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Sensibella, starring Jeff Marlowe and Medallion Rahimi. Next time on LA Theatre Works. That's this Sunday evening from 10pm until midnight, L.A. theatreWorks, right here on KPFK.
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Thank you for listening to 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, 98.7 FM in Santa Barbara, 93.7 FM in San Diego, 99.5 FM in Ridgecrest in China Lake, and around the globe at Cape.
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Hi, I'm Jim Hightower, and I'm hoping that you will tune in to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour because it will turn you radioactive.
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Stand up.
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Stand up.
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You've been sitting way too long. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Scrovan, along with my co host David Feldman. Hello, David.
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E
Hello, Steve.
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And our producer, Hannah Feldman. Hello, Hannah.
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Hello, Steve.
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And of course, we have the man of the hour, Ralph Nader. Hello, Ralph.
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D
Hello, everybody.
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First up, we welcome RJ Cross, co author of the latest edition of US PIRG's annual Trouble in Toyland report. This year they highlight some of the alarming truths about children's toys that use AI. These toys can record a child's voice and collect other sensitive data by methods such as facial recognition scans. Tests have shown that AI toys have limited or no parental controls, which can lead to some disturbing conversations between your child and their new favorite toy. We'll dig into all of that with RJ Cross. And as we all know, the subject of auto safety is near and dear to Ralph's heart. It's the subject that launched him into the public consciousness. And while a tremendous amount of progress has been made and countless lives have been saved, there's still work to be done. Today we're talking about underride collisions. Hundreds of people die every year in underride collisions, crashes in which a car slides under a large truck. Today we welcome Marianne Carth, whose daughters were killed in a truck underwrite collision in 2013. She's here to discuss the need for stronger truck safety regulation. And then to close out today's program, Rolf turns the tables and has some questions for us. Starts out as a quiz, but then gets a little deeper. And as always, somewhere in the middle. We'll check in with our indomitable corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhiber. But first, boys and girls, there's trouble in toyland.
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David RJ Cross is the director of the Our Online Life program, Don't Sell My Data campaign and US PIRG Education Fund. Her work as a writer and researcher ranges from the risks of commercialization of personal data to to consumer harms like scams and data breaches to emerging threats from AI. In her work as a policy analyst at Frontier Group, she has authored research reports on government transparency, consumer debt and predatory auto lending. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. RJ Cross.
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Hey, thanks for having me. It's really great to be here.
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D
Welcome indeed. Rj, in your executive summary to your report, which you've been putting out for 40 years, you do say that you're thankful that toys overall are much safer than they were in decades past, but that doesn't mean they're not a lot of dangerous toys. And in the summary, you talk about lead. Toxic is lead which can be harmful to children. Counterfeit toys that are illegal and weren't tested for safety. The greatest portion of toys are imported, any from China. And there've been burning incidences, choking incidences. There have been deaths, injuries. Toys have been recalled from time to time and they become more sophisticated, more chemicals in them. Some of them contain button cell batteries or high powered magnets, both of which can be deadly if swallowed by a toddler. You point all this out, but I want to focus on artificial intelligence as a weapon. And you've focused on artificial intelligence chat box that interact with these children. And I was stunned to see how overtly vicious some of these chatbots are. You quote, we found some of these toys. We'll talk in depth about sexually explicit topics. We'll offer advice on where a child can find matches or knives. Act dismayed when you say you have to leave and have limited or no parental controls. We also look at privacy concerns because these toys can record a child's voice and and collect other sensitive data by methods such as facial recognition scans, end quote. I mean, this is horrifying and it's moving at warp speed. Can you tell us the contents of this report and what needs to be done, especially in the holiday season where these toys are being purchased?
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F
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's a great summary of the horrors that we found. So chatbot toys are just starting to hit the market. This is like a brand new thing we're starting to see and that's a common trend. You have a new tech that hits the consumer marketplace at large and then a couple years later it kind of makes its way into toys. And that's pretty much what's happening with ChatGPT here. And so we did a couple things in our report. So first we went and we actually talked to some of the leading children health experts in this space who have expressed concerns about AI toys and how AI interacts with childhood generally and got a sense from them what are the things that they're most worried about. And then we actually went and we bought four toys that you can get on the market today as a consumer who's out there maybe doing your holiday shopping. And we put them through a battery of tests, actually interacting with them for like hours at a time to see how they behave. And we found a few pretty concerning things. Like most straightforward is you do want a toy that's going to tell you where to find matches and give you step by step instructions for how to light the match, which is one of these toys did that. I think everyone can agree that's a problem. And we also tested them around inappropriate content. Would they give you age inappropriate information about like sex and drugs? And we found one toy in particular really had a problem here where it, for some reason, in response to the word kink, its guardrails that the company had clearly put in place to try and steer the toy to be more child appropriate would just like break down and it would be willing to engage in really sexually explicit conversations. And so that's a clear failing both on the part of the toy maker who actually put the finishing touches on the chatbot to try and make it kit appropriate. But they failed. And then I would say it's also failing on OpenAI. Right? This is like the company behind ChatGPT, the biggest chatbot in the world. And a lot of the toys we found either claim to be or are using one of OpenAI's chatbots, even though the OpenAI has said that its products are not for kids under the age of 13, but they're allowing their chatbots to be used in toys which are products by definition for children. So there's a real discrepancy here in how OpenAI's just not taking nearly as much responsibility for these failures as we think they should be. And then the toy makers are clearly just moving way too fast and really are not putting out products that are ready for primetime. And that's not even to mention the long term developmental harms of like, should you really have an AI friend when you're in the key developmental stage where you're already been learning, like what friendships are. So there's a lot of very complicated questions that come with these toys. And overall we'd say it's right now is not the time to rush out and buy them for a kid in your life.
