Ring Cameras, Nancy Guthrie, and the State of the Surveillance State, with Bill Simmons

Summary

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Wait a Second…: Ring Cameras, Nancy Guthrie, and the State of the Surveillance State Podcast: Wait a Second... Host: The Ringer (Jason Concepcion) Co-host: Tyler Parker Guest: Bill Simmons Release Date: February 19, 2026

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Episode Overview

This debut episode dives into the chilling transformation of modern day mass surveillance—how it went from shadowy government overreach to fun, convenient, and engaging consumer technology. Through real news, pop culture history, and current events (including Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance and Ring’s infamous Super Bowl ad), Jason Concepcion, Tyler Parker, and Bill Simmons explore the nuanced, ever-expanding, and often unsettling presence of surveillance in our lives. The tone is witty yet deeply critical, with sharp asides, tangents, and frequent nods to pop culture and personal experience.

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Main Topics and Key Discussion Points

1. The Evolution of Surveillance: From Scary to "Fun"

• Opening Story: FaceApp Craze (00:08)
  • Jason recounts the viral 2019 FaceApp phenomenon where millions (including celebrities and regular folks) uploaded selfies to see themselves aged—unknowingly sending biometric data to Russian servers and granting broad, irrevocable data rights via unread terms of service.
  • “Surveillance stopped being scary and it started being fun.” — Jason (00:41)
• Nuance: Despite a brief media uproar (Sen. Schumer writing the FBI, DNC warnings), most people shrugged and moved on, showing how normalized invasive tech had become.

2. Why This Show Exists: The Groupchat News Void

• Genesis from Viral Conspiracies (03:20)
  • Bill wanted a place for the “weird stories” that circulate in group chats but rarely get mainstream news coverage, referencing the viral “airplane lady” and various unexplainable internet events.
  • The podcast was born from the realization that there’s a gap in group-chat driven, rabbit-hole news content.
  • “I've started keeping a Google Doc with all these themes… who could drive this fancy race car? Obviously, go right to you.” — Bill (04:00)

3. Case Study: The Nancy Guthrie Disappearance & Nest Camera Mystery

• Incident Overview (05:24)
  • Nancy Guthrie went missing, and investigators immediately turned to her Nest camera for answers.
  • Surprise: Basic-tier subscribers can’t access stored footage, but Google ultimately produced footage anyway, prompting serious privacy questions.
  • Expert Reaction: Ex-NSA researcher Patrick Jackson (quoted) suggests Google revealed undisclosed surveillance capabilities under pressure.
  • “This is Google tipping their hand for potentially a capability that maybe they've never disclosed.” — Patrick Jackson via Jason (06:18)
• Segue to Ring Super Bowl Ad (07:00)
  • Bill and Jason discuss the much-criticized ad wherein neighborhood cameras—powered by AI—help find a lost dog, promoting a vision of interconnected surveillance that unnerved privacy advocates.
  • “Viewers called it dystopian and terrifying… no one will be safer in Ring's surveillance nightmare.” — Jason citing EFF (07:41)
  • Public backlash led Ring to abruptly cut ties with Flock Safety (makers of license plate readers).

4. Paranoia and Practicality: Living with Surveillance at Home

• Personal Comfort Levels
  • Jason has a Nest camera but disables microphones; Bill is highly uncomfortable, rating his concern a 15/10.
  • Bill’s Take: “Cell phones are tracking you wherever you are every seven seconds… I don't think people fully understand that yet.” (11:04-11:44)
• Data Storage & Data Retention Loopholes (12:17–15:20)
  • Tech giants stockpile data, often contradicting claims of deletion.
  • Google’s TOS for Nest explicitly allow for indefinite data retention (“deleted data may linger”).
    • “Linger is such a great word… like, I'm going to follow you the rest of your life.” — Bill Simmons (14:57)
  • Jason raises concerns about the storage boom (new data centers) and questions whether companies ever truly erase any content.

