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IM 848: Guaranteed Human - Satellite Photos for Everyone
02:57:45
Satellite Photos for Everyone
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- [00:00]
Leo Laporte
It's time for Intelligent Machines. Paris Martineau is here and Jeff Jarvis has the week off. But good news, Jason Howell will be filling in our guest this week. Dr. Anthony Vinci is the author of the Fourth the Future of Espionage and the Battle to Save America. We'll talk about how AI has become the new form of espionage. That and a lot more next on IM.
- [00:26]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twist.
- [00:35]
Leo Laporte
This is intelligent machines, episode 848, recorded Wednesday, December 3, 2025. Guaranteed human. It's time for Intelligent Machines, the show. We cover the latest in AI robotics and all the smart doodads all around you. Jeff Jarvis has the week off, but hey, look, we got somebody. I'm very excited to have Mr. Jason Howell in the house. Yay. Yay. We miss you, J.
- [01:04]
Jason Howell
Miss you guys too. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for the invite.
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Leo Laporte
Still doing Android Faithful, right?
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Jason Howell
Yeah, doing Android Faithful. Doing, of course, AI Inside with. With Jeff Jarvis.
- [01:15]
Leo Laporte
And we talk about it every week, but I'm sure. But I'll just make sure people know AI Inside Show.
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Jason Howell
That's right.
- [01:23]
Leo Laporte
So if you can't get enough AI and for AI news and information.
- [01:26]
Jason Howell
All right.
- [01:27]
Paris Martineau
If you want to see the aipod that Jeff does before he does this AI podcast, it's like the warmup.
- [01:33]
Jason Howell
It's the warm up for Jeff.
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Paris Martineau
You know, it's the freshest you can.
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Leo Laporte
That's Ms. Martineau, investigative journalist at Consumer Reports and lately my conduit to the Z's.
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Paris Martineau
Yeah, we'll try not to get into it right now, but our chat for this show has been overtaken by media gossip.
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Leo Laporte
It's incredible. Last two weeks, it's incredible. Hey, I'm very excited about our guest this week, Dr. Anthony Vinci. I didn't ask you ahead of time. Is it Vinci?
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Dr. Anthony Vinci
Vincy?
- [02:06]
Leo Laporte
Vincy. You're not duh, Vinci, you're just Vincy.
- [02:09]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
And I'm only doctor to my wife.
- [02:12]
Leo Laporte
All right, all right. We put it in there. Anyway, you have a PhD in international relations, so I think that counts. But more interesting to me, he's a spy, or was a spy for a long time in the intelligence community in the field in Iraq and other dangerous places. Then actually, you've got a really great cv. But I'll start with the latest thing, which is a brand new book called the Fourth Intelligence Revolution. I have the audiobook up because I'm just about to buy it. The Future of Espionage and the Battle to Save America. I'm just about to buy it Because I have the PDF, but I want to listen to. This is such a. This is like a spy novel, except it's nonfiction.
- [02:57]
It's about your career and about what's about to go on and what's about to happen in the world around us. Anthony, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it.
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Dr. Anthony Vinci
Thank you so much for having me on.
- [03:10]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. This is. People are going to say, well, what does this have to do with AI? It has quite a bit to do with AI because we are about to enter the AI era of intelligence.
- [03:24]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
That's absolutely right. And that's really what drove me to write the book in the first place, was trying to bring AI into these agencies.
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Leo Laporte
Yeah. So I will. Let me. Let me just give you a little bit of Anthony's history because it's actually. It's fascinating.
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You were a clandestine intelligence officer with the Department of Defense.
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I hate it when interviewers do this. Like I'm telling you. You know, you were there. Anthony was a intelligence officer, a spy in Iraq, Africa and Asia and throughout the Middle East. He then became chief technology officer at the National Geospatial intelligence agency, the NGA. That's the. One of the big five U.S. intelligence agencies responsible for analyzing satellite imagery, which is a geospatial analysis, which has become increasingly important in this era. He then became.
- [04:24]
A hedge fund member and a managing director at a capital firm and also a startup entrepreneur. He's currently co founder and CEO of. Is it Now? Is it going to be Vicio Vico or Vicky or an AI company focused on Vico? Superhuman judgment for decision makers. He's also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, senior fellow at the center for new American Security, MITRE's Technology Committee board. I can go on. There's a lot there. But the book is fascinating.
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I am a fan of spy novels. Maybe that's why I like it. And you talk about the four eras of American espionage, starting in World War II with the OSS, which eventually kind of became the CIA.
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You call the era that most of our spy novels came from the golden era, because that's the Cold War. Right. That's when things were, you know, was smiley and the spyo came in from the cold and all of that.
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Dr. Anthony Vinci
It's what most people think about when they think about espionage.
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Leo Laporte
Right.
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Dr. Anthony Vinci
Including me, by the way. I'm still a fan of James Bond.
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Leo Laporte
Yeah. And you kind of worked in that. In that era. Right. Although you also worked in the post 911 era, which things got a lot more chaotic.
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Dr. Anthony Vinci
I was Sort of trained by guys who worked in that Cold War era. And really I started after 911 and that was my, you know, that was my time. And that's sort of what I thought it would be forever. And then this new revolution has happened. You know, as I've watched it unfold.
- [06:11]
Leo Laporte
Well, what, what 911 brought was kind of chaos because instead of nation states, you are now talking to terror, you know, spying on terrorists. It was a much broader realm of espionage involved and I think, judging from your anecdotes, a little more dangerous.
- [06:28]
The Cold War, there was a certain, it's maybe it's just my imagination, civility, a certain, you know, it was all professionals.
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After 911 there are a lot of amateurs involved.
- [06:40]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
Yeah, after 911 we were kind of going after these decentralized terrorist organizations which, you know, the CIA and the NSA and all these agencies weren't really set up to combat. But you know, another, another way to look at it that's maybe relevant here is how the technologies change.
- [06:58]
Leo Laporte
Right.
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Dr. Anthony Vinci
You know, the OSS intelligence has always been about technology to some degree. And the OSS, which was kind of the CIA during World War II, they were like the original agency. They were groundbreaking on technology. They were the first people to use portable radios. They had these suitcases, literal suitcase sized radios that they would use to communicate from behind enemy lines. And we were using aerial reconnaissance. And then when you get to the Cold War era, you got satellites and you get what's called signals intelligence, electronic intelligence elint, where you're now kind of spying on the signals of your enemy and you're spying from satellites. And 911 changed technology again. Now it was all about networks using cell phones, using the Internet to collect information.
- [07:52]
Leo Laporte
Now we are in an AI era. In fact, that's why the NGA brought you in is to kind of modernize what one would think would be a pretty modern espionage agency, since they worked with satellites and geospatial information. But they wanted to bring in AI. How does AI change this?
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Dr. Anthony Vinci
Yeah, you know, the difference in my take is that AI does what a person can do. It kind of simulates human intelligence. And when I was at nga, if you can sort of imagine this, you've got these, these satellites in space collecting. You know, we can't talk about, I can't talk about the classified details of the satellites, but you can imagine they're taking pictures of the world and you have people literally looking at those pictures to see what's on them. And I don't know if you watch that movie House of Dynamite where you know, it's like about this rogue launch, intense movie. But those people at NGA are the people who look for those rocket launches. That's what they come to work every day and they're looking and they want to see if somebody has a rocket on the pad ready to launch at America. Right. And so they're looking at these satellite images. Now when I came to nga, all of a sudden what had happened is we were overwhelmed with all the data because all of a sudden now there was these commercial companies like Planet or Black sky that were putting up commercial satellites and we amount of data to, you know, 10 or 100x that amount of data and the, and the only way out was to. Now we couldn't hire, you know, a million, you know, we couldn't 10x the number of analysts we had. So we had to start using technology and computer vision at that time was starting to really work, you know, and imagenet had come out and machine learning based computer vision was starting to actually make sense. And that's what I was trying to integrate into the agency.
- [09:54]
Leo Laporte
And now of course, the other thing that's changed is the imagery from those satellites is now available to everybody online. You can buy it. You actually recommend people search for satellite imagery. They'll be able to see a lot of what until recently only governments could see. You could be your own analyst. That's changed things too. That information has really started to flow very freely.
- [10:22]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
Yeah, there's this thing in the intelligence world called open source intelligence. And the idea is an agency like the CIA or DIA or another one of these agencies could just buy data. They'll buy that commercial satellite data for example.
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And they'll use that for performing their intelligence mission. But now it goes the other way. A regular person can go buy that same data and it may not be quite as good as, as what a government has, but it, it's definitely suitable. You're definitely going to see a picture of the world. You know, some of the, the resolution on some of the commercial satellites is pretty impressive. You know, maybe, maybe a, you know, gets down to maybe a square foot or even less. Their company is with kind of 10cm resolution images, which is incredible if you think about it. I mean that's what like I don't know, maybe the U2 was able to do during the Cold War or something.
- [11:21]
Leo Laporte
I remember my uncle was a satellite photo analyst first of the army and the CIA. We found out later he's passed many years ago. But he said, you know Leo, we can Read a newspaper over a guy's shoulder in Moscow. And that seemed pretty incredible at the time. It was just probably the 60s or the 70s. But now you can too. You just could get that imagery right off the satellite. You actually. There's a great line in here that's gonna need some explanation. You say the Fulda Gap is now in your pocket in the smartphone. First of all, what is the Fulda Gap?
- [11:57]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
Yeah, yeah, that's old school Cold War talk.
- [12:01]
Leo Laporte
That's why I like it.
- [12:04]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
Yeah. During the Cold War, the military, the US and the NATO military is prepared for an invasion by the sov. And they would, they would, you know, the idea is they would come across sort of central Europe and it was pretty flat. And there was this sort of area called the fold a gap. It's, it's literally like a geographic area. And that's where the, you know, the Russians, the Soviets would, would invade the rest of Europe. And, and so, you know, the military, you know, guys, for, for decades would talk about defending and preparing to defend the folder gap. And now, you know, that fold a gap is on your cell phone. And the reason I say that is because it's not just about guns and bombs anymore. That's not how geopolitics works now. It's also about information, and it's about collecting information from everybody, essentially, and changing that information and doing what's called kind of information warfare, information operations. And a lot of people are familiar with the 2016 kind interference by Russia in the US election. That's an example of that, where they were coming over here and running essentially covert action on the American public. And it's coming through your phone. And so now that's the area that we have to defend.
- [13:25]
Leo Laporte
Suddenly we are on the front lines of this information warfare. You know, we talk a lot about, over the last couple of years, TikTok, and there's been a lot of debate among our crowd about whether TikTok is really a threat to Americans. And there are some of us who say, no, no, I've seen information, as the Congress has said, I've seen information that convinced me. And then there's some of us like, come on, what do the Chinese get from TikTok that they can't buy from a data broker anytime they want to. So. But you say that TikTok is a threat. Tell me about that. Why should we as individuals be worried about the data coming out of our phone?
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Dr. Anthony Vinci
It's not just the data. That's the thing. It's. It is a means to collect Data from people. And TikTok has been sued by the Department of Justice for doing that, including collecting data from miners, by the way, from children, and illegally sending it back to China. So just, just right there they're doing illegal things. But really the problem is nothing different.
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Leo Laporte
Than Meta or, you know, Instagram or Roblox or a lot of American companies, I should point out.
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Jason Howell
Yeah, right.
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Dr. Anthony Vinci
Well here's, here's the difference is that Meta and, and Google are still beholden to US Law. And when information is collected on Americans and sent back to China, there, there is no, there's no protections. And that information is going to go to their security services and they're not just collecting it for fun, they're collecting it to use it. And the goals of the Chinese Communist Party are to carry out their, you know, national security to protect their regime. And they want to do that in some ways through information operations, which means influencing the American public. And they will, for example, they want to not have America defend Taiwan if China invaded, for example. That would be a goal that they have. And so the goal in information warfare then would be to change people's views, views of Taiwan, to make people believe that Taiwan is, is part of, rightfully part of China and that they should be able to take it over. That would be an example of their goal. Or they want to be able to, you know, China is in essence performing a sort of cultural and maybe even real full genocide on the weaker people, which is like a minority group in China, a Muslim minority might as well, minority group. And they've put these people into camps, like literal concentration camps. And they don't want the American people to know about that or, and so they censor it, for example, or they, they actually want the American people to believe that they have a good human rights record. And so people have done studies and there's a group out of Rutgers that has done excellent work statistically showing that, that TikTok censors information about the Uyghurs and about Tiananmen Square and so forth. And you can, you, you, you can see that in comparison to American owned social media sites like Instagram or Facebook, for example, they're, they're censoring the information, but also they're changing people's views. And they've in fact shown that if the longer you are on TikTok, the more benevolent view of the human rights record you have of China. So you, you believe they're, they're better at protecting human rights, the more you're on it. So right there it Shows not only are they doing this, but it's working. So it's not just about information collection. It's about changing information, censoring information, influencing people's views, and doing that where we as citizens have zero control. We have zero say in what they're doing. And that's why it's a threat. And that's why we really do need to either shut it down or transfer it. And I don't mean just like move servers over the entire algorithm. Everything has to be transferred to Americans for control.
- [17:38]
Jason Howell
So what you're talking about, as far as that kind of convincing or changing the narrative or changing the, you know, the understanding of, let's say, American citizens using TikTok and is. I'm trying to understand the mechanics of that. They get the information, the data, you know, collection from our citizens that informs them on what, how to, how to put that information out on TikTok in a way that, that blankets the, the narrative in front of the right eyes and over time convinces them that this narrative is, is okay versus not being exposed to it. Is that, like, the mechanics of how that works? I'm just curious.
- [18:17]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
Yeah, it can be hard to show. This is why I have to do these kind of. It's called like a volumetric statistical study, because it could be difficult to actually directly trace the line of exactly what they're doing. But I would say broadly, think about it like this. They can control the algorithm, so they can control, for any given person what is sent to you and what you see. And it may not be, by the way, a complete censorship. Right. In fact, they're better off. They have better plausible deniability by not completely censoring. They can just add friction. They can minimize the amount of certain information you see or increase the amount of information you see. And you. A lot of us are trained, you know, we sort of think, oh, well, it's, it's happening because this is what I like. You know, a lot of people, they talk about TikTok and they're like, oh, it just knows what I like. Except it's, it's, it's not just doing what you like.
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Leo Laporte
It's more.
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Dr. Anthony Vinci
They're, they are influencing. They are purposely, in some cases, pushing to certain information more than other information. And that's what's kind of skewing people's views over time. And remember, by the way, they're targeting a specific generation. This is targeting Generation Z, you know, and, and we're all a little bit older here on this call, but, you know, we maybe receive a lot of our news from news newspapers or, or even cable news or something, or, or blogs. For Generation Z, it may be 80% of news that they receive comes through TikTok.
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Paris Martineau
Right.
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Dr. Anthony Vinci
And so there's no triangulation there. And so now imagine you can subtly influence what they're seeing from this, you know, authoritarian state and that may be the only news they ever see.
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Leo Laporte
Should we point out that should be.
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Paris Martineau
Concerned about the other social media platforms though, because they ostensibly are also doing this.
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Leo Laporte
We just learned because of the change in X's algorithm, how many sock puppets and foreign influencers are pretending to be Americans. On X.com?
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Dr. Anthony Vinci
Yeah, I saw that. Look, I don't think they're particularly great either. There's a lot of downside from social media just in general for societies that there is an echo chamber effect there, there is sort of innate issue whenever, you know, a company or you know, maybe even individual, you know, ultra net, you know, high net worth person controls any information platform. That's, that can be problematic. But at least they are still beholden to US law. A law enforcement agency can go in there and stop them from doing something. They can investigate something. Right. And you can also, you know, it's unlikely that people working in a U.S. you know, social media platform are going to want to, you know, significantly harm U.S. national security or, you know, U.S. elections. Right. Like, it's just less likely.
- [21:23]
Leo Laporte
But I get your point. It's not completely obvious. That's the case in some cases anyway. You're actually in a way arguing for kind of media literacy, especially among young people, an awareness, at least an awareness of how they're being manipulated.
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Dr. Anthony Vinci
Yeah, exactly. You know, I talk about, you know, having people think like intelligence officers and become even maybe citizen spies in a sense and learn the types of tools and thinking styles that I learned as an intelligence officer which allow you to see where these threats are and to overcome them. You know, for example, you know, every intelligence analyst learns very early on to triangulate information. You never trust one source. So whatever it is, even if you trust your newspaper or whatever it is, you're always going to look at another source, triangulate, see if you know it's coming from two different sources. Those are the kinds of thinking tools that can help you when not only where information might be wrong, but where it might be deceptive, where there's somebody actually trying to purposely change or harm you via information. You can learn these kind of tools kind of in the way that we have learned to protect ourselves in Terms of cybersecurity, where we now, everybody in the nation, really, even children, understand that there might be criminals, criminal actors, like hackers that are trying to harm them via their computer to steal data or something, or to steal their money via their computer. So we learn basic, you know, cybersecurity, you know, techniques, right? Like you change your password, you don't click on phishing emails. We can do the same thing for foreign espionage.
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Leo Laporte
We're talking to Anthony Vinci. His new book is about the fourth intelligence revolution. We are in the fourth one right now and argues, I guess, that we should all be like intelligence officers. You know, for a long time I've raised the issue of, well, why would the Chinese government care enough about me to care where my location is?
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Paris Martineau
They don't care about you specifically, but they may care about everyone altogether. Or me.
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Leo Laporte
Yeah, exactly. Anthony makes a great case that unlike authoritarian countries where the rulers in the traditional espionage and intelligence gathering, it's about gathering information about the rulers because they run the show here. It's a democracy. We run the show. So naturally, in a way, we're the targets of clandestine operations from our adversaries, which I hadn't really thought about. We're right now in a debate over DJI drones. You know, I understand why you don't want Huawei networking devices in your 5G network. I can understand that. That gives our adversaries access to all of our communications, which it turns out they already have anyway. But that's another story. Why should I worry about drones? I mean, do I care that the Chinese see what the roof of my house looks like?
- [24:33]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
Well, these drones are going to expand a lot, right? We're. We're sort of. We sort of see drones. Like a lot of us see it as like a hobbyist kind of thing now, and maybe they use them in movies here and there. But soon we're going to be in an era where there's just drones everywhere. And that would amount. If all of that information was collected by DJI drone and it was to go back to China, it would absolutely be the equivalent of them being able to. To spy on you directly, not just see the top of your house, maybe to see in your window, see when you come and go and so forth. But there's, you know, there's other aspects to it as well. You know, that these drones are used by police, for example, and do. And by the military. You know, do we want China to be able to see what our police officers or our military are doing? I don't think so. Right, right. And maybe they're used by insurance companies, maybe they're used by, by, you know, even healthcare and medical field. And do we want them to have access to that? No. And what China does a lot of times, and in its economic competition with America, and some people have called this even economic warfare, is they subsidize the costs of these things. They did this with Huawei routers and other equipment, for example, and they do it with DJI drones, where they're selling it sometimes even below the cost to make it so they can own the market and so that no American company could possibly compete at that price. And so we won't create an American drone manufacturing industry. And that would be. That's really scary to think about because if China ever wanted to stop selling those drones, you know, remember back in Covid days when, you know, we couldn't get access to PPE because it was all made in China? Well, the same. If we couldn't have access to drones, that could be very problematic.