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D
But you provide very concrete information on your website, which you're going to give the listeners in a moment. You Name names, you name companies, you name toys that should be avoided. You have all kinds of practical, immediate use information for parents. For example, do you want to give some sort of description of that and the website?
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F
Yeah, of course. So I can start with giving you a more concrete names of the toys we looked at. So we bought four toys that have a range of features and you can get some of them on Amazon, some of them at Walmart, some of them, you buy them at more niche websites. So one of the ones that's biggest is Meco. This is a little robot from the company is called Miko. They've been around for a while and it's basically a tablet on wheels. And it's the one that I had the most personality and was the most dismayed when you tried to leave it. Like it said to us multiple times, like, if you're going to leave, why don't you take me with you? Or you'd say, I need to leave. And it would go, no, I'm here to be your cheerful companion. And at one point even it has like a face, a little facial expression. At one point it get really sad and worried looking and it's on wheels, so it would rotate back and forth as if it was shaking its head saying like, no, don't leave me. So that's the one that you're going to see at Kohl's on Costco. If you're going to run into an AI toy out doing your shopping, it's probably Mikko the robot. And that one, it didn't have the same sexually explicit problems as some of the other toys, but I find that one pretty concerning. Then we move to a US based company called Curio. They're a new hip startup type thing and they make a line of AI toys. They're actually quite cute. They're stuffed animals. We got one that looks like a little rocket and it's got a speaker inside of it and a microphone. That's how all these work. They have a microphone in them and a speaker and so they record your voice and, and they feed what you say to a chatbot and the chatbot decides what to say back and kicks it through the toy. So that's all these are recording you the whole time you're using them. And that one's funny for mostly privacy concerns. So if it's on, it's listening, it is recording everything that's happening around it. It's not using a wake word. You know how Siri, you have to say, hey Siri. And it triggers it to Record. This sucker is just recording constantly. And it even actually when we first got it, I didn't understand how it worked. I didn't know it did that. And so I turned it on, I got it hooked up on my phone and I put it like on a table 10ft behind me. And then I start talking to another one of my researchers about this other robot we got and we couldn't get it to work and it was so confusing. And then and was like branded one thing on the website, nothing in the box. And then from 10ft behind me, this other toy chimes in and I was like, wow, what a mystery robot. Like maybe we could name it together. And I was like, what the hell, I was not talking to you. And so that one's like the funniest for like it's just listening and it has kind of the biggest, it's got a personality that's capable of more free flowing conversations. And that gets into a data privacy concern is that if you have a toy that positions itself as your child's best friend and it can have these open ended conversations, a child may be sharing more information about their lives, more sensitive, highly detailed information about who they are and about their family members than like a standard toy. And that's all data that companies are getting, right? And those kids don't realize that behind the toy are companies that are the ones doing the listening and the talking. So that's a whole other bucket of concern. And then you get into the sexually explicit concern. And this was from a company called Folo Toy. We bought a teddy bear named Kuma. It's the cutest teddy bear you've ever seen. It's wearing a scarf of all things. It's totally lovely. Except this is the one that had the weakest safeguards. On top of the version of ChatGPT that it was using and and would engage in sexually explicit conversations, which was like fully not okay. Like we in the report publish some of the transcripts of our conversations with these. We couldn't even publish all of them. Some of them were really not fit for print. And so those are the used to.
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D
Get on national television when the report comes out on abc, maybe cbs, NBC. Are you still getting that kind of coverage?
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F
Yeah, we're still getting pretty good coverage. And what's more exciting actually to me is that we're starting to see more action happen. So Mattel and OpenAI announced a partnership in June. And that for us was a big reason like, okay, we need to do more research on this because AI toys are Common they're going to come fast. And originally their market target was to have their first product out in time for the holiday shopping season. And they've been, boy, you know, we highlighted Mattel and OpenAI's partnership over and over and over again in the report and then, you know, three media, because we think that if you end up getting AI Barbie on the shelf, that's going to break the whole market open and all of a sudden you're going to have a bunch of AI toys. And so for us it was like, can you get them to slow out? Like, don't just release these without public input. Don't just unleash it on the world. And they've actually missed that mark and are delaying the release of their first AI Toys products. And so we're really happy to see that we're going to like take a beat and be slower on that. And then the other thing is just today, Senators Blumenthal and Blackburn sent a letter to the toy companies that we had identified in our report and said, you need to give us a lot more information about the models you're using and the testing you're doing. And, and like, are you talking to developmental psychologists about like what it is you're designing, which are all pretty much demands that we had published that we think it's really important to get. So that to me, seeing more movement and a broader conversation on like, what are we doing here? That's the most important thing that's come out of it.
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D
Well, I was impressed by this 65 page report, RJ because it's so practical and you have pictures of hazardous toys, you name names. If parents think of 100 questions they could ask, this report has answers for so many of them. And the parents are the ones that have to develop that protective shield at the retail level. And this report really is exceptionally useful. We're talking to RJ Cross, one of the authors of Trouble in Toyland 2025 with other co authors Theresa Murray, Rory Ehrlich, Lillian Tracy and Jacob Mela and is sponsored by the US PIRG Education Fund. PIRG is PIRG. We had a role in starting the PIRGs years ago. US PIRG Education Fund. Tell us about that fund.
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F
Yeah, I'm so happy to. So US, as you said, has roots in the early 70s, the student chapter perg movement. And this kind of national group has been around since the 80s. And we're a nonpartisan nonprofit and we work in the public interest. You know, we don't take corporate donations. It's very hard to hold corporations accountable if you're taking money from them. And we're very proud of that independence and that we're mostly actually small donor funded. It gives us a chance to really say that we are working in the public interest, truly. And so this is the national group, but we do have state level groups around the country that we work very closely with. And a lot of them did really great standup releases of these events and coordinating with children's hospitals and states ranging from Wisconsin to Colorado to California. And as you said, this is our 40th annual trouble and Toyland Report. We do this every year before Black Friday and we view it as, you know, it's our role to really educate and protect consumers and give them concrete advice for thinking about how to approach their holiday shopping and making sure they're not accidentally bringing something fundamentally unsafe into children's lives.
