for your Apple watch.

[Adam Conover]

Right.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And I don't use those three things, but my boyfriend does. And so I was like, oh, Christmas presents.

[Ed Zitron]

This is awesome.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Great. I'm just, like, starting to make Christmas presents list on the CES floor, which actually seems like the best possible.

[Adam Conover]

That that is what it should be.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Adam Conover]

You should walk around and go, oh, stocking stuffers, little goo gaws. That'll make Grammy happy.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, like useful electronics.

[Adam Conover]

Consumer Electronics Expo.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, yeah, it is for. It is at a retail level for the consumers, me and my family. And. But then at that same booth where I was. So I was, like, really awed by this. The little flip open.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Wireless charger. And then a guy. The guy was walking me around, and he was showing me the other things that they have, whatever. Whatever other power blocks and charging things. And then another guy at that same booth came up, and there's. I have a photo of it, but it's probably not worth showing. They. They have a little set of power banks in the back that's like pastel colors. And I didn't look at that and go, oh, power banks for girls. I didn't. That. Gotta say, that thought never crossed my mind. I just thought a power bank that's pink and light blue and light green, whatever.

[Ed Zitron]

Very progressive.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And it looks kind of like a makeup bottle. Like, it's like one color on, like, for two thirds of it. And then it kind of looks like it might have a clear glass top.

[Advertisement Voice]

It's not.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It's just a power bank. But I. Again, this is not a thought that I had. But the second guy walks up and he goes, it looks like a foundation. Clearly, with the tone of, like, you're a lady. You will like that.

[Ed Zitron]

Now there's a guy who knows makeup.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

Looks like I'm conquilia.

[Adam Conover]

Like, he worked for the product.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

He worked for the company.

[Adam Conover]

For the company.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And I. And I went, oh, yeah, it looks like A foundation. And. And he, like, doubled down on it. He was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So I think you'd like it. It looks like a foundation. And I. So these are for. These are the power banks for girls. And he went, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're for girls. And I think the first guy who I was talking to understood that I hated what was going on. Like, that I was having fun and sort of mocking the whole thing, but he couldn't step in and stop it. And the guy who I was mocking fully did not track what was going on.

[Ed Zitron]

I love that. I love that they're still like, it's like 1995. And, like, what if computer for woman.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yes, woman.

[Ed Zitron]

They use in this thing now. The birds.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Truly. I. He kept doubling down and tripling down so hard on it that I eventually pointed. We're still standing in front of power banks for girls. And I pointed to one on the end that was black. And I went, see this one? I go, what is that?

[Ed Zitron]

No, dumb.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I literally hit my forehead with the ball of my hand. I pointed to the colors and I went, but this one. I go, that makes me happy. The first guy is, like, humiliated this whole time. And I was like, I'm sorry, but your coworker is really fucking annoying.

[Adam Conover]

That's so good.

[Ed Zitron]

I love that. I love that they're still doing shit like that.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It was crazy.

[Adam Conover]

I mean, it reminds me of when I purchased in 2013, a 2010 used Prius AT the Prius dealership. And the guy is driving around me and my girlfriend at the time, and she's in the back. I'm the one purchasing the car. But he turns to her and he goes, so Toyota actually polled 1,000 women on what they would like in the car. And so there's a place to put your purse right here, like, under the console. And she hated that so much. She talked about that for 10 years. To look at her and say, we've. We asked your kind.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, we asked 1,000 woman. And that is it. We. We. No more. No need to do. It's just. I. I don't know. I. Without. Without being too preachy, but it's like, it's 2025 at this point. It's like, pink is for girls, black is for boys.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

This will fit in your handbag, which you don't appear to have.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Also. All of this fits in my handbag. It's all very small.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it's like.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It.

[Ed Zitron]

Like, were the go ones smaller and thinner or they just colors?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

They were. It was just Pink and purple and.

[Adam Conover]

And see, they gotta go. They gotta go further than that when they make it, like, super girly. Like, I went to the razor booth and they had. This is an old product, but they had the headphones with the cat ears.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, that's.

[Adam Conover]

I feel like that's not so bad because that's like, you know, if you're super. If you're like a E Girl, Twitch streamer and you, like, you, Your whole, you know, streamer room is hello Kitty.

[Ben Rudolph]

Right.

[Adam Conover]

You know, it's like, I would say.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I would say that headphones with cat ears is the third gender.

[Adam Conover]

One of them autistic.

[Hayden Johnson]

I would love one of these guys.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

To be like, hey, it's like, my headphones don't have ears on them.

[Ed Zitron]

My headphones are the exact ones. I looked and I looked for hours and hours and hours, and I tried several of them, and I talked to multiple friends, and then I found the perfect one. And then they weren't perfect, so I returned them and tried another one, and they were perfect. Yeah.

[Advertisement Voice]

Those.

[Ed Zitron]

That's the fourth gender just diagnosed.

[Ben Rudolph]

Just.

[Adam Conover]

I'm fresh.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm fresh.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

The listeners show up that it took this long.

[Ed Zitron]

The listeners who have been trying to diagnose me for two years are like, finally. I mean, I'm, I'm finally edified.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, God. So, okay, talk about.

[Hayden Johnson]

I, I, I, I just want a vendor to look at me and be like, you know, this thing plays a little rap music.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. Directing. This is the ur.

[Hayden Johnson]

You know, we. This goes in your sneakers.

[Adam Conover]

You know, you like sneakers.

[Hayden Johnson]

You know you went to those.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, God.

[Hayden Johnson]

Instead, when I roll up, they look me up and down, they see the press card, and then they immediately direct their press person over. Like they're a bodyguard or enforcer. Or if I ask, like, two questions about how does this work?

[Ed Zitron]

They're like, oh, oh, yeah.

[Advertisement Voice]

He'll tell you. He'll tell you.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. That's so Sad. Again, it's 2025, and they're still like, whoa. Don't worry, one of you guys.

[Hayden Johnson]

My goal.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

This computer has a basketball.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay. You went to that.

[Hayden Johnson]

I gotta find. I'm gonna find someone to riff with.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Hayden Johnson]

That's my goal in this, this convention. Not to find a product I like, but someone who, Someone will be a little scared.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Or be too scared or.

[Hayden Johnson]

Yeah, actually, we'll get nervous.

[Ed Zitron]

Someone who's just like, I, I, I don'. I don't know. I've never. I've met tons of people like you, but wait what did you see today?

[Adam Conover]

What?

[Ed Zitron]

Anything fun?

[Hayden Johnson]

I mean, it was nothing interesting. I circled back to.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It was nothing interesting. A really funny review of ces.

[Ed Zitron]

Another good tagline for the show.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Nothing interesting.

[Ed Zitron]

Nothing really interesting.

[Hayden Johnson]

I circled back to a lot of the age, tech and kind of AI health companion stuff because I was interested in seeing. Okay, maybe if I have a little bit more of a conversation with them and get them to explain what the agent part means or to explain the actual use cases, I might find something interesting. But it was just more of the same. There was one firm I circled back to. I think their name was Ali Q. That is really, really big on elderly companions and trying to have something that your grandparents can talk to that may or may not cause chat psychosis if they spend a lot of time talking.

[Ed Zitron]

To it, but they'll never be alone. Is it like a thing on the computer?

[Hayden Johnson]

It is just like big old kind of looking like a orb.

[Ed Zitron]

Like a big orb?

[Hayden Johnson]

Yeah, like a big orb and some sensors around it and a pad that you get to talk to and type into.

[Adam Conover]

Grandma loves to commune with the orb.

[Ed Zitron]

Great news, Granny. I got you an orbit. Yeah. You like your orb, Granny?

[Hayden Johnson]

Yeah. Told me it was God, your friends in the computer.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You know, I'm never alone now that I have my orbit.

[Hayden Johnson]

So you have to log in to talk to someone. Essentially. You go into work, you got to sit at your desk and be like, hello, how are you doing?

[Ed Zitron]

But there's a person at the end. Or a chat bot. It's a chat bot. That's so sad. Yeah.

[Hayden Johnson]

And this chatbot's supposed to be your interface of the outer world.

[Ed Zitron]

Isn't trained on old people speak like what?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It says the YouTube. Yeah, yeah. Shows them.

[Ed Zitron]

It fills up the TV show TV volume to max. Automatically. It has the same conversation.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It agrees it is too cold in here.

[Hayden Johnson]

It's also.

[Ed Zitron]

I do agree the young people don't work enough.

[Hayden Johnson]

So instead of push notifications or, you know, it basically has pusher notifications that are like, let's start a conversation. So you'll be doing your thing and it'll be like, hey, I want to talk to you.

[Adam Conover]

We invented technology to harass your grandparents. Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

No, literally, though, I know so many grandparents who would. Would take that out back and hit it with a slice.

[Ed Zitron]

Can you imagine?

[Adam Conover]

All they want is not to be bothered.

[Ben Rudolph]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm just imagining my. My grandfather had passed, like, 20 years ago, even, like, way before LLMs. Just imagine Ken. He was a sign painter in Dorset, in Bournemouth, and he. Christchurch Broaden Main, England. And he would have just. He would have beat the. Out of this one minute. He would have been like, I'm not touching that. I'm not judging that. Beat it with a stick. He would have loved that. Actually.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

They sent the machines to watch us.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, I don't even think he'd just be, like, offended by an orb he has to talk to. So if we want to go down the pub.

[Adam Conover]

Did you guys see the booth for. For Tom Bot Incorporated?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I saw it from afar and it looked so terrifying, and I didn't stop.

[Adam Conover]

Like a little dog puppet. And it's. The booth is like a living room and it's got framed photos of the dog puppet and a. And like, what is a sampler, sort of cross stitch thing that says a pet for people who can't have pets.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay.

[Adam Conover]

And then there's like a lady dressed up like a granny and she's holding the puppet. I didn't really see what it does. Presumably it's just like an AI dog. This sad guy just sort of sitting there.

[Ed Zitron]

Wait, there was an actual fella?

[Adam Conover]

There's like a fella sitting in there.

[Garrison Davis]

He.

[Ed Zitron]

Like a real guy?

[Adam Conover]

Yeah, he looks like he's bummed out. He's just sort of sitting there, like, zone it, like, dissociating. Petting the dog and Zenied up and like, it could be. It could be useful. But it's also like, it's such a bummer just to be like, this is.

[Advertisement Voice]

For.

[Adam Conover]

Very elderly people who've lost their ability.

[Ed Zitron]

And I'm like, 50, 50 on those. Because I can kind of see, like, there is. It's been proven that that's helpful. I've heard good things. But the same thing is like, you're too. You're too old or sick to take care of an animal.

[Adam Conover]

It's great.

[Ed Zitron]

But like seeing a whole booth of that and then the guy they paid to just sit there all day.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

It's 15 bucks an hour. Yeah. You go look depressed.

[Adam Conover]

You feel bad for the demo.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Adam Conover]

You're watching the demo and you're like, oh, it's too bad that this guy has to sit there and pet that fake dog. He doesn't look happy about it. Whereas when people are with a real dog, they're so happy.

[Ed Zitron]

That's such a good point. Surely he would want to be like, hell, yeah, I have a dog.

[Adam Conover]

I love my dog.

[Ed Zitron]

This dog is so cute. It's like, no, just wait in here until my son calls me in a week.

[Adam Conover]

I've seen the studies that you're talking about. They're also true of plants. Like when you give old plants in, like the nursing home, they give them. They bring like kitties in. Like, it's not. It's not a particularly unsolved problem. I. Look, we do need more technology for old people. I've always thought, like, the Wii was such a hit for old people and then there's been no we since. I think that's a tragedy of technology that, like, there's countless senior homes that are still using their WWII from like 2007 to play Wii Golf. Because there's never been anything like that is quite.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Did we go out of business?

[Ed Zitron]

No, Nintendo is still in business.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah, they still make stuff and they occasionally make a game like that. But the Wii was like this moment where they developed control, a video game and a game that was very simple and resembled games people already knew. And it was like this perfect thing that people had never played a video game, especially elderly people could like, figure it out. And then it just sort of wasn't popular enough among the core gaming audience and they stopped making that type of game.

[Ed Zitron]

It was also tough to develop for as well. And it was really expensive. The controllers were weird and you had to have like a weird bar above your thing. It was just like a lovely idea that just would not scale ever.

[Ben Rudolph]

You think?

[Adam Conover]

You think not? I know. I think maybe I needed a different company to make. I think about this a lot.

[Ed Zitron]

Kind of done it with the switch, with the control. With the controls. But it's not the same.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah, it's.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But you're saying a company that's not motivated by the youth gaming sector. Yeah, like doesn't. Doesn't need to win the most billions of dollars that like, could operate at.

[Adam Conover]

A. Yeah, I guess literally a company that's like trying to get contracts with. With senior homes.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

You know my favorite.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

We can pitch them or like schools. I feel like at this point, kids want things that feel digital but don't absolutely melt their brains.

[Ed Zitron]

The thing is though, like, I think we're describing the problem of the modern state of capitalism where it's like, oh, a company that doesn't need to grow forever. I'm never going to fund that bullshit. Are you going to make consistent money? Fuck you. I will say I did find a weird one where it was just one of these. One of 900 different companions. It was just these horrible little things wheeling around like Teletubbies. But what was interesting was someone had a dog, like a leaving dog, and it was just going fucking Batshit. And I was like, this rocks. And then someone went and picked up the dog. If they just had a booth where they had a dog going nuts on these things.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, a booth where a dog gets to destroy a robot.

[Ed Zitron]

I would pay. I would pay to watch. Like, a large. Like, even, like, a small dog would be funny, but, like, a. Was Malwa the one that can climb walls? Like a giant dog just ripping up. How much would you. Yeah, like a malamute. Just up. Like, any of these robots would be sick.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I feel like we need. You know, so there's the Edinburgh Festival, which is in Edinburgh, Scotland. It's a big performing arts festival. And then there is the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which grew up as a. Like, people who were rejected from the core. Edinburgh Festival. And now the fringe has become bigger. And it's. It's the biggest. Biggest performing arts festival in the world. And it's the third biggest ticketed event after the Olympics and the World cup, and it's crazy. Whatever.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I feel like we need a CES fringe that can grow, where we can have booths. Like a dog attacks a robot.

[Adam Conover]

Actually a really good idea. Is there, like, a counter programing, like, punk art festival that happens at the same time as CES that's like, freaks.

[Ed Zitron]

That's. You know, that's what we're doing. We're going to start Better Offline Fest, where it's like, bring your shit for the dogs we've hired to destroy. And we were.

[Adam Conover]

Well, of course.

[Ed Zitron]

But we want. We're pro labor, so we will pay guys to sit around looking depressed on everybody.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

A guy staring out into the distance with Gimme Shelter playing.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It's going to be a guy who works for one of the companies that have a booth at the real ces, who then sits and looks sad as we watch as he watches his stuff get destroyed.

[Ed Zitron]

I saw another robot that was just this. It was on, like, conveyor belts, and it had big arms, and it was like home. It was like home patrol, elderly care, laundry folding. And I just walked up, like, can I see any of this? And they went, no. I was like, okay, but does it do it?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It will.

[Ed Zitron]

I just stared.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Right.

[Ed Zitron]

But what does it do now?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Well, it's there.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm like, yeah, I got that part.

[Adam Conover]

What?

[Ed Zitron]

And just this happened a lot. I mean, you were talking about brisket, this AI agent cooking thing. Yes. And it's just like, you look at it and you're like, oh, AI agent. Oh, it can order food. Well, doesn't sound like it can.

[Hayden Johnson]

No, they haven't figured that part out yet.

[Ed Zitron]

And what is the AI agent part?

[Hayden Johnson]

Well, that wasn't clear either, because it wasn't working.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Oh, okay.

[Ed Zitron]

It was.

[Hayden Johnson]

It's. It seems like it's just a chat bot that has a. There's a camera inside so it can like take pictures of your food and.