- [26:39]
For civilian life, but also for the military where they're going to have to use drones. So we need to create and maintain an American drone manufacturing industry. And we can't do that if they're, you know, effectively subsidizing these drones. So we do need to care about them.
- [26:53]
Leo Laporte
You actually talk about modern, the modern form of warfare that is being prototyped in the Ukraine Russia war and how that will eventually spread.
- [27:06]
Globally. Drones is one, of course, one of those technologies. What else is happening? Should we be paying more attention to what the technologies that are being used in, in the Ukraine war?
- [27:17]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
Yeah, I think about the Ukraine war as it's like almost like a trial for a potential future war. Yeah, right. And, and it's happened before. There was a Spanish Civil War between World War I and World War II. And a lot of the technologies we saw in World War II were tried out there, you know, tanks and radios and airplanes and how, how things would work. And then In World War II we kind of did that. But, you know, times 10, times 100. Right. And Ukraine in many ways is like that. And China's paying attention and we're paying attention of how that war is, is being run. And I think what we will see potentially in the future and is a Ukraine times 100. You know, right now we see drones fighting drones there. You know, they, the Russians might have a drone and the Ukrainians might try to shoot it down with their own drone, or they, you know, they're dropping grenades from these drones onto soldiers and so forth.
- [28:12]
Leo Laporte
It's also a test for disinformation. You have, you talk about a scenario where there's video of a Ukrainian drone taking on a Russian tank that Russian analysts get and immediately change it into a Ukrainian tank and celebrate it as a Russian victory.
- [28:30]
They're testing disinformation at the same time and their ability to do this. And thanks to AI, thanks to the technologies we have, this can happen at scale very quickly.
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Dr. Anthony Vinci
Yeah, exactly. I mean, you can't even tell the difference.
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Leo Laporte
Right.
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Dr. Anthony Vinci
If it's a video. And so you don't know what to believe and what to trust.
- [28:48]
Leo Laporte
We're at a disadvantage in the United States as a free and open democracy. Right. We don't. We have, you know, Chinese state run television on our cable, we have Russian state run television on our cable. We allow that in this country because it's kind of our culture compared with authoritarian regimes where they're very much controlled the information flow. How do you want us to become more like them?
- [29:16]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
No, just, just the opposite. And it's, look, it's true what you say, like we have TikTok here, but they don't have Facebook and Instagram there.
- [29:26]
Leo Laporte
Their own version of TikTok. It's not even the same TikTok.
- [29:29]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
But you know, it can seem like.
- [29:33]
It can seem like that's a better system of national security in some perverse way because they have so much control, but actually in the end it's. You're actually less secure. They put all their eggs in one basket, for example, of what they're betting on. Or the control systems themselves can make people more rebellious and actually weaken it. Like a democracy works because if people are fed up, they vote out whoever's there and they put in a new guy. Well, you can't do that in an authoritarian state. And also even for the technology, a lot of people sort of point and say, oh well, China could just direct investment into AI or into drones and make the best AI in the world. Except whenever you're directing something in that centralized way, you're probably going to get it wrong. Like governments are not good at picking winners in technology or in businesses, whereas here companies have to fight it out and the best technology is going to win. And we're seeing that our AI is better than China's AI. So no, I don't think we should change to that system for practical reasons. And then obviously also because, you know, we want rights and freedoms and that's the basis of, you know, our nation.
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Leo Laporte
That's what we're trying to spread. Yeah.
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Paris Martineau
In the Book. You kind of point to this fundamental tension we have going on right now because private companies rather than governments own many of the most transformative technologies relating to intelligence. But the issue is that even though the intelligence community depends on Silicon Valley, the incentives of Silicon Valley often diverge from national security. I mean, what is the solution to that? How do you get those things in alignment?
- [31:21]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
Yeah, you're right. It's. That is the fundamental tension. I don't know that it can be aligned, in fact, nor must it be aligned. I think that though, there are new ways that, you know, Silicon Valley or the, you know, kind of economy in general can work together with government. You know, and I'll, I'll give you an example. You know, we're in an economic competition with China where it, this isn't like normal competition where they have some companies, we have some companies, we want to sell stuff, they want to sell stuff. They lower prices, so we lower prices. Like, it's not that. Because what they're doing is their government is working together with their companies to try to undermine our companies. Right? They, they don't want America to make drones like we were talking about, or mine rare earths. So the government works together. Our companies can't compete with that. Like our company, a private company can't compete with a nation state. And so what we need to do is figure out a way where we can help defend those companies, but also not control them in the way that China is doing. And so we have to find new ways. And, you know, one way, for example I talk about in the book is like public private partnerships of sharing information between our government and our companies so that they're not at such a disadvantage with, against Chinese companies. And so, and we do this sometimes with cybersecurity information already. If we collect cybersecurity information from a nation state, we'll share that with a targeted company. Well, we could also do that when they're being targeted economically, for example.
- [33:11]
Leo Laporte
That's, I think, the plan of the Genesis mission, right, to share this information that DOE has been keeping kind of private for a long time with private AI companies and so forth in the United States in an attempt to do exactly that. Is that the kind of thing you're talking about?
- [33:29]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
Well, that's slightly different, but also I think a good idea, which is that, look.
- [33:38]
Our government is run by the people we as taxpayers and voters own. What's in the government doesn't have a particular right to that information that is made at a national labor. And so I think the idea is we should share that, you know, with the American people. And sometimes we open source that information, sometimes we can give it, we can license it. And to help, you know, to help American companies, we need to do that in a way that doesn't like pick a winner. I think, I think we want to kind of be fair about it, but I do think it's a good idea for the government to kind of give this information back. Unless it's classified, of course, but most of the information is not so that it will help American companies to compete.
- [34:24]
Leo Laporte
We paid for it.
- [34:24]
Paris Martineau
It is interesting, though, because sometimes that sort of cross pollination between government agencies and private companies can create, I guess, moments of tension. I think one of the most famous ones, which, looking back on it now seven years later, seems almost naive, is the Project Maven incident with Google in 2018. I know that you were on the executive committee of Project Maven, so whatever you can or, or can't say, they understand. But I'm curious, how do you think companies should kind of navigate these tensions between national security contracts and employee ethics?
- [35:03]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
Yeah, I was, I was not only there for that. I was part of the group that chose Google as the. As the deal with the fallout from that. So.
- [35:12]
Leo Laporte
Interesting.
- [35:13]
Paris Martineau
Yeah. For context, for anybody listening this, that's.
- [35:16]
Leo Laporte
A story I want to hear more about. Yeah.
- [35:19]
Paris Martineau
This was the Department of Defense's 2018 initiative to like, use AI to analyze drone footage to identify objects. And it led to kind of widespread internal protests within Google that then led to Google pulling out of the contract. But you were there, so please continue.
- [35:34]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
Yeah, no, I, you know, at the time when we started doing it, it felt like this. Like finally we were having a success, which was, you know, instead of going to giant prime contractors to make this technology, we went out to these small companies and had them build algorithms. And the idea was to not just like, make this AI tech, but to field it within a year, which sounds slow, but like within Department of Defense standards, that was like light speed. And, and, and then we needed a bigger company, you know, to, to provide the infrastructure, and Google was chosen for that. And, and even that was like a breakthrough because instead of again, choosing like, you know, your typical government contractors who aren't really truly tech companies, we chose like a true tech company. And it was incredible. And then it's true what you said, you know, employees, and it turns out, like it wasn't actually that many employees at Google kind of rebelled against the idea. And I think, you know, it's. It's sort of tragic because well, first of all, you know, I think there was sort of a story that this was like a weapon system or something, which it wasn't. But you know, that's sort of besides the point is also that the government, the, you know, the military didn't even really know how to communicate with employees like that. And to communicate like that. There were rules actually Department of Defense at the time and, and still is like, has a lot of kind of ethical rules in place for handling technology and, and, and these sorts of things and had a pretty, I think surprisingly open debate around this, but that was sort of dismissed and, and, and there was this like knee jerk reaction that, you know, this is, you know, we're making war systems or something. The irony now is everything's turned the other way. And like so many, you know, Google is back in the government and Department.
- [37:32]
Paris Martineau
Of War, it's gonna say it's notable that one of the conclusions from that 2018 incident is Google's like, oh, we publicly promise to never use AI technology for weapons or surveillance ever again. It's like, well, all bets are off on that now, baby.
- [37:49]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
Yeah, everybody's, everybody's doing it. But you know, look, the, the it can, it can, it can sound easy to just sort of say, I don't want to build weapon systems. Right. But, but also, you know, we have to remember the military isn't there for the fun of it. The military is there to defend us as, as a nation. And, and we have to do that. And at, at some level you have to have that. And there is a route to determine what the rules are and what the policies are, and that is through voting for presidents and for people in the Senate and people in the Congress. And that, that is the way that there is a means in place to determine what the military should and should not do. And it's worked in the past. Right. And we should, we should. They. I feel like the Google employees should have gone that route, frankly.
- [38:41]
Leo Laporte
The book is the Fourth Intelligence Revolution, the Future of Espionage and the Battle to Save America. Anthony Vinci. I wish we had more time because there's so much to talk about, but the book is, it is really engaging. It's easy, it's easy to read, but there's a lot of important information in there. And I think you raised some really important points, especially the point that it's on all of us. This is something we can't let others do for us. You say at the beginning it's a little provocative that we all have to become intelligence agents. Well, we certainly all have to become a little more intelligent about this. I think that's for sure true. Anthony, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate your time and I do encourage everybody to read the book. There's a lot more in it.
- [39:27]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.
- [39:29]
Leo Laporte
Really do appreciate it. We'll have more on intelligent machines. Jason's going to stick around in just a bit after a word from our sponsor. Our show today brought to you by Melissa, the trusted data quality expert since 1985. They've been doing it longer than we have. Reiki. Melissa has been recognized by G2 as leaders in both data quality suite and global address validation. Plus, Melissa is trusted by businesses worldwide to eliminate costly errors, to boost efficiency, to drive growth. It's more than just address validation. They're really data scientists and they work in so many fields. I'll give you an example. Oil and gas pipelines. What you say, what does that have to do with address validation? Well, pipeline safety is one of those, you know, critical things that often goes unnoticed until something goes wrong. That's where the Paradigm alliance kicks in. They exist to prevent incidents by keeping communities around pipelines and pipeline operators compliant. So they keep the communities informed and the operators compliant. So it involves communications. They need to find and reach the right people and sometimes they need to do it now, fast. With Melissa, Paradigm gained an extension of its team with faster access and more intelligent decisions. The president of the Paradigm alliance talking about a mission critical business, right, says this, quote, melissa's team doesn't just provide data, they provide solutions tailored to our unique challenges. And this is the point, end quote. They can do that for you too, whatever your unique business is or unique challenge. Address verification, of course, the foundation of their services. But Melissa's data enrichment services go so much farther beyond that. Organizations can use MELISSA to build a more comprehensive, accurate view of their business processes by using MELISSA as part of their data management strategy. Like I said, they're data scientists. Another example. Pick the Parkinson's Institute and Clinical Center. Of course, they are in the fight on the front lines in the fight against Parkinson's. They've amassed an invaluable collection of clinical data over the last 30 years. It's globally unmatched. They're the tops in this field. The relationship between MELISSA and PICC opened up many transformative use cases. As an example, improved understanding of how genes, proteins and treatments impact Parkinson's disease. Yes, Melissa does that too. Earlier identification of candidates for clinical trials or alternative treatments. Secure and highly remunerative Data sharing with collaborators. Pick's CEO says Melissa has made it possible for us to transform our complex and diverse data into a unified research ready knowledge resource, end quote. That's good for everyone. Data with Melissa is safe. They're absolutely secure. They're compliant. Melissa's solutions and services are GDPR and CCPA compliant. They're ISO 27001 certified. They meet SOC2 and HIPAA high trust standards for information security management. So you never have to worry. They are absolute stewards of your information. Get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free at melissa.com TWIT that's melissa.com TWIT we thank them so much for their support of intelligent machines. Thank you, Melissa. Jason Howell, so nice to see you. Paris, have you ever. Did you ever do twit with Jason or work with Jason?
- [43:09]
Jason Howell
Yeah, yeah, for sure, lots of times. Yeah. Produced a lot of twigs, co hosted.
- [43:13]
Leo Laporte
A. Oh, that's right.
- [43:14]
Paris Martineau
He was. Who's twig extraordinaire?
- [43:17]
Leo Laporte
I forgot all about that.
- [43:20]
Benito
Jason's the one who brought Paris Martineau to this show.
- [43:24]
Leo Laporte
He is, because of him that we know you.
- [43:27]
Paris Martineau
Yes, it's true.
- [43:28]
Leo Laporte
Well, there you go.
- [43:30]
Jason Howell
There you go.
- [43:31]
Leo Laporte
Thank you, Jason.
- [43:32]
Jason Howell
Thank you.
- [43:32]
Leo Laporte
She was quite a find. So what are you doing? Tell us a little bit about what you're up to these days.
- [43:38]
Jason Howell
Working my tail off every single day and night. I swear, doing this, doing this content thing, independent, it's no joke. It's hard work. Yeah.
- [43:47]
Paris Martineau
Your backdrop looks like a Nickelodeon set. And I mean that in the. As the most sincere compliment.
- [43:52]
Leo Laporte
I like his Atari pillow. I think that's very cool.
- [43:56]
Jason Howell
Does that look familiar, by the way, Leo?
- [43:58]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Oh, did you steal that from the studio?
- [44:00]
Jason Howell
Well, yeah, there's also, you know, a little, little Mac there.
- [44:05]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
Yeah.
- [44:05]
Jason Howell
Yeah. You were getting rid of some of these things.
- [44:07]
Leo Laporte
I was like, no, I'm glad you got it. Yeah.
- [44:08]
Jason Howell
Yeah.
- [44:09]
Leo Laporte
It went to a good home.
- [44:10]
Jason Howell
Makes a nice.
- [44:11]
Leo Laporte
I have. I have no more room for pillows in my office. Office.
- [44:14]
Jason Howell
Yeah.
- [44:16]
Leo Laporte
Those are all from.
- [44:18]
Paris Martineau
Is that what that big boy computer is? Is that a pillow?
- [44:23]
Jason Howell
Which one?
- [44:23]
Leo Laporte
See the Mac behind him?
- [44:24]
Paris Martineau
The big boy computer behind him. Oh, that one. What is the one to the left of the J?
- [44:30]
Leo Laporte
That is an Atari. That's an Atari, I think. Or is it a Commodore?
- [44:34]
Jason Howell
Yeah, no, that's a. That's a. That's a Mac 2.
- [44:37]
Leo Laporte
Oh, it's a Mac 2 GS.
- [44:39]
Paris Martineau
That could also have been called a pillow because it's pillow shaped.
- [44:43]
Jason Howell
Well, they both are. They're both pillows. I mean, they are pillows. So I could snuggle up right now and go to sleep, you know, they're very comfortable. Apple hardware.
- [44:51]
Leo Laporte
I still have a few. I think I have a Mac Classic. But yeah, we had. Because he kept sending me pillows. He's great. It was a kind of neat story. Roberto kind of did this out of his house and there he is. And now he has like a whole business of making these great pillows. But anyway, that's a sideline. So you. So you have a studio. You do. I know. We know. We've talked about AI inside the show. You do with Jeff.
- [45:16]
Jason Howell
Yeah, so. So if I had to think about all the things I'm doing right now. AI inside Android Faithful. I'm working with Tom Merritt two days a week doing daily tech news show.
- [45:24]
Leo Laporte
Oh, nice, you're on DTNs. Good.
- [45:26]
Jason Howell
Doing DTNs. That's a lot of fun.
- [45:28]
Leo Laporte
Tom Merritt brought you to us, so I know it's full circle.
- [45:32]
Jason Howell
Yeah, it's all combined and crisscross and everything. I'm now writing for ZDNet, which is a totally new kind of challenge for me. I've been doing that for a year now and having a. Having a blast, kind of learning that skill. And then, yeah, I've got my two YouTube channels. I've got my. My primary, like, personal YouTube channel where I do, you know, tech tech reviews and commentary and stuff like that. And then I've got an AI inside YouTube channel, which is primarily about the podcast, but I'm playing around with other ideas to kind of see how I can explore.
- [46:04]
Leo Laporte
That's the energy it takes to make it, I think, is you gotta work your butt off and do it all.
- [46:10]
Jason Howell
Yeah, it's basically a million streams of income. None of them are massive, but all of them in aggregate add up to a living. I mean, I'm two years later and I'm still doing it, so something's working well enough.
- [46:25]
Leo Laporte
Well, I got to know where you got this picture of Jeff Jarvis looking like a secret agent man, though, I have to say.
- [46:30]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
Yeah.
- [46:31]
Jason Howell
Honestly, I can't even remember. I think when I was putting that together at the beginning, it was just some picture of Jeff I found on Google Images.
- [46:39]
Leo Laporte
I think he's a little.
- [46:40]
Paris Martineau
He's been blurred.
- [46:41]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Or something. There's something going on there.
- [46:44]
Jason Howell
Yeah, yeah, there's. There's some AI kind of shaping going on there. But yeah.
- [46:50]
Paris Martineau
What's your favorite interview you've recently done? But yeah, inside.
- [46:54]
Jason Howell
Oh, hands down, favorite interview was with Yann LeCun.
- [46:58]
Leo Laporte
That's a great kid.
- [46:59]
Paris Martineau
That's a really good one.
- [47:00]
Jason Howell
It was fantastic. Yeah, he was just remarkable to talk to. This was probably like 7ish months ago. And I mean, he's been talking about the world models thing for a long time now, but he definitely goes into detail there. And of course now we have the context of him kind of moving out on his own and doing his own thing in that regard.
- [47:21]
Leo Laporte
Had you talked to him before he left Meta?
- [47:24]
Jason Howell
Yeah, this was like six or seven months ago.
- [47:26]
Leo Laporte
So he started his own. There's been a lot of movement, you know, Apple's chief designer just this morning, Alan Dye left to go to Meta. To do what? I don't know, but I'm sure he got a nice big paycheck.
- [47:41]
Paris Martineau
Much like it seems like all the money is just revolving from company to company. All the people are going from company to company, so.
- [47:48]
Jason Howell
True.
- [47:48]
Leo Laporte
Well, and of course the. Probably the big story in AI this week is that the guy Apple brought in to run Apple Intelligence from Google, John Jannandrea, who had a really strong reputation at Google.