5. Generational Divide: Are Younger People Less Worried?

• Shame and Privacy Attitudes (16:01)
  • Bill argues that younger people have less “shame,” referencing the normalization of sex tapes and exposure compared to 1990s panic.
  • Nostalgic reminiscence of 90s-era fear around putting credit cards online.
  • “Now, 30 years later, I just don't think there's the same kind of shame.” — Bill (16:18)

6. Pop Culture Timeline: Surveillance Through the Ages (17:38–29:07)

• Key Milestones:
  • 1949: George Orwell’s 1984 – surveillance as tyranny.
  • 1954: Lord of the Rings – Sauron’s all-seeing eye.
  • 1974: The Conversation – surveillance as voyeurism.
  • 1984: Apple’s Super Bowl ad – tech as resistance… oh, the irony.
  • 1998: Enemy of the State, The Truman Show – society on the edge of full transparency.
  • 2002: Minority Report – predictive policing as reality.
  • 2010: The Social Network – the “fun” pivot; people give up data willingly.
  • 2019: FaceApp and the “game-ification” of surveillance.
• Notable Quote:
  • _"What if we make it useful?... Let's make it fun." _ — Jason (27:41)
• Cultural Reflections: These pop culture shifts trace how fear and resistance morphed into acceptance—often by making surveillance irresistible or necessary.

7. Can You Opt Out? Surveillance-Proofing Your Life

• Practical Tips (31:06–33:44)
  • Jason automates nightly phone restarts to blunt spyware persistence; Tyler refuses smart home devices; Bill disables unnecessary permissions on apps.
  • TikTok described as especially invasive.
  • “There's just… an all you can eat buffet [for your data]. Instagram could be like, I'm gonna go into JC's Instagram and I'm gonna just take all his photos and do weird AI shit.” — Bill (33:08)

8. Are We Too Far Gone? Nostalgia, Cynicism, & Institutional Distrust

• Cultural Lament (33:46–36:40)
  • The trio wax nostalgic about “simpler” pre-surveillance times (the 1990s).
  • Jason: “I think it kind of was [better].” (33:56)
  • Blame shifts from state power to corporations—who increasingly mask themselves as “small business” or community-friendly (e.g., the CEO fronting their own ad).
  • “Look, we're just a little small business that puts cameras all over the place. Little face recognition never hurt anybody.” — Jason (36:41)

9. Human Nature, Corporate Abuse, and the Limits of Oversight

• Ring Staff Abusing Access (44:19)
  • In 2017, a Ring employee was caught watching thousands of private videos; in 2019–20, hackers accessed videos from bedrooms, demonstrating the constant risk of both rogue insiders and external attackers.
  • Tyler reads from the TOS: “An unlimited irrevocable, fully paid and royalty free perpetual worldwide right to reuse, distribute, store, delete, translate, copy, modify, display, sell, create derivative works...” (47:13)
  • Memorable Moment: Bill, aghast, “That's horrifying. That's in their terms of service?” (47:15)
• AI’s Dark Side
  • AI as voyeur, gatekeeper, and risk: “They’re going to try to say, it’s AI that watches it… it’s not a person.” (44:35)
  • Descent into the “fappening,” AI-generated explicit content, and chilling consequences ignored during early warning scandals.

10. The Lucid Score: Rating the Story's Elements (48:34)

• Legs (newsworthiness/persistence): Unanimous 4/4 — “the story isn’t going away.”
• Unintentional Comedy: 1–2/4 — Dog-a-day Super Bowl stat gets a laugh.
  • “Dog a day is the fucking best… What a day. I'm like, damn, we're doing pretty good in America.” — Bill (49:19)
• Sinisterness: 4/4 — off the charts.
• Intrigue: 4/4 — “Could be the story of the year once the Epstein files are done.”
• Danger: Split between 3 (Bill) and 4 (Tyler/Jason). Growing awareness is blunting impact, but AI’s power keeps risk high.

11. The Doom Scroll (55:23)

A rapid-fire, tongue-in-cheek breakdown of recent weird news:

• Obama on Aliens: (55:52) – Former president hedges alien comments; quips and Trump impressions abound.
• Kevin Durant’s Burner Accounts: (57:56) – Deep dive into authenticity, group chat culture, athletes venting, and celebrity self-sabotage.
  • “Triple double cocaine bear”—Bill’s favorite leak (65:17)
• Shia LaBeouf’s Mardi Gras Escapade: (67:02) – Sad escapism, bar fights, and substance abuse.
• Navalny Allegedly Poisoned with Dart Frog Toxin: (70:44) – Bizarre, Bond-villain-like assassination details.
• AI Dating Cafe in NYC: (72:12) – Jason: “The most diabolical data farming operation I have ever heard.”
  • “This could possibly be the saddest place on Earth.” — Tyler (73:24)