[Ed Zitron]

Be like, oh, you like to eat this?

[Adam Conover]

I've seen that five days today.

[Hayden Johnson]

No, there are so many.

[Ed Zitron]

Hey, one of them food eaters.

[Hayden Johnson]

Yeah. You know, you into this, you know, you like, sort of slump and I. It was fun because at first it was pitched as, like, oh, this will, like, prepare the food and cook it for you. And then as you ask questions, it's like, oh, no, it's like. Like, you have to. You still.

[Ed Zitron]

You do everything.

[Hayden Johnson]

You still do almost everything. How would it prepare nothing? All it is.

[Ed Zitron]

It was a pellet smoke, wasn't it?

[Hayden Johnson]

Yeah, that's pretty much it. You know, but they're spinning it as. Because they have other products in this where they're like, oh, we have a grill that's also an AI.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, yeah.

[Hayden Johnson]

Agent grill. And we have, you know, any sort. We have a microwave that we're working on. So all of it is basically like. We just have a sensor inside that gets data on what you like to eat, and then we'll order some of the components and then we will figure out a way to charge you extra for that delivery service.

[Ed Zitron]

And it's just a chat GPT wrapper.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Adam Conover]

Blue Apron plus an AI, which we.

[Ed Zitron]

Kind of already have. We have Tovala. We have like 19 different Instagram services that. Instagram ads that target me a week.

[Hayden Johnson]

And it costs probably five times more than the other thing because it also has a giant fucking screen on it.

[Ed Zitron]

But also the fun part, pellet grilling is like, you can just go and buy a shit ass. Like what, like a pork shoulder and just throw it in with some seasoning. And it's like, you don't need the computer to tell you what you need the computer. Also, who are these people who are like, every day is just confusing to them. I'm just fucking. What do I eat? What do I do? Throw the food in there. Oh, God, I don't remember.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

What are the things I like to eat.

[Ed Zitron]

I don't have tastes.

[Hayden Johnson]

Yeah.

[Adam Conover]

These companies have not thought about, like, even before AI. They're all trying to solve the food problem, like the meal delivery kit companies, and none of it sticks. People do meal delivery kits for like a couple months and they stop and it's because eating is a solved problem. There's like, there's three kinds of people. There's people who buy frozen shit and heat it up or they boil hot dogs.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Adam Conover]

There's people who only eat takeout and there's people who enjoy cooking.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Adam Conover]

Those are the. And, and all of them already have something people. The people who hate cooking aren't going to like cooking because of the expensive shit that you sold them to try to trick them into what does cook for them.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Adam Conover]

That sort of cooks for them or does it badly or sends them shit in the mail. They don't want to cook at all.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Adam Conover]

They want to eat McDonald's or they want to heat up a factor meal in the microwave.

[Hayden Johnson]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And the thing is, I don't judge anyone who does the meal kit stuff. I did it fine. Especially when you're trying to lose weight, it's fine. But it's also like, like I, I steal a lot. Like a decent amount of efforts. You have to select and it's like you're kind of like, you heat them. I did it for a while.

[Adam Conover]

Did you enjoy throwing out 500 small plastic bags?

[Hayden Johnson]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And also, like, if you fall behind on them or travel, you just have a stack of the. And that's when you cancel the moment you have a stack. And I've still got some of them somehow. And it's just. I read the documentation for the brisk it. I don't fucking care.

[Adam Conover]

The brisk.

[Ed Zitron]

It's what it's called.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yes.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

The brisket.

[Ed Zitron]

If it was called like the brisk it, I'd kind of laugh. But like, it's just like. But I read it and it was like the little fake demo they had on the leaflet that was like, what? I want to eat this. I want to limit myself to 1800 calories and I want to leave these foods out. It's just like, like, all right, no one exists in this manner. No one is doing this. No one's going to use it in this way. No one who is buying a, I assume, thousand plus dollar grill is going to be like, yeah, okay, a chatbot to finally tell me if you're discerning enough to, like pick a grill that costs that much money, you probably put more thought into cooking than just, I want to spend a thousand dollars for a cooker that will just tell them what to do.

[Hayden Johnson]

When you ask them where the labor saving thing is, because they insist this will save you time and convenience, they describe a process that is like, longer than getting the food itself to and cooking or meal planning your. On your own. You know, it's like you.

[Ben Rudolph]

You.

[Hayden Johnson]

I'm spending, what, half an hour, you know, getting this thing ready, constantly cycling through it, training it.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And then it'll.

[Hayden Johnson]

It'll kind of recommend things for me that I still gotta go out, buy, design.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Hayden Johnson]

And prepare, you know, so it's like, what's actual. What's actually.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Which seems to be a trend. What's actually.

[Advertisement Voice]

Special point.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Like in. In an earlier block, we were talking. Or an earlier episode, we were talking about the chat bot that manages. I think you were talking about this. The chat bot that manages your home. The. The chat bot that's like, you don't want to pick up your kids from groceries, from daycare, whatever. But it's like you still. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it, like, looks at your Google Calendar for you and whatever. Except you still have to look at your screen to read what the chatbot is telling you.

[Hayden Johnson]

Right.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

So you could also just look at your screen to look at your Google Calendar. Like, it's not. Not fundamentally. And. And look, maybe the designers of that chat agent would be like, no, no. This combines the six apps that you have to have open. Except the reason that six apps are open is because I have to make a decision about concretely what happens in my life. Like, do I go to this place or this place first? And the chatbot can't fundamentally can't make that decision for me. It doesn't have enough information. It can't. All of the information is in my brain.

[Hayden Johnson]

Which is why you have to offload it into the.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Then it can hallucinate. Yes.

[Adam Conover]

I've been trying to write jokes about AI for a while, but, you know, Chloe, as a comic, when someone has written a joke that's so good that you can't write anything better, and it's like, taking over your brain. Very funny. Comic name, Hayden Johnson, who wrote a tweet that was like, every. Every AI ad is a guy saying, what should I eat? And the AI says, sandwich. And the guy is like, w.

[Ed Zitron]

It's so true, though. It really. It's like, sandwich.

[Hayden Johnson]

I never thought of that.

[Ed Zitron]

Whoa. And that's actually, I think, genuinely a Gemini ad. It's like, what am I gonna eat? And it's like, have you tried this ham sandwich? It's like, if you act like that, go to a doctor.

[Hayden Johnson]

Gemini ads where it's like, hey, you know, you're in this book club, you signed up for, for some reason, and you didn't do the reading what if you faked it and told all your friends that you did use us to fake it?

[Ed Zitron]

What if you joined a book club where you didn't read? Yeah, yeah.

[Adam Conover]

It's just like, you know, or like.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

What if you lied to your friends? Yeah, yeah.

[Hayden Johnson]

What if you lied to your loved ones?

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, right.

[Hayden Johnson]

We can help with that.

[Ed Zitron]

It's very. It's peculiar as well, because again, grilling, if the whole thing is just throw some burgers on there and you're there, I assume, with friends. Or like, you throw in a big brisket and it takes 18 hours and you kind of look at it, it's very analog. Like, I have two giant smokers, and they are mostly like the best one. I have this, a big stainless steel beast that's basically a temperature measurer, a hopper for pellets, and then an auger to send him and set him on fire. It's not a computer. Adding computer to that really wouldn't change much.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Like, I wouldn't change much. But I think the confusing thing to me, I. I want masculinity to be tied to analogness again.

[Matt Binder]

Right.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And I don't right now. I think masculinity is tied to computer. And so it is interesting, I think, in a lot. I think there's a lot of like. Like, dad, you like this grill because it has a computer in it.

[Ben Rudolph]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Dad, like, plain grill. Dad.

[Adam Conover]

Like, this is changing because that's. That's dad. But, you know, now there's like the performative male archetype, like, tick tock thing, and that's all wired headphones, reading. Reading. Bell hooks in paper form. Totally.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But I don't think. I think that that is.

[Adam Conover]

That's complicated because it's a stereotype created by women about men. I was also gonna say not masculine. So it's.

[Hayden Johnson]

Never mind.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Adam, with greatest respect, I think that your feed over represents how many performative men are in the world.

[Adam Conover]

Oh, I think the whole performative male thing is. Is nonsense, bullshit as a meme.

[Hayden Johnson]

I think.

[Adam Conover]

I think it's really destructive and doesn't exist. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

I think masculinity should be tied to personal responsibility and love for your friends and loved ones. But that's perfect.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Is not computer.

[Ed Zitron]

No, and it's not. The computer is the. No, I think the computer is innocent. The people who fuck with the computer must be stopped. And this show really is like. Like, I think I saw no less than 17 different companies that were like, yeah, we Generate images. You're a rapper. You're a rapper for Chat GPT. Oh, we generate images and text. So you use chat GPT or. Or Claude. Yeah, we. We connect your disparate documents and we allow you to summarize them. So Chat GPT. And there were so many of them. They were hallway. I went to Eureka park, as you can guess, which is the very sad small box area, mostly looking for funny names. I'm not gonna lie. I was mostly just looking for names that make me laugh. And it was just so biz. Because what happens when all of this starts getting more expensive because it's all unprofitable? Just these companies evaporate overnight. And I will say we're coming towards the end of this blog. But nevertheless, I will say Eureka park felt. And even the Expo, the Venetian one, felt smaller to me. Like previous years, it felt a little more robust and there was a lot more like they would. The countries like the Careers left France and all that.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

The Epcot Center.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, yeah, the Epcot center was never above ground. You put them in the. In the basement where the other countries apparently belonged with like the Social Security Administration and the various scams. They were up top. They were top.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Not to say that Social Security is a scam.

[Ed Zitron]

No, no, no, no. But like I. I had a comma in that one, I promise. But it was just. Thank you, Chloe. But it.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You.

[Ed Zitron]

It feels like most of the show is just LLM rappers now. And like, we can laugh at that and goddamn will. We've got an hour and a half to cover. But it's very worrying because before it was like, oh, it's a bunch of Kickstarter shit, Indiegogo shit. At least there was money involved in products. This is like predominantly companies that are using an API and that's like, oi. First of all, no differentiation, easily cloned by OpenAI. But also just, where's the fucking business, buddy? Where is it?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Where's the product?

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, don't worry, there isn't one. It's just other than the ones which are like, yeah, we have a photonic sensor to put on the top of a specific device. I fucking love all of those. The industrial one where it's like for a specific use case, they're there to meet one of 11 people and they meet all of them. Those are cool. The rest, not so much.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah. I mean, the. The. What I wind up wondering as a pure layperson is. Is the fact. So sorry, let me. Let me sort of give. Give you what I'm hearing.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It sounds like, and I agree with this from my experience on the floor, it sounds like some very high preponderance of. Of the offerings at CES this year are functionally wrappers around an already developed AI tool. Yes, right. They are. Some interface with chat GPT. There's some. Right. Whether whatever that interface may be, an orb, a pillow, an app, or whatever it is, it is the technology at the core of it is something that somebody else has already made that we are all aware of. Yes. So in that case, if. If that preponderance is higher this year, is that because is there are, like, fewer problems to solve elsewhere? Fewer, like, consumer problems to solve elsewhere that we've like, actually advanced so far in technology that without. Without these wrappers for these LLMs, they would be. CS would be way smaller. Or is it that everybody has gotten so distracted by LLMs that everybody's gone, well, we can create a new interface for this, a new kind of rapper for it, and that they've actually, like, directed their creative energies away from solving a lot of other consumer problems.

[Ed Zitron]

It's all of the ab. And I realize we're approaching the end of the half an hour, but I'll wrap this on this. What it is is that. It's that venture capital is pretty much only like 50% of venture capital went into AI this like last year. It's got this 2026 now. It's also CES usually just is magnetized to whatever trend there was. Metaverse, there's VR. I'm. I'm. Two years ago, we had an AI semen thing. None of that this year. No come, no coming.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I've never met intelligent semen.

[Ed Zitron]

Apparently they were a few years ago.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Organically or artificially.

[Adam Conover]

Okay.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Men are back.

[Matt Binder]

Oh, man.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Kill. Oh, man. More woman on podcast. Honestly.

[Ed Zitron]

Honestly. Female listeners going to eat this up. All right, we're going to rotate though. We're going to rotate. Here comes an ad that's specifically only for woman.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It's pink.

[Advertisement Voice]

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[Ed Zitron]

Well, the holidays have come and gone once again.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But if you've forgotten to get that.

[Garrison Davis]

Special someone in your life a gift, well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday.

[Ed Zitron]

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[Chloe Radcliffe]

So here's the idea.

[Ed Zitron]

You get it now. You call it an early present for next year.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

What do you have to lose?

[Adam Conover]

Give it a [e-mail] switch limited time.

[Advertisement Voice]

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[Ed Zitron]

And we're back in the room now. We've of course got the wonderful Garrison Davis. If it could happen here.

[Garrison Davis]

Hello.

[Ed Zitron]

And we're back with Chloe Radcliffe, actress, of course, in the movie Is this Thing on?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Stand up comedian.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Comedian and host of the factually podcast Adam Conover. Hello. And we were just talking about LLM rappers and why everything is LLM this year. And AI this year more so even the last year why? There are so many things that are just effectively wrapping around the chat, GPT, API. And what it is, is, yes, CES magnetizes the trends. Like, it's just. It goes wherever the trends are. We've had our metaverse and VR and AR and indie, like, 2015 was very Indiegogo. Heavy crowds, crowdfunding and such. But I think it's also the funding thing of where venture capital is going, but also it's just fucking easier to build a company on top of it. Now people will frame this as, oh, it's democratizing building companies. Companies. No, it's democratizing lazy fucking assholes building nothing.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And take that, suckers.

[Ed Zitron]

No, it really, it really is, though, the suckers being venture capitalists and customers as well. Because it's like, yeah, I built a company. No, you fucking didn't. You built something on top of someone else's company and you're claiming it's yours. By the way, those API rates are going the way. They're too cheap. They don't make sense. But yeah, it's just kind of sad because usually you go to CES, it's say 40% of the stuff will be dead in a year. This one is like, if things go the way I'm expecting all of it, like, like maybe 75% of it, to be fair. But like every LLM powered thing, you're.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Saying, even the robot dog.

[Ed Zitron]

Especially the robot dog, because that has phys.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Oh, don't kill my robot dog. And not.

[Ed Zitron]

How many times are we going to talk about killing dogs on the show?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Every time the glowy's on, I actually have a whole.

[Ed Zitron]

Know multiple times we've.

[Adam Conover]

I have a whole nother product. I want to talk about dogs.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, oh, God.

[Adam Conover]

It is. It is about dogs.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

He landed the plane perfectly. He landed it.

[Adam Conover]

So I w. I wandered into a. It was like a consortium of Internet of Things, home products or whatever. And the guy recognizes me. He's like, oh, Adam, I like your show. Great. I'm like, what do you got in here? He's like, oh, I represent all these different companies. He. He actually said one of the. You know when someone like, accidentally says something that sounds really use, he's like, this thing over here will detect if you left your stove on and turn your stove off automatically. I was like, wow, that.

[Ed Zitron]

That's great.

[Adam Conover]

Who did invent? Why didn't we invent that 50 years ago? That seems very obvious as a product. Then he's like, over here we got the smart dog crate.

[Ed Zitron]

Hell yeah.

[Adam Conover]

It's like A big, like. Okay, first of all, imagine if your dog crate was like a. Like a twitch streamer's room.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, good. We talked about this briefly, but I want to hear.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

This is a different smart dog. This is a different one.

[Ed Zitron]

Does it measure the height of your dog? That was the one we saw.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

No, I think it's different because the one that I was looking at. So. So just to catch you up, the short. This is one sentence overview. There is a little crate that measures your dog's breathing rate, your heart rate, and the height, distance between the top of the crate and the top of the dog. And I said, why do we need that? And the guy said, because if it. If the number doesn't change for a while, maybe the dog has died. And I said, but wouldn't it. I said, but wouldn't you know that from the other numbers or by looking.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, God.