- [48:04]
He was Apple's senior vice president for machine learning and AI strategy. Is, and I'm going to put this in air quotes, retiring.
- [48:13]
He's retiring in the spring of 2026. Although it sounds like he has no operational duties even now. He'll be serving as an advisor, advisory to the company.
- [48:23]
Jason Howell
That's about it.
- [48:23]
Leo Laporte
That means there's a picnic table on the roof where a few people gather every day.
- [48:27]
Paris Martineau
I was gonna say it feels like the finance concept of gardening leave, which is you can't work here, but you can't work anywhere else either, buddy.
- [48:36]
Leo Laporte
You're on gardening leave.
- [48:38]
Jason Howell
Well, he'd already been removed from a portion of his job with, with Siri a handful of months ago.
- [48:44]
Leo Laporte
He was kicked downstairs. I think blamed maybe even the fall guy for the Apple Intelligence debacle they announced, you know, in 2024. Oh, you know, and they even had bought ads about all the things Apple Intelligence was going to do and then had to really put their tail between their legs and say, yeah, we can't do any of that. That ad was made up and we won't have it until 2026 at the earliest. And I think that they were looking for a fall guy. I don't know if it was his fault. Maybe it was, I don't know. We don't have any insight into what was going on inside the walls of Apple. We never do. He's been replaced by, ironically, a guy who was at Google for 16 years, then left Google. He worked at Microsoft for a cup of coffee and then immediately decamped for Apple. Amar Subramania. Now, the thing that I think is interesting on this is that the 16 years he was at Google, he was head of engineering for Google's Gemini Assistant. That was his last job before leaving. And that is it is rumored and I think it's a good rumor and it's an accurate rumor going to be the model that Apple is finally going to turn to for Siri next year that they've realized they can't do it themselves. They have models, they keep announcing new models. They just announced another one this week but apparently that none of it's good enough for Siri. So Siri is going to be talking through the mouth. The Gemini is going to be talking through the mouth of Siri. The story I think came from Mark Gurman is that Apple will pay Google a billion dollars a year for this privilege. So it makes sense you'd hire the guy who was head of engineering for Gemini for the voice assistant. Yeah, I know. I'm not talking to you.
- [50:33]
Jason Howell
Oh, they just want to prove themselves, don't they?
- [50:35]
Leo Laporte
It's funny, I said Gemini and it responded so maybe it's starting to.
- [50:39]
Jason Howell
Yes, Leo, I'm ready.
- [50:40]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I'm ready.
- [50:41]
Paris Martineau
Please ask me.
- [50:42]
Leo Laporte
Put me in coach.
- [50:42]
Jason Howell
I'm ready to parse your words, make sense of everything.
- [50:47]
When he was leading or working with Gemini, it was kind of during Gemini's not as awesome time. Yeah, right. So there's.
- [50:56]
Leo Laporte
That's right that. Let's not forget they wanted us to put Elmer Glue on our pizza and eat rocks.
- [51:01]
Jason Howell
Yeah, there was that. They've all made embarrassing common, you know, mistakes like that though.
- [51:07]
Leo Laporte
So yeah, we've got a lot better. Gemini 3, which is the latest model is actually really good. I can't, I actually cannot imagine a better choice for Apple. At least if you had to put it a pin in it today. That's the problem is it's back and forth.
- [51:23]
Paris Martineau
I would love to see a, an Apple X Claude. I've really, I've really become a Claude fan over the past.
- [51:29]
Jason Howell
It's so interesting that you mentioned that I, I would say of the main line kind of AI services, Claude is the one that I'm probably least like integrated into, like least familiar with. I haven't found the thing I use it for. I found that for Chat GPT. I found that for J.
- [51:46]
Paris Martineau
What are the things you use ChatGPT and Gemini for?
- [51:50]
Jason Howell
Gemini is big time research for me. Research. If I want to kind of get Like a dossier together and really understand something. Gemini is kind of my first go to for sure.
- [52:02]
Leo Laporte
We've been using Claude for.
- [52:04]
Paris Martineau
Effectively we have been using.
- [52:05]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, don't tell anybody.
- [52:06]
Paris Martineau
Using Claude for pre show. Yeah, yeah, don't tell anybody.
- [52:09]
Leo Laporte
Don't tell anybody.
- [52:10]
Jason Howell
But I wasn't going to mention it, but you have told everybody.
- [52:13]
Leo Laporte
The briefing book that Anthony Nielsen's been putting together using a Claude skill and.
- [52:18]
Paris Martineau
They have improved over.
- [52:20]
Leo Laporte
It's really good.
- [52:21]
Jason Howell
It's super impressive, I have to say.
- [52:23]
Leo Laporte
Anthony, he says he's team Claude. Anthony does.
- [52:26]
Paris Martineau
Anthony, did you update the questions you ask it? Because I noticed the format for the last couple ones were slightly. Were kind of different than what he'd been using for. But Claude puts together these five to six thousand word briefing documents based on a kind of custom prompt that Anthony uses for interesting as kind of a good jumping off point to Claude quickly get up to speed with them. I did a version of this this time where I also had it. I added the book into my Claude project so that I could ask specific questions about chapters because I'd only read a couple chapters of it, but I found it quite useful.
- [53:05]
Jason Howell
So cool. Yeah. When I opened up the doc and saw that, I was like, oh, what is this? And I remember Jeff had told me like, yeah, Anthony pre interview thing. And I opened it up, I was like, oh my God, we need this. Because it's not like I don't use these services to kind of prepare for an interview, but the way it was structured. And so I guess what I'm saying is. Right. It's interesting that you bring up the Claude thing because I have been trying to figure out what would I use it for, how would I bring it in, what would it replace, if anything. And I'm starting to see more and more kind of some of its strengths. That sheet was really impressive, I'll be completely honest. I pulled that sheet and I brought it into Gemini and I said analyze this and come up with a prompt that'll give me this every time. So it gave me a meta prompt and then I put it into Gemini and I put it into Anthropic to see what it would give me. Or that's the Claude.
- [53:54]
Leo Laporte
That's the new Ouroboros for AI engineers. Did it work?
- [54:00]
Jason Howell
It worked very well for Claude actually. I ended up getting a very usable Claude output on Gemini. It was a little. It was almost like the Claude was a friendlier thing to look at and the Gemini was kind of see, I.
- [54:14]
Leo Laporte
Don'T want laboratory friendly I'm not looking for. I'm. Yeah, but you can, you know, you can tune it to do whatever style you like.
- [54:22]
Jason Howell
And I. And I did it very quickly. I didn't spend a whole lot of time on it.
- [54:26]
Paris Martineau
But I'm also curious. There was. There were perhaps getting too behind inside baseball here, but at one point in our group chat, Anthony texted us a screenshot of some output for one of these primer docs. And it had also had a section that had host specific notes where it was like, for Leo, of this person, here's some exciting new tech thing for Jeff. Here's what you need to know about media for Paris. Here's something critical and a little rude. And it was. I was like, how does. How do it know? Was that Anthony, did you prompt that in some way? I'm curious. Or was that just.
- [55:00]
Leo Laporte
It knew our styles.
- [55:01]
Paris Martineau
It did know our styles.
- [55:04]
Leo Laporte
So there's been this flurry of new models. Claude has a new model too. There's Opus 4.5.
- [55:10]
Paris Martineau
We have to talk about the sole document at some point.
- [55:12]
Leo Laporte
And Opus 4.5 has a soul document. Thank you for bringing that up. Now, this is an internal term that they use at Anthropic. It's not really probably what they want.
- [55:26]
Paris Martineau
My exposure to this also, I'm not sure if this is the same for you guys, but I'm in the various AI subreddits and people in the Claude subreddit over the last week were posting about this. They're like, I. 4.5. Opus 4.5 is out. And I got it to reveal its sole document. Isn't this incredible? And everybody in the comments was like, dude, what are you talking about? This is probably just some sort of common hallucination. It's not a soul document. Cool. Your role. Then it starts getting traction on Twitter and executive at Anthropic is like, yes, that is our soul document. Basically, this is what we've been calling it internally, the soul document.
- [56:06]
Leo Laporte
This is the. No, I don't want. Ask Grok to explain the post. Go away. This is.
- [56:11]
Paris Martineau
Oh, no. Oh, no.
- [56:12]
Jason Howell
Here I go.
- [56:14]
Leo Laporte
Explain it. I'm glad.
- [56:15]
Jason Howell
I appreciate it.
- [56:16]
Leo Laporte
This is Amanda Askel from Anthropic. I just want to confirm that this is based on a real document. We did train Claude on it, including in sleep. I'm not sure. Something learning. It's something I've been working on for a while, but still being iterated on, and we intend to release a full version. In other words, they're not trying to hide this.
- [56:38]
This is like the post training stuff that every AI has that kind of says this is what your personality should be like. So apparently it was a guy named Richard Weiss who first was able to get Claude 45 opus to spit out a 14,000 token document. Claude itself called it the Soul Overview.
- [57:03]
Jason Howell
Dehumanization continues.
- [57:05]
Leo Laporte
Here's how. Yeah, I know, let's not anthropomorphize. Here's the opening paragraph. Claude is trained by Anthropic. This is information that you would want the AI to have. Right? Claude is trained by Anthropic. And our mission is to develop AI that is safe, beneficial and understandable. Now this is interesting because they're actually spinning Claude. Anthropic occupies a peculiar position in the landscape. A company that genuinely believes it might be building one of the most transformative and potentially dangerous technologies in human history yet presses forward anyway. Now I understand why you'd put that in a press release or a tweet, but why would you tell the AI that?
- [57:44]
Paris Martineau
Well, because the next line. This isn't cognitive dissonance, but a rather calculated bet if powerful AI is coming. Regardless, Anthropic believes it's better to have safety focused labs the frontier than to seed that ground developers less focused on safely See our core views. I don't know, I think I thought it was interesting. This is obviously a very long document, so we won't obviously read it.
- [58:05]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, 14,000 tokens.
- [58:06]
Paris Martineau
I don't know how many words that is.
- [58:07]
Leo Laporte
That's more than 14.
- [58:08]
Paris Martineau
An interesting look into the framework that these models are being trained to incorporate in some way.
- [58:18]
Leo Laporte
We think it goes on. Most foreseeable cases in which AI models are unsafe or insufficiently beneficial can be attributed to a model that has explicitly or subtly wrong values, limited knowledge of themselves, of the world, or that lacks the skills to translate good values and knowledge into good actions. So Claude, we want you to have the good values, the comprehensive knowledge and wisdom necessary to behave in ways that are safe and beneficial. I wonder, you know, I think even among people like Askel who work.
- [58:56]
In the company and are doing this, have a little bit of a kind of woo woo attitude about AI. Like we're talking to it, we're telling it what to do because that's what it sounds like. Like they're talking to a kid or a new hire, an intern. Here's what we want, you know, as if there it is. If it is a human.
- [59:19]
May it.
- [59:19]
Jason Howell
Must work with a document after all.
- [59:22]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah.
- [59:22]
Paris Martineau
So it continues in order to be safe and beneficial. We believe CLAUDE must have the following properties. And in cases of conflict, we want Claude to prioritize these properties roughly in the order they're listed. That is, number one, being safe and supporting human oversight of AI. Two, behaving ethically and not acting in ways that are harmful or dishonest. Three, acting in accordance to Anthropic's guidelines, which are below. And four, being genuinely helpful to operators and users, which I think it is interesting that you have those three properties layered on top of being genuinely helpful.
- [59:55]
Leo Laporte
Now, I have to say, if I look at the document that Claude generates when I use CLAUDE code, for instance, one of the things you do when you use CLAUDE code is you create something called Claude md. MD stands for markdown, is the format that. That humans and machines are good at reading. And the Claude MD sounds just like this. It's exactly like this sole document. It's Claude telling itself how to behave. So I think, I mean, I think there must be some merit in doing this. I could actually. Let me see if I could show you the.
- [60:31]
Jason Howell
It's probably not 100% it's an influence, but it's not, you know, to me.
- [60:36]
Leo Laporte
It'S a little strange. That talks to itself.
- [60:40]
Jason Howell
How do you actually get a model to like, spit this out, like.
- [60:44]
Leo Laporte
Well, we can read this guy's article about how he did it.
- [60:48]
Jason Howell
Managed to get Claude 4.5 opus to spit out the.
- [60:51]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, some sort of prompt injection I get, I would guess.
- [60:55]
Jason Howell
I hear about this every once in a while. I'm like. And part of me is like, well, how do I know that it's actually giving me an actual thing?
- [61:01]
Paris Martineau
Mr. Vice says, while extracting Claude 4.5 opus system message on its release date, as one does, I noticed an interesting particularity. I'm used to models starting with Claude 4 to hallucinate sections in the beginning of their system message. But Claude 4.5 opus in various cases included a supposed soul underscore overview section, which sounded very specific.
- [61:26]
Basically, he started looking in. He thought it was. At first it was a hallucination, but as it kept coming up again and again, he got curious and so he asked Claude to output what it is associated with that section and got the first two paragraphs, you see.
- [61:45]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can add to your Claude MD as well. I mean, it's. In fact, in all of these AI chatbots, you. There's a personalization section or in the settings or something like that where you can say, in Paris's case, I want you to be nice and friendly. In my case, Be terse, concise, to the point. Don't say nice things, don't be sycophantic. I don't know.
- [62:11]
Paris Martineau
You think that I wanted to be nice and friendly?
- [62:13]
Leo Laporte
Didn't you just say you liked that it was kind of nicer?
- [62:17]
Paris Martineau
Not that it was nice. I just thought that their priorities of the way they prioritized values in this.
- [62:24]
Leo Laporte
Document was, oh, no, this document. But I thought. But maybe it wasn't you. Maybe it was.
- [62:27]
Jason Howell
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. When I mentioned. Yeah. The output of Claude, how it presented the introduction, it feel nicer. Yeah, it was friendly in a friendlier way or a more readable way versus, you know, I don't know which one's better or worse. I think they're different. But there was something a little more sterile about the presentation of the information that came from Gemini, that sometimes when I'm in the middle of a podcast, I don't know, sometimes there's a part of me that. That appreciates having a nice rounded kind of way because then if I need to lean on it, it's. It sounds good. It doesn't sound so.
- [63:02]
Leo Laporte
Well, that's the point, I guess. To each his own. I mean, you can totally.
- [63:06]
Jason Howell
And that's why. That's why people find different value in different models for different, you know, for differing reasons.
- [63:12]
Leo Laporte
And why people get attached totally 100 their aisle. We do not recommend. As a general.
- [63:22]
Paris Martineau
Thing, actually, we'd recommend more readings.
- [63:28]
Leo Laporte
Paris has been doing dramatic readings from Reddit of people who are very, very upset or in love with their chat.
- [63:37]
Jason Howell
It's something. It's incredible how. How attached people can get to the conversational aspect of these things.
- [63:44]
Leo Laporte
Well, after. After Gemini 3 came out, and I suspect a little bit after Opus came out as well, there was a little bit of internal panic at OpenAI. This is from the information and exclusive by your friend Stephanie Palazzolo and Aaron Wu. OpenAI declares code red to combat threats to ChatGPT and delays ads efforts. Now, earlier I don't know if we mentioned on this show, we mentioned it on Twitter. I can't remember if it happened before our show last week. We saw code. I think bleeping computer had this information. Somebody saw code in the Android version of.
- [64:28]
ChatGPT that implied they were going to have ads.
- [64:32]
Apparently that was true, even though OpenAI has not acknowledged that it's working and selling ads. But this code red says wherever we didn't announce it, we're not going to do it. We're going to put on the back burner ads. And we are going to focus on getting better.
- [64:52]
Jason Howell
Yes. Basically improve it, make it better, better output faster.
- [64:56]
Leo Laporte
Google, also more accurate, did code red when ChatGPT5 came out.
- [65:01]
Jason Howell
Ding ding.
- [65:02]
Leo Laporte
So wow. It's back and forth and back and forth. Sam Altman said the code Red surge to improve ChatGPT meant OpenAI would delay progress with other products such as AI agents, which aim to automate tasks related to shopping and health. And Pulse, which generates personalized reports for Chat GPT users to read each morning. Shoot. I forgot to try that and now I can't, I guess.
- [65:27]
Jason Howell
Well, I mean it might still be available. They just aren't working on.
- [65:30]
Leo Laporte
They're not going to work on. Have you used it? Has anybody used it? Pulse?
- [65:34]
Jason Howell
No. You know what? I don't know that I've. I think I checked it out.
- [65:36]
Leo Laporte
We talked about it last week.
- [65:37]
Paris Martineau
No Pulse requires the upper level subscription.
- [65:41]
Leo Laporte
Oh, you have to be max.
- [65:42]
Paris Martineau
You have to be max. You have to be Max to pulse.
- [65:44]
Leo Laporte
I'm just pro.
- [65:46]
Paris Martineau
Pros can't pulse.
- [65:47]
Leo Laporte
I can't pulse.
- [65:47]
Paris Martineau
Max can pulse.
- [65:48]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [65:48]
Jason Howell
You know they also just announced shopping mode called shopping.
- [65:53]
Paris Martineau
I have seen that. Yeah.
- [65:55]
Jason Howell
And I haven't used it. I've seen that they did that. And I wonder how that that kind of overlaps with this as well because that's shopping related.
- [66:03]
Paris Martineau
I should try. They just announced it asking the various AI systems for overview of Fujifilm cameras because I'm torturing myself thinking about spending too much on a camera that I shouldn't buy. But I thought about using the shop.
- [66:16]
Leo Laporte
I don't need to buy a camera. I've got an iPhone.
- [66:19]
Paris Martineau
But now I follow some people online who post beautiful photos. Their Fujifilm T100.
- [66:25]
Leo Laporte
That's a really nice camera.
- [66:26]
Paris Martineau
It's so nice.
- [66:28]
Leo Laporte
We've been talking about that camera on our Chris Markworth's photo show. He's sort of a fan.
- [66:35]
Jason Howell
Then you got to remember to bring that thing around with you.
- [66:38]
Paris Martineau
But it's really tiny and portable. It's a pocket sized which is kind of nice. It's a problem. Anyway.
- [66:44]
Leo Laporte
It's a good camera. I would not say not to get.
- [66:46]
Paris Martineau
It's a good camera but it's $2,000 and backordered. This is. These are the problems. Anyway, I thought about using Shopping mode but I was worried that it would not be as in depth as Research mode.
- [67:01]
Jason Howell
Yeah, good question. I haven't played around with it. Turns out though a lot of people were using AI for Black Friday just last Friday.
- [67:09]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. You know Adobe, of course Puts these stats out every year and other analysts also. And.
- [67:19]
How you interpret these stats is important. Let's just say that the President said, look, you know, Black Friday was huge. Americans spent a whole lot more money online than they had before. I can't remember where the growth was.5 or 6 or 7%, something like that. And I brought it up on Twitter on Sunday and fortunately I had a smart, few smart people on there. I don't know if it was Mike Yelligan or Daniel Rubino said, yeah, but notice why the dollar sales were up. It was fewer items, everything cost more.