12. Conspiracy Corner (73:40)

• Closing Segment Proposal: Each guest should confess a “half-baked” conspiracy theory they sort-of believe.
• Bill’s theory: We really landed on the moon, but the video was faked (inspired by Kubrick and Room 237).
  • “Where's the camp for people who think we did land on the moon, but we didn't videotape it?” — Bill (75:21)
• Jason: Eyes Wide Shut as Epstein foreshadowing; rich and powerful consistently “miss the message” of Lord of the Rings.
• Ben Simmons (Bill’s son)'s take on Kubrick: “Really good director Stanley Kubrick. Really good at this.” (77:08)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Surveillance’s Evolution:
  • “Surveillance stopped being scary and it started being fun.” — Jason (00:41)
• On Google's Data Retention:
  • “Deleted data may linger…” — Jason citing Nest FAQ (14:46)
  • “Linger is like, I'm going to follow you the rest of your life.” — Bill (14:58)
• Generational Shift:
  • “I don't think young people have shame in the same way.” — Bill (16:03)
• AI & Data Storage:
  • “It’s like a fucking all you can eat buffet for them.” — Bill (33:08)
• On TikTok’s Invasiveness:
  • “It's reading your texts, reading your search functions, like anything you use the keyboard for.” — Jason (33:17)
• Dog-a-Day Ring Ad:
  • “Dog a day is the fucking best… What a day. I'm like, damn, we're doing pretty good in America.” — Bill (49:19)
• Terms of Service Shock:
  • “That's horrifying. That's in their terms of service?” — Bill (47:15)
• AI Dating Cafe:
  • “This is one of the most diabolical data farming operations I have ever heard.” — Jason (73:18)
• Moon Landing Theory:
  • “Where's the camp for people who think we did land on the moon, but we didn't videotape it?” — Bill (75:21)
• Kubrick Review:
  • “Really good director Stanley Kubrick. Really good at this.” — Ben (Bill’s son, via Bill) (77:08)

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Section Timestamps

• Cold Open/FaceApp Story: 00:08–02:03
• Motivation for the Podcast: 03:20–05:24
• Nancy Guthrie & Nest Camera: 05:24–07:00
• Ring Super Bowl Controversy: 07:00–10:17
• Personal Surveillance Practices: 10:17–15:41
• Generational Attitudes: 15:41–17:38
• Pop Culture Surveillance Timeline: 17:38–29:07
• Opting Out & Data Hygiene: 31:06–33:44
• TOS and Corporate Abuse: 44:19–47:19
• Lucid Score Segment: 48:34–53:29
• Doom Scroll: 55:23–73:40
• Conspiracy Corner: 73:40–77:34

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Overall Tone & Takeaway

The episode is irreverent but deeply anxious—a true product of the late 2020s, blending humor, paranoia, and critical inquiry. The hosts’ love of weird internet subplots, true crime, and pop culture frames the show’s message: Surveillance isn’t just an authoritarian bugbear; it’s a feature. Our trust is fading, our data is for sale, and as AI races ahead, we all need new ways to understand (and maybe resist) the invisible eyes watching us. As long as we’re entertained—or at least caught up on the weirdest news—maybe we’ll keep playing along.

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(End of Summary)

Transcript

[Jason Concepcion]

It's the hot girl summer of 2019. You have no idea what Covid is and you're on the couch scrolling. You see it. Your friend who usually posts, Casey Framings, has uploaded a photo of himself as a gnarled old man. He looks like a washed Gandalf. You see your cousin posted one. A co worker. LeBron did it. Drake did it. DeJonas brothers did it. You learn they're using something called FaceApp. CNN business reports that it's the top free app in the App Store. You don't want to miss out, so you download it. You take a selfie, you hit the button and there you are. Old, wrinkled, spotted, weirdly convincing. You laugh, you send it to your group chat, you post it, you move on with your night. But as you upload that selfie packed with data about you and your and your device, it travels across the world to a server in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the terms of service you just agreed to when you downloaded FaceApp, the ones you didn't read because who reads them? Granted that company a perpetual, irrevocable worldwide transferable license to do whatever it wanted with that data. And your face. Perhaps it dawns on you, you just handed your biometrics to Russia. You worry about this briefly, but not enough to stop posting. After all, why worry? Sure, Senator Chuck Schumer writes a letter to the FB the app and the DNC tells presidential candidates to delete it. But look, there's old Gordon Ramsay, an ancient David Guetta. How bad could it be? After all, FaceApp isn't doing anything that different from what American apps already on your phone have been doing for years. FaceApp represents an important evolution in the way surveillance is presented in the 21st century. Surveillance stopped being scary and it started being fun. Welcome to the first episode. Wait a second. This is mass surveillance.