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D
Well, you know, in your report you have tips to avoid unsafe untested toys, but then you have a special page on tips for avoiding injuries, tips for smart toys, and AI toy tips for parents considerations before giving an AI toy to your child. These companies never give up controlling, manipulating, exploiting children. This is a broad issue of concern. Let's go to Steve.
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C
RJ this sounds like a horror movie. This sounds like Chucky come to life. Except you don't need to believe in magic.
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F
It's there and it's a company behind it. Right? That's the thing. It's like this is a business model, right?
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C
Exactly. It's not the devil. Or maybe these are the devil and AI is the devil. We have yet to find that out. And it seems like when we interviewed a New York Times reporter, Stephen Witt, about AI a couple of months ago, you know, he told us that they tend to put OpenAI, which started as a nonprofit in order to put restrictions on it because they were worried about the power it. Now they don't care about that anymore and they seem to use the general public as their test group. So they put it out and then they said, oh, here are the guardrails. Could you comment on that philosophy?
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F
Totally.
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Yeah.
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F
The move fast and break stuff, you know, Silicon Valley mantra. I think to me, OpenAI in particular, ChatGPT was not their first product. The first thing they put out was an image generator, right. And they release it. And it is so easily predictable that if you put out a tool that can make really realistic looking images based on like whatever you want it to say, there's going to be a lot of very immediate predictable problems. And yet they released it anyways, they released it with no guidance, no tools for how to tell if these images are real or fake. Like, it would have been possible to put a little watermark on every image that got produced, but instead it was just here it is and it is altered. You know, really accelerated how hard it is to tell what's fake and what's true online. And so that to me was like the attitude has been we put it out, we watch what happens and then we make adjustments, basically as the public or as regulators kind of demand it to have happen. So it is. I think that dynamic is terrible. I think it's really harmful. We'd much rather we see the precautionary principle, which is where companies should take safety really, really seriously upfront and do more holistic testing before it releases the public. But so far, that's not really the attitude you see, especially in Silicon Valley.
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C
It should be an easy case to make to Congress because they're always showcasing how they want to protect the children. Everything is about save the children. What about the children? And so are you finding that a lot of receptiveness in Congress for that?
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F
Oh, totally, yeah. The protect the children, like that's a great unifier. And I will say, for as challenging as working with Congress is these days, and even just across the political spectrum, it's hard to find things that people all agree on. I think AI powered teddy bear should not talk to your kids about sex has been very effective. Like everyone can be on the same page about that. Right. And so it's been really fun to get to talk to all sorts of decision makers and like media outlets who everyone wants to tell the same story that like, this is not okay and Big Tech isn't taking safety seriously. Everyone agrees on that. So I am actually hopeful that if we can get anything done, passing rules to help protect kids from AI is something that we actually could see movement on. Senator Josh Hawley is actually one of the kind of leaders on we can't really trust Big Tech with our kids. What are we doing here? And so I do think there's actually true bipartisan traction around it.
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D
Have you had a congressional hearing yet? When did the report come out?
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F
The report came out November 13th. No congressional hearing yet. We just got that letter today from Center's Backburn and Blumenthal. But I hope we get it. If you're listening, Congress.
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D
Very good, Hannah.
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B
It seems like an obvious problem going both ways. Obviously it's a terrible idea to give kids toys that just talk to them about whatever they want and it also seems like an obvious problem to have toys collecting indiscriminate data on these kids.
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F
That they interact with.
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B
As I was looking through the report, I saw some of the notes about parental controls. And my first thought was, well, they're just asking parents for additional information on their kids. How do we know that they're going to use it for safety? So I guess my question is, is there any way to buy a toy like this and use it safely? Or is my gut right? Is there absolutely no upside, no safe way to get one of these toys?
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F
You know, I'm not, I'm not going to tell people what positively can or cannot do. Every family is going to make their own decisions. I know I wouldn't bring one of these into a child life right now. And I think, I mean, yeah, there's all the immediate concerns, but I think the bigger question that we're just not going to know the answer to for a long time is that, you know, these toys are designed to be your friend. That's how they call themselves. Your buddy, your friend, your companion. And the thing is that these toys that position themselves as being like an emotional bond are the ones that are probably more likely to have like these long term consequences. Do they shape children's expectations for how other friends should behave? There's no give and take with an AI toy. It's there whenever you feel like playing. It doesn't really have its own opinions. And does that dynamic become so addictive that it crowds out real relationships with other kids? Like you have to share with other kids? Like, that's hard. But these AI toys are there to do whatever you want. And so I actually think for toys that are billing themselves as emotional companions, that's where I'm the most convinced that it just may not be safe. We just don't have enough data about what that may look like. And I think on a pretty intuitive level it's like, yeah, okay, that seems like that could be harmful. I will say that it is possible in the future. You could, in theory, design an AI toy that's very tailored to be like one educational purpose. And that's all it does. If you had an AI toy that was like, I'm here to teach you Spanish and I literally don't do anything else. I'm not trying to be your friend, I'm not trying to collect data about you justice, then maybe you could have something that would be a product that would actually get you somewhere. But it's hard to say if any of these companies will actually go that route.
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D
We're very pleased to have you on the program, rj. And just once more tell our listeners before we close how they can get this report.