- [67:55]
Paris Martineau
Yeah.
- [67:56]
Leo Laporte
Oh.
- [67:59]
Jason Howell
That makes sense.
- [67:59]
Leo Laporte
So we spent more but not didn't get more.
- [68:03]
Paris Martineau
I looked at a couple products that I had bought literally last year maybe 11 months ago. They were more than double the cost.
- [68:12]
Jason Howell
No way.
- [68:13]
Leo Laporte
So that's why you should buy the Fujifilm now.
- [68:16]
Jason Howell
Yeah, it's a responsible purchase decision to just buy the camera, the really expensive camera.
- [68:22]
Paris Martineau
Go on a road trip in like January or February for a couple of weeks and be a perfect road trip camera.
- [68:29]
Leo Laporte
You need a good camera. So AI, this is the story from Reuters helps drive a record $11.8 billion in Black Friday online spending. I gotta sign into Reuters Because AI.
- [68:44]
Jason Howell
Driven traffic to US retail sites soared 805% compared to last year, says Adobe.
- [68:51]
Leo Laporte
So that means what people were using AI browsers.
- [68:55]
Jason Howell
AI driven traffic to US retail sites. Yeah. What would that mean?
- [69:00]
Paris Martineau
So that would be clicking on a link from chat GPA and then you can see how it does the little.
- [69:05]
Jason Howell
Question mark.
- [69:07]
You know, still 805%. I mean if it was hardly happening last year, I was gonna say I.
- [69:13]
Paris Martineau
Wonder how many link outs that is. Quant.
- [69:16]
Jason Howell
Yeah, totally right. There's some missing information there because 805% is a pretty large, you know, large increase. But compared to what?
- [69:25]
Paris Martineau
You know, I wonder also if they are. Brandroid brings up a good point which is Google search obviously now that's got AI. It could just be people Googling.
- [69:38]
I was gonna say best Fujifilm camera but they're probably not Googling that. You know, Googling a normal thing that a normal person would and then clicking on the AI summary.
- [69:46]
Leo Laporte
Best price for Fuji.
- [69:50]
Paris Martineau
They're all really expensive is the issue. But then it's like if I'm gonna get one of the less expensive ones, it's still like a thousand something dollars.
- [69:58]
Leo Laporte
And I'm like why don't I don't get the less expensive one? Because you'll end up buying that. And the more expensive.
- [70:03]
Paris Martineau
Well this is also coming from how many Instagram story ad purchases have you made in the last week?
- [70:10]
Leo Laporte
No, I. I have deleted Instagram from all of my devices. I am. It's too dangerous for me. And I also don't like what to me. So Anthony earlier was Talking about how TikTok shades the news to, you know. Well, Instagram has made some decisions about me that I do not fully agree with.
- [70:28]
Paris Martineau
Are you talking about all the naked ladies?
- [70:30]
Leo Laporte
Yes.
- [70:31]
Paris Martineau
You've been talking about this for years. You clearly are engaging.
- [70:34]
Jason Howell
It's.
- [70:35]
Leo Laporte
I'm not engaging. I only use Instagram to. To check up on you and my son and anybody else. Maybe Jason. Occasionally people who use Instagram, I use it as a read only feed for people. I know that's all I want, but I think because I don't give it a lot of signals because I hardly use it, it's decided. Well, you're an elderly white man. I think we should give you naked ladies. That's what I think.
- [71:00]
Paris Martineau
And is it wrong?
- [71:03]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. And that's why I deleted it, because I feel like I'm being taken advantage of. You are all these thirst trash.
- [71:10]
Paris Martineau
Elder abuse.
- [71:11]
Leo Laporte
It's elder abuse. Thank you. Thank you.
- [71:13]
Paris Martineau
I'm standing up for you.
- [71:16]
Jason Howell
They're all taken advantage.
- [71:17]
Leo Laporte
You're talking about the XT5?
- [71:20]
Paris Martineau
No, I'm talking about the X100.
- [71:24]
Leo Laporte
I. Yeah, that's. That's the one everybody seems to like.
- [71:27]
Paris Martineau
I mean, everyone's obsessed with it. It looks adorable. The film sims are fantastic.
- [71:35]
Benito
It's all about patience, Paris, because, like in a couple of months there's going to be a new camera.
- [71:39]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's true too.
- [71:40]
Jason Howell
Yeah, but then you're not going to want the this one, right? Because there'll be a new one.
- [71:45]
Paris Martineau
No, I probably will. I don't know. I'm contemplating getting one off Facebook Marketplace.
- [71:50]
Leo Laporte
Let's take a break so that we can make some money so that Paris can afford her new camera. How about that?
- [71:58]
You're watching intelligent machines of very pleasant visit from our friend Jason Howell, host of AI Inside at AI Inside show with Jeff Jarvis. He does that show. Jeff is away for the week. He'll be back next week. I'm sure he'll be sad that he missed Anthony Vinci, though we'll have to tell him all about it. That's Paris Martineau, cub reporter at Consumer Reports. She's not a cub reporter. You're no longer a cub reporter. You're a senior senior reporter.
- [72:26]
Paris Martineau
I'm a Fat Bear Week reporter.
- [72:31]
Leo Laporte
What? I'm not sure I should ask. Does this have anything to do with RFK Jr? Fat bear leak?
- [72:37]
Paris Martineau
Fat Bear week. You were saying cub. So I was imagining.
- [72:39]
Leo Laporte
Oh, I get it.
- [72:41]
Paris Martineau
What would be a grown up bear? It wouldn't just be fun to say adult bear. Why not? Fat bear week.
- [72:47]
Leo Laporte
Fat Bear week. Got it. She's a full grown bear. Our show today, brought to you by the Agency Build the future of Multi Agent software with Agency. Now that's spelled a G N.
- [73:02]
It's an open source collective building the Internet of agents and it's now part of the Linux Foundation. That's wonderful. Agency is building the Internet of Agents, a collaboration layer where AI agents can discover, connect and work across any framework. All the pieces engineers need to deploy multi agent systems now belong to everyone who builds on Agency, including robust identity and access management that ensures every agent is authenticated and trusted before interacting. Agency also provides open standardized tools for agent discovery, seamless protocols for agent to agent communication, and modular components for scalable workflows. You'll be collaborating with the best developers from Cisco and Dell and Google Cloud, Oracle, Red Hat, 75 plus other supporting companies all collaborating together to build the next next gen AI infrastructure. Agency is dropping code specs and services. No strings attached. Visit agency.org to contribute. That again is agntcy.org.
- [74:09]
We thank them for their support. I loved this piece. And you might not from no Opinion, which is one of the substacks I really enjoy. I love AI. Why doesn't anyone?
- [74:23]
Jason Howell
Why doesn't everyone everyone?
- [74:24]
Leo Laporte
I mean.
- [74:27]
Maybe that was a Freudian slip. Anti AI sentiment might or might not be rational, but it certainly relies on a lot of bad arguments. And that's actually the point I wanted to bring up that and he, he mentions Karen Howe. We had her on the show some weeks ago. She wrote a book.
- [74:48]
As I was reading it, I realized more and more it was kind of an anti AI, anti OpenAI book.
- [74:55]
Paris Martineau
As I was reading it, man who was texting the group chat one page in I don't think she likes AI.
- [75:02]
Leo Laporte
Well, it became more and more apparent as it went on and as it sometimes happens, your bias against something might in fact inform.
- [75:12]
The facts you choose or use.
- [75:16]
She and you pointed out we were talking about this during the week, Paris, you pointed out that Karen Howe was quick to go to x.com and say oh, I made a mistake and correct it.
- [75:27]
Paris Martineau
Okay. To be clear, specifically what he's talking about is there is one stat related to water usage of I think data centers.
- [75:37]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, within 20 pages there is. Howe manages to claim that a data center is using 1,000 times as much water as a city of 88,000 people, when in actual fact, it's using about 0.22 times as much water as a city and only 3% of the municipal water, the city system that the city relies on. In other words, she was off by a factor of 4,500.
- [76:01]
Paris Martineau
Well, part of it is, I'd hesitate to say she was off by. She was using. I'm forgetting the exact description of it. This is pointed out, I believe, by Andy Stone on Twitter. And so Howe brought up her sourcing, which is noted in the footnotes of the book. It was a governmental document from, I guess, the government of that city, which I don't believe was in the US.
- [76:29]
It had cited the wrong stats, I believe, in the actual government report she was relying on. And so then she reached out to the government, asked them to correct their report or check the facts on their own report. They did. So now she's issuing a correction to that one stat in her book, which I think. I don't know. This is how writing a book, you don't have to have fact checkers in this. And I think she did pay for fact checkers, but it's difficult.
- [77:00]
Leo Laporte
She also implies that AI data centers will consume 1.7 trillion gallons of drinkable water by 2027, while the study she's pulling from says only 3% of that will be drinkable water, 90% will not be consumed and instead return to the source unaffected.
- [77:18]
In other words, at least when you're talking about water. And the problem is, this is the problem I have with this. This information has become internalized and people bring it up all the time. People. Somebody brought it up on Twitter it a couple of weeks ago. And it's just what people say. Oh, yeah, well, just, you know, AI is fine except for the water use, or AI is fine except for the power use, except it's BS and it's, it's, it's become part of the kind of public awareness of AI. Anyway, this is a good piece from no Opinion, in which he talks about other reasons people attack AI, perhaps with less, you know, valid reasons than others. He also points out that we're a lot more concerned about AI in the US than they are anywhere else in the world.
- [78:07]
Jason Howell
That's interesting, isn't it? I wonder if that has to do with kind of the. Maybe it's a wrong word to use, but the democratizing quality that AI tools can bring with it, that maybe, you know, in the US we're so used to being at the top and being the leaders of this and the leaders of that. And maybe the AI that is proliferating worldwide is like an opportunity for everyone to kind of enjoy that. Whether that's true or not, I realize as I'm saying that. But, you know, I see this from.
- [78:42]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I see what you're saying. I'm not sure why it is. This is from the Pew Center. How do people around the world feel about the rise of AI in daily life? 50% of the US is more concerned than excited. Only 10% is more excited than concerned. Italy is number. We're tied with Italy than Australia. But it goes way down. I think where it goes way down, this would be. My guess is in less developed countries, Although I see there's a lot of bullishness in South Korea, Israel, Germany, Sweden, all, you know, highly developed nations. But in India, they're very much more excited about AI. The country that's most excited about AI is South Korea, interestingly. I don't know, maybe I get an impression that South Koreans are maybe more fond of technology.
- [79:32]
Benito
I think this has something to do with the marketing in America. AI is marketed so heavily to everybody. And I'm in Asia, and I was in Japan just the other just.
- [79:40]
Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah, okay. You were just in Japan, Benito. This is good. Yes.
- [79:43]
Benito
And this isn't like, AI isn't marketed to everybody there. It isn't plastered on every billboard. It isn't, like, on everything there. And I think that probably has a lot to do with it in America.
- [79:52]
Leo Laporte
Has a lot to do with it. I bet you're right.
- [79:53]
Jason Howell
Is that partially because it's just already accepted? And, you know, because, like, here, everybody here has to, like, point out, oh, well, that's AI. AI is driving that. AI, AI, AI. And there's, like, an overwhelm that that's attached to that because everybody's like, God, I'm sick of hearing about the AI in other countries. Maybe there's an openness because of a lack of resistance. It's not always the story about the AI it's just the story about this technology.
- [80:19]
Benito
It's also an American industry, pretty much. Right.
- [80:22]
Leo Laporte
Like, other countries are making part of our financial story right now. And not only the stock market, but our gdp, almost all of our GDP is growth is coming from AI companies. By the way, here we are, fat bears in the forest.
- [80:41]
Paris Martineau
If you go up one, there's one of us just as bears. And I want to know what I did to.
- [80:48]
Leo Laporte
You are a scary brown bear.
- [80:49]
Paris Martineau
I'm a scary Brown bear that's not wearing any clothes. But you guys are both wearing your outfits, which I think is very funny.
- [80:57]
Leo Laporte
That is odd.
- [80:59]
Well, it's. Cause you have a black outfit.
- [81:01]
Jason Howell
You have a black outfit on.
- [81:02]
Paris Martineau
Yeah, I guess that's true.
- [81:03]
Leo Laporte
You're a black bear and a black turtleneck. They can't tell you're dressed. That's all.
- [81:07]
Paris Martineau
That's true. It's true.
- [81:09]
Leo Laporte
I do like your piercing bear eyes though. Of all of us, you have the most piercing.
- [81:13]
Paris Martineau
Yeah, it's rfkf.
- [81:17]
Leo Laporte
You had to say it. You had to get it in, didn't you?
- [81:20]
Paris Martineau
You can't not.
- [81:20]
Leo Laporte
Thank you, Darren. Okey. For what is obviously an AI. I have to point out that is AI generated. I'm just gonna tell you that's real. Oh, never mind.
- [81:29]
Jason Howell
Alternate. Alternate universe.
- [81:30]
Leo Laporte
That's amazing. Nowadays you can't tell, can you? I think. I really do think because. And also because we're getting so much bombarded with this news. The AI's in a bubble. The bubble crash is gonna happen. Everybody is saying this, the crash. And I keep saying, don't say that. You're going to make it happen.
- [81:48]
Whether it's going to be real or not. It's going to be dependent on whether people believe you when you say it's going to happen. But. So that might be a real.
- [81:56]
Jason Howell
Good luck convincing people to not say it.
- [81:58]
Paris Martineau
Yeah.
- [81:59]
Leo Laporte
The only reason I don't want him to say it is because my entire retirement is invested in the US stock market. And I'm afraid, I'm very afraid, because.
- [82:12]
The S&P 500 is totally influenced by AI companies. This Magnificent Seven, they call them.
- [82:19]
Dozens of American universities and colleges have announced new AI departments, new AI programs. New York Times says college students flock to a new major. AI.
- [82:34]
The second most popular undergraduate major at MIT is now a program called. A new program called Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making.
- [82:45]
I think we're very interested in the usa.
- [82:47]
Jason Howell
I think so. Yeah. I think that's pretty unsurprising, if I'm honest. Yeah. Although when I look at what it's like to be a college student right now, it's gotta be a really weird time to be going into college right.
- [83:03]
This moment where the uncertainty, whether founded or unfounded, you know, a lot of people are concerned about like, well, you know, I'm gonna. What am I gonna study for four years or six years? Get my degree, and then.
- [83:14]
Leo Laporte
And then what?
- [83:15]
Jason Howell
And then what? The AI is gonna do it, do it for me, if it doesn't already. Like, why am I Even going to school right now, it's gotta be so weird to be in school. So of course they're flocking AI because I'm sure for a lot of them, it's like, this is how I keep myself relevant in this new world, whatever the heck it is or going to be. Yeah, it's got to be weird.
- [83:35]
Leo Laporte
We were talking about Instagram. Did you see the Austrian nuns? Do you know that story? The Austrian nuns?
- [83:42]
Paris Martineau
No.
- [83:43]
Leo Laporte
So these are elderly nuns, just a handful of them, who were moved out of their convent and then came back and took it over.
- [83:55]
And.
- [83:58]
Paris Martineau
Rebel nuns refused to give up Instagram. Love that. Love that. For them.
- [84:02]
Leo Laporte
Sisters Bernadette, Regina and Rita have been Busy. According to NPR, on their Instagram account, Rita, 82, can be seen rushing around the cloisters and dabbling in boxing lessons. Sister Regina, 86, has gotten so used to climbing four flights of stairs, she forgets to take the recently donated stairlift. And sister Bernadette, 88, regularly shares sharp witted observations about matters both sacred and secular over a ritual cup of coffee. These nuns made headlines this past fall after staging an escape.
- [84:39]
Paris Martineau
Pardon me, how many followers do they have, I wonder?
- [84:42]
Leo Laporte
185,000. They made an escape from the care home. They were in a nursing home.
- [84:50]
Which they say the church took them to against their will. They escaped from the nursing home, moved back into the shuttered convent, and then started an Instagram account. The authorities, the local abbey, and the Archdiocese of Salzburg had acquired the convent.
- [85:07]
So the archdiocese has said, well, you can go back, you can stay there. Rather, we'll let you stay there, but you have to give up this Instagram account because it's really given us some, some, some upset stomachs here. Speaking via Instagram, Sister Regina said, we can't agree to this deal. Without the media, we'd have been silenced via Instagram. Here she is. It's Italian, so you know.
- [85:35]
No, it's German. What am I saying? Italian.
- [85:40]
This, this is. This is what? Instagram. Yes, this is what Instagram was made for.
- [85:45]
Paris Martineau
It is true.
- [85:47]
Leo Laporte
God bless him and I hope they. They leave him in there.
- [85:51]
Jason Howell
It's like Kardashians, but with nuns.
- [85:53]
Leo Laporte
It's, it's.
- [85:55]
Paris Martineau
Put them on, put them on Love Island.
- [85:57]
Jason Howell
I'd watch.
- [86:00]
It.
- [86:00]
Benito
Feels like an 80s movie and they have to win a talent show to go.
- [86:03]
Leo Laporte
It does, doesn't it?
- [86:04]
Paris Martineau
Yeah.
- [86:05]
Leo Laporte
Where's Whoopi Goldberg when we need her?
- [86:09]
Their superior said, they can stay, but the nuns must cease all social media activities, stop talking to the press, and forgo Seeking legal advice. The nuns have re. Ooh, yeah. The nuns have re. Well, they have given a vow of obedience, I might add. The nuns have rejected the proposal, and now their superior has called on the Vatican to intercede. I was wondering why Father Robert was.
- [86:35]
Jason Howell
Going to say, can we get Father Robert on?
- [86:37]
Leo Laporte
I think I now know what he's up to.
- [86:39]
Paris Martineau
He's trying to convince the nuns.
- [86:41]
Leo Laporte
Canon law scholar and priest Wolfgang Rota told NPR the deal is neither reasonable nor humane and has no legal basis in either church or state laws.
- [86:53]
They have a right to their. Not only to their. They have a right to post Instagram, but yeah, they have a right to their social network.
- [87:02]
On Monday, their superior called in a crisis PR manager.
- [87:10]
Jason Howell
Wow.
- [87:12]
Leo Laporte
So we'll follow this. We'll follow this.
- [87:14]
Paris Martineau
How long until the. The church posts an Instagram notes app apology. Great.
- [87:22]
Leo Laporte
Apparently the. Her superior, the provost, is just as media savvy as the nuns. Sister Bernadette mentioned, For instance, his 2022 photo shoot with an Austrian TV chef.
- [87:37]
Paris Martineau
Oh, boy.
- [87:38]
Leo Laporte
The provost in the church invite journalists to the big parties they throw. It helps raise money. Why shouldn't we do the same?