[Adam Conover]

Just the idea of, like, the distance from the ceiling to the dog has not changed in three days. Something is wrong.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I said. I told my. My boyfriend Stuart last night about. About the. The dog crate that I saw, and he was like, well, you want to avoid the. The terrifying case of your dog shrinking or worse, getting bigger. That's the thing.

[Ed Zitron]

It's like my dog is. Is not in a perpetual state. It's like my. At times. But wait, so, Adam, you found another one? Another one? A twitch streamer crate?

[Adam Conover]

A different one, yes. It had, among other things, it had an iPad in the dog crate so you could show your dog videos and video chat with your dog. It had like, a privacy screen that would open and close. Like glass that you could remotely open and close.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And then your dog wants to try on new outfits.

[Ed Zitron]

Your dog wants to pretend it's in a limo.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yep, yep.

[Adam Conover]

Or like, if you were, you know, had your dog in some sort of, like, prison visitation situation.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It was like, if you don't want strangers to see your dog's dick, this.

[Adam Conover]

Is a thing I vaguely knew already existed.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But, like, I. I want my dog to be modest. Ed.

[Adam Conover]

They said it was, you know, he was like, some people put a blanket over the crate, but now you don't have to do that. And again, it's one of those things where it's like, yeah, what was the problem with the blanket over the crate?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And also the blanket over the crate is to make the dog. Dog think. Is to make the dog go to sleep.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Is to say it's nighttime now. Not, I need some privacy.

[Adam Conover]

They called it privacy screen, and it was cool. Like, I Was aware this already existed. Like a. A pane of glass that if you, like, run a current through it, it suddenly turns opaque or something.

[Ed Zitron]

And.

[Adam Conover]

And that was cool to see go. Even though I knew it already existed. But. And. But then a big part of it was like, if you are at home and your smoke alarms go off and your house is on fire, you can open the door of the crate aut so the dog can run away from the fire. Or if you're on your way home and you want to let the dog out a little early. And the thing in my mind is, I'm like, who's. Who's crating their dog this much? Like, use it when your dog's a puppy, maybe.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

You're trading a dog to stay in the crate and be happy in it. And the whole point is that it can't leave. Like, you kind of, like, train it to, like, the crate. Like, why would you let it. I guess if you let it out early. Oh.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Also, the whole point of a dog is that it knows routine. As everybody knows the point of a dog.

[Adam Conover]

The point of a dog is routine.

[Ed Zitron]

The point of a dog is maximal.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Efficient efficiency, is optimize your dog.

[Ed Zitron]

Optimize your dog.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But if you let the dog out, if you open the dog crate early and the dog has no way of predicting when you're gonna open the crate.

[Ed Zitron]

Remotely and you are not there and.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You'Re not there, like, I feel like if you have a dog crated while you're gone, because I. I do know people who are like, there are tons.

[Ed Zitron]

Of people who do it.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, yeah. And do you know, it's whatever. Whatever judgment. Decide about whether you should have your dog in the crate that much or not. Totally. Setting that aside, just dealing with the reality of there are people who do. If. If you drive home and the dog hears the garage door opening or the dog hears the front door opening or whatever, then the dog gets to be excited because the crate is about to open. But if you're just randomly opening it, it's like, do you know those. Do you know that experiment with rats where they, like, shocked them, where they place. They place.

[Ed Zitron]

That's a. Was that the one where they shock the dog?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I think I know they had one with rats that I'm thinking of where it was was where they, like, play a beep and then shock the rat. And those rats survived, like, two or three times longer than where they. Where they just randomly shocked without the beep. Because the rats who didn't have the beep were so anxious the entire time. Were so stressed because they didn't know when the shock was coming. Whereas when they knew it's. It's right after the beep, they could, like, prepare for it for the second between the beep and the shock. And I feel like that's what you're doing to your dog. If the dog's just like. This door could open at any moment.

[Ed Zitron]

Could a person.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

At any moment.

[Ed Zitron]

Could a person fit in this thing? Okay.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

We were talking.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, no, we talk about the cat ear things. You got an iPad in you. It was like a twitch streamer. I got a few furry listeners.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. I definitely know people.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm like the yif. The yiff Maxers who listen.

[Adam Conover]

Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

There's going to be one person who emails saying they love that and another that threatens to kill me. It's going to be great.

[Adam Conover]

It was kind of charming. It wasn't that to your point, Chloe. I think if you were a dog and you're like, in the crate all do day and then suddenly the door just, like, silently swings open.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Adam Conover]

I'd be like, oh, humanity is gone. They've died. And I've been released from my. I'm in like a 28 days later situation. Like, it's the beginning of the movie.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I'm gonna have to eat my owner.

[Ed Zitron]

You just come back with dog fucking kills.

[Adam Conover]

It's too ominous.

[Ed Zitron]

All right, Gav, what have you seen today?

[Garrison Davis]

Today I've been to once again, more panels. I went to the Panasonic booth once. Actually, I would. I would prefer to go over your favorite part of Cell ces.

[Ed Zitron]

What do you mean?

[Garrison Davis]

Which is Showstoppers. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Showstoppers who have made war with me.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Because I work at a PR firm, they've decided I cannot go. Very unfair, Very nasty. So if you ever go to Showstoppers, my. My request is you eat a lot of horrible food. I want you to upper deck every toilet in that place, and we turn this into Mos Eisley Cantina.

[Garrison Davis]

I got it.

[Matt Binder]

I get.

[Adam Conover]

I like when that accent comes out. What is that specifically with the consonants.

[Ed Zitron]

Like Mos Eisley Cantina? It was like, it's west. It's West London. It' West London. Yeah. It goes between, like, my posh accent and the West London.

[Adam Conover]

And it's all in the consonants. Like, they're tight.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. There's something wrong with me. Tell me about the. Tell me about Hostoppers.

[Garrison Davis]

It was the worst Showstoppers I've been to in a Few years, which I'm honest, I'm saddened to say. Like, I usually kind of look forward to Showstoppers and could I request a.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

One to two sentence overview of what Showstoppers is?

[Garrison Davis]

Showstoppers is a media event for journalists where a bunch of products, usually from like Eureka park, usually like the ces, like innovation type, have booths in a ballroom in the Bellagio and there's food and drinks and journalists will walk through and you can talk to, you know, people from these companies. It's like another condensed version of like the show all in like one room and it's like every Tuesday night at ces.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And is there. Who gets to be there? Journalists? No, no, not who gets to look.

[Ed Zitron]

You have to pay. Who gets to show, like exhibits, who.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Gets to stop the show. But I guess what I'm saying is like, can you just pay enough and be one of those exhibitors? Like is it just. It's. It's not like nobody's picked. It's not as like we think these are actually the best.

[Ed Zitron]

There's a degree of that in that something that's outright fraudulent they would probably say no to, but probably not.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Because like there's, there's not much space and so they kind of defer to people who've won like the CES Innovation Awards every year. So you got. There was like a few of those boots.

[Ed Zitron]

But what was. What was mid about it?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

What was.

[Ed Zitron]

What was not.

[Garrison Davis]

It was. They changed venues. It was in a much smaller ballroom than. That's actually a terrible than the past few years. Yeah. And I would say about 40% of the show floor was once again your favorite product. Smart glasses. So many smart glasses booths.

[Ed Zitron]

Interesting.

[Garrison Davis]

There was like three. Three like regular smart glasses.

[Hayden Johnson]

All.

[Garrison Davis]

All like back ended via LLMs. Like the auto translation glasses I tried on.

[Advertisement Voice]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

One was a sound translation where they like have speakers in the arm that they were running that translation through Microsoft's AI. They had another like a backup translation that you could run through chatgpts. I did a.

[Ed Zitron]

That's funny because Microsoft is powered by GPT.

[Garrison Davis]

This is.

[Ed Zitron]

No, no. But I'm not saying.

[Garrison Davis]

With the guy saying.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just like. That's just like classic CES brain. It's just like what it runs through ChatGPT or Chat GPT with a different handle.

[Garrison Davis]

The other, the other ones which were like the visual. Visual translations as well as like navigation. Like they hook up to like Google Maps so they can do. Do that sort of Thing if you're like biking. But the big ones were the rokid glasses, the crowdfunded AI smart glasses.

[Ed Zitron]

Did they work?

[Garrison Davis]

They worked better than the sound ones. The sound. Only one ones worked, but with a pretty significant delay.

[Ed Zitron]

How long?

[Garrison Davis]

About 10. 10 seconds.

[Ed Zitron]

Jesus.

[Garrison Davis]

So you can't have a conversation with them. They were prettier. They were. They. They look like normal glasses. The Roku glasses are a little bit more obvious that they're smart glasses, but the translation's faster. It's. Obviously, it's hard to have eye contact with someone in a conversation when you're like the kind of like blurry like hologram text. Um, but as long as you can focus your eyes and multitask, it's like. Okay, um, that. That one runs through ChatGPT. I. There's a. Two different, like in ear. Like earbuds which listen to and transcribe conversation also run through ChatGPT. The worst part about those though, that they were. They worked really well. And you. You could like whisper then that. That was the main fix. That. That was the main feature. It was like auto. Auto dictation. If you like wheels whisper as Even like a loud showroom. Yeah. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

That's kind of cool.

[Garrison Davis]

Even in like a loud showroom, the person who had it on could like, whisper something. I. I could not hear it standing like two feet away, but it was like, it was perfectly transcribed and I could like, match via. Like, via like reading lips. And it was good.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But. And is this. Sorry, hold on. This is translation through language and transcription.

[Garrison Davis]

It does both. And this is.

[Ed Zitron]

These were earbuds.

[Garrison Davis]

These were basically. Basically like. Like. Yeah, like. Like a AirPod style.

[Ed Zitron]

Cool.

[Garrison Davis]

But the. The dictation feature is a subscription model. You have to pay to keep using it.

[Ed Zitron]

And it's powered by GPT and all that.

[Garrison Davis]

And it's also powered by GPT. So there's a few things like that there was smart like swim goggles. There was smart like ski goggles, bike goggles.

[Ed Zitron]

One question just with the previous one. Sorry. So you need a subscription, but do you need an Internet connection as well?

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, I didn't ask that. That's.

[Ed Zitron]

That's because I assume it must connect to your phone or something, which is just like. Because.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Y.

[Ed Zitron]

Because like, ostensibly if you're.

[Garrison Davis]

The dictation needs the phone because you see the dictation, like getting updated on.

[Ed Zitron]

Your phone, that's not too bad.

[Garrison Davis]

They're gonna. It's gonna be synced to your mobile.

[Ed Zitron]

Device, but you'd want that Anyway, that one's not so bad. But the translation ones, it's like if you're in a foreign country, you can't necessarily rely like the CEO. The situations you need translation will probably not be in a major metropolitan area because depending on the country and if it's a country where it is a major. It doesn't have English translation. Translation. The cell service might not be good. You know, it might not.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It's just also the idea of walking up to a person who doesn't speak English who speaks like literally so much zero. So zero of English that you can't. Yeah. You can't converse. Muddle through.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And being like, hold on, let me put in my thousand dollar machine into my head that is going to make me be able to talk to.

[Garrison Davis]

I mean, a lot of the glasses. At least it's for like putting on so you can hear people like around.

[Ed Zitron]

You, which isn't too bad.

[Garrison Davis]

It's not, not necessarily even for conversation, but at least, at least you can like you can hear someone speaking foreign language.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

The eavesdrop. So that these people who are specifically who have switched to a foreign language specifically so that you won't understand what they're saying.

[Ed Zitron]

What my dad. No, it's really funny. When I was a kid, my parents used to speak in French in front of my brother and I to try and avoid us hearing. We didn't tell them for fudgeing years we could understand then we could completely.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Understand what they're doing is teaching you French.

[Ed Zitron]

No, I. No, no. We were just listening to work out why, like we're like, how long we were going to stay places or if there was something we were going to do we didn't want to do. And then eventually, I think one of us like laughed at something they said. It was like, oh, God damn it. Years of the scam. Okay.

[Garrison Davis]

It's kind of useful if you are someone who only speaks English. Talking is talking to someone who's speaking another language but can like understand English but maybe. Maybe can't like speak it very well.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I do actually.

[Garrison Davis]

That's a transaction that's like the main use case.

[Adam Conover]

There's stuff like this has been normalized a little bit too. Like, I've gone to plenty of hotels where there's someone from mainland China trying to check into the hotel and they're using the translation thing and it's like. And then they show the phone.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yes.

[Adam Conover]

And like that'll get more refined. And I, I don't know. It seems to me like translation is one of the few things that like I was about to say this really good for, like, it, it is an improvement.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes, we're working our way there.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, totally. And like, it is, it is a positive use case. It is a like non harmful, at least broadly non harmful, harmful use case. I more was imagining the setting. The, like when you're in the, you know, the rural Uzbek mountains and you're trying to communicate with like I was trying to watch the setting where you have no WI fi, but you're like trying to use these earbuds which just feels like a, you know, a, a set piece in a movie.

[Garrison Davis]

So like, although some of these things kind like works to some degree, the audio one's a little bit slower. Like these are all stuff I've tried on at CES before. Like, I've, I was going to say.

[Ed Zitron]

I feel like we had this conversation last year.

[Garrison Davis]

We've had this exact, exact conversation before. Like, these are not new. And this was, this was like 40 to 50% of the show floor at Showstoppers was just these with. It was like this genre of product. Right. The only new thing is they, they put like these smart glasses technology and like ski goggles, like swim goggles, scuba goggles, so you can have like a, you know, heads up view if you're wearing a scuba goggles. And like that's like newish, I guess.

[Ed Zitron]

I feel like, why do you want.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Headset view if you maybe you need.

[Garrison Davis]

To play app with gesture controls?

[Adam Conover]

Because you saw the Terminator 40 years ago and you're like, it would be cool to see text on my eyes.

[Garrison Davis]

Look as pretty as it is to scuba dive. You could also be watching Instagram reels at the same time.

[Ed Zitron]

So yeah, like brain rot as you're looking at beautiful tropical fish. Jesus Christ.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Then that's the thing. You're like, hey, do you like to swim laps? Because it's the one place that you cannot bring your phone. Have we got the solution for you.

[Adam Conover]

The whole thing about the phone is that you can look away from it. Like, to me, the main, the main reason VR didn't catch up is, is because like when I would play a VR game, I would, you know, sometimes I would enjoy them, but after like 20 minutes I'd be like, what if my house is on fire? Yeah, what if, what if somebody needs me and then I take the thing off and then it's such a big phase change. You don't want to go back into it. And just the ability to glance away from stuff is so important. And I Just feel like, I don't know, heads up display. I don't want for that reason. Reason. And it fits into the thing of I've really been struck by how many people I've been walking. If you look at the way people are using their phones at this thing, everybody is on their phones all the time. They're just in, they're in like hunched over phone position, you know, like, like elbows on knees, looking at the phone and I'm like, I don't see any of these companies unseating Apple and Android. Like it's, we have the here, this is where the AI is happening. This is where all the you. We've done it and I don't think.

[Garrison Davis]

We'Re even happening that you can do trans. Like I was just in Japan and you can do translation on your phone. You can type, you could type the thing in, you can show it to someone, they can type it back and that's going to be faster and more efficient.

[Ed Zitron]

I went to Japan in 2017 and I literally just used Google Translate.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And I feel like it would be way more offensive to this man who did not speak a lick of it. I went to Iraq and it was amazing. And like it was way less offensive to be like, oh, I don't understand you. I'm going to use this. And being very honest to be like one second, beep, beep. Now speak.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, that's what I mean, you imbecile.