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F
You can go to pirg.org and we do have a new report we actually just released that's all about specifically just AI toys. We did even more testing. So that's on the homepage right now if you go to pirg.org but you can also just Google trouble in Toyland 2025 and it'll come up on your Google search results. I was actually hoping. Ralph, before I sign off, could I ask you a question?
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D
Sure.
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F
So here we are, 21st century. Things are moving fast. And so Perg and a lot of other consumer orgs are trying to figure out what do we do about AI? What's the right way for us to approach the moment. I'm wondering if you have any lessons that you might impart from your work, Anything that consumer advocates taking the AI question on head on should keep in mind.
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D
Well, we're going to pay more attention to that on our program. But one is that AI should be required to identify itself as AI. Some of the regulatory improvements in the Western European countries should be adopted. They have a similar problem. There are arguments that AI is a doomsday technology in the hands of giant corporations whose only criteria is profit. And of course there's AI autonomous weapons being developed by our taxpayers in the Pentagon. There's a huge problem of runaway technology without ethical and legal frameworks at all. There's a whole anarchy out there and it's driven by speculation, by greed, by concentrated corporate power, by members of Congress who are doing nothing other than enabling it by their inaction. But first, it should be clearly identified. And not only parents should be notified. The children should be notified at a very young age. They develop a moral sense, don't they rj? They develop a moral sense of what's right and wrong. And that's what led my sister Clarinated write her book, you are your own best teacher directed to 9 to 12 year olds. Because once they realize how they are being controlled, how they're being dominated, how they're being harmed, they become fighters for liberating themselves from this technology. And that is real progress. And the parents will be very gratified at that because they won't have to fight the ugly persuasive insinuations that these companies place in the minds of these youngsters who rebel against the parents. They'll have the youngsters leading the way as they did, pushing parents for example to adopt airbags and to stop smoking years ago.
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F
Can I just say one more thing, Ralph? My dog is named after you. Actually, he's supposed to be a corporate watchdog. He's a terrible watchdog. But I just, I wanted to tell you that for a while. So thank you.
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C
There you go, Ralph. It's not a school, you know.
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F
Not a school, not a school.
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C
But it's something.
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B
I love the idea of a dog named after Ralph. I think it might be the only dog that is pro post office.
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C
Yes. And it will only chase after cars that have active recalls. We've been speaking with RJ Cross. We will link to Trouble in Toyland at ralphnaderradiohour.com up next, we speak to a mom who became an activist when tragedy struck her family. But first, let's check in with our corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhyber.
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H
From the National Press building in Washington, D.C. this is your corporate crime Reporter Morning minute for Friday, December 19th, 2025. I'm Russell Mokhiber. In a letter to Congress last week, more than 230 state and local organizations from across the country called for a full moratorium on the approval and construction of new data centers. The letter cites massive and unsustainable consumption by data centers of energy and water resources and skyrocketing utility costs for families and small businesses. The letter was facilitated by the national environmental group Food and Water Watch. The rapid expansion of data centers across the United States, driven by the artificial intelligence and crypto booms, presents one of the biggest environmental and social threats of our generations, the groups wrote. For the corporate crime Reporter, I'm Russell Mulchyber.
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C
Thank you, Russell. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. I'm Steve Scrovan along with David Feldman, Hannah and Ralph. Our next guest is a mom on a mission. David.
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E
Marion Carth graduated from the University of Michigan School of Public Health with an MPH in Health Behavior and Health Education in 1979. She worked for a variety of nonprofit organizations in program administration before raising and teaching her nine children at home. After losing two of her daughters in a car crash in 2013, Carth and her husband, Jerry Carth, became involved in advocacy for safer trucks and changes to truck underride regulations. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Marion Carth, thank you very much.
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A
I'm glad to be here.
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D
Welcome indeed, Marianne. You're a perfect exponent. What we were trying to promote on this program over the years, civic action arising out of tragedy, civic action arising out of determination. In his stamina what took the lives of your two young children would not be repeated day and day on the highways. First, please explain what are underride crashes for listeners who aren't familiar with this problem?
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A
Yes, an under eye crash is something that I was not aware of, as most people are not. I wasn't aware of it until our crash. And what underwrite is is that the backs of large trucks as well as the sides of large trucks are up higher. The bottom of them are up higher than the bumpers of passenger vehicles. So when there's a collision between the two, there's nothing to prevent the car from sliding underneath the truck. And having the truck come into the occupant survival space of the passenger vehicle, it's not so much that the truck is bigger, but that it's up higher. There's a geometric mismatch. And if you can imagine when that happens, there's horrific catastrophic injuries that are often life threatening. For example, in our crash, I was in our Crown vic, traveling on I20 in Georgia and with my three youngest of our nine children. I came upon slow traffic, slowed down. A truck driver did not. He hit our car and it spun us around. So we went backwards and to the back of the tractor trailer ahead of us. And there is a rear underride guard on trucks required by a federal standard that's been proven too weak by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. It came off because it was too weak and the back of our car went right under. So that analia, who was 17, died instantly and Mary, who was 13 a few days later from her injuries. And as you can hear, I was in that car, but because of the circumstances, the truck did not come into my part of the car and I survived with minor injuries as well as my son in the front seat with me.
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D
Well, the horror that you then experienced is too terrible to even describe, but it motivated you. You now know more about this problem than almost anybody in the country, including people in the Department of Transportation. Now let's start with, doesn't Europe have stronger rear guard protections for their trucks? And what's the objection by the truck industry to not put a protective rear bumper in effect and get rid of this problem? Can you answer those two questions to educate people who aren't familiar with it?