- [87:47]
Anyway, we'll keep you up to date on the Sisters of perpetual indulgence.
- [87:53]
Jason Howell
247,000 followers, actually.
- [87:56]
Leo Laporte
Oh, they just went up.
- [87:57]
Jason Howell
Yeah, they're surging right now.
- [88:00]
Leo Laporte
This story is bringing them new followers all the time.
- [88:02]
Jason Howell
I mean, wouldn't you. I feel like I got a click follow. You know, I gotta. I can't understand a word they say.
- [88:08]
Leo Laporte
But, you know, let us. Let us take a little break and we will have more in just a moment. You're watching Intelligent Machines. It's great to have Jason Howell here. Thank you, good friend from AI Inside at AI Inside Show. And of course, Paris Martineau, the angry brown bear.
- [88:29]
You don't look like a brown bear at all. No, not at all. We will get the Olivia Nuzzy update in, Mr. Moss.
- [88:38]
Paris Martineau
I don't know, guys. I probably should do it because I'm getting dinner with a friend tomorrow who I haven't updated on this in like, two weeks, and it's gonna take me 45 minutes to tell him what has happened.
- [88:50]
Leo Laporte
So we'll just.
- [88:51]
Paris Martineau
We'll just read the clips.
- [88:52]
Leo Laporte
A couple of days ago, Paris posts. Somebody on their blog posted a series of just.
- [89:01]
Appalling sentences from her new book, American Canto. And Paris says, I'm standing outside in the cold reading these and I can't stop.
- [89:11]
Paris Martineau
I did think it was gonna be the first example of death by prose because someone sent me this blog by Scotchy Sentences from American Kanto that Sent Me to the Hospital is the title of it, as she as Scotchy had reviewed this for Slate and it's just the Times review.
- [89:30]
Leo Laporte
All right, well, we'll talk about it.
- [89:32]
Paris Martineau
Once after the break. We'll talk about it after the break.
- [89:33]
Leo Laporte
Did you see the Times review yet? I want to give you time.
- [89:36]
Paris Martineau
Should we go through.
- [89:37]
Leo Laporte
Go look at the New York Times review. I think you'll enjoy it.
- [89:40]
Paris Martineau
Did you see the Washington Post review?
- [89:42]
Leo Laporte
Let's put it this way, they're not very good.
- [89:48]
I would almost say scathing. This episode of Intelligent Machines is brought to you and this is this, by the way, this whole story is totally inside media has nothing to do with AI. So it's just a footnote. Let's put it.
- [89:59]
Paris Martineau
Hey, you know, last two letters of Olivia Nuzzy's first name.
- [90:04]
Leo Laporte
I A. I A. Yeah, turn that around.
- [90:08]
Jason Howell
Look in a mirror.
- [90:08]
Leo Laporte
Olivia Nuzzy, her erstwhile fiance Ryan Lizza, and her portrait artist, Izzy. Yeah, it's really, it's a little incestuous. They are the new Kardashians, I think. Our show today, brought to you by Vention. Now, look, look, you are, as we all are, hearing all this hype about AI, maybe you've even created, you know, an AI proof of concept and you're really thinking, how can we get our company into this brave new world? But it's scary, it's puzzling, and the worst thing is it can actually tie you up in knots. That's why you need to know about Benchen. AI is supposed to make things easier, but I have to say for most teams, it's just making the job harder. But fortunately, there's a partner here who can help you cut through the hype. Vention and their 20 plus years of global engineering expertise. They build AI enabled engineering teams that make software development better, faster, cleaner, calmer. Vention's clients typically see at least a 15% boost in efficiency. And we're not talking through hype, but through real engineering discipline. Because at bottom, that's what Vention is. Engineers, developers, people who understand how this stuff works. They will also do, if you want, and I would suggest you check this out at least. In fact, maybe the first thing you do, they have these great fun AI workshops and it's an interactive workshop with you, your team and the Vention pros. They will work with you to help your team find practical, safe ways to use AI across your entire business. It's a great way to start with Vention to test their expertise. Whether you're a cto, a tech lead, a product owner. The beauty of this is you won't have to spend weeks, kind of months maybe figuring out tools and architectures, which model you use. You know, Vention can help you assess your AI readiness. They will work with you to clarify your goals. They'll help you develop an outline to the steps that you need to take to get you there without the headaches. And of course, that's just the workshop. If you need help on the engineering front, their teams are there. They're ready to jump in. As your development partner or your consulting partner, it is probably the best thing you can do after your proof of concept. This happens all the time. You've built this incredible prototype, right? You maybe vibe coded it unlovable, it's even running in tests. You got it, you can look at it. But now what do you do? How do you productize it, how do you market it, how do you implement it? Do you open a dozen AI specific roles just to keep moving forward? Or maybe you bring in a partner who's done this before across many industries. Someone who can expand your idea into a full scale product without making you crazy, without disrupting your systems, without slowing your team down. That's Vention. Vention is real people with real expertise that are going to give you real results. You can find out more@ventionteams.com See how your team can build smarter, faster, and with a lot more peace of mind. Or get started with your AI workshop today at ventionteams.com TWiT that's V E N T I O-N teams, all1word.com Twitter TWiT thank you, Vention, for all you do to help our lovely audience get their head wrapped around what AI is about to do to them. Vention we did. This is the time of year you might remember this. Actually, Jason, we used to do this where you every dictionary comes up with its word of the year, right? We've already done Merriam Webster. We've already. We've done a few of them, haven't we, Paris? I think so.
- [94:04]
Paris Martineau
We have.
- [94:05]
Leo Laporte
But the king of the hill, the one that really matters, is the Oxford word of the year, right? I don't know. Oxford University. I feel like it's the prestige one, right? Oxford University Press. They announced Monday, after three days of voting by more than 30,000 participants, the Oxford Word of the Year for 2025 is.
- [94:33]
Rage bait.
- [94:35]
Paris Martineau
Okay?
- [94:36]
Jason Howell
It beat out Aura Farming and Biohack. And Biohack.
- [94:42]
Paris Martineau
Aura Farming was already in someone else's word of the year because I had to explain.
- [94:45]
Leo Laporte
Maybe that's why. Yeah.
- [94:46]
Benito
And all of these are two words, by the way.
- [94:49]
Jason Howell
Yeah. Yeah, good to know. I mean, biohack, they, they took the space, they made it a one word thing. But yeah, not for rage bait or rfr.
- [94:57]
Leo Laporte
Rage bait. According to npr, which apparently these days has his finger on the pulse of Instagram and TikTok. Rage bait gained popularity after actress Jennifer Lawrence revealed that she has a secret TikTok account she uses to get in fights with strangers online.
- [95:16]
Paris Martineau
I really respect that. You gotta, gotta be a hater.
- [95:19]
Leo Laporte
She picks fights. This is.
- [95:22]
Paris Martineau
I mean, it's not me. I'm. I don't need to pick fights with anybody on the Internet, but I do think it's kind of beautiful to be a celebrity who can't go anywhere or do anything without being mobbed and recorded to have a secret fight burner account for Instagram.
- [95:40]
Leo Laporte
She says, I get in fights on TikTok. I get in fights in the comments section.
- [95:48]
Benito
One girl was like, please do this too, by the way.
- [95:51]
Leo Laporte
Do they. This is the new thing.
- [95:52]
Paris Martineau
And how we usually find out is they slip up and accidentally use their personal account, suddenly see them in the comments posing to be someone else.
- [96:01]
Leo Laporte
LeBron. No. One girl was like. Jennifer adds, this is in a publicity tour conversation with her co star in their new movie Die My Love. Robert Pattinson. Is he the. He's the Twilight guy. He's the guy from Twilight.
- [96:17]
Paris Martineau
Twilight, yeah.
- [96:17]
Jason Howell
Yeah.
- [96:18]
Paris Martineau
But he's so much more than that.
- [96:20]
Benito
He's a good actor. He is a good actor.
- [96:21]
Jason Howell
He is.
- [96:22]
Paris Martineau
He is.
- [96:23]
Leo Laporte
He. He's got chiseled cheekbones, which makes me distrust him immediately.
- [96:28]
Paris Martineau
He and Kristen Stewart are both really good actors.
- [96:32]
Leo Laporte
Yes, they are. Both from Hunger Games. No Twilight.
- [96:36]
Paris Martineau
No Twilight. It's okay, grandpa. You're going to be going to bed soon, so it'll. It'll blow.
- [96:41]
Leo Laporte
I wish I were in bed right now.
- [96:44]
Jason Howell
Yeah, you want to go to sleep, watch Twilight? There you go.
- [96:47]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, no kidding. I tried. The only way I get through it was by making snarky comments the entire.
- [96:52]
Paris Martineau
Well, I would recommend there was a time in the last month or two where it was, I think available for free on streaming. And friends of mine used to do a drinking game where you had have to take a drink every time someone sighs in that movie. And it's devastating. It's a devastating. It's a devastating prospect.
- [97:14]
Leo Laporte
How's nickvember? How was nickvember?
- [97:16]
Paris Martineau
You've completed your nickvember was fantastic.
- [97:18]
Leo Laporte
How many Nicolas? So maybe you don't know this, Jason, how many Nick Cage movies did you watch in Nick again?
- [97:24]
Paris Martineau
I kind of. I kind of beefed it, boofed it. So I do this thing now for the past two years where in November I attempt to watch 30 Nicholas Cage movies in the month of November. It's called Nick Member and I try not to watch any other movies featuring if they don't feature Nick Cage.
- [97:46]
Leo Laporte
I didn't know this little deal. You don't watch anything else.
- [97:49]
Paris Martineau
Well, I ended up watching, I think two other movies only because I was hanging out with a friend who had already subjected to I think three or four Nick Cage movies. At that point I was like, I can't. I can't in good conscience earnest fight for us to see a fourth Nick Cage movie together right now. But it was great. Honestly, I was really. This was my first nickvember where a Nick Cage movie came out in theaters during the month of November.
- [98:15]
Jason Howell
That's exciting.
- [98:16]
Paris Martineau
The Carpenter's Son, a movie where a horror movie where Nick Cage plays Joseph to Teen Jesus, or he might be Teen Devil. We don't know.
- [98:26]
It. I don't know. It was really good. I did end it this year by doing something that I planned on doing last year, which was watching the Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. And honestly, I loved that one.
- [98:40]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
I didn't.
- [98:41]
Paris Martineau
I think it was.
- [98:44]
Leo Laporte
It makes fun of Nicolas Cage. Maybe that's.
- [98:46]
Paris Martineau
It makes fun of Nicolas Cage and also just fundamentally misunderstands. What about Nick? Like it.
- [98:53]
Leo Laporte
It.
- [98:53]
Paris Martineau
So the plot of it is that Nick Cage plays Nicolas Cage, plays Nick Cage, who is Nick Cage, but he's down on his luck, running out of money, ends up accepting like a million dollar offer to go hang out on this island with a fan and then like kind of an action movie spirals from there. But it's all a bit tongue in cheek poking fun at him. Him. Basically they name check a bunch of his movies and it's kind of an homage to his career. But I found it frustrating because despite the fact that it's ostensibly an homage to his career, it just doesn't understand the things that make his movies good. Which I think a lot of people have this warped understanding of Nick Cage that dates dates back to a, I think like 2000-10s YouTube video that went super viral called Nick Cage Freakout Compilations, which is given everybody this understanding that Nick Cage is just a guy who screams a lot and that's his whole shtick. And he does scream in quite a lot of Movies. But that's not the. Like, it's different than that. It's not just that he's shouting so.
- [99:53]
Leo Laporte
Much more than that. It is a more robust character in his eyes.
- [99:58]
Paris Martineau
It's him eating a live cockroach after, you know, and that's. It's him eating a live cockroach like 35 minutes in to Vampire's Kiss. And then him and the director are being like, well, how do we escalate from here? It is. It's so much more.
- [100:13]
Jason Howell
Man, you are a connoisseur. I am a Cages, a cage, a sewer.
- [100:18]
Leo Laporte
Is he Renfro in the. What's his name? Ren in the Vampire's Kiss. Is he.
- [100:22]
Paris Martineau
Oh, he's in Ren Faire. I didn't think Ren Faire was a good movie, but I did like Nick Cage.
- [100:27]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [100:27]
Paris Martineau
I think that he's the best part in that.
- [100:29]
Leo Laporte
He's the best part in any movie that he's.
- [100:31]
Jason Howell
Okay, all right, maybe you've already answered this, then. But if you're such a Cage. Aurora. Favorite cage. Least favorite Cage.
- [100:39]
Leo Laporte
Oh, don't ask her. That's impossible.
- [100:41]
Paris Martineau
It's hard.
- [100:42]
Jason Howell
So I'm just authentically curious. I just plugged it in. Gemini, by the way. It says 120 to 130 films.
- [100:51]
Paris Martineau
I was about to say yes, ballpark, because as a brief, he went through a period that I call the pyramid debt period, where he bought, made a lot of unwise purchases, like multiple pyramids and exotic animals, and then went into debt and had to make a lot more movies to get up to it. But to answer your question, my instinctive answer for favorite Cage is Face off, because it's a perfect movie. And what inspired me to do this.
- [101:13]
Leo Laporte
That is a great movie.
- [101:13]
Paris Martineau
But I think, technically speaking, I'm either adaptation or Vampire's Kiss is probably what you're talking about.
- [101:24]
Movies that make my heart sing.
- [101:25]
Leo Laporte
Come on.
- [101:27]
Paris Martineau
I mean, Moonstruck is also fantastic is the issue. There are just so many great Nick Cage films out there.
- [101:34]
Jason Howell
Like the whole set. I get it.
- [101:36]
Leo Laporte
Yes.
- [101:36]
Paris Martineau
It's wonderful. Matchstick Men. Honestly. Also a banger. Even though it's more of kind of a straight to, like, it's sort of movie you'd see on cable tv. But least favorite movie is Zandali by far, which is a. I gotta look this one up.
- [101:49]
Leo Laporte
Up.
- [101:49]
Paris Martineau
It's. I don't even. I don't even know how to describe.
- [101:54]
Leo Laporte
You're a Cagesur.
- [101:55]
Paris Martineau
Yeah, I am a Cagesore. It is. Ostensibly. It's. I'll read the description. Bored. With her marriage to burnt out poet turned corporate executive, the Harry Zandali falls prey to an old friend of her husband, Nick Cage, who's got a crazy goatee, the manipulative and egotistical Johnny, and becomes enmeshed in a sensual, passive, passionate and destructive affair. It could, I guess, be Challenger esque if you were doing it right, but every aspect of the movie is just done wrong. It's shot terribly, the dialogue doesn't make sense, the plot doesn't make sense, the actors aren't really doing a good job in any of it. It's just. It's the closest I've come to turning off a Nick Cage movie while logging.
- [102:42]
Jason Howell
Ooh, man. I've only known about this whole aspect of your life for like five minutes, but I never would have imagined there would ever be a Nick Cage film that you'd think about.
- [102:52]
Leo Laporte
Tr.
- [102:54]
It was son Egger on so bad.
- [102:57]
Jason Howell
I can't emphasize does judge Reinhold doesn't save the film. I mean seriously, you would expect.
- [103:05]
Paris Martineau
Listen, you'd expect the craziness of his. As someone who literally has a Nick Cage coaster right next to me right now, you'd expect that I would be enamored by some part of it. But it's bad. It's like not even a bad movie in the way that I'd recommend watching. I think my letterboxd review for it was this could have been Challengers instead it was boring. That's the issue is I like a movie. I love a bad movie if it's bad in an interesting way. But to be bad in a boring way, criminal.
- [103:35]
Jason Howell
Yeah, totally.
- [103:37]
Paris Martineau
I forget how we got on this.
- [103:39]
Leo Laporte
I don't know. But I'm gonna take a break before.
- [103:41]
Jason Howell
We do rage bait.
- [103:42]
Leo Laporte
I have. Yeah, that was rage bait. That's how we got it. I have a two parter for you. This is Paris's Thanksgiving, as you know every year.
- [103:57]
Paris Martineau
I'd also like to add to my thing I forgot Wild at Heart. Also probably Wild at Heart.
- [104:02]
Leo Laporte
That's the classic.
- [104:03]
Jason Howell
Yeah, it's one of my favorites.
- [104:04]
Leo Laporte
That's the classic.
- [104:05]
Paris Martineau
Sorry, we do have to. I have to add a caveat. So last week I was home in Florida. I literally as I was because we talked about, oh, maybe my dad should pop in and be on the show. As I was and I was picking up from the airport, I was like, you know when I'm filming on Wednesday, like you should come by. I'm sure the boys would like love to chat with you. Haha. And he looked at me, he's like, I don't know, maybe. And seemed like really uninteresting.
- [104:28]
Leo Laporte
He was playing it cool, wasn't he? He was just.
- [104:30]
Paris Martineau
He was trying to play it so cool. And apparently he spent the entire night that I was recording just kind of waiting around, hoping that I would invite him in. And then after was like, I guess you didn't want me to come on after all. I was like, you seemed uninterested.
- [104:46]
Leo Laporte
Broke his heart.
- [104:47]
Paris Martineau
I did. He was genuinely.
- [104:49]
Leo Laporte
There's a lot of backstory, Jason, on this. There was earlier, a year or two ago. They were at a wedding and where was it, Bruce?
- [104:57]
Paris Martineau
They were in a wedding in Peru. And for some reason, because, like the wedding had.
- [105:02]
Leo Laporte
Because he had bodyguards and was wearing a Tuxiri tuxedo, people in Peru, Drew.
- [105:07]
Paris Martineau
Thought he was some American celebrity. And so there's this video posted by a random TikTok account of people mobbing my dad. And my dad's a ham. So of course he responds with me like, I'll sign your autograph. I'll take a photo with you.
- [105:19]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
Sure.
- [105:20]
Paris Martineau
And my mom is in the background being like, scott, come on, we gotta go. But he's like, it's my time to sign.
- [105:26]
Leo Laporte
He. I think he. Next time you gotta get him on the show.
- [105:28]
Paris Martineau
Because he really, he had questions for you guys prepared. It was really.
- [105:32]
Leo Laporte
I think he really.
- [105:34]
You know, maybe we should call him up anyway. This might ease the pain a little bit. It's a two parter. We'll start with part one before the turkey goes in. Let me know.
- [105:46]
Jason Howell
All right, here we go.
- [105:47]
Leo Laporte
The insertion of the deep frying of turkey is always kind of an important component. I hope we do have the destined fire department ready to go at any moment.
- [105:56]
Jason Howell
They'll be just around the corner. That was right here.
- [106:00]
Leo Laporte
That's your grandma, right?
- [106:01]
Paris Martineau
That is my grandma, yeah. She hangs out by the deep fried turkey so that she can smoke cigarettes all night.
- [106:08]
Going to be a little profound.
- [106:11]
Leo Laporte
So, you know, here we go. Get ready. It's going in the. Don't try this at home, kids.