[Bill Simmons]

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[Jason Concepcion]

Like many podcasts, the why Files Covers conspiracies, aliens, time travel, ancient civilizations. Some are very serious about this stuff. They believe every detail, even if they don't quite add up. Others tear a story apart. What fun is that? The why Files is different. First we explore the mystery. Then together we separate fact from fiction and see what's left. Some legends can't be debunked, and those are my favorites. The Y Files is on Spotify or anywhere you get your podcasts. The X Files said the truth is out there, but the Y Files, the truth is right here. Hi, I'm Jason Concepcion. Welcome to the premiere episode of. Wait a second. It's my co host, Tyler Parker, and the man that needs no introduction, Conspiracy. Bill Simmons. Welcome to the to the program, the debut episode of the program.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm just delighted to be here. I can't wait. Are we being watched?

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah, we are. For sure we watch.

[Tyler Parker]

Absolutely.

[Bill Simmons]

Are the Swedes watching us?

[Jason Concepcion]

Absolutely. So this show is about the weird stories that kind of fall through the cracks of the news cycle. Why did you want to do this type of show, Bill?

[Bill Simmons]

We've been talking about this since the summer of 2023 with the airplane lady.

[Jason Concepcion]

Right.

[Bill Simmons]

I remember Klosterman was on my podcast and we did eight minutes about this lady who was claiming something wasn't real on the plane. He's back there. You guys don't understand. And it was one of those stories that was not covered on the nightly news. It was not like a major event. But on text threads, people were like, do you see this lady? What's going on with this? And that was when started thinking about, like, there's no podcast that covers this. What is this? And started keeping a Google Doc with all the themes. And then eventually it was like started thinking about, you know, who could drive this fancy race car? Obviously, go right to you. In my brain, it's gotta be, gotta be gc. Like, who else could it be?

[Jason Concepcion]

When you pitched it to me, I was like, you know, I spend too much time on the Internet researching stuff like this and I have nowhere to put it or ever talk about it. I'm a 10 year member of the Unsolved Mysteries Reddit. Did you get a jacket?

[Tyler Parker]

Yeah, you gotta at least get a coin or something.

[Jason Concepcion]

I just think it's very rare that like a mysterious disappearance or a serial killer case comes across my transom, where I'm like, I'm not aware of that one.

[Bill Simmons]

How many text threads are you on or a part of where this stuff gets circulated around? Because I think that's A key piece of this I'm on.

[Jason Concepcion]

Multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple, for sure.

[Bill Simmons]

Including another one, my friend Ben, who after I told him about this podcast, has just been sending me ideas. So it's like this new text thread emerged just because. Does Jason know about this? Does he know about this one yet? So, yeah, this is the kind of burden we have for this show.

[Jason Concepcion]

Well, in this episode, we're going to be talking about mass surveillance. And here's what kicked this off for us. On February 1st, Nancy Guthrie, the 84 year old mother of Savannah Guthrie, disappeared from her home, was reported missing, one of the first things investigators looked at. And we're taping this Wednesday, February 18th, in case there are any developments in this case. Don't worry.

[Tyler Parker]

The war Cash Patel's on the doors.

[Jason Concepcion]

Right. The sheriff's department refuses to cooperate with the FBI. That's a whole other thing.

[Bill Simmons]

It's going great.