[Ed Zitron]

Who cannot converse with me versus people being like, yeah, we're both from different countries. Like, yeah, how magical.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

There is a barrier and technology has solved this barrier without removing the honesty of conversation. Versus I have paid someone 525 bucks a month so that you and I can pretend we understand each other. Because we don't.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And, and I do, I really do think that like at the, at the broadest levels, I do think that the translation use case makes, yeah. Makes more sense than almost any other to me. And you know why it makes that sense? Because it's written in English. But Adam, what you were saying earlier, I couldn't miss it anyway. But the burden of being a comedian, you have to take the low hanging fruit. But Adam, what you were saying earlier just a second ago about like we've already like the winners are here. The winners are the iPhone and Android phones.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Sort of goes back to what I was asking in the earlier block about which about why are the rappers so prevalent and is it because, Ed, I'm hearing you that that a huge part of it is that we're following the trend. But also, like, is it that there is some degree of the biggest consumer tech gaps have been closed right now or like the biggest consumer gaps that we can imagine right now. I'm sure in 10 years there will be. They will be. We'll be in a totally different. I mean, the situation.

[Adam Conover]

The iPhone was like 90% of all technological advancements. Yeah, that was possible when it was invented.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

That's what I mean.

[Adam Conover]

Like, it's sort of picked. It was all the low hanging fruit all at once. It's been refined over 20 years and.

[Ed Zitron]

They planned for it. Like, there was a famous Goldman Sachs analyst called Jim Cavallo who said, like the iPhone, they knew it was going to happen like a decade beforehand. They just needed Bluetooth to be smaller, they needed GPS to be smaller and modems and such.

[Adam Conover]

And like Apple has made the same thing in a dozen other form factors. And they're all less popular than the iPhone. They're just like less. The iPad, less. The Apple watch, less. The iPhone is like the main thing.

[Garrison Davis]

Well, obviously, the Vision Pro, which is the most successful.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah, that.

[Ed Zitron]

That's the popular product everyone loved. I think, I think there's another level of it as well, which is it's follower culture. Because it's when a big company goes, we're gonna try this. And I think the meta glasses, because a lot of credulous journalists went, yeah, wow, I could use this to video myself cooking. I could use this. We're walking around. I did a content video as a content creator. This is now a thing. And because that happened, everyone goes, I bet those dumb VCS will buy anything. No one.

[Adam Conover]

The whole.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

They will and they.

[Ed Zitron]

I don't. Yeah, but VCS will. But have we seen any proof that consumers.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

No, no, no, no.

[Ed Zitron]

But yeah, but it's like, oh, yeah, we can clone the very popular Meta Ray Bans. You mean the horrendously unpopular one. Sorry. The unprofitable, but also not super profitable. Like meta is not.

[Adam Conover]

I've never seen them in the real world. I've never seen anybody using them.

[Garrison Davis]

I've literally seen them once seen one person using them.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Don Lemon.

[Ed Zitron]

Don Lemon.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Is that real?

[Advertisement Voice]

This is.

[Ed Zitron]

This is real. Yes, this is real.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You could not have said a funnier name.

[Ed Zitron]

Ghislaine Maxwell.

[Adam Conover]

That man was Don Lemon.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah.

[Adam Conover]

You could tell me a story about anybody doing anything and at the end say it was Don Lemon.

[Ed Zitron]

That is very. That's very good.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, but that's the thing.

[Garrison Davis]

He's shorter than what you would think.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

He seems so tall.

[Garrison Davis]

He's like maybe five, seven at most.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh baby, that's not good. Yeah, that's a shorter man than I expected for a man that stood up to Elon Musk, kind of.

[Adam Conover]

I went to the Razor booth, which I know we talked about yesterday, but I did have a good time there. And I actually kind of left going like they're doing it in an honest way because you know, know I walk in and most of the stuff. Look, they're a second tier hardware company that makes accessories for gaming, right? And they make good ones. I have a razor mouse. They had some keyboards. They went clicky, clicky, clicky.

[Ed Zitron]

Nice.

[Adam Conover]

It was very nice. And then they had like a. Their. Their LLM rapper was a pair of gamer headphones with cameras. And they're like, this is better than glasses cuz it's like a little bigger and no one can hear you. And then they did the same demo as where like literally they had a plastic. Plastic cutting board full of plastic food. And the girl goes, what can I make with this? And the LLM is like spaghetti. And she's like, wow, thanks. Like it's literally spaghetti. And did you see the wife tube though? I did, I did see the wife tube, but just to. To finish first. Then they're like, look, it can connect to Claude or Opus or any of them. And I'm like, okay, great. So Razor has gone. I know. Who gives a. But Razor has gone. We're a hardware company, we make hardware. This is a thing that people are maybe using, using. Here's a hardware interface for it. That's like pretty good.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Adam Conover]

And like fine. And they, they called it Project Makoto, which is a little bit over the top.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay.

[Adam Conover]

But like it's functionally a gamer. A gamer headset. Right. It's like not that bad. Now the little tube I thought was funny.

[Ed Zitron]

And this is the holographic tube with the WAIFU in it.

[Adam Conover]

It's a little hologram. Have you seen this? Chloe, you should probably go check this. I think you would enjoy it. I would like to see you interact with it. It's a little so like a little on your desk, a little tiny tube and inside the tube's a little anime girl. And you can talk to it and it's just like talking to chat GPT. But you can say like, hey, hey, kid out my gun in Battlefield four. And then she goes, okay, I added a scope to it.

[Ed Zitron]

But did that work? This is what the wife tube looks like, by the way. Yeah, it's.

[Adam Conover]

But it's a little avatar tube, wife tube. It can see you. And the guy goes, hey, what do you think of Adam's outfit? Because, by the way, everybody at. In the razor booth, that was the most recognized I was all weekend because they're all Internet nerds, so they're like, saw you on you. They kept coming, going up and saying, hi, Adam. I was like, are you AI?

[Ed Zitron]

Like, stop it. They pause 10 seconds every time you talk to them.

[Adam Conover]

But. So the guy goes. He reveals that he knew who I was because he goes, what do you think of Adam's outfit? And it sort of goes like, wow, CES badge on fleek, looking super professional and like, a boss and Jesus Christ, you know? Yep. I guess there's some gamers who might need compliments. Like, a little compliment tube.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But it's.

[Adam Conover]

It was dumb, but also, it was compliment tube.

[Advertisement Voice]

Hu.

[Adam Conover]

A little toy. I felt like they weren't even taking it that serious. They're kind of shrugging, going, like, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

You know, this is the we got.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

To do this year.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah, yeah, it's Razor. Hey, you want a mouse or you want a little anime girl tube?

[Ed Zitron]

You want something useful or do you want whatever the. This pervert at least?

[Adam Conover]

Yeah, but they make led, you know, desktop towers. Nobody doesn't have, like, delusion.

[Advertisement Voice]

Love it.

[Ed Zitron]

Love it. Yeah, but, like, I don't know. Just like, if you buy the waifu tube, they should put you on a list. I'm sorry. Like, if you're like, I desire a tube ray, where to quote Robert from yesterday, where, like, Krieger's hentai wife from Archer resides, you should. You should not be allowed to, like, you should have to introduce yourself to your neighbors. Like, it's just. It's just a very worrying product. And also, who the fuck for, like, who is. Because it's not good enough to give you actual, like, CES badge on fleek.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Wow.

[Ed Zitron]

Fuck off.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Well, that's the thing is that, like, that's one of the things is sure. Are there a lot of gamers who could use some compliments? Without a doubt, absolutely. But, like, it sort of feels insulting to their intelligence. It feels insulting, I think the way AI talks, the kind of sycophant semantic chatter.

[Ed Zitron]

Got this.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, yeah. Feels. Feels like insulting to anybody's intelligence. And it's. It's sort of shocking to me that we just go, yeah, that's how it should talk, and that's fine. And we accept that and aren't, like, that's humiliating and stupid, but you can.

[Adam Conover]

Tell it fits into Me in the gamer context actually, because something that so many games do that I find annoying but clearly people must like is like, thank you so much, you saved the whole village. You're the strongest hero we've ever met. Like I don't compliment you for doing basic things.

[Ed Zitron]

I don't even think games do that.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I mean you saved the whole village, Adam. That's more than just a basic thing.

[Ed Zitron]

But you also, you see that in like a text box and it goes away and you've forgotten it happened. And I'm Hammer and X. I'm, I'm like, I'm just like full autist. Like I need to get the next fucking beer. You. I don't care about the story and it's just most gamers I talk to would be very annoyed to have any interruption and just having this demented hentai thing in the corner being like the.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Other badge is on FL to be. You need to wash. Did you say you need to wash?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Now look now that has utility.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

If it's a wash tube that just reminds gamers to shower. I actually this is a use case for AI that I could get.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh no, we're going to get some emails saying I'm a gamer and I wash. But by the way, if you email me that, I'm asking how often.

[Adam Conover]

It is funny that like you know, maybe it's the computer from Star Trek, right where they go computer do this or that and it was would answer but the computer didn't go, what a great idea, Captain. That's sure decisive and a great show's leadership on your part.

[Ed Zitron]

I think that actually is it though. It's trying to cover up.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Think of how much better Captain would have felt about himself if the computer.

[Adam Conover]

Had said that Captain Picard had self respect.

[Ed Zitron]

But here's the thing, they're doing that and gamers, they're doing that because you can't just be like do something. You can't be like do this because it can't do anything. It's like you can't be like the battlefield example. It actually can't do that because it would require it to interact with the game, which it definitely can't do. So it's like, yeah, they add all the sycophancy because you can't actually be like, can you do this for me? Can you find this? Because There'll be a 5 to 10 second pause and it'll go, Olympia is the capital of Washington. It's like I needed the fucking time.

[Adam Conover]

It said that it did it. The guy said Kid out my gun. And it said a bunch of stuff about the gun. I didn't know the game enough well enough to tell if it did. But I asked the dude, I was like, do you think that gamers want this like a game assistant? Because to me a video game is like the Paragon thing that you would want to do yourself.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah. Yes.

[Adam Conover]

And I asked him this. He was like, well, yes, but sometimes people, people want to get better at a game like League of Legends or a game like that has a high skill ceiling and so maybe it can give you tips. And I was like, okay, like a coach. And he's like, yeah. And I was like, all right. Maybe that's a use case like a training. A training AI that's going to give you. Cuz people do hire like, like video game like coaches. That is a market.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

But if you're someone who's good at a game.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Not like a regurgitation of how many game FAQ pages. I'm not even being sarcastic. I'm not even being sarcastic. Like people. I've had many people help me with games, but people. And the whole point is they watch you and go, that was wrong. That was wrong. No, do this. Like you're doing this. I see you regularly making this action. I don't think you could recognize that through a camera.

[Garrison Davis]

I guess it could maybe use for like, for like walkthrough guides. If you're like stuck at a part you don't know how to continue, you can ask and it'll like regurgitate some IGN article about how to get past the like fourth dungeon place.

[Adam Conover]

PlayStation already has that built in.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Do they really?

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, with Astrobot they really brought it in as well.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

I don't know that they have a.

[Adam Conover]

Feature the, the developers have to like build it in. But like Astrobot has this all done because that's like a super famous party game. It like you hit the PlayStation button and it has like game hints. So literally, you know, if you're on a level and you're like where's the third puzzle piece? And it, it'll like show you a little video or give you a hint. But that's like basically they just put the game fact in the game.

[Garrison Davis]

The game.

[Adam Conover]

It's.

[Ed Zitron]

I used to write video game guides and the problem is is that the things that people get stuck on can be so. Because it's why they have like yellow things on ladders that you have to climb now because something that seems really obvious to 1 million out of 1. Sorry, 1.9 million out of 2 million people is really just not obvious to like a thousand people. And all of those people post online and they are just like what the do I do here? And then you get the people who are mad that it's too obvious but but it's like it's yet another thing where it's like a solution in search of a problem and it's just kind of sad and I hate to do this really abrupt thing, but we're at 30 minutes and the next thing will solve either all of your problems or cause you more. Your choice. But you really have to give them your money, whatever it is. And if it's a podcast, you have to listen and trust them wholeheartedly.

[Advertisement Voice]

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[Ed Zitron]

We return to our scene. We've rotated once more, bringing back Matt Binder of Matt Mashable.

[Matt Binder]

Hey, nice to be here again.

[Ed Zitron]

And of course, stand up comedian and star of Is this Thing On Chloe Radcliffe.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You have her? Where is she? Bring her out.

[Ed Zitron]

There she is.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I must see her.

[Adam Conover]

Someone's gonna. Someone is gonna see. Is this Thing On? As a result, they've heard the name so many times.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You know what I want people to do? Who cares about it's not. No, the movie's amazing and I'm very happy to be in it. What I want you to do. Can I do a little plug, please?

[Ed Zitron]

Please.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I want you to come to my stand up shows in either Cincinnati this weekend, January 10th and 11th, or D.C. next weekend, January 17th and 18th, or my solo show called Cheat in Philadelphia, January 20th, 21st.

[Ed Zitron]

And I saw Cheat.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

That's what I want.

[Ed Zitron]

I saw Cheat. It's brilliant.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Thank you.

[Adam Conover]

I need to do that too. I'm sorry.

[Ed Zitron]

No, do a plug, please.

[Adam Conover]

She plugged. I got a plug. I.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

No, no, it's only my turn.

[Adam Conover]

This weekend I'm going to be a comedy on State in Madison, Wisconsin, one of the best clubs in the country. And then I. I'm going to be next weekend in Fort Wayne, Indiana, which I. I will not say, at the Summit Comedy Club in Fort Wayne, Indiana, which I will not say is one of the best clubs in the country. But if you live in Fort Wayne, Indiana, it's probably the only club you have access to. And I will be there. So go see me there. And then. And then Houston, ladies and I will.

[Ed Zitron]

Be at the Chuckle Hut, Las Vegas, doing, doing my new set, actually, Stolen Valor. And it's me doing the DreamWorks. I brow for 15 minutes. Anyway, we're back talking about CES. Matt Bender has returned.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

What have you seen recently?

[Matt Binder]

I don't even know anymore, man. Yeah, it's just everything all at once in multiple places. I will say that this is very insidery in terms of being here, but that's fine. Vegas has very specific Uber pickup points.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes.

[Matt Binder]

And it seems like when CES comes to town, they just decide to with everyone and move them places without telling the Uber drivers.

[Ed Zitron]

Yep.

[Matt Binder]

So, you know, you try to get somewhere and you just can't because the Uber driver can't get to you west.

[Ed Zitron]

You have to go to the west hall and go to the Diamond Lot or you have to go to the Renaissance Hotel. That's the only way to get out the lvcc. You can also take the tram if you want to be shoulder to shoulder with people who all want to die.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Today I walked from the lvcc.

[Ed Zitron]

Great.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

How long did it take you LVCC to here? It took me half an hour, maybe a little bit less. Damn, you powered. Yeah, my priority is speed.

[Advertisement Voice]

What?

[Adam Conover]

What a voice.

[Ed Zitron]

That's like a, an English thing that I'd see in Eureka park. When your priority is speed and it's just a sass product. Yeah, but, but Matt, have you not seen like.

[Matt Binder]

No, no.

[Ed Zitron]

What have you beheld?

[Matt Binder]

All right, so, so I, I did. I don't even remember the name of it, but I did. I remember the last time I was on this show. I was lauding the fact that Crypto and Blockchain is dead at ces.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, did you find something?

[Matt Binder]

I unfortunately found something. I don't remember what it did. It was a mining company. I don't know what their product did. I mean, but one thing, I saw one thing. So we don't got a shutout here at CES when it comes to Crypto, but it seems like it is still dead other than that one thing.