- [106:15]
Jason Howell
Oh, God.
- [106:17]
Paris Martineau
We do it every year. And every year I do think that it's going to explode.
- [106:20]
Leo Laporte
It seems so scary and dangerous.
- [106:22]
Paris Martineau
You pointed out after I said say this that she has a fleece blanket like one foot away from sitting.
- [106:27]
Leo Laporte
So that is fair. She would, she would go up. Oh, well, she didn't.
- [106:33]
Paris Martineau
She didn't.
- [106:34]
Leo Laporte
Now the drinking can begin. We got about three. Oh, wow, they're ready. Go again.
- [106:41]
Paris Martineau
Yep, the drinking can be good. He didn't understand the plan, we'll be.
- [106:45]
Leo Laporte
Going at this about 51 minutes. We'll give you updates along the way. He's very good at math, your dad.
- [106:52]
Jason Howell
No kidding. But how was the turkey?
- [106:55]
Leo Laporte
Oh, you're gonna see how the turkey was in a moment.
- [106:57]
Paris Martineau
When we come back, crispier than ever and juicier than ever. He also had watched apparently a lot of TikTok videos about different turkey carving techniques.
- [107:08]
Leo Laporte
Oh, carved in a.
- [107:09]
Paris Martineau
Very interesting.
- [107:10]
Leo Laporte
So that is an issue. That is an issue. Now the quality of the second part is lower, so I don't know, maybe you have it a better quality version. It looked better on my phone. I don't know, maybe if Apple has downgraded it or something.
- [107:25]
Paris Martineau
Do you have any Android says of my grandmother, she's smoking with a fleece blanket right next to the vat of boiling oil heated by a propane tank. What could possibly go wrong? She's a person. Great question.
- [107:37]
Leo Laporte
Who has no fear. It's true. She is a brave, brave person.
- [107:41]
Benito
She is part of the greatest generation.
- [107:44]
Paris Martineau
Yeah, it's true.
- [107:45]
Leo Laporte
No, it's funny because I saw the video. I said, so who is that woman sitting there? Is that your grandma? And she said, yeah.
- [107:53]
Yeah, that's grandma. I love it. We're gonna have more in just a bit. Jason Howell is visiting. It's great to have you. Jeff will be back next week. And of course, Jeff joins Jason every week. In fact, he didn't miss the show this week, I might add, on a lion's side. What is he doing that show? I don't know. What is he. Do you know what he's doing, Jason?
- [108:13]
Jason Howell
He is speaking at a media conference, I believe, somewhere in a different country. That's about all that my memory can recall at this point. But yeah.
- [108:25]
Leo Laporte
We will see the turkey emerge from its hot bath in just a moment. But first, a word from Monarch. Between travel and gifts, hosting, entertaining, you name it, it's easy to lose sight of your money and, sad to say, maybe even of financial responsibility this time of year. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch, rated Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop or on your phone. And right now, just for our listeners, monarch is offering 50% off. 50% off your first year. Now, I can tell you I use Monarch. I live in Monarch. It is so useful for me, especially now I'm on a fixed Income. I have to pay attention. My investments are. Am I going to survive? Am I being Alpo next week? Monarch lets me keep track of it. I never in my whole life budgeted before. I always found it too fiddly. Too much data entry. I don't have to even do that anymore. With Monarch, it automatically is hooked up to all my accounts, by the way, that was an easy process. Stays hooked up, which is great. And then automatically imports all the transactions and automatically filters them, files them away in the right place. So I know exactly how much I spent on food, how much I spent on groceries, gifts. Not much charity, even less. But I know it's in my head and I know where I am. Monarch is built for people who don't have the time to spend doing a lot of data entry. Putting in your checkbook. Remember we used to do that in the early days of computers. You get your bank statement, you type in all your. You don't have to do that anymore. If you put off organizing your finances. Monarch is for you. Or if. Or if you, like me, in the old days, used to do it by hand and got tired of it. Monarch is for you. Monarch does all the hard part, the heavy lifting. You link all your accounts. It takes just minutes. You're going to. And by the way, the data visuals, the graphs and everything, they're beautiful. You get smart categorization of your spending. You get real control over your money. You know, I told. I was talking to Henry about this. My son, when you're making good money, you know you're in your prime of your earning. It's very easy to say, yeah, I got plenty of money. I'm not going to think about it. Don't do that. Don't do that. I told him that. I said I did this. This is not good. You're going to have kids to put through school. You're going to want to buy a house. You're going to want to retire someday when you're young, you don't think about that. Now's the time. Now's the time. Don't be complacent. If you're not on top of your money, you could be missing chances to save more, to invest smarter, to hit your financial goals faster. Like buying a home, saving for retirement, whatever it is. I just thought of something. I know what I'm going to give Henry for Christmas. Monarch helps you stay informed so nothing slips through the cracks. Monarch. It's not just another finance app. It's a tool. And real professionals and experts use it. It's Forbes best app for couples because you can share your finances with one another. That's one of the things couples get in fights over more than anything else. If it's on the paper there, you know what's going on. It's much, much easier. CNBC named it one of the top fintech companies in the world. World. It's got a very active and passionate Reddit community. Paris, you might be interested in that of over 34,000 users. What's really cool, Monarch pays attention to that community. Those users are shaping how the product is developed. Monarch cares. Don't let financial opportunities slip through the cracks. Use the code iamanarch.com in your browser for half off your first year, 50% off your first year. Monarch.com the code is. I am so glad. I'm trying to think of what to get. Henry, he called me last week. He said, I don't know, should I, I'm in the stock. Should I get, what should I do? How should I, should I save? And I try to give my best advice. I'm going to give Monarch 50% off your first year. Monarch.com use the code. I am knowledgeispower monarch.com we thank him so much for their support. Yeah, there's a website. I use the website, but there's also iPad app, app, iOS app. There's an Android app. So, you know, you got it covered everywhere. Oh, I don't know. Did you put it in the discord because this is kind of low quality. I wanted to show everybody how good that turkey looks.
- [112:54]
Paris Martineau
Yeah, hold on one second. I'll put it in the discord because.
- [112:57]
Jason Howell
Yeah, I'd love to get more hungry than I am already.
- [113:00]
Leo Laporte
Could you. Is it possibly hungry for turkey? This short, this recently, that Thanksgiving was this recent, I mean, deep fried turkey. I made my own turkey. I used Alton Brown slash Kenji Lopez Alt's method, which involves a baking steel on the bottom of the oven and then you turn up the oven all the way to 500 degrees, get it really, really hot, put the turkey and then turn it down to 300. But the heat from the steel cooks the dark meat faster. That's the problem. Right. The light meat cooks, the dark meat takes more time. So the heat cooks the dark meat faster. It actually came out perfect. Perfect. It was. I was done. The dark meat was fully cooked. The white, the breast was not dry. It was really, really good. So. But I think Paris will vouch for me, vouch for this. But I think deep frying produces a pretty good result.
- [113:49]
Paris Martineau
It is delicious. The skin Is crispy and brown, but it is juicy and flavorful in the inside.
- [113:57]
Leo Laporte
And it's in 50 minutes. And that was a big turkey. That was a giant turkey. How many people did you have?
- [114:02]
Paris Martineau
17 point something.
- [114:04]
Leo Laporte
That's huge. We had a 10 pound turkey. And I still have leftovers.
- [114:09]
Jason Howell
All you risk is a bonfire. I thought you were gonna say salmonella.
- [114:13]
Paris Martineau
That's why you do it in your.
- [114:17]
Backyard.
- [114:17]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, by grandma. Out by grandma. The fire department.
- [114:20]
Paris Martineau
Oh, right next to grandma.
- [114:24]
Leo Laporte
Alcohol. That's there as well.
- [114:26]
Paris Martineau
Yeah. There's so much alcohol. All right. I posted it in the chat. Chat.
- [114:29]
Leo Laporte
Okay.
- [114:30]
Paris Martineau
Yeah, I was about to say it is. It was close. It was close to the alcohol. And frankly, it wasn't far enough away from the garage.
- [114:36]
Jason Howell
I'm looking at it.
- [114:37]
Leo Laporte
I'm like, all right, Here we go. 759 minutes later. It's now time for one hour.
- [114:44]
Jason Howell
How much bourbon has been drank in that time?
- [114:47]
Paris Martineau
Infinite.
- [114:48]
Jason Howell
Coming out.
- [114:49]
Leo Laporte
Look at that. Look at that temperature gauge. Yes, please don't touch it.
- [114:55]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
What is he crazy?
- [114:56]
Paris Martineau
He crazy. Yes.
- [114:58]
Jason Howell
What? What did he just do?
- [115:04]
I guess I should have asked. How did he do that? That's.
- [115:06]
Paris Martineau
No.
- [115:07]
Leo Laporte
This is now headed to the dining room table. First we'll put it. This is. What a trooper your dad is. He doesn't. He doesn't let anything.
- [115:15]
Paris Martineau
Look at that crispiness.
- [115:16]
Jason Howell
That does look delicious. I want to eat that right now.
- [115:19]
Leo Laporte
Should be ready to go. We're going to let her rest for 20 minutes. Then it's turkey carving now. How do you get all that metal out of there? Does it just come right out?
- [115:26]
Paris Martineau
It's kind of just like a. A little frame that goes in there. Yeah, you kind of pull it from the other side.
- [115:33]
Leo Laporte
There's your dad.
- [115:34]
Jason Howell
Destroy the turkey.
- [115:35]
Leo Laporte
There's your dad.
- [115:37]
Jason Howell
Wow.
- [115:39]
Paris Martineau
It's good.
- [115:39]
Leo Laporte
By the way, next time have dad have a k extinguisher. HD editor has some experience with this. He says an ABC fire extinguisher is not good enough stuff. You need the foam.
- [115:50]
Paris Martineau
I don't even know if they own a fire extinguisher, to be totally honest with you. I should get that as well. I think this is actually wise because I started making a list of things I need to buy to bring to them in when I come home for.
- [116:06]
The holidays. My parents, their whisks are broken. They've got a messed up cheese grater. They've never properly cleaned their cast iron.
- [116:14]
Leo Laporte
And oh, boy, what kind this is.
- [116:16]
Jason Howell
It's properly seasoned.
- [116:17]
Leo Laporte
Then I am ready in case.
- [116:19]
Jason Howell
Dang. Look at that.
- [116:21]
Leo Laporte
Should break out. Well, I got nervous at one point. I think there's a lot of electronics up here in the attic.
- [116:25]
Paris Martineau
Will that work for electronic fires?
- [116:27]
Leo Laporte
This is an abc. This is an abc.
- [116:29]
Jason Howell
What is the difference?
- [116:30]
Leo Laporte
I get a K. I need a K, don't I?
- [116:32]
Paris Martineau
No, I. I don't know.
- [116:33]
Leo Laporte
He's the one with the foam.
- [116:35]
Paris Martineau
Yeah, but do. I don't think fire extinguishers work for lithium battery fires. I know this because I thought about getting a 300 box for my E Bike battery batteries.
- [116:44]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, they don't. You're right. Batteries make their own. I also have an emergency fire blanket. I do have that. The prepared hero emergent. I saw it on Tick Tock.
- [116:55]
Jason Howell
I have a massive amount of old smartphones up there. Many of them actually came from the Twitch studio when. When you were shutting down the studio.
- [117:03]
Leo Laporte
You got them. Thank God. I don't want them.
- [117:05]
Jason Howell
These are the, you know, ancient batteries that are just daunting.
- [117:08]
Paris Martineau
I'm constantly trying to pawn my old smartphones off on friends because I'm like, they're gonna explode one day.
- [117:14]
Jason Howell
Can it be your problem and not mine? Thank you.
- [117:17]
Leo Laporte
We're very excited. You may have seen us talk about Marumi, the furry companion robot. It is now available on Kickstarter. We are very, very excited.
- [117:33]
Paris Martineau
Oh, my God. And this is than the one that's just a little flu.
- [117:37]
Leo Laporte
This is better than the one that sits in a little bowl and just goes, yeah, yeah. This is a. What they call a charm robot. See, it's attached to a person. Apparently all this is. Look around.
- [117:46]
Jason Howell
This is a spide of ice.
- [117:48]
Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah, Yeah.
- [117:50]
Jason Howell
I don't know this.
- [117:51]
Leo Laporte
I think you're right. I think Anthony Vincy would say, do not. Where is this made?
- [117:57]
Jason Howell
I. I wonder what he would have said about Labubus, because I've heard some really crazy weird things.
- [118:02]
Leo Laporte
They don't have caribou, Boo. Do they have.
- [118:05]
Jason Howell
I think there's just some. Some. Some wacky conspiracy.
- [118:08]
Benito
There was some viral stuff. People cutting the boobs open and finding cameras. But I don't know if, like, there's that are planted or like, you know, you can't believe anything on the Internet.
- [118:17]
Jason Howell
Totally. No. And I don't.
- [118:20]
Paris Martineau
But still, Vo should get on that. We could make a good view.
- [118:24]
Leo Laporte
I. I am glad that your father did not fall for the AI Slop recipes that are taking over Thanksgiving dinner food bloggers. And my son is a food blogger. Sees traffic dip as home cooks turn to AI inspired by impossible pictures.
- [118:43]
Jason Howell
Oh, okay.
- [118:44]
Paris Martineau
Oh, boy.
- [118:45]
Jason Howell
The recipes are Not AI generated. The pictures are right. And there's.
- [118:49]
Leo Laporte
Well, no, I think it's all AI.
- [118:52]
Jason Howell
I wondered about that. I mean I pretty much assume that if an AI is generating a recipe that didn't exist before, it's probably your chances are pretty low that it's going to be amazing.
- [119:02]
Leo Laporte
So Bloomberg quotes E.B. gargano, who has been writing recipes online for some time. The easy peasy foodie. You might know him as.
- [119:14]
She not he can predict when us readers begin searching for her stress free turkey instructions or when her Christmas cake will start its annual climb up search results. This year though, the easy peasy foodie says familiar patterns are breaking. Instead of sending home cooks to her decade old, well tested recipes, Google increasingly inserts AI generated summaries stitched together from bits of her work and others work that often get the basics wrong. For instance, an AI assembled version of Gargano's Christmas cake would have people cooking a six inch cake this big for three to four hours.
- [119:52]
Paris Martineau
Oh no, you're gonna need that fire extinguisher.
- [119:56]
Leo Laporte
Y she says you'd end up with charcoal. Meanwhile, traffic to her turkey recipe is down 40% year over year. And it's because. And this is what Google's doing to everybody, right? This is the end of the Internet. Google is replacing traffic to people's websites with their AI summaries. The thing that's bad is these AI summaries aren't good. They quote a Mexican food blogger. Muy bueno, Yvette Marquez Sharpnack.
- [120:32]
She says earlier this month she posted two AI generated tamale photos. One with sauce poured over. Now if you know tamales, and I don't know if you do, they're delicious. It's corn with a filling. And then they're wrapped in a corn husk right where and then steamed. But you, I know Jason knows this because he's around, you know, he's in California. You take the husk off, right? And then you eat the insides. You don't eat the husk. Well, no, no, no, no, that'd be crazy. She posted you can't. Yeah, yeah. It would not be good. She posted two photos and one AI generated with sauce poured over the husks, another showing tamales lying flat in a steamer. Both were obvious mistakes. She said. One, the husks aren't meant to be eaten and tamales are supposed to steam upright. She said little details like this are big red flags. These are the AI generated images. And she says this is a bad sign. People are going to get the Wrong idea.
- [121:34]
Jason Howell
I didn't know that tamales were supposed to be steamed standardized.
- [121:37]
Leo Laporte
I didn't either. And if you fell for AI generated photos, you might not know.
- [121:42]
Jason Howell
Not that I know.
- [121:45]
Leo Laporte
She said her husband trusted the post. Her husband wanted to try a recipe on Facebook for maraschino cherry chocolate chip cookies.
- [121:54]
She said she was suspicious of the photos. The cookies were too perfectly pink. But her husband trusted the post because it was quote on Facebook.
- [122:03]
Paris Martineau
Hey, that's all you need.
- [122:05]
Leo Laporte
The result was a melted sheet of dough with a cloyingly sweet flavor. A disaster, she said. So just a little word of warning.
- [122:15]
You know, there's lots of, lots of AI garbage out there.
- [122:20]
Jason Howell
I mean, in general, when we're talking about, like, you know, an AI, I don't know when it's an AI summary of facts from, you know, like a news story or something like that, generally, you know, I take it with a grain of salt, but often it's gets things mostly sort of right.
- [122:37]
Leo Laporte
I feel like talking about and say I can tell the difference. Right.
- [122:42]
Jason Howell
Well, there's probably a little bit of that, too. Yeah, that's true. That's true.
- [122:46]
Leo Laporte
Paris is always saying, I don't know.
- [122:48]
Paris Martineau
You don't because you.
- [122:50]
Leo Laporte
Grandpa.
- [122:51]
Paris Martineau
No. Just because anyone reading something that they do not intimately know are an expert in the mistakes that these, these tools make are going to be inherently not very obvious.
- [123:06]
Leo Laporte
And they're so confident, they're so convincing stated. So, like, I know this answer, but yet.
- [123:12]
Jason Howell
And I guess what my point was is, is that I would trust a lot less an AI interpretation of a recipe when we're talking about amounts and. Yeah. Tablespoons and teaspoons and quarter and. But Alex all the time.
- [123:26]
Leo Laporte
Time that he'll give the AI a couple of, you know, ingredients he has and have it give him a recipe. And he says, I cook them all the time. They're great.
- [123:35]
Paris Martineau
Okay. We have been having. I did this week because I have been busy and not buying groceries as often as I did. I just asked because I've been trying out Claude a lot more. I asked Claude to do a full research of recipes that I could make quickly after work for dinner that would also give me any leftovers to have for lunch or breakfast the next day. And I have during the show been eating a cold sesame noodle thing that I had it specifically prepare for this evening because I knew I wouldn't have time to eat or cook before the show. And it's been great.
- [124:08]
Jason Howell
And that was a Claude recipe.
- [124:09]
Paris Martineau
A cloud Claude recipe. I mean, it's pretty.
- [124:12]
Leo Laporte
It probably stole it from somebody.
- [124:13]
Jason Howell
I was gonna say. Yeah. I wonder if it was like stole.
- [124:16]
Paris Martineau
It from somewhere originally. I believe they'd had.
- [124:20]
Where were the links on this?
- [124:23]
It was originally from Gimme some Oven and Table for two blog.