[Jason Concepcion]

So the first thing that investigators looked at was the nest camera that she has. And initially it was reported like, oh, we don't have anything. And then like 10 days later, it turns out, oh, wait, we got the footage. Everybody's probably seen the footage by now. Black and white footage of a person in a mask with gloves, you know, covering the ring, that. Excuse me, covering the nest camera. What was interesting about this was Nancy had the basic package, did not have the package where the videos are saved, meaning that apparently when you pay for the platinum package, whatever it is you're actually paying for for access to your own videos, which are, it appears, saved for a long time. Here's a quote from Patrick Jackson, a former NSA researcher, on a story to CBS News. This is Google tipping their hand for potentially a capability that maybe they've never disclosed. Maybe clearly, maybe. And maybe this rose to the occasion where they felt, okay, you know, we have to do this ability, we're going to use it for this occasion. The second thing was the super bowl ad by Ring that ran and kind of shocked the world. The premise was simple. A family has lost their dog and other cameras in the neighborhood activated by AI.

[Bill Simmons]

We love pets here at Ring.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah, yeah. To identify the dog over a dog a day. Yes, that's right.

[Bill Simmons]

They did say that.

[Tyler Parker]

One dog.

[Bill Simmons]

A dog a day. One dog a day.

[Jason Concepcion]

Guys, we gotta put a stop to this.

[Tyler Parker]

I hope that they were like, Jamie, we can't say two dogs. It's at 1.4. We can't, we can't, we can't round up. It's at one. You're gonna have to just say over One dog a day.

[Jason Concepcion]

Let's not be alarmist about it and say it's one dog. Viewers called it dystopian and terrifying. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit focused on digital privacy, wrote that, quote, no one will be safer in ring surveillance nightmare. Senator Ed Markey sent an open letter to Amazon demanding answers. Bill Buddington, a senior technologist at the eff, told ABC News, if this surveillance network that people have on their homes and in their front doors is able to identify dogs, there's no reason why it can't identify people.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, no reason.

[Jason Concepcion]

Rings founder Jamie Siminoff told CBS News that he, quote, didn't expect the reaction, which is kind of like, I think, shows you where we are right now, where the folks behind these technologies are really confident that we're going to love

[Tyler Parker]

it, like, to the point of arrogance at this point, even him appearing in the commercial itself, him thinking, you know, who's got to sell this?

[Bill Simmons]

Me.

[Tyler Parker]

I got to do it.

[Bill Simmons]

We need a front man.

[Tyler Parker]

Yeah. My rule in general is if the owner's in the commercial, I'm pretty much out. Like, a couple of exceptions. Like Dave Thomas with Wendy's.

[Jason Concepcion]

Right. Dave Thomas with Wendy's is a good one.

[Tyler Parker]

The Men's Wearhouse guy, he made me feel, like, safe, you know, But I

[Bill Simmons]

love Wayla Manish me with the sun.

[Jason Concepcion]

And then within days of like, the kind of uproar, Ring announced that it was gonna end its collaboration with Flock Safety, a company that manufactures license plate readers that are placed strategically around.

[Tyler Parker]

Things only open up, you know, we gotta have.

[Bill Simmons]

So this is the least successful super bowl commercial ever.

[Jason Concepcion]

It appears. It appears.

[Bill Simmons]

$5 million to basically torpedo their company.

[Jason Concepcion]

It appears so.

[Tyler Parker]

They said that. I mean, the partnership with Flock was announced, like, the previous October, and only just now they determined that. Following a comprehensive review, we determined the plan Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated. Oh, did you just now.

[Bill Simmons]

Tough times.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah, it's tough times. Bill, do you. I have a. Listen, I have a Nest camera on the front of my house. I am. It has been useful occasionally. I had a dog walker issue that made it kind of useful, but I have some Google Nest products that I turn off all the microphones, always. How worried about this kind of stuff

[Bill Simmons]

are you on a scale of 1 to 10? Like a 15.

[Jason Concepcion]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. This, to me, the Ring thing, I'd always wondered. And there's been little anecdotal stuff with this, right. Where it's like you hear a commercial on TV and then it's getting fed to you in your Instagram. Like, stuff like that, where you're like, that's weird. I just saw a commercial for this. And why is it now? And then how the algorithms work? Like, I think we understand the algorithms part. What we don't understand is how much do they have. And I think for me, I'm like a big true crime. I like all the true crime docs. How the guys get caught is really instructive. With this, like the Idaho killers guy, who is the criminology guy.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yes, right.

[Bill Simmons]

This guy's studying how to prevent crime while also, like banking. Here's how I will actually murder people. Not aware of the. The cell phone pinging in every direction.