[Adam Conover]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

I will also say when Crypto was here, and I do remember it, it was so half hearted because first of all, it's the problem all the AI runs into, which is it's Internet connected, but it's also where AI really doesn't work. Crypto really, really doesn't work. It's like, yeah, it's a blockchain game. Great. So what you do is you get the thing, it takes 10 to 15 minutes based on the Ethereum blockchain. And now one thing has happened, now you'll do another thing. Yeah, you're going to need more Ethereum because every single time you touch. Watch this. I, I, I've definitely walked around a few of those I'm like, yeah. So does this work? What's proof of concept? We've got a white paper. I'm like, just everything.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

That's not good.

[Matt Binder]

That's not good showcase material.

[Ed Zitron]

For none of it was. And like, last year, I did see a panel that was a guy talking about Quantum and Web3, and I thought it would be funny. No, it was just a guy. It sounded like someone with a concussion. Oh. Like web3. Web3. Web3. Quantum. Quantum fast. But Quantum will break blockchain. And everyone going, you bringing up web3.

[Matt Binder]

Did make me remember that. I did. I didn't go into it, but I did pass by. Apparently, Jason Calicanatis, whatever his name is, from all in, they were doing a live. Just him. Was doing a live all in podcast at ces.

[Ed Zitron]

Jesus Christ.

[Matt Binder]

No interest in going in. But, I mean, they sent, like, the.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

What?

[Matt Binder]

The least successful we've sent.

[Ed Zitron]

Our clammiest man, our dampest man, is here to bring you the dampest coverage of the ces because.

[Matt Binder]

Because the other guy chopped whatever Chop. Whatever his name is. He's. He's the most wealthy one, I think.

[Ed Zitron]

Right.

[Matt Binder]

And then.

[Ed Zitron]

And there's just David Sachs, and David.

[Matt Binder]

Sachs is too busy. Too busy with his insidery trading stuff with the Trump administration.

[Ben Rudolph]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

So, I mean, I guess Jason Calicon.

[Advertisement Voice]

Whatever.

[Matt Binder]

How you ever say his last name?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

I mean, what was his claim to fame again?

[Ed Zitron]

He sold Mahalo.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

The SEO.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, the SEO Shop. And then weblogs. But weblogs which created Engadgets. Like a weird thing where, like, he had a hand, and so he was also early.

[Matt Binder]

Oh, right, right, right, right.

[Ed Zitron]

Basically. What the fuck is he doing here?

[Matt Binder]

He's on the all in podcast. He's one of the four hosts. Right. I mean, what.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, but I mean, I guess I can't really judge someone for being like, I'm going to do a random podcast at ces. It's not random. I planned it.

[Matt Binder]

Right, right. No, but I mean, it wasn't like, this is Ed Zitron show and Ed Zitron is here.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes.

[Matt Binder]

All in is four guys, and they sent just the one guy. They don'.

[Ed Zitron]

Like, that is really. Yeah, they did a regular episode. They're doing one right now. It's like, yeah, Jason, Mini, just cover ces. Thank Christ. Okay, let's do this. Let's do the show. Jason's gone. God, that would be really. I think. Is there four of them?

[Matt Binder]

There's four of them. I never remember the fourth one, but because he stays out of the political world. I think for the most part they.

[Ed Zitron]

Had Trump on and he was just like, we're going to be the biggest immigrants. Are going to have the biggest immigrants in the world. They're going to be the largest. And they're like, that's so great. You should do one H1B.

[Adam Conover]

I don't like foreigners.

[Ed Zitron]

Like, yeah, we don't like either. We need H1B's we don't like them. But they were the biggest.

[Matt Binder]

He was looking at Chamath, I'm sure when he said, I don't like foreigners.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I'm sure.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I'm sure. Sure that that was fine. Oh, God, I can't believe, like, this is stay. This is meant to be. Actually this is a good segue. This is meant to be the consumer electronic show. But I keep running into non consumer, like, oh, Eureka park is like full of just meaningful enterprise stuff like sensors and like solar things and like things that when you look at, you want to make a joke. Could it be like, okay, this is a specific center for like, oh, it's a wetness sensor for a specific, like cleaner of some. It's like a very specific thing. And then just like a cat litter, like a robotic cat litter thing that was not available.

[Garrison Davis]

Right?

[Adam Conover]

I mean, yeah, I was taking video of just like I was at. I was in something that had like a whole lot of signs up. Like it was a science fair. And. And I was, I videoed just like the, the titles because they were baffling to me. Fleet management with vision AI nice edge AI meets human touch.

[Advertisement Voice]

What?

[Adam Conover]

And then AI native compute for the IoT. These are not consumer products.

[Ed Zitron]

These are money laundering operations. That's just connecting. That's just connecting various phrases together to see how many venture capitalists actually read the things they invest in.

[Matt Binder]

That's classic CES though. A few years ago it was every company was a web three method Metaverse interactive artificial intelligence block on the blockchain.

[Ed Zitron]

My favorite one was one that was.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I want to buy that.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, no, my favorite one was one that just said, let's see. It was called sorb and it just said solve via sorb. Let's just bring this up. Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

For a second I thought he.

[Ed Zitron]

Solve via sorb.

[Adam Conover]

Your accent is making this specific.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, this is really difficult. I just SORV S O R V SOL VI a sorb. And I will admit I didn't want to know anything more because mostly that handled it like I got. I got it. I my. I'm constantly like, what do I Do. And I saw.

[Matt Binder]

Right.

[Ed Zitron]

That's.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I'm sorry, a side note on the accent. My. This is a completely unrelated. I'm also dating a British man, and I'm dating a man who is also British. And he tried to make a joke of what's your source on that? But he pronounced it. But he was. The joke was, what's your sauce on that? But in a British accent, source and sauce are exactly the same word. Like, there is no distinguishing. And I made him say what's your sauce that? Probably 15 times in a row. Because I was like, I don't understand what the joke is. I know you are making a joke.

[Ed Zitron]

This is like, there's the show called P A W N Stars. Now here's my problem. If I start saying, yeah, I was watching porn stars, this leads to more questions than answers.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

For all that the Brits are king of wordplay in America, we've come up with a lot of wordplay that absolutely paralyzes you.

[Ed Zitron]

And I'm like, yeah, I'm watching porn stars. There's this big guy called Chumley. And then there's Rick. And they're like, all right. He's like, yeah, why? He's constantly conning people. And they're like, whoa, this is some weird porno.

[Adam Conover]

I'm like, no, funny is. I literally was thinking of pawn stars, like 120 seconds ago. Because when you were talking about them sending the one guy from All In, I was like, that's like. If it was the cast of Pawn Stars and they only said Chumley. I was like, maybe that's a joke, I should say. And then I let it pass because I was like, pawn Star is kind of an old reference. And then here you are.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah, right.

[Adam Conover]

Two minutes later.

[Matt Binder]

Have you ever told anyone at it who your favorite character is? And then you have to let them know it's the old man.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yes.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

My brain.

[Matt Binder]

He's my favorite porn star.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah, the.

[Ed Zitron]

I like the old man. That sounds like this in my brain. Porn stars. Yeah, it's. And it. But every episode of that show is great because it's just Chumley being like, yeah, I bought a car, a Toyota Corolla for $15,000. And then Rick's like, ah, that's terrible. But I scammed an old lady out of a 50 million dollar coin by giving her 300 bucks. It's just an evil show and I love it. Yeah, but they charge you to go in there now. They should be on the show floor. Why Chumley should just Kind of like amble through Eureka.

[Matt Binder]

They charge you to go into the.

[Ed Zitron]

Actual and they're not there. I've not. I've not actually been because I think every Vegas resident just stays out of the tourist areas. But yeah, it's. I would love them to come on the show.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

This is. This is back to my pitch about a CES Fringe Festival.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

We could have like. Yeah, the Pawn Stars guys have.

[Ed Zitron]

Have a booth chumley trying to buy a startup.

[Adam Conover]

It's a genuine. I mean, CS Fringe Festival would be kind of like. Like XOXO or another like, creative tech festival. You could do something like that near nearby and have like, cool people with like, their itch IO projects.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Adam Conover]

And like their weird hacky things, you know, that would be fun and.

[Ed Zitron]

Or just like, you get the grandma orb and you just obliterate it. You start. You just have a 50 cal rifle that you unload into a computer.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Okay. This is actually like a rage room for. You can go to CES and then there's a rage room with all of the products at ces.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

You then get to walking around the shopping like, do you mind if I shoot this? Like, what?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

What? I just want to. I want to state for the record, if any listener decides to start a CES Fringe, I. You have to. You have to credit me as a co. Creator. Oh, okay.

[Adam Conover]

Okay. But they don't have to pay you.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I would like. Okay, that would be nice.

[Matt Binder]

It's your ip.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It's my ip.

[Matt Binder]

There you go.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It's developed here on the show.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, developed on Better Offline and thus owned by iHeartRadio. This. No, no. The ideas on this show are owned by, I think me. I haven't really checked anyway.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

No, it's.

[Ed Zitron]

It's such a peculiar show and I don't want to repeat myself and just. It's useless, but it is. There are less cameras, dildos and batteries companies, which is disappointing. And there are less practical. Like, I've been looking for Anka Anker, right. They're like my favorite. Like, I got big fucking Anka battery.

[Matt Binder]

Make a lot of mobile chargers and.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, mobile chargers and stuff. Like, I like them. Can't find no like. And it's funny, the description of the useful products so far still stuff that exists. Stuff like a. A battery for girls. Like, that's. That's new now.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

That doesn't exist.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because a woman, if you try and picked up this battery, it's too heavy. You'd be like, whoa.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I go, my arms are My Chinese.

[Ed Zitron]

My tiny.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Mister, can you lift this for me? Thank you.

[Ed Zitron]

I don't like this one because it's black, but if it had flowers on it, then I'd love it.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Then I go, that's for me.

[Adam Conover]

A little mirror on it. You can check your makeup.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, so you could look at yourself. Because woman do that.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I love mirror.

[Ed Zitron]

You could get so far at this show.

[Hayden Johnson]

Just be.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah, but as a man, I prefer to have a hologram. Waifu.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Now, I will say, okay, not to be all a woman about it, but the wife tube. I was. I was.

[Adam Conover]

You can have. You can put a man in the.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Tube and does anyone.

[Ed Zitron]

Which one?

[Adam Conover]

The razor one.

[Matt Binder]

Oh, the razor.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Victoria was saying you. There's a man. Man with tattoos you can put in.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah. So the, The. I don't remember if we even talked about this when I was on last time.

[Ed Zitron]

No, this would be. No, we should keep talking about the two.

[Matt Binder]

Okay, so the. The razor one is the Project Mokoto or Mokatu or something like that?

[Adam Conover]

No, no, that's the headphones Project Ava is the. Is the wife in the tube.

[Matt Binder]

Oh, no, you're right. You're right.

[Adam Conover]

I was just really sorry.

[Matt Binder]

You are correct.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yes.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

I'm glad you're on this one.

[Adam Conover]

Thank you.

[Matt Binder]

Because I'm not up.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

But there are weirder ones because. Because the. The razor one actually do. They showed it to you, right? So they were like actual. I wouldn't use it, but they were. There were actual use case applications, like. And you could put a guy in.

[Ed Zitron]

It if you wanted to.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And like, you're playing.

[Matt Binder]

You're playing a video game and you're like, oh, is this the best, you know, configuration for my character?

[Adam Conover]

No one does that.

[Matt Binder]

But that at least is like an I idea they got.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

There's.

[Matt Binder]

There's one that I saw from a company called Pretty Low Bar when we're.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Like, they've got an idea. Yeah. I mean, that's. That's ces. They got an idea. That might as well be the ces.

[Ed Zitron]

They got an idea.

[Advertisement Voice]

I guess.

[Garrison Davis]

Anyway.

[Ed Zitron]

Wait, wait, but you've seen alternative tubes.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes.

[Matt Binder]

So. So Lem, this company, Lempro, has this. This tube called Amy, and it's not as good of a hologram, but it. But it's still. You put a woman in a box, which is weird. A tiny woman in a box is a big thing now, apparently, because a lot of companies want to do this. It's very weird.

[Ed Zitron]

It's an Oingo Boingo video.

[Matt Binder]

But the whole, the whole purpose of the Amy from Lempro seems to be not AI assisting or any ideas like that. It's simply, you're a lonely guy and you want to talk to this a woman and you don't have a woman to talk to.

[Ed Zitron]

You have a thought about trapping a.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Woman and you don't want her to be full sized and you don't want her to be able to go and.

[Matt Binder]

Because they were, they were, they were talking about it as an AI companion and my colleague at Mashable was doing a video on it, holding the device, talking about it, saying, you know, if you need a friend, I guess. And while he's saying friend, the little woman in the box starts literally like gyrating her body as if she's like doing a striptease. And I had to be like, buddy, I don't think she's meant to be your friend.

[Adam Conover]

I mean this is.

[Ed Zitron]

Have you ever wanted the experience of thinking a stripper fell in love with you? Every day.

[Adam Conover]

Right?

[Matt Binder]

And it's, it's because, listen, I don't want to put a stigma on sex tech. Ced did that years.

[Ed Zitron]

We already talked about jacking off. Right, right.

[Matt Binder]

But, but like, this doesn't feel like sex tech. This feels like Gooner tech. I don't know, it doesn't feel like something that like, is normal even for like what people should be experiencing sexually.

[Adam Conover]

In order to want to have it socially, you need to be socially stunted in a way that other people perceive as like, I remember when I was a nerd and I grew up around other nerds and then occasionally I remember.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Now he's a cool.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, now he's cool.

[Adam Conover]

I remember being like 16 and one of my friends would say something about, about women where I'm like, oh, you really don't see them as people and not in like even a he. You feel so pathetic internally, you have so little ability to communicate that you sort of see it as, you see another person as, as being a stimulus producing machine for you, your purpose. And there are people like that and you, you to buy one of these products, you have to, that's how you have to see other people.

[Ed Zitron]

Right?

[Adam Conover]

You have, you have to be like really mentally, socially, emotionally, like disabled in a way. Right.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And I just want to, I want to sort of plant a flag very firmly and we don't even have to analyze this, but just sort of like for posterity's sake. The sort of the, the broadest and most, most foundational symbology of, of a technology where it says, here's a little woman that lives in a box on your desk. Is just sort of every sentence, every word in that. Imagine explaining that worse and worse and worse for gender dynamics.

[Adam Conover]

Like.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Really does symbolize somebody who doesn't see women as equals. Right.

[Matt Binder]

I mean, one of the. One of the recommended demo like commands you were. They told you to try was to go up to the box and say, dance for me. I mean, that. That alone is very weird.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Like, pretty damning.

[Matt Binder]

And for people who use this type of thing, there's Dance for me.

[Ed Zitron]

Are you Jabba the Hutt? Do you want. Do you want to be like Jabba the Hutt?

[Adam Conover]

I've had a long day.

[Ed Zitron]

Dance for me, tube woman. Show me.

[Adam Conover]

Oh, that's good. No, do it more like it.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yes.

[Matt Binder]

Yes.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yes, that's good.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes, that feels good.

[Matt Binder]

Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, my God. But also, I hate to ask, but how was the woman white and thin by any chance?

[Matt Binder]

There were a few women options, many.

[Ed Zitron]

Women to trap, but you could pretty.

[Matt Binder]

Much guess, yes, that it was like a white. Like a blonde, white schoolgirl and then. Like a Japanese woman dressed in like traditional Japanese garb. You know the type of stuff.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It's really bad.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah, it's really, really making it for me. Actually making it anime makes it slightly more palatable. Palatable. Because there is.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But it's not anime.

[Adam Conover]

Oh, it's not anime.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It's just. It's just a white school girl.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it's just people who fetishize Asian woman.

[Matt Binder]

They're not real. They're not like human models. They are sort of like cartoony.

[Adam Conover]

Okay.

[Matt Binder]

But it is like an anime style.