- [124:31]
Leo Laporte
So earlier today we were talking about AI generator recipes and you know we have a fun group in our Discord Chat Chocolate milk mini sip. Paul tried putting this recipe in. I have broken Lego overripe bananas and tuna. What can I make for supper? But I was so impressed that ChatGPT did not fall for it. Short answer Please don't cook the Lego longer and tastier answer here's what you can do with what you've got with overripe bananas and tuna. There is no traditional dish that combines them and for good reason. But you can make two separate components that actually taste good. Banana pancakes, which is overripe bananas, egg and a little bit of oats. Tuna salad Tuna melt gave it the correct recipe for that. Although I would put a little chopped celery in there. But that's just me. Serve them as separate dishes. Your taste buds will thank you. And then, and this is hysterical like a little laughing emoji says. If you meant this as a joke, here are some quote creative combinations not recommended. Lego crusted tuna, crunchy, colorful and 100% a dental emergency. Banana tuna smoothie. The last thing you'll ever drink voluntarily. And a Lego banana casserole. Great structural integrity, zero flavor integrity. I think that was the right answer. Not that was pretty good, you know.
- [126:04]
Jason Howell
Not immediately groan worthy humor coming from.
- [126:07]
Leo Laporte
No, it's funny. It warned you not to do it.
- [126:10]
Jason Howell
Yeah, not bad.
- [126:13]
Leo Laporte
Finally, since we, you know, we only had one nun story today, I think we need another Catholic Church story. So I'm going to put one more in the race to AGI pill the Pope. Now this one I will run by Father Robert. I'm sure he'll have something to say because Father Robert, as some of you know, is our good friend who is in the Vatican and is consultant to the Pope on technology and AI. This is a story from the Verge today. Robert Hart, writing a team of believers, want the Vatican to take AI doomsday scenarios seriously.
- [126:49]
There is a movement afoot to get the Pope to speak out about the dangers of AI. These are AI doomers that want Pope Leo to pick a side in the AGI debate.
- [127:06]
Jason Howell
Hmm.
- [127:07]
Paris Martineau
What do you think he's gonna pick?
- [127:08]
Leo Laporte
I don't. I don't know. The Verge says he's convening experts. He's paying attention to relevant conferences and gatherings on AI. I know. He asks Robert. According to several Vatican observers the Verge spoke to, it's something of an open secret that Pope Leo is preparing an AI focused encyclical.
- [127:27]
Which would be, in a way, you know, the doctrine of the Church.
- [127:32]
Paris Martineau
So.
- [127:35]
Leo Laporte
Maybe they should be lobbying the Vatican.
- [127:37]
Paris Martineau
We gotta get, we gotta get a representative from the church on here that knows a little bit about AI, whoever could be calling.
- [127:45]
Jason Howell
We know new.
- [127:46]
Paris Martineau
If only we knew someone that also had great expertise when it comes to cats.
- [127:52]
Leo Laporte
Cats and AI and drones. He's also, he's also drones. So there are a group of people, they actually flew to Rome and they're trying to get to talk to the Pope and, and get him to say something about AI Doom.
- [128:11]
I don't know.
- [128:13]
Paris Martineau
I also. For anyone interested, I have posted the text of the meal plan recipes recommended by Claude in the Discord Live chat. Oh.
- [128:22]
Leo Laporte
Oh, that's a benefit for members of Club Twit.
- [128:26]
Paris Martineau
Yeah.
- [128:27]
Jason Howell
Lucky you.
- [128:28]
Leo Laporte
Lucky, lucky you. If you're not a member, you see what you're missing. Twit tv Club Twit. It is a very important part of our monetization. Just as you have your Patreon, Jason Howell, we actually, we use Memberful, which is a Patreon company. We have our own little club. The club, though, makes up a big portion of our overall expenses. 25% of our operating cost come from your Club Twit membership. That's a huge deal, as Jason knows. Well.
- [128:59]
If we. There's no deep pockets here, there's no investors bailing us out. If we don't make enough money to keep the shows on to support the staff we have to cut and we have in the past. The reason I'm in an attic with my little ABC fire extinguisher is we didn't want to spend the money on a studio. So we've done everything we can to cut. It's up to you really, at this point if you want to. To keep Twit doing what we're doing. If you want to keep these shows going, if you want to get the extra shows that we do in the club and we do a lot of stuff. Our AI user group is coming up tomorrow at 2pm Pacific. We're actually. This is going to be fun. Larry lrau in our club Twit is going to. He's been working on a demo of Google's new vibe coding IDE Anti Gravity. So we're going to get a demo of Anti Gravity. Hi, Larry. So that'll be fun. I'm very interested in this, but that's the kind of thing we do in the club. It's great. It's so much fun. We have conversations about interesting things going on in our life. Anything geeks might be interested in. If you're not a member, please consider it ad free versions of all the shows, of course, because we don't need to show you ads. You're a member. Twit. TV Club Twit. This is a good time now through Christmas Day. We have a 10% coupon for annual memberships. There's a two week free trial. There's also family and corporate plans. The base plan, $10 a month, $120 a year. But again, 10% off when you sign up for a year. Be a good gift too. Twit. TV clubtwit. Enough said. Not gonna belabor the point. None.
- [130:35]
I think this might be a good time for our picks of the week so we can wrap things up and Paris can get back to our newest.
- [130:42]
Benito
Actually, before we get to that, I wanted to ask Jason something. Something about all the AI music news that's happened in the last couple of weeks. Because that's something I'm personally interested. I know Jason's a musician as well, so I want to know what his opinion is on Warner making deals or Universal making deals with the AI companies.
- [131:00]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah. And by the way, Spotify has announced that they are making so much music that Suno is creating rather Suno not Spotify. That Suno is creating an entire Spotify catalog. What is that, seven, eight million songs every two weeks?
- [131:18]
Jason Howell
Two weeks.
- [131:20]
Paris Martineau
And this is the context also is that Warner Music Group struck a deal this week with Suno settling if it's copyright lawsuit against so.
- [131:30]
Leo Laporte
And I've used Suno and I love Suno, by the way. I am so impressed with what Suno can do now. Jason, he has albums. He's yellow. Is it yellow?
- [131:39]
Jason Howell
Yellow gold. Yellow gold.
- [131:41]
Leo Laporte
Yellow gold.
- [131:42]
Jason Howell
Yeah, yeah. One word.
- [131:45]
Leo Laporte
I'm sorry, I was teasing you.
- [131:49]
But now they're gonna remember it, right? And so you are a musician. As you can see, there's, you know, guitars behind him and stuff somewhere back there. I think that's.
- [131:58]
Also a musician. Bonillo's said in the past, and I think this is true, that the joy of being a musician is making music.
- [132:05]
Jason Howell
So 100%. Yeah. I mean, as a musician I can say that, right? As someone pretending to be someone who does not make music, though, I think these services fill a gap for someone who has an idea or wants to get into the fun of making music and doesn't have the time or the energy or the money or the whatever it takes, the commitment to learn a musical instrument, it gets them at least an entry point into what it's like to have an idea and to come out with something on the other end. And as far as the deals are concerned, I think this was just inevitable. I knew at some point, knowing what we've seen these services were capable of, regardless of how they were fed their information and the legality of all that collection of the data that built up the services and all that, putting that to the side, that's a whole other question. But the quality of what they've been able to do. For me, as a person who loves technology and the magic of. Of really good music technology, I just look at it and I'm in awe. Benito, you would appreciate this. I have, you know, after 25 or 30 years of making music, I have like tons and tons, hundreds, 500, let's say, old recordings of songs that I've like demoed, or just me and a guitar, you know, from 30 years ago into a. Into a tape recorder or whatever. And what I realized with Suno is that I could take that old recording, put it in there and tell it I want this song, but I want this song modernized. And what it allows me to do as a musician is get re excited, like re excite myself about these old ideas. Because then I go, oh, that's what I could work towards is something like that. And so these tools, I think they get a lot of flack and a lot of pushback because it's so easy to just type out a paragraph and end up with something. And then people claim ownership or they claim like, I created that. And you know, a lot people of people will push back on that, but I think there's real value there.
- [134:05]
There's a whole lot of complicated issues though, connected to that, and I recognize that. But from a pure technological standpoint of just being a fan of music technology, I think it's really interesting and I think I'm not surprised at all that these companies are being swallowed up and they're going to turn it into something legit.
- [134:24]
Leo Laporte
Does it scare you that Suno, I don't know if you've used the new version 5, but it's so good.
- [134:30]
Jason Howell
Yeah, it's really good. That's what I've been using.
- [134:32]
Leo Laporte
You use it too?
- [134:33]
Jason Howell
Yeah, well, I use it. I use it to prototype. I use it to get a sense of like, what could this song be if I was to, you know, spend some time with it, you know, take it, take an old crappy demo and see, like, is this a path worth pursuing for me? And I find myself getting excited about what I hear there. I'm like, oh, that's what I could work towards. And then I'm invigorating and then I go and I make it like as a creator. I then put in my effort as a musician and I create it so, you know, for my. But I'm also not like a career musician. I'm always gonna write music because I love it. It's dear to my heart, it's part of my expression, it's part of who I am. So the existence of a suno doesn't offend me outright, you know, like, like it's gonna take my job or take. But. But I can totally understand why people are freaked out. It about.
- [135:24]
Paris Martineau
Does it at all worry you to be uploading, I don't know, old demos of you into something else?
- [135:30]
Jason Howell
You know, it doesn't worry me. Again, I can, I can understand why it worries other people, but for me, like, these things are 30 years old. Like, who cares? I mean, I don't care. It's a 30 year old, you know, song that when I was a teenager I recorded in. Into a microphone. It's going, you know, when I pass away, those recordings are probably going to get, get thrown in the trash, you know, like no one's going to ever care about them as much as I do and I'm not making any money off it. So I don't care. I just want to do cool stuff and that allows me to look at my music through a different lens. I. I'm very interested.
- [136:04]
Paris Martineau
Cool use of it.
- [136:05]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because iHeartRadio just announced that they're not going to play any AI music or use AI generated personnel in their radio stations or create any AI generated podcasts. They are one of the biggest hosts.
- [136:23]
Paris Martineau
Are now going to say that they are guaranteed human.
- [136:28]
Leo Laporte
Guaranteed human.
- [136:30]
For a certain group of people that's like, yay, right?
- [136:34]
Paris Martineau
Yeah, I mean, I think that's fantastic.
- [136:37]
Benito
I do think we're about to split here though, where there's going to be a section of people who just straight up don't want AI music and then there's a section of people who want AI music.
- [136:45]
Jason Howell
Music.
- [136:46]
Leo Laporte
It's not just music or just don't.
- [136:48]
Jason Howell
Care, like, because I think there's a certain segment of music like, like I'm Kind of of the camp that, like, I know a song I like when I listen to it and I realize that I like it. Like, do I need to know the provenance of that song? Do I need to absolutely know that a human made that? If I like it, is that the point? And I think that's the case for some people. It's like whether AI is the tool that created it or created a piece of it. You know, Hollywood's going through this too. They're trying to figure out, like, are we okay with AI? AI I'm sorry, but AI is part of your tools. Whether you like it or not. It's going to be the same way that Photoshop is used for, you know, editing pictures and everything. That old trope.
- [137:25]
Leo Laporte
But can you tell if it's AI Generated?
- [137:28]
Jason Howell
When I hear an AI generated song, yeah, I think I can. It's got a watery quality to it that I feel like is pretty identifiable.
- [137:35]
Leo Laporte
That's a nice watery wet. Yeah, but for how much longer?
- [137:39]
Jason Howell
It's got like this. Yeah, exactly. Like the way everything is improving in all other fashion, you know, facets. Its video is pretty remarkable.
- [137:46]
Leo Laporte
Right now they're talking in the discord about Walk My Walk, which is a. Yeah, by.
- [137:52]
Jason Howell
That's right.
- [137:52]
Leo Laporte
Artist called Breaking rust. It's a 100% AI generated song. Number one on Billboard's country chart.
- [137:59]
Paris Martineau
That was, I believe, a couple of weeks ago, an overstatement, I think it was. It wasn't exactly number one. There were no.
- [138:05]
Benito
It was number one on the chart, briefly. The chart was for people who purchased digital music. So, like, that's a very small. You can absolutely game that. It only takes like 3 or 4000 buys to get on that list, right?
- [138:18]
Jason Howell
Oh, really small. But, yeah, no one's trying to work.
- [138:21]
Benito
Anymore compared to like the actual billboard top 100. Like, this is like a Country charts.
- [138:26]
Leo Laporte
The Billboard Top 100 based on album.
- [138:29]
Benito
Sales, a bunch of aggregate stuff, a lot more stuff.
- [138:36]
Leo Laporte
Look, there's only two ways you can listen to music now. You stream it or you buy it. And this is the. It was also streamed 3 million times in under a month. I think this is legit.
- [138:47]
Jason Howell
I mean, at a certain point, would we all agree that at a certain point these things are going to get so good that it's going to become really difficult, if not impossible, to tell the difference between an AI generated song and a real song? Like. Of course. So then at a certain point, you know, these. I heart. And I'm not saying this because I feel strongly that I, you know, about this I heart story.
- [139:08]
Leo Laporte
No, but there are people who will, right? Who will.
- [139:10]
Jason Howell
But there definitely are people who will. And I just think like I get it right now, like you know, right now the music, the technology is not there. But if, if you want to live in a world where you're like. And it's never going to happen because I'm not going to let it happen. I'm sorry. It's. It's like that. That's not how technology works. That's not how it's ever worked. And this is just a weird spot that we're in right now.
- [139:33]
That's how I feel.
- [139:33]
Leo Laporte
What, what, what do you think Billboard's real charts are based on? I mean really, seriously, are there record stores anymore? I mean I used to report to Billboard when I, when I worked in radio and when I worked at a record store I used to report to Billboard. But I don't know is. Does radio airplay count?
- [139:49]
Paris Martineau
The charts can be ranked according to sales streams or airplay.
- [139:54]
And for I'm.
- [139:56]
Jason Howell
Sure.
- [139:59]
Paris Martineau
How much song charts, charts such as the Hot 100 or Global 200, all three data are used to compile the charts. So sales streams and airplane.
- [140:08]
Leo Laporte
So how much of what you end up listening to on Spotify is AI generated? I bet a lot more than you'd like to think. Unless it, unless it's the wrong.
- [140:16]
Paris Martineau
I don't know what was your Spotify wrapped? Do you have any AI generated songs in that today?
- [140:20]
Leo Laporte
I have not. I don't use Spotify. Wow. What was your Spotify so different? Are you a Spotify? Of course. You're a young person.
- [140:29]
Paris Martineau
Is that a young person thing? I feel like Spotify is kind of the big.
- [140:32]
Leo Laporte
Everybody uses Jason Spotify.
- [140:35]
Jason Howell
I have Spotify and YouTube Music.
- [140:37]
Leo Laporte
YouTube Music is what I have Apple Music. The problem, the reason I had Spotify, I got rid of it because I already have YouTube music which I was gonna get rid of. Then I realized but that also gives me YouTube Premium so I don't have to see ads. I have Apple Music because I have an Apple one account. I have Amazon Music cause I have an Alexa. I have too many. At least three or four.
- [140:58]
I have other. There's others. So I think I never heard of Spotify because both my kids have Spotify.
- [141:05]
Paris Martineau
So we should have a. I'm just scanning through. I was on the Wikipedia page for the Billboard charts and the first chart published by Billboard was last week's 10 bestsellers among the popular songs. A list of best best selling sheet music in July 1913 Winchester Cathedral.
- [141:28]
Leo Laporte
You ain't hear nothing yet, mama. All right, now we're going to take it's. Well, there's no break to take. We. We've done our breaks. Now we can do our picks of the week if you would like to. We like to start with Paris Martineau.
- [141:43]
Paris Martineau
I'm trying to decide what I want to do. We didn't get to talk. Should I just read some quotes from.
- [141:49]
Leo Laporte
Sure. This is the ones you can read.
- [141:52]
Paris Martineau
The ones I can read. Hers actually isn't very crass. So this is the book published by Olivia Nuzzy, who famously got fired from New York magazine a year ago for having an emotional affair, an affair of some sort with RFK Jr. Who she was covering.
- [142:10]
Leo Laporte
He says it was emotional. Lizza, her ex.
- [142:14]
Paris Martineau
Other people say it's not. I don't know. Anyway, this is her memoir that she wrote that's being ripped apart now kind of in the press for its interesting writing choices. I'll read some sentences picked out by Scotchy, the Great blocker or the Great Gawker blogger who says she had to review Olivia is Nezzy's new book for Slate, and she did a blog called Sentences from American Canto that sent me to the hospital. The first is see if you can track. If you can follow this. The flag winked beside lanes that bent to borders that faded to barriers that fell to the lines I crossed. I am talking, of course, about how it happened between me and the politician.
- [142:57]
Leo Laporte
It might be helpful to understand she claims she writes all her works on her phone.
- [143:03]
Paris Martineau
Yeah, and I feel like.
- [143:07]
Here'S something that is a useful thing that I guess could go with. I think I mentioned this in the chat. I was once gifted a drone. I named him Pistachio since he was so tiny. Page 44.
- [143:21]
The movie star not a fraud at all. In fact, a shock of honesty in this weird little town approached and grabbed my face. Olivia, the secret to life is to be rapeable, she told me. You are rape people.
- [143:34]
Leo Laporte
Oh my God.
- [143:36]
Paris Martineau
Weird. What are. Oh, one of them is. This is a line pointed out in the Washington Post review as a description, as an example of her metaphors growing in feverishly mixed. She writes, it was as though the media was holding up a doll of me and gesturing at random to different parts in search of kindling to feed the fire of the story.
- [144:01]
Leo Laporte
Oh my gosh.
- [144:01]
Paris Martineau
It's just then that we came from fire and returned to fire, that we move forward only because we have learned to tame some fires, that here at least untamed fires is the greatest present threat to life.
- [144:15]
Leo Laporte
Honestly sounds like she might have a mental illness issue.
- [144:20]
Paris Martineau
Seriously, I think that she.
- [144:24]
Went through something. I really actually enjoyed the Washington Post review of this, which is Olivia Nessie tries and fails to save her reputation in American Canto. And where was the.
- [144:40]
Basically, she says that you can't write a memoir unless you are willing to kind of bury your soul in it. She said in the end, Olivia did go native in her time in Washington, which is one of the things she said says. But her account of her infatuation and the ensuing ordeal is a string of overwrought emotions. You shouldn't write a memoir unless you are willing to make yourself look foolish and pathetic. Nazi breaks this cardinal rule, flattering herself by admitting only to the chicest types of disintegration. And I think that that is. It's part of it. She goes on. This author goes into good literature and good gossip haven't come that they are both savagely and mortifyingly honest. They plumb the depths and reveal the sort of details. They don't save face. They rip it off to expose the raw veneation beneath. And I think that that's kind of good. We're all having a lot of fun making fun of the back and forth between Olivia Nuzzi and Ryan Lizza and all the media drama of it. But the thing about this that I do find interesting and a bit disappointing is if you go through most of the reviews of Olivia Nuzzi's book begin with some great author who's writing this reviewing like I was genuinely a fan of Olivia Nuzzi's reporting for years.