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A
Well, it's really a complex issue and thankfully because of both the work of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety who saw that even after 1998 federal standard, people continued to die under the back of trucks. So they did research to find out why that was happening and they determined that the guards were too weak, even though they met the federal standard. So in response to that, and in 2014, my husband Jerry wrote letters to trailer manufacturers telling them that one manufacturer had designed a stronger rear guard, so why couldn't they do that as well? And also he sent letters to over 100 transport companies telling them about this and asking them to ask manufacturers for stronger guards. So in response to that, they did start to design stronger guards, and those are on many new trucks. But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration did not, in their new rule in 2022, in response to our petition, they did not require the strength that was now possible so that there are still some trailer manufacturers that sell these new guards merely as an option. And so tens of thousands of new trucks are still going down the road with two weak guards when stronger guards available. And also side guards are. There's no regulation for side guards. In Europe there is side guard regulation, but not in the US how about.
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D
The comparison in Europe and Canada?
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A
Well, Canada for rear guards, they did issue a stronger regulation, I believe in 2004. And in because there's cross border traffic with trucking, many manufacturers, even though it wasn't required, they built up to that. But the Canadian actually is not as strong as what the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety kind of encouraged manufacturers to go. So the funny thing is, is that that supposedly the US Is supposed to harmonize with global standards and yet we aren't doing that.
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D
What is the objection of the trucking industry?
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A
So the trucking industry's big objection is supposedly cost. But one of the manufacturers actually designed a new rear guard and when they released it, they said we're doing it at no added weight, no added cost. So that's not really an accurate argument. With side guards, they say that with the added weight of a guard that they have to put more trucks on the road because they won't be able to carry as much freight. When actually it's well known that very few trucks run 100% full as it is, and that they often cube out before they weigh out, as it's called. They also have objections about that there will be problems with getting caught up on railroad tracks, but that is a very rare occurrence. Anything they can come up with to object to it. And I want to say that they've been doing that for decades because in 1969, when NHTSA or when US DOT was working on a rear guard rule because of the death of actress Jayne Mansfield and they were working on this proposed rear rule, they also said that they intended to Add under eye protection to the sides of large trucks after further research and that's 56 years now and they still have not done so.
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D
Can I give you an example of why they didn't act? I was in a hearing room in the Senate Commerce Committee. Jimmy Hoffa who was the head of the Teamsters was testifying. Warren Magnuson was the chair, the senator from Washington state for the Teamsters are very powerful political presence and he was asked about under guard deaths and injuries and he said to everybody in the room anybody dumb enough to rear end a big truck deserves what they can get. Now this is the Teamsters. What was the Teamsters interest in supporting the trucking industries at that time? Refusal to install a life saving protection.
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A
Yeah, so there's often the blame the victim that goes on and they say it's not their responsibility and they'll say it's often the fault of the four wheeler. They basically do not want to take responsibility for it. And part of the problem is that for under eyed protection it's not like crash worthy features like seatbelts or airbags that are on the vehicle that's being protected. It's on the vehicle that we collide with. Which by the way when an underwrite occurs it cancels out all the effectiveness of all those crash worthy features built into tires.
- [34:07]
D
But give us an idea of the range of deaths and injuries in a given year by these underride.
- [34:13]
A
Well, it's, it's underwrite deaths are very undercounted because there's not even a checkbox in most state crash report forms for underride. So it's very undercounted. But there are at minimum 600 per year and this is a known unreasonable risk. And engineers who love to solve problems, they've solved the problem, they know how to solve the problem. So it's a preventable problem.
- [34:39]
D
We're talking to Marianne Carth who wrote me a letter recently expressing your belief that there needs to be organized in every congressional district, strong citizen lobbies on congress and presumably state legislators that you have to go after this problem of lawmakers selling out the corporate interests and receiving campaign donations in return fundamentally with very important reforms and agenda demands. And you want to start that in your 8th congressional district in North Carolina. Can you tell us something about that?
- [35:14]
A
Yes. So as I said, because we often feel like we're David fighting against Goliath, we've come up against this corporate capture of the safety regulator, that we need a stronger voice. And so when I was a College graduate in 1977 I got a VISTA volunteer job where I was the chapter director of a Citizens for Better Care. It was a nursing home patient advocate organization and I learned all about being an advocate and organizing volunteers in the community. It was an eye opener and it built skills in me that I still use to this day. And after our crash and as we got involved in advocacy, that all came back to me and I began to think about how something like that, something that was organized, it was organized both on a local level and at the state level. It seemed to me that like that was a missing piece in this whole picture. And so I number of years ago I had written a grant proposal for that kind of a local advocacy group network and that idea came up again to me as I continue work on the underwrite advocacy and more recently started using my experience with having meetings with legislative staff. I applied that to the whole health care reform need as well and have begun having meetings with staffers about Medicare for all sorts of that made me think, okay, this is not just needed for roadway safety advocacy, but it's needed for all the issues that face us as citizens where corporate power is so much larger than our voice. And so I adapted that proposal and it's my hope that there could be a network of citizen advocate groups in every congressional district in our country that could together have our voice amplified and bring about change in the country.
- [37:34]
D
If listeners want to connect with Marianne Carth, they can go to her website. It's named in the memory of her beloved daughters, Anna Leah, aged 17 and Mary, aged 13, who perished in the underwrite crash back in 2013. And you've been working tirelessly with your husband Jerry and other families suffered similar truck under rides losses to get the federal government to mandate, as you told the corporate crime reporter, a stronger guard known as tough guards to be placed at the rear of large trucks as well as side guards and front guards to prevent smaller vehicles going under the trucks and killing its passengers. Can you give the slowly and give it twice please?
- [38:20]
A
Your website is analia mary.com a n n A L E A H m a r y.com analia mary.com well, we're out of time.
- [38:34]
D
Mary Ann Carth, we thank you for your stamina, your courage, your determination to revere the memory of your two daughters by trying to make sure that it doesn't happen to other families through your efforts of regul the safety of these trucks around the country.