[Adam Conover]

But I was gonna say there's stuff like Genshin Impact where people like collect their favorite characters. They find themselves sexy. Both women and men do this. And it's like, it's a little. It's sort of like fun fantasy land. And I can see a version of this product that like appeals to the Genshin Impact player, right? Where like the average person might be like, that's kind of weird, but I know enough people who do it where I'm like, you can do it in a fun way.

[Matt Binder]

Right.

[Adam Conover]

But like, in general, as selling is a companion, which is bad.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Right.

[Matt Binder]

Like the razor. When you said like the. The model of the woman in there was like an anime character. It was like a known. I don't know who. Who she was, but it was a known person. And while she might have been dressed like provocatively, it was the character. But also there's no actions that add to that, that, that, that, that at all her character.

[Ed Zitron]

I don't, I think it's all.

[Matt Binder]

I agree, but I'm just trying to differentiate the two products. This one, this one is a gradation. They were, they were, they were dressed that way and then acting out ways you would fantasize someone and not.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Wait, are you Saying the Razor 1 is a real character? Is a character that exists in the world and then these are not, these.

[Matt Binder]

Are just their own AI companion creations.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And you think about it and you're like, you know, these people you, you have, when you're designing a companion, you have a literal infinite number of human characters who you could, you know, like, why not pick a 65 year old lady bus driver in the Bronx? Why not?

[Ed Zitron]

Honestly, why not?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But this is what I'm saying. But the reason that you are laughing at this and look, I'm saying that.

[Ed Zitron]

It'S because it's not sexualized.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But the reason that I'm laughing, why.

[Matt Binder]

Doesn'T everyone want Meryl Streep in a box? Meryl Streep in a box.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm gonna be honest.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I wanna Meryl Streep.

[Adam Conover]

No, not saying that.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay, what if, what if I just.

[Matt Binder]

Want to talk shop with Meryl Streep about her film career in a little box?

[Ed Zitron]

I'm gonna be honest. Some of the best conversations I've ever had have been with like random old people at airports. Like a few years ago I was at a random. I forget where I was. Like maybe Salt Lake City or. Regardless, I just talked to this guy next to me and he was a former NFL player from like the 60s or set. Like it was before. It was like a whole high paying job and we just chat shit for half an hour and we kind of talked about our days and I was like, yeah, I'm going through some shit right now. And like we had an honest conversation that was probably like, I can't imagine.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

That was more socially healing.

[Ed Zitron]

But as far as like. Yeah, to your point. Exactly. Sorry, I didn't mean to talk over here, but it's like the actual. They're going to get me for this. But the loneliness thing, the isolation isn't solved by sex. And like immediately placing women in this situation where they are. The solution to men's problems is putting it male loneliness bullshit. It's claiming that women are somehow the solution to men not seeking introspection and companionship.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And what's funny is that it's not even woman is the solution because there's a, there's a 65 year old Bronx bus driver who would not count as the solution. What it is is there is a, there is a specific checklist of a woman's weight, Mm. Facial beauty and social subservience that are supposed to, that are supposed to fit into, into this very narrow range of measurements. And that woman then owes service to man who is lonely.

[Ben Rudolph]

Yep.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And, and I want to be, I want to be like as fair as possible. So say a man is very lonely. A man, A man lives a very isolated, isolated life.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And goes I, I can see a use for an AI companion as a, like a social like fill, fill the hole that is in my life that I can't figure out another way to fill. But maybe we would say hey, what do you like, do you like chess? Go find a once a week or once a month chess night. Hey, do you like. I don't know, whatever.

[Matt Binder]

Well, there's chess, there's chess playing robots that'll solve that problem.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Right? That like I understand understand that there are people who live an incredibly isolated life that I would maybe look at it and go there are ways to solve this. There are analog human to human ways to solve this and to take baby steps forward. Sure, of course. I mean I think that that's the solution. End all, be all. But like I can imagine somebody who goes that kind of human facing solution is impossible for me. I cannot imagine leaving my apartment. I cannot imagine going to a chestnut. I cannot imagine whatever insert. Sure, fine. Okay. So I'm trying to like be as fair as possible, have as much as much empathy as possible. And, and this person, first of all, the idea that this person doesn't have inherent. Sorry, I'm really on my ladies soapbox now. This is great. But the idea that that person doesn't already like, hasn't already been inherently soaked in sexist assumptions and standards and, and a view inherently of women as unequal because that is we all. I view women as unequal because that is the water that we swim in. That is how we, that is how, that is how we are socialized. So like those assumptions already exist in all of us and particularly in this isolated person. But again, I'm being as fair as possible. Say that those assumptions are not actually surface level. They're inherent. They, they, they operate in how we, we make subconscious judgments.

[Ed Zitron]

Right.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But this person is not you know, sort of like outright a sexist. They buy wife in a tube and suddenly, suddenly they're. If we're assuming that they're pretty isolated, suddenly they're a huge Bulk of their interaction with what feels like a human is Japanese lady in a kimono who probably has big tits under that kimono. Good for, you know, like good. She better.

[Ed Zitron]

And one other thing though is that.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It'S like that suddenly it becomes your only interaction with. With the concept of a woman or, or the vast majority of your interaction with the concept of a woman. Like that inherently is going to poison how you interact with your. Your interactions with gender. And I just like that. That to me that is my fairest take. Where, where, where. I'm not saying it's evil at the top or I'm sorry, it's like evil at the out from the outset. I think the product is evil. Evil from the outset. But the person doesn't necessarily have to be like up from the outset. But I just think this product is going to.

[Ed Zitron]

I wanna.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Right.

[Ed Zitron]

I want to add one thing to that which is it also inherently connects loneliness with sex and physical validation. Because it's like why isn't it guy. Like why do you have to have a woman you are attracted to to solve your loneliness? Why is your companion by default the opposite sex and I assume validating how you look until telling you you're a tr. Why is that? Because that is not. Because that's where it gets into the like woman's subservience thing for me as well. Because it's how our woman of service.

[Matt Binder]

That's, that's because all these, all these, all these products aren't solved. If your issue is solving your. Your social problem.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

None of these, no tech product is.

[Ed Zitron]

Going to therapy will do that.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yes.

[Matt Binder]

But the whole point.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Or like exposing like exposure to the outside world. Right.

[Matt Binder]

Like you just if, if you have a problem socializing with people, then the way you fix that is by forcing yourself to socialize with people.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

Like tech can't by definition fix that because tech is not a person.

[Ed Zitron]

And I mean I used to be a very awkward like even like, you're not Chloe.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But he's cool now.

[Adam Conover]

But I'm cool.

[Ed Zitron]

No, I am not. But like it's like. And it took having to have some very harsh conversations with myself and my therapist and just accepting that like, yeah, I was awkward. I was not thoughtful about my conversation style and I was just hated myself and didn't think I was human. Yeah, I'd been to fucking therapy. Now it's great. But it's solving that would not be someone validating my every whim. You kind of need to hurt a little bit because no one is perfect but it's like saying, oh yeah, a sexy waifu in a tube is your prisoner now. And now you won't be lonely because the prison wife is yours and I can.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And again, like, being as fair as possible, giving. Giving as much credit to the other perspectives as possible. I can imagine somebody saying, when you're saying, saying like, I don't want the solution to be loneliness to be inherently tied to romance. I agree at a philosophical level, but I can imagine that from a pragmatic view, a huge amount of very lonely people are like, yeah, I would love to be in love.

[Adam Conover]

There's a lot.

[Ed Zitron]

It doesn't solve it. It doesn't solve it. If you hate yourself and you meet someone and you have sex with them and you're with them and you still hate yourself, you are going to become dependent on that woman.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And you're going to be a fucking. You're going to be a tumor on them. It's just, I hate to say it's a birthmark, Ed. It sucks. I legitimately.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Listeners who have no idea that I have a huge birthday.

[Ed Zitron]

Chloe, my autism is such that I genuinely don't think about your birthmark ever. And you know, I'm like the one.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Person I know 100%. It's my favorite joke to make.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, no, it fucking rocks. Use the store.

[Adam Conover]

Anyway, for those who don't know Chloe, she's got a big birthmark. For those who are just hearing her VS Audio. Look, it is first of all, the lonely. The loneliness epidemic is real. It does kill people. It's like the discourse about it, whatever, but like, it is a real problem. It's also like evidence of such a deep distortion in our society that we have it. Because the thing that we have the most of in the world is other people. Yeah. We are literally too many.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

We are literally the most second only to other chickens.

[Adam Conover]

And the whole idea of replacing people with technology at all is insane because we've got 8 billion of us, up from 6 billion when I was in like high school. And guess what? They're cheap. Like, you want one in America, you can get one for seven bucks an hour and they'll do whatever the you want. You know, like, that's 7:20, by the way. Even when it comes to like, companionship. Right. There's a role for people to do that commercially. I'm friends with, with women who are sex workers and they see at least a couple of them as like, look, there's guys who like, they need love and sex. It's a human need they like have their neurodivergent or have some other issue in such a way and I can provide a service and they get something out of it. It's reciprocal. That's the best version of it.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Right.

[Adam Conover]

Etc. I could, I could go into details, but like, that's a real. That's a real. That's a, that, that's like a, an occupation that's stigmatized in our society.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Adam Conover]

But like it's a real thing that a human could do better even.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Adam Conover]

And the idea that we're a place people is insane.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah. There is a difference though, I think, between like the loneliness epidemic and like the socialization problem. Like there are guys who have plenty of friends just have trouble with women, so they go to sex workers and that's fine. And hopefully they don't, you know, they are normal people other than that. But, you know, but the socialization thing, these people who aren't even thinking about, you know, interacting with another woman, even for pay like this, these are people who, who just want to control something because they don't even want to. I don't think they want to fix the socialization problem because why would you buy a woman in a box if you're like, I'm socially awkward. I need to talk to someone that doesn't solve your issue. That's not even something that gets you in that direction, in my opinion.

[Ed Zitron]

I just, I don't think it doesn't involve any introspection.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Right.

[Ed Zitron]

It's just about I got a thing that kind of solves the problem so that I don't have to think about solving the problem.

[Matt Binder]

Right. Like meeting people online, like that's a fairly new thing. And you know what? It solved a lot for a lot of people actually.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It's technology.

[Matt Binder]

You use technology to actually enhance your real life, your real world.

[Ed Zitron]

Every single person in this room who has been on this show, including Phil, who I've known for 14 years, I know through the Internet, every single fucking one. I'm like the drill crying. Tweet where it's like my beautiful wife crying. My job crying. My, my watch crying. Now get the fuck out of my office. But that with the Internet and it's like, it is difficult. I'm not pretending like low loneliness isn't like a thing, but I, it. I resent the male loneliness thing because women get lonely too, and they solve it in a vastly different way. And there's not just a series of different cons set up to corner woman's being like, you want a husband tube Right. You want. Do you want the man tube?

[Matt Binder]

There, There is none.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Right?

[Matt Binder]

There's nothing. No one putting in a guy in a box, right?

[Ed Zitron]

There's no one saying that. Because women are put in a position where they're meant to work. They're meant to work it out. Women have to work out. Woman. It's your fault.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You're lonely.

[Ed Zitron]

Why aren't you fucking. Why are you too emotional? Why are you this. Why you that fucking. It pisses me off because it's like these whiny fucking men who are like, oh, yes, I'm fucking lonely and thus I'm going to become racist. And it just. Fuck off. Sorry. I have some very spicy feelings about this because I went through the actual work and it was very difficult and annoying.

[Matt Binder]

I know. I fully agree with you. I think, you know, I don't think they, they consider the fact that women are, can be. Be lonely. Like, it's not because in a lonely guy's world, they think. And you see this online all the time because you could see how angry they get when, oh, a woman decides to like, start an only fans and they are successful and they make money doing that. They're like, oh, it's so easy for women. They just go out there and they could talk to anybody and every guy will want to talk with them. And it's like, you know, but you could just go out there and talk too.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

What?

[Matt Binder]

Nothing's stopping you.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, I'm going to say something really out there. Every guy who says that. Get on Only fans start selling pictures of your. I'm serious. I'm actually serious.

[Garrison Davis]

Go.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Who they would never allow purchase pictures of their. Because gay is bad. Because. Why is gay bad? Because it is close to woman.

[Ed Zitron]

It's feminine. You couldn't possibly look at a man's penis. You might turn gay.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's just comes down to the, like, such foundational views. It's the, it's the, it's the most foundational framing of women in society, which is women are there to be consumed and men are there to consume.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And it's so deeply fucked up and it holds, it kills, it kills women and it kills. Arguably it kills men.

[Adam Conover]

It kills men.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah. Thank you, Adam, for sticking up for the men.

[Adam Conover]

Well, well, you know, I think that the point you make is you guys can, you can go and talk to anybody any time. Is true to me. It's, it's similar to a lot of other social problems, like, you know, poor nutrition, people being in poor Shape, not exercising. Right. Yes. Anyone can eat better and jog or whatever. And also some people grow up in an environment where every thing that they are ever told, every product they ever purchase, their entire environment is pushing them away from doing that thing and they just never get, get around to it. So like, my dad has no friends. My mom has 20 friends. Not because my dad's a piece of, just that's the way American society is structured. And so yes, my dad has a responsibility. And also society can look at this overall problem go, what the are we doing wrong here that's causing this like demographic problem? And the answer is not waifus in tubes. The answer is like connecting people with other people.

[Ed Zitron]

So it's racist.

[Matt Binder]

But. But also is, is your, is your dad long lonely? Like there's some people just prefer actually just.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, my father, he's quite happy. He hangs out with my family.

[Matt Binder]

Like, for it to be a socialization problem, you have to be a lonely guy who's upset.

[Hayden Johnson]

You're alone.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

You feel like you're owed something.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You're alone and not trying to change that. Right, right, right.

[Matt Binder]

Because, because if there are people who are completely content being isolated and they don't view themselves as that, but like, you know, they, they'd prefer to stay in, then go out and hang out or party. Like they, they like their time to themselves.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

And that's completely fine. But there's people, people who are inside and are angry. They're inside and alone. And that's the difference. I think so.

[Ed Zitron]

You know, so I hate to do this. We're going to rotate again. Coming up, an ad for men and women. Whoa. Looks like that they got them for both birds and the fellas now.

[Garrison Davis]

Wow.

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[Chloe Radcliffe]

Wait.

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[Ed Zitron]

We're in the fourth quarter and I haven't had any water. That's actually true. I have not drank a drop of water. I think I've had 11 Diet Cokes.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You do have a bottle of water next to me.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it's mostly I just like to sit with it it. Okay, we're back. It's better offline and we talk about male loneliness epidemic. I guess we're back. And of course with comedian actress Chloe Radcliffe. We will let you do your plags. Plags.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Plags.

[Ed Zitron]

Do your plagues.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, put your plagues, your plagues at the end.

[Ed Zitron]

And you of course Adam Conover, stand up comedian.

[Adam Conover]

Hello.

[Ed Zitron]

And of course the host of the factually broadcast. And we're actually joined by Ben, my good mate Ben Rudolph.

[Ben Rudolph]

It's good to see him.

[Ed Zitron]

He's the CEO of Cartographic. And you did 15 years at Microsoft.

[Ben Rudolph]

I sure did.

[Ed Zitron]

You did the PR for Windows Vista. You were saying?

[Ben Rudolph]

Enterprise PR for Windows Vista. The worst job in the company.

[Ed Zitron]

It's. Honestly though, that's the most PR thing you like. You all always have one. Yeah, you have one thing.

[Ben Rudolph]

I made it, though.

[Ed Zitron]

No, you made it. And you're still smiling.

[Ben Rudolph]

I'm here.

[Ed Zitron]

But that's right. It's germane to what we're talking about. Like positive male role models. Positive male discussions. Because I brought you here because you're a good mate and we've done a lot. Like we're friends online and you've talked to me about fitness and being like, you've genuinely changed my life. Like helping me build a workout routine. This. So like my relationship with you solved more male loneliness than any like, romantic relationship I've ever had.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Are you, are you a fitness coach or are you just do. Okay.