- [145:51]
Leo Laporte
Almost all of them say that everybody.
- [145:52]
Paris Martineau
Was too and still am. I think the stuff she'd written was great, even though now I feel complicated about because I don't know who she has and hasn't slept with.
- [146:00]
Leo Laporte
But why would that matter? Explain to people not in the business.
- [146:06]
Paris Martineau
You it would be.
- [146:08]
She has been alleged to have had romantic, if not physical relationships with two of the politicians she covered, which is not acceptable.
- [146:19]
Leo Laporte
And to have written a. A profile of a politician that her lover at the time was trying to influence.
- [146:28]
Paris Martineau
Yeah. And there's also.
- [146:29]
Leo Laporte
This is perfect juxtaposition between you and her. You won't even. You won't even vote. You won't talk about politics and won't even vote because you need to not be biased.
- [146:41]
Paris Martineau
Yeah, I won't like participate in political demonstrations and things like that because I. I think it's important to continuously like maintain neutrality.
- [146:50]
Leo Laporte
And she. But she. And this is what everybody Says, well, maybe she's more of a Tom Wolf or a Hunter S. Thompson, where she's gonzo. She's one of the things that Rizza.
- [147:01]
Paris Martineau
Her ex, published and claims is a document he found. I think on her computer is a memo that Nuzzy allegedly sent to RFK Jr. Basically spelling out how he should approach being excluded from the presidential debate. And it goes so far as to be like. Like, you need to wear a suit, a blue suit, because you're a summer. You're a summer unlike some other politician, you know, and you need to pitch your stream to these specific news networks, and if they don't agree, then you need to go to this host and basically acting as a political advisor, which is completely antithetical to journalism. But I think the thing that is so sad about all this is it would have been a. I was originally really excited to read this book, American Candid, despite all the things I just said, because I was like, well, Olivia Nesi is a famously good writer. She clearly made a terrible mistake. Grave lapse in judgment. It would be. It'll be a fantastic book to read. How she fell into such depravity, how she lost herself so much, what covering Trump World from the front lines took from her. And it is upsetting that there doesn't seem to be as much self reflection in that as anyone would have hoped.
- [148:16]
Leo Laporte
She's 32 now. She was very young when all of this began.
- [148:21]
Paris Martineau
I mean, yeah, that's also, I think, a huge part of it.
- [148:24]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [148:26]
It'S just pretty sordid and tawdry and I prefer to think of better things. But.
- [148:33]
Paris Martineau
But I will keep texting you every.
- [148:34]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
Time.
- [148:37]
Paris Martineau
Leo's saying this, but yesterday he, to me and Jeff were going back and forth over his, like, why does this always happen when I'm on the.
- [148:43]
Leo Laporte
Air, I'm in the middle of a show and I'm getting text after text after text, and it's like I can't even read the things you're talking about. It is. Look, it's amusing. Mostly. I'm amused by you and Jeff and all the energy around it is very amusing.
- [148:59]
Paris Martineau
I was gonna say, this is perfect. Me and Jeff bait.
- [149:01]
Jason Howell
Yeah, it is.
- [149:03]
Leo Laporte
Thank you. Paris, did you want to share a pic with us?
- [149:06]
Paris Martineau
That was my picture.
- [149:08]
Leo Laporte
Oh, I share this pic with you, actually. This is a good pick, Jason, go ahead.
- [149:12]
Jason Howell
Yeah.
- [149:14]
I forgot that there was a whole pick thing. And I was like, well, I guess the Suno thing could have been a pick, but I gotta have a pick. And then I was looking Around, I was like, oh, yeah, loop earplugs. So.
- [149:27]
I just started in a new band. I haven't been in a band for, I don't know, 25 years. I've just done music by myself. And then friends of mine were talking about their Ween. Have you ever heard of the band Ween?
- [149:40]
Leo Laporte
That sounds familiar. Are you in Wean?
- [149:42]
Jason Howell
Well, I'm in a Ween cover band, and I play keyboards, which is very interesting because that's not a key. That's not like an instrument that I consider at the top of my list of capabilities. But I'm learning anyways. It can be a loud band. And I forgot that I had these loop earplugs, which. Which are kind of like. They don't look like your standard typical earplugs. The cool thing about these is that they don't just block everything. You know, sometimes you put in earplugs, and if you're a musician and you're in a live music environment or you go to a show, you put in earplugs and you can hardly hear the music because they just dampen with, you know, reckless abandon. And the cool thing about the loop earplugs is, A, they're not that expensive. B, you know, I wish I had. Oh, actually, I do. I have an overhead shot. Do I? Yeah, I do.
- [150:33]
Paris Martineau
Wow.
- [150:33]
Jason Howell
They kind of have a little bit of a. Kind of, you know, fancy quality to them, I guess, the little metallic piece and then the nub that goes in your ear. But they come with a lot of different pieces that you can attach to the end that give you different noise reduction, also give you, of course, different fit. And I really enjoyed wearing these when I'm doing the band practice because I don't feel like I'm isolating myself into, like, a muffled room off in the distance. Yeah. So that's. I was on the website, scrambling, trying to.
- [151:04]
Leo Laporte
You didn't get the Swarovski crystal one. I can see that.
- [151:07]
Jason Howell
Not the Swarovski.
- [151:09]
Leo Laporte
I have two pairs. I have one for sleeping, which is smaller and is out of the way.
- [151:14]
Paris Martineau
You. Do you have a hard time sleeping without.
- [151:16]
Leo Laporte
No, And I never wear them, but.
- [151:17]
Paris Martineau
I got them just in case.
- [151:19]
Leo Laporte
It was actually when we were going to go on that trip up the Mississippi, and I'd heard it was very noisy, so I got them for that bad. And. And I. And I'd done some research. I think I saw it on Reddit, and then I got a pair, because I always wear earplugs when I go to Shows you're so smart, Jason. I have bad tinnitus anyway, but I don't want to make it any worse. So I got some of the kind of more standard ones. But what's cool about these loops is you can put a little rubber ring in them that attenuates the music even more. So you have control about how much attenuation there is on the music. And yes, they do. Unlike just stuffing something in your ear, they really do give you a pretty good quality. They don't sound too.
- [152:00]
Paris Martineau
Have they been tested? Do they actually dampen the sound enough that it protects your hearing, though?
- [152:04]
Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah. There's. It's. I think it's 10. 10 decibels. I can't remember. They say they have the. There you go. Ready to rumble.
- [152:12]
Jason Howell
Yeah. So these are the Loop Experience plus. That's what they are. And then when you get the box, comes with all these different kind of.
- [152:19]
Leo Laporte
Fittings for the tips. But there's also a little rubber ring you can put in the. In the loop, I believe.
- [152:26]
Jason Howell
Oh.
- [152:26]
Leo Laporte
So they have. So the experience mode is 23 decibels down. Quiet mode is 26, which is quite a bit. And so, you know, if you're at a concert and it's 100 to 120 decibels, that's deafening. That's very, very loud and will damage your hearing. Anything over 90 for an extended period of time, will it damage your hearing. So if it's 120 decibels and you're able to get 26 decibels down, that's going to protect your hearing. That's going to really help it. You should still get out of there.
- [152:56]
Paris Martineau
But I need to read this review that's just casually at the top of Loop's thing. It was just left by someone. 5 stars. Awesome. They look amazing. They also really help block out sound. My bird screams a lot and putting these in blocks out most of his screams. Screaming. I can still hear people talking to me and it keeps going on and I was like, your bird screams a lot?
- [153:19]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, Bird people are different. They're different.
- [153:22]
Jason Howell
They put up with a lot.
- [153:23]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Different type, different breed. Yeah. So, yeah, the loop experiences are for concerts. Let me see what they do. I think there may be even more. More reduction. But I. I really like them. I think they're really good. And they. You can get a little magnetic, which I did. Little magnetic cable so I don't lose them.
- [153:42]
Jason Howell
There's like a whole loop loop road that I haven't driven down.
- [153:45]
Leo Laporte
There's a whole Loop road.
- [153:47]
Jason Howell
It's a loop. It's. It's a whole loop loop. But part of the reason I bring it up is because, of course, because it's close to Christmas, they're having a sale, and they're not that expensive. You know, it's like sometimes you. You know, it's like dirt cheap or really expensive when it comes to ear protection and stuff. And these are really affordable, but not. Not dirt cheap. You know, they're probably like 30, 40 bucks, but they got to hear that.
- [154:08]
Leo Laporte
You. You're protecting your hearing. Paris, when you go to concerts, do you wear.
- [154:13]
Paris Martineau
I do, yes. I used to hate concerts until I realized that you can wear earplugs and sit down.
- [154:21]
Leo Laporte
The AirPods also. You don't have to dance, huh?
- [154:24]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
I will. Yeah.
- [154:25]
Paris Martineau
If I end up. I. Like when I was at a bachelorette party, we ended up at a club, and I hadn't brought earplugs plugs, and I was, like, so physically uncomfortable because I feel like hearing getting damaged. But then I put the air plug.
- [154:37]
Leo Laporte
AirPods work really well, actually. Yeah, they're. I've. I've gone to shows with AirPods, too.
- [154:42]
Paris Martineau
Is it. Does it actually help, though? Because it's active noise cancellation. Is that not.
- [154:46]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, but if damaging. If you have a good seal.
- [154:48]
Jason Howell
Yeah, if you have a good seal, you're sealing them.
- [154:51]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. So it's not that sound is. Your ears are being protected. Absolutely.
- [154:55]
Paris Martineau
But the active noise cancellation isn't producing other noise that cancels it out, but is also damaging. Okay.
- [155:02]
Leo Laporte
No, it's.
- [155:02]
Paris Martineau
I don't know how noise works.
- [155:04]
Leo Laporte
It's bringing it down. Well, you got a wave like that, and then an active noise cancellation gets a wave in the other direction.
- [155:11]
Paris Martineau
But the fact that there's another wave, that's not.
- [155:13]
Leo Laporte
No, you're not hearing the other wave. They're canceling each other out.
- [155:16]
Jason Howell
No, they cancel each other out.
- [155:17]
Leo Laporte
So there's a. There's a trough and there's a hump and the hump and the trough, and they just zero.
- [155:23]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
Out.
- [155:23]
Paris Martineau
Out.
- [155:23]
Leo Laporte
It's amazing. It's a miracle. Yeah. Yeah, that's. That's a good. You know what? I bet you people don't know that.
- [155:30]
Paris Martineau
Noise cancellation is not making more noise multiple times before. I guess it was many years ago, but I never found a straight answer.
- [155:37]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, so they do two things. They seal your ear because of the tips. If you've got good tips. So that's cutting it. And then the noise cancellation is bringing it down even more. Yeah. It's not putting More noise in your ears. Good news.
- [155:50]
Paris Martineau
Good news.
- [155:51]
Leo Laporte
That's because they have microphones on them and they can. And the circuitry in there takes the music.
- [155:57]
Paris Martineau
They figure out what this is and.
- [155:58]
Leo Laporte
They make the music, shifts it over 90 degrees and then the trough fills the wave and the wave fills the trough and you get nothing.
- [156:09]
Jason Howell
Or takes the air noise of the airplane and does same thing.
- [156:14]
Leo Laporte
That's why it works with continuous noise, but it doesn't work very well with transit noise, like because it doesn't have enough time to generate a canceling wave. Yeah, that's a good. I'm glad you brought that up. I thought that was common knowledge. The more you know, the more you know. Paris Martino, everybody should read her. Are you working on like the next big expo, Consumer Reports soon? You gotta subscribe.
- [156:40]
Paris Martineau
You don't need to subscribe, but you should because you should support good journalists. Yes, but you don't need to subscribe to read my stories. But you should because it's really, really affordable.
- [156:50]
Leo Laporte
Are all of your stories outside the paywall?
- [156:52]
Paris Martineau
Yeah.
- [156:53]
Leo Laporte
Oh, I didn't know that. Is that part of the deal you made?
- [156:56]
Paris Martineau
I mean, no, it's just our special projects team does. Because you're doing good work for people, consumer advocacy work. So that's inherently an in front of the paywall thing because we want it to reach as many people as possible.
- [157:10]
Leo Laporte
Nice, nice. Very good. And again, Jason Howell.
- [157:14]
Jason Howell
Yeah.
- [157:15]
Leo Laporte
All inside. All inside. AI inside. I want to say all inside. AI inside show. AI inside show.
- [157:24]
Jason Howell
Yeah. And the lower Yellow gold.
- [157:25]
Leo Laporte
What's the yellow gold website Together?
- [157:27]
Jason Howell
You know, I don't really have a yellow gold website. Just go on to Spotify or YouTube Music and do a search for yellow gold. One word. You will also find an artist called Gustav Gustafer. Yellow gold. I think that's not me.
- [157:38]
Leo Laporte
You.
- [157:39]
Jason Howell
It's just yellow gold.
- [157:40]
Leo Laporte
Just plain old yellow gold. And where does the weaned tribute band perform?
- [157:45]
Jason Howell
Well, soon in the Bay Area.
- [157:47]
Leo Laporte
Oh, excited.
- [157:48]
Jason Howell
I. When I went to my first, my first practice with them, I was like, oh my God, you guys are like really good. And so I've got a, you know, I've got a level that I've got to work up towards and I'm working on it, but I think, you know, it's fine.
- [158:00]
Leo Laporte
Do they have a clever name? Because, you know, if you're a cover band, like we have the, the Illegals, we have Fleetwood macrame, we have a she dshi.
- [158:12]
Jason Howell
Yeah, acdc.
- [158:13]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, this all girl ACDC tribute band. Do you have A like wean. Like not wean or we. We ain't. Or. I don't know. You need a clever name. You have a clever name.
- [158:23]
Jason Howell
There needs. There's an old ween song that I really like called Voodoo lady that I think would be a great, good, good band.
- [158:30]
Leo Laporte
Voodoo Ladies. The Voodoo ladies.
- [158:32]
Jason Howell
Voodoo Lady. But you know, there's a million names. We actually have a group chat going on and I swear half the. And it's always rolling and half the time it's. It's like band name ideas.
- [158:41]
Leo Laporte
So. But the name's gonna be. Yeah.
- [158:43]
Jason Howell
Before we go, can I mention something real quick?
- [158:46]
Leo Laporte
Oh, just this. I wanted to. I'm sorry, I meant to bring this up.
- [158:48]
Jason Howell
Yes, it's fine.
- [158:49]
Leo Laporte
Go ahead.
- [158:50]
Jason Howell
I'm happy to just have like 30 seconds.
- [158:52]
Leo Laporte
Jason's doing something really cool.
- [158:54]
Jason Howell
I mean, I'm, I'm. I'm playing around with ideas. It's the end of the year. It's, you know, and I'm like looking at December, I'm like, I want to of. I had an opportunity to help someone, friend of a friend who had a podcast and they were looking to take it more seriously. And I hopped on a couple of calls with him and it just made me feel good to take my 20 some odd years of podcast experience and tell him things that I take for granted. But that really impacted his, you know, how he approaches his podcast. And I was like, I want to do a little more of that. So. So I decided that for the month of December, I'm opening up my calendar for like 10 people, 20 minutes. It's not a huge amount of time, but it's the amount of time I have. And if you have a podcast or if you're thinking about podcasting or whatever, I want to get a sense of what kind of need is out there or what kind of problems people are looking to solve around podcasting. I might not have a solution to everything or an answer to everything, but I'd certainly love to talk with you about it and maybe I can give you of some insight that you might appreciate. And I would learn a little something about the demand for something like this. Go to Bit Ly podcasttuneup. I just set that up before the show. That'll take you to a substack post that I did like a week and a half ago talking about this. And that gives you the way to say you're interested. So anyways, that's. Anyone who has a podcast or thinking about it, reach out.
- [160:18]
Leo Laporte
What a great thing to do. Yeah. Lisa told me about it and I thought, oh, that's really cool. Bit Ly Yes.
- [160:26]
Jason Howell
Podcast Tune up.
- [160:27]
Leo Laporte
All one word Podcast Tune up for some help from a guy who's been doing it practically as long as I have.
- [160:36]
Jason Howell
My professional career pretty much is podcast. I started in 2005. I got an internship at ZDNet and I think at the time I was helping out with a show called Dan and David with David Berlin and Dan Farber.
- [160:48]
Leo Laporte
Remember? Yeah.
- [160:49]
Jason Howell
And then I got pulled over to Buzz Out Loud.
- [160:51]
Leo Laporte
Buzz out loud in 2006 and I've asked ChatGPT and it suggests the Bugnish Brothers. Pure Guava Revival.
- [160:59]
Jason Howell
I like that one.
- [161:00]
Leo Laporte
Chocolate and Cheese Whiz. The Mollusk Men. Dean and Jean Adjacent. Voodoo Lady Review. Mutant Boognesh. I don't know what any of these mean. Pork Roll Egg and Tribute. Captain Fantasy's crew.
- [161:15]
Jason Howell
Captain Fantasy is another one that I'm amping up for.
- [161:18]
Leo Laporte
Or Buenos tardes. Imposters.
- [161:21]
Jason Howell
Love it. Yeah. By the way, yeah, Ween is a very unique band, but they also rock. It's everything. The weird thing about Ween is they are everything.
- [161:34]
They might have a bossa nova song next to death metal song next to a like they're everything thing and they just do it all so well.
- [161:43]
Leo Laporte
Wow. Yeah, that's really cool.
- [161:45]
Jason Howell
It's really unique. And when I found out that they were looking for someone, I was like, oh my God. When I was a teenager, the band that I emulated when I first started recording music was Ween.
- [161:55]
Leo Laporte
So, you know, I know a lot.
- [161:58]
Jason Howell
Of the songs and they were like, well, I guess you have to be in the band then. Like, okay, great.
- [162:03]
Leo Laporte
Hey, let us know when you play. I'd love to come see you.
- [162:05]
Jason Howell
All right, we'll do.
- [162:06]
Leo Laporte
Thank you. Jason Howell. Great to see you again. Funny Paris Martineau. Thanks to all of you. A special thanks to our our Club TWiT members. We do intelligent machines every Wednesday, 2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern, 2200 UTC. You can catch us live in the club Twit Discord, of course, but also on YouTube, Twitch, X.com, facebook, LinkedIn and Kik. You also can watch us after the fact, which is probably more convenient. You can download shows, audio or video from our website, Twit TV IM. There's a YouTube channel you can use to clip little bits and send it to friends and family or just watch the video there or subscribe to the audio or video versions of the show in your favorite podcast player and leave us a great review because Paris has got to do some dramatic readings next time.
- [162:53]
Paris Martineau
That's true.
- [162:54]
Leo Laporte
I do make it interesting, make it funny, make it exciting.
- [163:00]
Thank you, Paris. Thank you. You, Jason. Thank you, everybody. We'll see you next time on Intelligent Machines. Bye.
- [163:07]
Jason Howell
Bye.
- [163:19]
Dr. Anthony Vinci
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