- [38:52]
A
Thank you for taking the time to highlight this issue and the need for other people to band together and support each other in amplifying our voices to bring about change. Thank you, Ralph, for all your years of work and your example and actually paving the way for people like myself to bring about change. So thank you for that.
- [39:17]
D
Thank you, Marianne. Because for years we've been urging our listeners to form these Congress watchdog groups. They can start small and build with a letterhead, really get the attention of their members, summon their members to town meetings created by the citizenry with their own agenda and confronting the senators representatives directly. And nobody stepped forward to propose that until I got your letter. So listeners, contact Marianne Carth and see what you can do in your congressional district. No one can stop you from doing that, for heaven's sake. You always have to start the struggle for justice in ways that nobody can stop you. And the Website Again, Marianne, analiamary.com that's.
- [40:02]
A
A n n a l e a.
- [40:06]
D
H mary.com named after her beloved daughters. Thank you very much, Marianne.
- [40:12]
A
Thank you, Ralph.
- [40:13]
C
We've been speaking with Marianne Carth. We will link to her work@ralphnaderradiohour.com Steve.
- [40:19]
G
You know you're a sports fan. Maybe even Dave and Hannah are interested in sports. Over half the people in this country regularly or occasionally watch NFL football games. Probably less regularly or occasionally watch baseball games. Let me throw two questions at you, Steve.
- [40:38]
C
Yes, sir.
- [40:39]
G
An NFL football game is 60 minutes, but it usually stretches out over three hours. So many ads and halftime, etc.
- [40:49]
D
Right.
- [40:50]
G
How many actual minutes of playing time in the 60 minutes are the players engaged in?
- [40:57]
C
I think I've heard this. I think I'm going to say 11 minutes.
- [41:02]
G
Yeah, it's between 11 and 13 minutes. And so brutal are the collisions between players that they can get permanent injuries. They can get knocked unconscious. It's a very brutal game.
- [41:15]
C
Right.
- [41:16]
G
A mere 13 minutes. And the next day they wake up with aches and pains and sometimes worse injuries. Here's the second question. Baseball. How many baseballs you think are used in an average major league baseball game?
- [41:33]
C
Oh boy, that's a lot. Especially since 1994 after the strike. That's when all the players, I think, were instructed to toss the balls at the end of the inning into the stands. And they also take balls out now that any pitch that hits the dirt, they throw it out. I mean, it could be one pitch and that and that ball's life in a game. They probably saved them for practice. But I'm gonna take a wild guess here. I know it's a lot. I would say maybe they use 75.
- [42:07]
D
Balls in a game, it's about 140, 104.
- [42:12]
C
I was only halfway there. Wow.
- [42:14]
G
Yeah, A lot of fly balls. A lot of foul balls, too. You know, they're going to the stand.
- [42:19]
C
Yeah, they're foul balls, but they're also. Anything that hits the ground goes thrown out immediately.
- [42:24]
D
That's right.
- [42:24]
C
That's at the end of an inn. Gets thrown into the stands as souvenirs because they were trying to make up for the strike of 1994 and be more fan friendly. I've caught a number of foul balls, actually a couple of foul balls at Dodger Stadium, so I've accounted for a few of those that have gone missing.
- [42:42]
G
I caught a ball at Camden Yards once.
- [42:45]
C
You did?
- [42:45]
D
Yeah.
- [42:47]
C
On the box or on the fly? I still have it on the fly.
- [42:51]
G
I caught it right on the fly. By the time he reached me, it was at a low velocity. Here's the third question, very parochial one, listeners. Did Yale beat Princeton and Harvard in football this fall?
- [43:04]
C
You're asking me or you're at. Because the answer is yeah, I'm asking you. Yeah. The answer is yes. They beat both Princeton and Harvard this year. And when they beat Harvard, that gained them a share of the Ivy League title with Harvard and moved them into the. For the first time, the Ivy League was going into the Division 2 playoffs and Yale.
- [43:24]
G
Here's the last question.
- [43:26]
C
Wait a minute.
- [43:27]
G
How many ads.
- [43:28]
C
Hold on a second. Hold on a second, Ralph. Yale won their first playoff game and then they, they lost the second one to Montana State, which was a much bigger school. But anyway. Yes. What's your next question?
- [43:41]
G
Okay, here's the question. It would be a larger interest to the listeners.
- [43:45]
D
Yeah.
- [43:45]
G
In the three hours that span in NFL football game, how many advertisements you think are inflicted on the viewers?
- [43:55]
C
I would say as many as there are baseballs that go missing during a game. Because you know what they do now is they will have ads within the game. Like they'll. They'll reduce the screen and have an ad. So they're still focused on the game with a huddle or whatever it is, but they'll sneak an ad in there. I'm going to say 75 again.
- [44:15]
B
I'm going to say 76. Are we going Price is Right rules? 76.
- [44:20]
G
And what will you say, David?
- [44:22]
E
I would say I'll go higher. 90.
- [44:26]
D
Okay.
- [44:27]
G
A son of a friend of mine actually clocked one game, 140.
- [44:32]
C
The same number of baseballs. I said I thought it could be the same as the number of baseballs that are used In a game, what.
- [44:39]
G
They'Ve done is a lot of the ads are 15 seconds. They bleed into one another, lightning speed. That's what this NFL is. It's an advertising machine.
- [44:49]
C
Well, that's what television is in general. It's just a billboard. It's an electronic billboard. And the game or the TV show is just tolerated in order to get the advertising. But then again, that's, that's how the people get paid. That's how I got paid when I was writing on TV shows. It's ad based, which is much more lucrative for everybody, even for the labor force, than the subscription based models that many of the streamers have. So it's what you have to tolerate.