[Ben Rudolph]

No, not really. No at all.

[Adam Conover]

He's just.

[Ed Zitron]

And just to give you an idea, Ben is like jacked. It's awesome.

[Ben Rudolph]

I'm trying every day and he's huge. To get a little bit more. A little bit more.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Rudolph]

No, I'm not. I'm not a fitness coach at all. I. I love lifting weights. I try and keep myself in shape. I've got nine kids, so.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Jesus Christ.

[Ben Rudolph]

Yeah, So I got a lot of people who are dependent on me.

[Ed Zitron]

Gotta lift up a lot of kids.

[Adam Conover]

Nine kids.

[Ben Rudolph]

It's a lot of. Exactly. A lot of functional fitness. Oh. But seriously, like, it's great for my health. It's great for my mental health.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ben Rudolph]

It's great for my family, you know. And like you had like, it. It solves as many mental challenges for me as it does physical challenges. So like, it's not a career for me. It's just something I really enjoy doing and it's so deeply ingrained into my day to day routine that I really can't imagine living without it.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. And we, we met over X the Everything app and we. The ultimate poster championship with you, me, Caleb and Tatiana and we just talked fitness and like I fucked up my body real bad doing connected fitness stuff. Actually. It was like fight camp and tonal and I was lifting real hard. I was not in a good place and I kind of went to Ben. I'm like, this keeps happening and I keep getting this pain and Ben just sends me video of him and his son. He's like, I'm going to show you how to throw a punch. And it was lovely. Like your son was like, you ready? And he just threw this perfect like spiral punch. I went, wow, I've been punching wrong for several months because you need to like rotate your hips and such. And it's just like, it's one of the things I cherish because it's like a wonderful relationship over the Internet for sure. Wonderful. A positive thing based with talking to another bloke about something positive. And I think it's really easy to dilute a lot of loneliness us to. Well, I need a female or a romantic companion. I need someone to make me feel better about myself versus helping me along a journey where I do that work while someone inspires me. Because you're huge and you've done. You always post the ones where you've got like eight 89 inch biceps or whatever. I think it's lovely. And also I'm saying, if you're listening to this as a man and you're saying, oh, I'm lonely as, go and talk to another fella, ask him how he's feeling. Talk to him about how you feel. Don't on focus can say, I need the wife tube.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And now I do think, okay, so again, I'm trying. I'm. I really am keeping central in my vision, thinking about the other perspective and being as fair as possible. So if I'm a man listening to this podcast and I'm like, I'm lonely and Ed's advice is go tell another man how you're feeling.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I think that the gap between where a lot of men exist and being able to tell another man how you're feeling is pretty deep.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm gonna say something simple.

[Adam Conover]

It's hard to do.

[Ed Zitron]

If you really can't, email me easytteroffline.com I'm not kidding. Signal me. Ezron76 if you really want to talk about your emotions and you're too scared because your cowardly male friends are not in touch with their things, do it. I don't care. You cry. I, I cry when I fucking need to. I'm fucking sick. You solve this by facing the problem by doing stuff.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You solve this by walking.

[Ed Zitron]

I have weight issues. And honestly, you helped me, Ben, turn weightlifting into I lift light now, I lift volume. It's about completing things. It's about building something rather than thrashing my body.

[Adam Conover]

But I think we need to, I think we have to start by recognizing that it is difficult for men for some reason that we could get into me and one of my best Friends, I've known him for 20 years. I see him twice a week at minimum. We're both in therapy. We're progressive guys. We care about our emotions. He number of years ago, seven years or so. Got divorced. Didn't tell me for a year.

[Ed Zitron]

Jesus Christ.

[Adam Conover]

Like, we were on a hike and he was finally like, I want to let you know, like, me and her are separated. I was like, yeah, man, I haven't seen her around. Yeah, I know, but we didn't talk about it then. I, I went through a big breakup like a year and a half ago, and he's had to come to me and occasionally go like, hey, man, how are you doing? You know, like, we haven't talked lately and, and we. Everything it. For some reason we have to remind each other and we do. Than we. But actually, yeah, you're right.

[Ed Zitron]

I. I think I get that you need to remind people.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Listen, there might be. Ask your friend a question. That sounds simple.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, that.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And, and this is not necessarily like, how do you tell your friends how you're feeling? This likely will open up a conversation. But like your friend saying, hey, how are you doing post breakup? Arguably, you. It's. It's sounds like you had noticed that something had gone weird in his marriage. You hadn't seen his wife around for a long time. But it sounds like you didn't say, like, how are things with you and the wife?

[Adam Conover]

Yeah, I didn't say anything to him either. So.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And so to me, it's like asking that question, even if that feels so. Like such a steep hill to climb. Like, I've. I've been as a, As a woman with feelings, I've been in conversations with my girlfriends who I'm super, super close with, where I'm like, God, it is really hard to be like, anyway, so how is your marriage doing? Like that. That seems like. It seems like if the answer is good, then I'm like, opening suspicion into an area that I don't need to be opening suspicion into. If the marriage is bad, if she's not telling me, there must be a reason that she's not telling me. But the answer is actually just we are sort of all socialized to not reveal a lot of that information. And then women have been permitted to. To be like, we have been sort of saddled with the. They're emotional and they're dramatic. But what that. The, the light side of that is that we are permitted to express difficult things a little bit more easily and a little bit more publicly.

[Ed Zitron]

Sorry, Ben. We've just Dropped you in the middle of this.

[Ben Rudolph]

No, this is great.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It's.

[Adam Conover]

It's like you.

[Ben Rudolph]

You and I. I mean, I think men in general are, you know, we're supposed to be strong, physically strong, mentally strong, spiritually strong, all those things. You and I started talking not just about fitness, but when you were like, hey, I struggled with my weight.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Ben Rudolph]

Like, I was able to say, like, I struggle with my weight, too. Like this about 2009 or so, I lost about 70 pounds. I was big. So that gave us a.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Which for you is like 1% of your body mass.

[Ben Rudolph]

Yeah, I weigh 700 pounds.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

But it's old muscle now.

[Ben Rudolph]

Yes, more. More now than it used to. But that gave us an opportunity to, like, to talk over that. And that was like, something that we could bond over and something that we could. You know, you're not the only person I know.

[Ed Zitron]

And a richness that we should compare.

[Ben Rudolph]

And, like, I still always feel like the fat kid.

[Ed Zitron]

I was saying. Oh, absolutely. I feel fat all the time. I feel fat right now. And it's weird, right?

[Ben Rudolph]

And I always do. And it's always like, weighs on me because I was a heavy kid through my 20s, and I didn't really turn it around until I was about 30 years old. And once you figure that out and you find out that other people have gone through the same thing, then all of a sudden you can have a very different conversation about it. And it's not about lifting to go in the Mr. Olympia, and it's not about trying to set a bench press record. It's really just about, like, you know, trying to build yourself up as much physically as it is mentally. And other people are trying to. You're just trying to get through the day.

[Ed Zitron]

And also that's okay. I will say, in my experience, pushing a little further on guys being like, are you really okay? A lot of guys will open up and be like, I'm not. And you have a nice conversation and you're worried. And I mean, the feminization of emotion is the disgusting. Because it's like, oh, my God, the amount of times I cried with my male friends and vice versa, and it's felt so much better. Or when I've cried in front of.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You clients, I've cried my close to how we met.

[Ed Zitron]

It was like two days later.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Two days later.

[Ed Zitron]

But it's great, and it's good, and it's just. It's really easy to find other stop gaps. And I want to be clear, like, these companies are taking advantage of that. They're not because I wanted to say this last episode as well. It's like the reason that there is a loneliness episode epidemic is there are no third spaces. There are fewer walkable cities. And the social networking tools no longer. This is such a. Like, Dennis Ly stole the social networking tools. Don't let you socialize. But really, though, you can't have a chronological feed of the people you want to follow on most platforms, there's obstructions between it. There's like random platforms just become racist.

[Adam Conover]

They're not designed to get people into physical space, with the exception of dating apps, which are. But even then, like, yeah, true. And those are all up and gamified. But like, you know, what was the name of the site from like the late 90s or like meetup.com or.org?

[Ben Rudolph]

Do you remember?

[Advertisement Voice]

Yeah, yeah, me.

[Adam Conover]

I think they're still around maybe.

[Ed Zitron]

I don't know.

[Adam Conover]

It was literally designed to. It was like sort of pre Facebook designed to be. Find stuff to do in real life.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Meetups. Yeah, Meetups are still around like that as a branded name.

[Adam Conover]

Okay, well, that is not the focus of most social networking tools. In the early days, I totally. There were a lot that were like, hey, let's get people to meet up in the real world. And now that's the last thing Facebook wants you to do.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

And it's just there are ways that this could be fixed. I don't. I'm. I'm not an inventor, but I don't know. The problem being that men don't want to talk. That's not something. That's an analog problem.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yes. I'm just saying, like the prescript.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, no, I'm agreeing. I'm agreeing.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Tangible prescription can be ask your male friend a question. Any question.

[Ed Zitron]

Any question.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And also ask.

[Adam Conover]

Ask.

[Ed Zitron]

Ask your girlfriend as well if you have one more questions. That's.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Ask anyone in your life a question and actually, they will love it.

[Adam Conover]

Well, I, I. No, really, all I want to add to this is I think it needs to start with a recognition that, like, in the same way that when I started working out, I was like, oh, yeah. Everything in my life has been telling me to sit on my ass and I have to, like, make an effort to do it.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Right.

[Adam Conover]

Well, that's even. But it was a little bit easier because, yes, men are supposed to be strong.

[Ed Zitron]

Right.

[Adam Conover]

Everything in men's lives are sort of telling them not to open up. It is like a barrier.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. Defensive almost.

[Adam Conover]

And like, you have to, like, treat it as, like, this is not gonna Be super easy. Like, I have to, you know, I have to, like, pry it out of myself and out of my male friend. Which is why, like, you know, again, my friend to me was like, we need to talk. It's been a while.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Which is exactly why.

[Adam Conover]

And I'm like, oh, why?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I'm saying. And it's.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm glad they did.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And that's exactly why I'm trying to point out the gulf between somebody listening to this and going, I feel, like, isolated. And the. The other side of that crevasse of, like, just tell. Talk about your feelings. And that. I do think that there's like, an easy, concrete.

[Ben Rudolph]

You're intentionally opting into something hard.

[Adam Conover]

Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

Right.

[Ben Rudolph]

Like, that's. I mean, and it's. It's. We are, you know, not to get too metaphysical, but, like, we're nothing if there are not challenges for us to.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah.

[Advertisement Voice]

Attack.

[Adam Conover]

And doing hard things can be rewarding.

[Ben Rudolph]

Exactly.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Right.

[Ben Rudolph]

And, like, it is no harder to learn how to bench press than it is to talk about your feelings. Feelings.

[Ed Zitron]

Those are both hard and with fitness as well. I had to, like, push past the thing of, like, I have to be strong. It was this incredibly negative relationship I had with my body because I was a fat person that didn't. I was a fat, sedentary piece of. Until I got past that, I could not have a body I liked until it was about building something and recognizing weakness and the fragility of one's body. But also the fact that going about it and beating the. Out of yourself to become strong is unsustainable because it just means that every, Like, a good thing, a powerful thing, a progressive thing, is inherently regressive. You were just hurting yourself. And where is the end point of that? How are you gonna go, oh, I've reached a good point. It's just you're a piece of. If you fall below this level. And I've fought with that.

[Ben Rudolph]

Yeah, well, and there's. I mean, especially when it comes out, like, the body dysmorphia stuff never stops. Right. I mean, there's like, there's memes and jokes about it. Like, I've been. I've been bodybuilding for five years. Like, when does the body dysmorphia stuff?

[Ed Zitron]

Like.

[Ben Rudolph]

Oh, it doesn't. Right. It's like, you're just getting started, man. Like, you. You see the guys even. Not that I would ever advocate for this, but, like, the guys who are, like, the pro bodybuilders, they'll win shows and they'll be like, what are you doing? I mean it's very famous. Like Jay cutler, who won Mr. Olympia four times. They interviewed him after he won and he was, they were like, what are you going to do to celebrate?

[Adam Conover]

He's well, I got to go to.

[Ben Rudolph]

Bed early because I got cardio in the morning and it's like, you just won like, you know, the World Series of Bodybuilding and he's not taking a day off because, because he was so wrapped into it and so like deep into it that it was just like, it's all he could think about and.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Like, you know, and, and there's no finish. Not to be a woman about this.

[Ed Zitron]

Please be a woman about it.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I just want to state for the record that I, it. I love. I am so glad that men are talking about body dysmorphia and the way that body dysmorphia shows up in women is so much more socially connected with our value like it. That, that like I do, I do not. I, I want to be like, I totally get it. I, I do totally get it. And I get it. I think probably more than you might think I do. And then just a quick shout out for the girls that like, then it is connected to the women are there to be consumed that like the, the, the, the extra layer of value when we feel body dismiss.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, it gets back to the wife tube thing, which I, I'm liking saying that phrase, I guess where it's like, yeah, it's not a overweight woman, it's not a man. It's a sexualized presentation of the idealistic woman for the certain customer of this thing. Because I, I am not a woman. I experience body dysmorphia every day. But I'm not like me being overweight is not the thing that precluded me from being happy. It was how I felt about myself. To be clear, I need, I like, I want to feel better about myself, but my value as a man is not directly affected in the same way.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Exactly, exactly. That's so I, when I was fat.

[Ed Zitron]

It was not keeping me from job opportunities.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Exactly. That's what it is. It's that, it's that like, I think probably the emotional experience of body dysmorphia is, is very, very similar in women and men and, and even the like, men are supposed to be strong. And so like there is a social value associated with that. But, but it is that when men fall outside of what we consider the classically attractive bounds, the way that their lives are negatively impacted tend to be much more minimal negative Impacts than the way that women's lives are impacted when they fall outside of the bounds of class.

[Ed Zitron]

I would say when I was very, I was like £350. There was definitely a level of, like, respect I didn't get, but it was not like, it wasn't to the level where women are just completely excluded if they do not look like the heteronormative idea of what a woman should look like. A certain level of thinness and attractiveness and makeup and all of these. Yeah, it's very, it's very different.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah. Or it's just like a whole nother fun.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, you get, you get like several more layers of.

[Adam Conover]

I mean, look at the, look at the people at this conference and look at the, you know, there's people who are, there's, there's men walking around who are not fitting conventional, conventional notions of what an attraction effective man is. And they're powerful, successful men at this conference. And I think you'd have a hard time finding women are in the same position. Right. Like, we're talking about all the other dimensions of, you know, of, of social value and, and status. Like, it's so much more connected for women.

[Advertisement Voice]

Absolutely.

[Ed Zitron]

And everything goes with women, as well as weight loss and thinness and certain presentations and minutes about a certain level of bigness and the metrics are even different. It's just, it's. I'm glad we're talking about this on the show because I know we probably have more men listening than we do woman. I hope. Like, I would love that not to be the case, but it's about technology. What do you think? And it's just like, it sucks because, yeah, there are lonely men, but it's like, yeah, sadly, you bring this to a woman before you fixed it, you're now her problem. She needs the key. And you're going to have many of these things about your body that you transform onto her. You'll judge her the same way you judge yourself. Until you can get past that. Even the internalized sexual, the sexism of, like, how a man and the woman is, are meant to feel. When I was, when I was heavy, like, I had to go through a lot of things of just like, no one needs to look a certain way at all. Like, I might need to be thin for myself. That might be what I need to aspire to, but that's no one else's job. No one has to look a certain way for me or for them, like, only for the themselves and sucks. I, I, the more I think about these Wife tubes. As funny as it is to say, the more like angry I get because it's just like reinforcing gender stereotypes but also adding a new layer of like woman prison.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I mean, it's, it's like, it's, it's fantasy subjugation.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes.