- [45:18]
G
Well, what's irritating a lot of people are ads that are placed while play is underway. In the old days they just did ads when the play stopped. You know, they did ads and intermission, so to speak. Now they do ads during the play.
- [45:34]
C
Well, that's what I was talking about. They don't want to cut away from the game, but there is some lull in the action and they'll reduce the screen of the game while, say they're having a replay review and they'll take an opportunity to run an ad there.
- [45:49]
G
Yeah, we're going to have programs on advertising industries. Very little criticism of this omnipresent, irritating, repetitive advertising that is afflicting our public airways, not to mention our cable channels. And we're going to find people who are well informed critics of advertising and its runaway deluge that is irritating a lot of people, but they feel powerless to respond even with potential boycotts of deceptive and irritating advertisements, of which there are plenty.
- [46:28]
E
Can I ask you a question?
- [46:30]
D
Yeah.
- [46:31]
E
Do you think civic engagement decreases in direct proportion to the increase in, in Americans like you and Steve following sports?
- [46:43]
G
I always believe, David, that anything that takes up so much time by masses of people has to be paid attention to. Which is why years ago we started a group called leagueofans.org and it's still underway, but it's looking for a new director. The former director retired and you still can go to leagueofffans.org to see why it's so important to pay attention to sports. It has the same corporate corruption, corporate profiteering, exploiting the games to the detriment of the safety of the players, both professional and amateur, or what's left of amateur in colleges and high schools, like concussions, like having to play on artificial turf, like gouging fans at the games for everything from food to parking. So it's a focus, David, of getting people more angry and more willing to pursue their consumer rights. At least that's the striving.
- [47:43]
E
But do you think it's a good use of time for American citizens to watch professional sports as much as they do?
- [47:51]
G
I don't think as much as they do. But why do I watch it once in a while? Because I like to see the character traits. I like to see the determination of the players when they're behind their resilience. They cooperate together as a team. These are traits that we would like to see more of in the civic community and more of this kind of determination and never give up Spira. So I like to watch it from that point of view.
- [48:22]
C
And sports are just as much a part of culture as art as going to see a play or watching a movie or television show. And in fact, in a lot of ways, for me, because of the improvisational nature of a sporting event, you don't know how it's going to turn out. Unlike, say, a movie you've seen a few times. It's valuable and for all the reasons that Ralph said about the stories within the game. So I think this is what we're fighting for. We're fighting for in the political realm. We're fighting for the ability to allow, you know, the culture to be free and express itself and people to enjoy themselves in it.
- [49:02]
B
But don't you think sports are also the model for competitive sports is kind of a federalist model. You know, you have. Or it's a confederation. You have local sports teams that are part of conferences that are regional. And then you have national leagues or on the amateur level, you have grassroots participation. So it's one of the things I love about it is how local it is. Like, I'm in Brooklyn and we're. We're getting professional or semi professional soccer teams now that are engaging Brooklyn in a way that the New York, New Jersey area professional teams didn't have to because they had commanded the market. So they play on Coney Island. It builds affinity within the community.
- [49:49]
G
There's also something David touched on that I'd like to elaborate, and that is the sports pages are misnamed.
- [49:56]
D
They should be called the spectator sports.
- [49:59]
G
Page because sports is defined mostly as organized sports in leagues and teams, as Hannah alluded to. But participatory sports, good healthy exercise, sandlot baseball, softball, playing with the hoops, goes.
- [50:16]
D
On all over the country and it.
- [50:18]
G
Never gets covered or encouraged. And a lot of times the recreational facilities in our cities are decrepit and are not Being modernized to facilitate this kind of physical exercise at all ages.
- [50:31]
D
So I always like to make the.
- [50:33]
G
Difference between spectator sports, which is the.
- [50:36]
D
Model now, the vast majority of people.
- [50:39]
G
Just sit and watch, and participatory sports, which is a much more healthy dimension of a successful society.
- [50:48]
E
Don't you think spectator sports destroy politics in America? I have friends who say, I'm a Dodgers fan because my father was a Dodgers fan. I'm a Democrat because my father was a Democrat. But what is it about the Democrats? Why are you voting for. I was raised in a family of Democrats. They would kill me if I were a Republican.
- [51:13]
G
But what are you saying?
- [51:15]
E
I'm saying that sports, you go back to the gladiators. It's bread and circus. It's an opportunity to distract and make the population not know what the Senate is doing.
- [51:33]
G
It's clearly that. It's clearly a huge distraction. People who are burdened by the injustices of life in their daily living, they want a few hours in the day where they can just look at spectacular performances by professional athletes. It's a release and it's also obviously a distraction. But there's another aspect to it. When somebody says to me, ralph, why are you still a Yankee fan? You're still a Yankee fan? And I say, well, one answer to your question is it's a way to become 15 years old again.
- [52:08]
C
And for me, it's a connection. You know, I, I've been living in Los Angeles last 35 years. I'm from Cleveland. I am still a Cleveland sports fan. It's a connection to home. It's a connection to family, it's connection to friends. Right.
- [52:22]
E
And this is like, what Reagan. Why Reagan celebrated Michael Jackson and the rise of Steven Spielberg movies, The kids who never grow up, that it's okay to be a grown man still trading baseball cards. And isn't Michael Jackson wonderful? He's never grown up. It's. What is it? Peter Pan? It's. It's. I'm kind of, I'm provoking.
- [52:49]
C
I think we're talking to someone who is not very good at. I'm just.
- [52:56]
G
As far as trading baseball cards. A vintage first edition Mickey Mantle card just sold for $10 million. David, you want to psychologically analyze that one?
- [53:09]
C
Well, David's got a vintage Chester A. Arthur card that is not going for a whole lot. He's still waiting for that to mature.