[Adam Conover]

And it's, it's a technological fake solution to a real social problem that is like preying on both the customers and, and the women who are represented.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

There's this tube where you had like an anime wife you could talk to. I probably should have multiple products, though.

[Ben Rudolph]

I, I distilled it from the conversation. Yeah, yeah, that sounds like a terrible idea.

[Ed Zitron]

It's, it's a really good band aid on a multitude of problems because I, I maintain you want to, you want to genuinely go talk to a priest. Like, I don't mean it. Even if you're not religious.

[Hayden Johnson]

You just.

[Ed Zitron]

Maybe you need some spirituality in your life. Maybe you need more than just how you look or how, how you feel and trapped in your own head. They'll talk to you for a priest will talk to you all fucking day. You don't need to be religious. I'm not even joking. Like the monk, the Dominican monk, Friar Gabriel. He's sadly not here. Father Gabriel. Pardon me. I've talked to him for hours. I'm not religious at all. I'm like agnostic. Who fucking knows? But it's like the problem is if you talk about your problems, then you have to recognize your role in them and how they make you feel. And when you've never done that, this is the simple empathy I'll give. It hurts.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It's. Well, there, there's. When you've never done that. And also when the technology that is in our world is so, Is so effective at like pressing the immediate dopamine button.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Or. Right. That we are presented with a drug that is more instant and more powerful and more replicable than ever in human history.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And so why would you do something that feels bad when you can just do something that feels good when you. Right away. Even if it feels bad on a long scale term. Long term scale. And you sort of understand that inherently. Yeah. But you can still just do the drug again. You can just press the button again. You can just feel better again. And why wouldn't you?

[Ed Zitron]

Of course, Chinese peptides, like, it really does connect that. No, but we were talking about these Chinese peptides yesterday. It's like. Yeah. A quick and easy solution. To be clear, you use GLP1 from a doctor. Brilliant. Well, however, your Weight loss journey happens, if that's what you need. Brilliant. Sadly, and better than I can tell you. You can lose all the weight, but you're still going to feel bad about yourself until you solve that, until you find a way to go carve out your own self, you're going to be. You're going to be in trouble. And I say this to someone who has been in trouble, who has taken years to build the internal and external me that I wanted. And it's like all these fitness things, they, they don't even really try that as well. I think Victoria Sungz made the point multiple times that these, these numbers, the useless numbers we were talking about, I.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Said that my, my theme for CES is numbers. You don't need to just like, there's.

[Ben Rudolph]

No substitute for the work.

[Ed Zitron]

No.

[Hayden Johnson]

Right.

[Adam Conover]

I mean, like, that's it.

[Ben Rudolph]

There's no substitute.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But everybody's like, but is this a substitute for the work?

[Ed Zitron]

Exactly.

[Ben Rudolph]

Like, we've been trying this forever.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

CES 2026. But is this a substitute for the work?

[Ben Rudolph]

There's a great, There's a great. I think you and I have talked about it for. Henry Rollins wrote a great article called the Iron.

[Ed Zitron]

The Iron and Soul. Yes, Amazing.

[Ben Rudolph]

Where he talks about the iron never lies.

[Ed Zitron]

Right.

[Ben Rudolph]

At the end of the day, like, forget, I'm going to butcher the quote. But he wraps it up by being like, you can be the biggest guy in the room with a smallest guy in the room. You can have the, the best body or the worst body. You could just gotten married or just gotten dumped. You know, you fired from your job, promoted. At the end of the day, man, the 200 pounds is still 200 pounds either lifted or you don't like it. It's the, the work is there to be done.

[Ed Zitron]

You change, but the iron stays the same.

[Ben Rudolph]

Like, the process of lifting heavier or eating better or whatever is like, the hard is what makes it good. It's not just about the aesthetics or about how much weight you can put push. It's about the process that you go through. And those GLP1s and other peptides, they are miracle drugs. They are miracle drugs. And I know lots of people who have gone on them. And the people who are successful are the people who go on them and then also lift the weights and also do the cardio and also eat better. The people who just take them and then kind of deflate because they're not doing anything have horrible, horrible metabolic problems because they took the shortcut. And you get the, you get the results of the shortcut.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And you feel still miserable about. And they say this is. I've lost. I was 350 pounds. I dropped to 130 pounds when I was 19. I then went back up to 260 something by the end of my like the midpoint of my 30s and maybe a buck 65. Now that last part was the first time it stayed like I've stayed consistently this way. Not because, not because I've stayed consistent, my fits, I've been off for the last few months but because I've been more focused on what good feels like than I have on. Am I fucking pushing, punishing, beating the fuck. I remember texting my friend Tatiana, friend of the show Tatiana. Yeah, my arms feel like they're full of broken glass. And I was happy. And she was like, I don't think that's what that's meant to feel like. And I was like, yes, it is. I'm good. She it wasn't a good age not long before I started talking to you, Ben. And I think it's just like it's really easy to fucking hate yourself for, for bad reasons and then also not really be critic critical of yourself for the good ones, such as I'm fucking up my body repeatedly so that I can be sexy for a woman.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And I want to add another a corollary to it's really easy to hate yourself. Yes. Also it is really easy to justify a fairly nihilist point of view. I think now more than ever I think it's very easy to be like nothing matters and we're all going to die and so why am I, why would I try?

[Ed Zitron]

Why would I even try?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Or like the world is so up and obviously there's no like to, to keep, to rationalize, to justify whatever your repeated choices are. And I'm talking to myself more than anybody. Like I, I have, I have a million of these ruts and then I get myself into to. And I think it's very, very easy to justify self destructive choices, particularly the mildly self destructive choices, the ones that aren't like driving, causing you to drive your car into a tree at the end of the night, you know, like.

[Ed Zitron]

What are the minor ones?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Oh, just like, like justifying promising yourself that you'll eat better and then not even if it's not to a crazy degree, but it's to a degree that keeps you unhealthy in a way way. Or like, you know, it's like if you're not getting blackout drunk every week but you're like, I When I drink, I wake up the next morning and I feel anxious in a way that cripples me for the whole next day. But I'm just gonna have another drink. I'm just gonna have one more drink with my friends tomorrow night or whatever. And it's. And again like this, these are things that I do. These are, this is my own life. This is. Nobody saw. Adam just dropped the nihilism thing.

[Ben Rudolph]

I mean like my favorite gym T shirt that I lift in all the time is like the counterpoint to that. And it says like, we're all going to die. Might as well get strong.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Rudolph]

Like I think, is it Pascal's wager? Isn't it Pascal's wager, Right? It's like, it's like that but for life choices. Pascal's wager.

[Ed Zitron]

You can act as if God exists.

[Matt Binder]

Exactly.

[Ben Rudolph]

Like you might as well act as if God exists because even if he does not exist, living in a moral way, it's the benefit of yourself.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I totally agree. I'm just, I'm saying like, I think a lot of people easily fall into adjustments justification where it's not even that they like, I, I think that there's people listening to this who wouldn't say I hate myself, who would just say everything is so.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, who gives a.

[Ben Rudolph]

It doesn't matter.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, yeah. And the thing is, or, or my, my jadedness is correct. Not even it doesn't matter stuff where they're like, it could matter but like look at I, I, I, I think people, people rationalize jaded.

[Ed Zitron]

I also think it's really easy for guys to impot particular and no, I take that back. It's not true. Women do this kind of self harm as well. And where it's like for the beauty standards of both woman and men, where it's I need to hurt, the pain is necessary. No pain, no gain. Actually pain is not brilliant. And with, with woman it can often be. I mean they do the same thing with fitness but like dietary stuff is much harsher. It's like the ways we punish ourselves and they usually fail. Like I am generally not in pain when I, after I work out, I feel worked, but I feel good. And it's like that's the thing to look for. But it's really easy because you got on Instagram, especially if you like start talking about fitness in the dm and Instagram's like, oh, we're not looking, but looks like you need some peptides and you can get this pressure of these guys who are just, they're younger than you, stronger than you. They've gone through crazier journeys, they've lost more weight, they've done this. It's really easy for guys to pretend like this doesn't happen. You don't look at another guy's body and you feel in inferior. It happens and you're like, if I look like that or feel better, you probably won't mate.

[Hayden Johnson]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And woman. Woman talk about this publicly all the time. Men don't want to because he's gay. He's gay.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Oh, you.

[Ed Zitron]

Good Lord. With the worst thing that could happen to you is that you're gay. Jesus Christ. That sounds fun. Like who gives a. You're in love with a man. It sounds. Sounds nice. You're in love with a woman who gives a. Yeah, but it's like this feminization of anything, any kind of pain and emotion.

[Advertisement Voice]

Strong.

[Ed Zitron]

Go to wife tube. Wife tube will talk to me. I'll lift a million pounds. I don't know. It's nice to have a conversation like this in a scenario like this as well. A very male dominated space. Male dominated industry.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And it's also scary for men to think about this stuff and it's much easier to blame everyone else.

[Garrison Davis]

Else.

[Ben Rudolph]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Other men too.

[Ben Rudolph]

That being said, I am going to try and lift a million pounds this year.

[Ed Zitron]

No, but you do it because it's.

[Ben Rudolph]

A million pounds of volume. That's the goal.

[Ed Zitron]

No, but that's. You're doing that because I'll get there.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But.

[Matt Binder]

No, but you.

[Ed Zitron]

You're doing it for fun.

[Ben Rudolph]

I'm doing it for fun. And because, like, it is, it is, it is a therapeutic thing for me. Like the joke of, you know, lift heavy rock. Sad.

[Adam Conover]

Yeah.

[Hayden Johnson]

Yeah.

[Ben Rudolph]

Right. But it's like, it's true. It is a. It is a great physical thing. It's a great mental thing. It's good for my marriage.

[Adam Conover]

Right.

[Ben Rudolph]

Like, I'm a better husband, I'm a better father, I'm better professionally because I'm.

[Ed Zitron]

Able to focus and put energetic and you've.

[Matt Binder]

Energetic.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ed Zitron]

And you build something versus see the results patching over something.

[Ben Rudolph]

Exactly. Right.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm so glad we're talking foundational. Lovely.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Adam, what do you think about all this?

[Adam Conover]

Sorry?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You've been quiet this whole time.

[Adam Conover]

Oh, yeah. We've been podcasting for two hours. I'm a little. I'm a little tired. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that it's just the trip that I'm on is like, I do think that we underrate how much society like, all of us together as a society push men down the wrong path on this stuff. And I think at the same time as we are saying, like, you know, men need to step up and, like, change their attitudes, I also think we need to, like, create space for other men.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes.

[Adam Conover]

To do these things.

[Ed Zitron]

That's actually what I'm trying to intentionally do.

[Adam Conover]

Men and women. Women need to do this. Men need to do it, I think, with each other.

[Ben Rudolph]

Each other.

[Adam Conover]

But it is like, you know, a. And I think the thing that. Because there's so many elements of this, you can talk about sexism and patriarchy and stuff affects men and women, and you can almost always go, it affects women worse. It's true. Right?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Adam Conover]

But a deficiency that. I think that the reason I'm glad we're having this conversation is I think a deficient deficiency. At least I think that's unequivocally true. True. Is that men talk about it less. I grew up watching just. Just the evolving conversation about sexism directed towards women for my entire life and, like, processing it.

[Advertisement Voice]

Oh, we're.

[Adam Conover]

We're developing how. We're thinking about this. We're trying to address this process. All still exists, but we're. And, like, we just. We. We have never had it for men. Yeah.

[Ben Rudolph]

On a.

[Adam Conover]

On a cultural level. And when we try, a lot of times people go, you know, like, why? You know, I talk about this on stage sometimes. And, you know, people come. Come up to A woman came up to me and says, like, oh, it's kind of. It's kind of like, oh, won't somebody think of the man? And I'm like, yeah, kind of. It is kind of what somebody think.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And I.

[Ed Zitron]

But the thing is, I get what she is saying in that it's very, very easy to fall into the trope of, like, all poor men. But it's like the actual solution is you can say that, but only if the answer is talking to other guys, not like. And that's where women come in. And that's how having sex. And by the way, I will just say that will not solve your image issues. That will not do it. It's a band aid, too.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I mean, Adam, to. To your thinking about what you were just saying, I think that the solution to there's. I don't know that there's, like, a way to really solve gender dynamics, you know, my fingers. But, like, we got 15 minutes left.

[Advertisement Voice]

We can.

[Ed Zitron]

We've actually only got five.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But I, you know, if I were there listening to the woman say it's kind of a think of the men. And your answer is, yeah, it is. Think of the men. That's because the only way that we make any progress is with empathy and kindness.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

To the people in, to every player involved in this. In the scenario.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, yeah. And it's.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But empathy, that means men.

[Ed Zitron]

Empathy requires introspection. Sorry, I didn't mean to talk.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no, no. Totally.

[Ed Zitron]

And on that point, I'm going to end this two hour long episode.

[Matt Binder]

Wow.

[Ed Zitron]

Ben Rudolph, welcome. We find you.

[Ben Rudolph]

I'm on X, the everything app.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, nice.

[Ben Rudolph]

Bend the PC guy.

[Ed Zitron]

It's my wonderful friend.

[Ben Rudolph]

Or you can go to cartographic.com@c a R T O G R a f I q.com because we wanted to make it super hard to spell for everybody.

[Ed Zitron]

Nice challenge.

[Adam Conover]

Can I just ask Ben a question? Did you see one cool thing at ces? We've been talking on tech products and men generally. Is there anything that you were excited about out?

[Ben Rudolph]

So I haven't spent that much time around the floor. I've been working with my clients. I think there's finally some, I mean, we could do another two hours. Should we get, should we get into, like, the transition from AI hype to, like, what you can actually do with it that actually matters? I have seen some stuff that I think is interesting and fun. I haven't seen anything that I'm like, wow, that's going to change my life. Like, there's a lot of, like, autonomous like scooters and lawnmowers and stuff like that that seem interesting, but I don't know if.

[Adam Conover]

Well, that's all I want to know.

[Ben Rudolph]

Thank you.

[Ed Zitron]

Adam, why don't you do your call outs to where you're going to be doing stand up?

[Adam Conover]

Oh, okay. This weekend I'm going to be in Madison, Wisconsin. Next weekend I'll be in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Then I'm going to Louisville, Kentucky at the end of January. Then in early February, I'll be in Houston, Texas. And then I'm taping my new special at the Punchline in San Francisco February 19th through 21st. Adam Conover.net for tickets.

[Ed Zitron]

Hell, yeah, Chloe.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I this weekend I'm in Cincinnati, Ohio. Next weekend I am in Washington, D.C. the week after that, not the weekend. January 20th, 21st and 22nd. I'm doing my solo show called Cheat, which is a completely separate hour. It's not the hour of standup that I do on the road. Ed has seen it and loved it in Philadelphia. Cheat in Philadelphia, January 202122 and then the weekend after that. Or oh then two weekends after that. I'll be in Vermont at the end.

[Ed Zitron]

Of and as we end this show, big shout out to the departed past last year. Sean Paul Adams, friend of the show, friend, Friend of the suite. Please donate to the Pediatric Epilepsy Research Consortium in honor of his son who is epileptic. His family would deeply appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening. We've got another two hours for you coming soon. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osalski. You can check out more of his music and audio [e-mail] m a t t o s o w s k-I.com you can email [e-mail] or visit visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat where's your Ed? To visit the Discord and go to R betteroffline to check out our Reddit thank you so much for listening.

[Advertisement Voice]

Better Offline is a production of coolzone Media.

[Ed Zitron]

For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit.

[Garrison Davis]

Our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out.

[Advertisement Voice]

On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Wherever you get your podcast.

[Advertisement Voice]

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[Ed Zitron]

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[Adam Conover]

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[Chloe Radcliffe]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.