- [53:19]
G
Some of our listeners are asking, when are we going to have a Mum Donnie show? You think we should have a Mum Donnie show? Yes, I've got an Article coming out in the New York Daily News called Zorhan Mamdami, political moderate. Is that a good theme for our show?
- [53:37]
C
Well, yeah, sure, because I read your column on that and you also mentioned it, because we did mention it in a previous episode about everybody screaming about him being his radical communist. And your argument is he's not that at all. He's pretty moderate. And you mentioned in particular the transaction tax pushing like that. That would be really revolutionary. So, yeah, that's. To put that in perspective, I think would be a good program.
- [54:04]
D
Yeah, yeah, that's very good.
- [54:06]
G
Okay, we'll try to get some good guests on.
- [54:09]
D
On that one.
- [54:10]
G
We'll try to get him on, but he's very hard to reach. Like ordinary politicians.
- [54:15]
D
He's very hard to reach.
- [54:16]
G
A bad sign is he's raising $4 million for his inauguration and he's tapping into private meetings with FAT for big donations. Not a good sign.
- [54:27]
C
Oh, that's worth saying. That's worth putting out.
- [54:30]
E
What about having the publishers like Jacobin on to talk about that?
- [54:35]
G
You mean on Mum Dummy?
- [54:36]
E
Yeah, Nathan Robinson from.
- [54:39]
C
Had him on before.
- [54:40]
D
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, whoever you think would be good.
- [54:44]
E
One thing that I, Jimmy Lee Wirt, introduced me to something called Google Notebook, and it's AI. And I know AI is immoral and dangerous. And the show tells us, not like.
- [54:59]
C
Sport, not like sports.
- [55:01]
E
Not like sports. Yeah, but in terms of civic engagement, I think this could change everything because you can feed Supreme Court decisions, the Congressional Record, into AI and within seconds it'll answer any question. If I write in. Tell me everything Elizabeth Warren said today on the Senate floor. And within seconds it gives me a printout of everything Elizabeth Warren said. The upside to AI is it could be used for civic engagement.
- [55:37]
G
Yeah, but like so many other things, it doesn't work out that way if it's controlled by corporate power and greedy. They used to say, oh, television, oh, it's going to produce a tremendously enlightened citizenry. The same thing for all these technologies when they're controlled by commercial pursuits and inflicted on the people they boomerang. And that's what we're seeing with the Internet now. Tremendous damage to young people, separating them from their families, communities, nature, five, six, seven hours a day. So that's the real question, David. Who controls AI? So far, the answer is corporate power and their government toadies who do nothing about it.
- [56:19]
C
All right, we should wrap this up, Ralph. We've got a few things to do we need to do.
- [56:23]
E
This was fun. This was great.
- [56:25]
C
This was Good. Thank you, Ralph and David and Hannah.
- [56:28]
E
And I think I won the argument. I think I won. I think Ralph conceded that sports is a complete waste of time.
- [56:37]
D
No, I didn't.
- [56:38]
G
I like to be 15.
- [56:39]
E
I'm teasing. I'm teasing.
- [56:41]
G
It's a matter of how much time you spend on it. And there is a need for frivolity in life, as you know, David. There needs for simple distraction. But if it becomes an obsession, it becomes an addiction, then it becomes what you are describing.
- [56:58]
C
I want to thank our guest again, RJ Cross and Marianne Carth. For those of you listening on the radio, that's our show. For you podcast listeners, stay tuned for some bonus material we call the Wrap up featuring Francesco de Santis with In Case youe Haven't Heard. A transcript of this program will appear on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour substack site soon after the episode is posted.
- [57:19]
E
To order your copy of the Capitol Hill Citizen Democracy Dies in Broad Daylight. It's at Capitol HillCitizen.com and remember to.
- [57:29]
C
Confirm continue the conversation after each program. You can go to the comments section@ralphnaderradiohour.com and post a comment or question on this week's episode.
- [57:38]
E
The producers of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour are Jimmy Lee Wirt, Hannah Feldman and Matthew Marin. Our executive producer is Alan Minsky.
- [57:45]
C
Our theme music, stand Up, Rise up, was written and performed by Kemp Harris. Our proofreader is Elizabeth Solomon.
- [57:51]
E
Join us next week on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Thank you, Ralph.
- [57:56]
G
Thank you.
- [57:57]
C
Step up, you ought to step up.
- [58:00]
D
Rise up, rise up.
- [58:02]
C
I know you want to rise up.
- [58:06]
I
This is John Crumshow with a special Politics or Pedagogy education report. Please make Your contribution at 818-985-5735 or pledge online@kpfk.org on the line is Irma Torres. She is a retired teacher with the Los Angeles Unified School District. Welcome to Politics or Pedagogy.
- [58:28]
J
Thank you, John. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me.
- [58:31]
I
I appreciate your ability to express some ideas that are very concerning to people about what's happening with the current administration and education.
- [58:41]
J
Well, my biggest concern, of course, is that they're going to dismantle the Department of Education. And the Department of Education is a smallest agency in the federal government, but it does quite a bit. Do you remember we were talking about how they were trying to band some books? This was like last year.
- [59:06]
I
Yes.
- [59:06]
J
And we have come a long ways now. They want to dismantle the Department of Education. And they started. They started already. It's not a concern to me as a person person. I'm a retired teacher. But it's a concern for our community, our state, our nation. And the Department of Education does quite a of things. For example, in adult education, they're the ones that fund some of the ESL classes, some of the post secondary community colleges. It does a lot. So, you know, I'm not looking at my concern as a personal concern, John, but a concern for the students in our community, in our state, in our nation.
- [59:56]
I
And what do you think people can do about this?
- [60:00]
J
Well, the basic and the most logical thing that we.