[Jason Concepcion]

Right.

[Bill Simmons]

Basically, cell phones are tracking you wherever you are every seven seconds. So there's that. I feel like every email and text you've ever had, they could just dig up.

[Tyler Parker]

Right.

[Bill Simmons]

And there. I think there was how many years here where we're like, no, no, those are gone. Or oh, yeah, I used to have aol. Nobody's going to find those. Well, they're going to find them, and then every text you've ever sent, they're going to find. Yeah, so. So basically, they have this entire track record of every Internet behavior you've ever had as long as you've had the Internet. And I don't think people fully understand that yet.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah, I agree. I think there were a few pieces that were missing when this kind of mass surveillance trend was developing. The one was, well, it's so much data. You heard people say this, and I think I might have said this a couple times. Yeah, but why would they listen to me? And it's. There's so much stuff that they're getting. How are they going to find what I can.

[Tyler Parker]

They can look at me all they want. All I'm doing is sitting here eating chips or whatever. The people say, like, there's like a. There's a casualness to this shit that doesn't take into account just how deep it all goes.

[Jason Concepcion]

Now, with AI, they actually can scroll through everything. Right. And then second is the storage. Like, they can. They really store all this data? Well, I mean, there's a huge groundswell of construction of data centers ongoing throughout the US A lot of local communities are pushing back against these things. Cause they use tremendous amounts of water and electricity. But the capability to like, store all of your stuff now is there. And I think the Nancy Guthrie thing shows that they keep it. And my question is, like, why did they. Why did they tip their hand now over this?

[Bill Simmons]

So when you say they keep this.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yes, they keep.

[Bill Simmons]

Do they keep everything?

[Jason Concepcion]

I think they keep everything.

[Bill Simmons]

So when. So here's the counter of this. Are people lying when they say they don't have it anymore? So like Grantland, our. Yeah, you and I worked together at Grantland. We had a whole four year YouTube channel.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

That was basically vaporized when I left. Because they were spiteful pricks.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Does that YouTube channel, do those videos still exist or they have they actually been vaporized? The more we learn about life, I'm guessing you could trigger those back up in five seconds.

[Jason Concepcion]

I think if there was a significant federal case that involved the grant, like

[Bill Simmons]

House 8 is backup.

[Tyler Parker]

They'd find a way.

[Jason Concepcion]

They'd find a way to get that.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Jason Concepcion]

Here's Google's terms of service for Nest. Google privacy policy states that videos can be captured even when the device is offline.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I mean, think about that.

[Tyler Parker]

That's the stuff that to me is the most alarming because like you say you're coming home, you're turning off the mics on all your stuff and it's basically this is proof that like doesn't do anything.

[Jason Concepcion]

It's like Tom and Succession. We here for you. Yes,

[Bill Simmons]

we here for you.

[Jason Concepcion]

We hear more. You. A Nest privacy statement allows sharing personal information with third parties for legal reasons if Google has, quote, a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information which is in good faith is reasonably necessary to meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable government requirements. So basically, if they feel like they should hand it over, they will. Google's terms of service further states, quote, if we reasonably believe that we can prevent someone from dying or from suffering serious physical harm, yada, yada, yada, they can share it. And then Nest privacy FAQ notes that, quote, deleted data may linger.

[Tyler Parker]

May linger.

[Jason Concepcion]

Just hang around.

[Tyler Parker]

Just gonna like chill for a little while over here.

[Jason Concepcion]

May linger in backups or be retained longer if required for legal reasons.

[Bill Simmons]

Linger is such a great word.

[Tyler Parker]

Such a great word.

[Bill Simmons]

Linger is like, I'm going to linger at this party for another 10 minutes. Or linger is I'm going to follow you the rest of your life.

[Tyler Parker]

They were fussing over that language and some lawyer in the corner was like, yeah, linger, yeah, just hanging out the room, ordered pizza.

[Bill Simmons]

What about lurk? No, no, no, no.

[Jason Concepcion]

Too ominous. It just is kind of like they're like, oh, he's still here.

[Tyler Parker]

Yeah, yeah, on the outskirts, on the. It implies on the edge. You know what I mean? Like it's almost. It's almost on the way out.

[Bill Simmons]

But here's the other thing that's changed. We have so many better ways to store data now than we did 30 years ago.

[Jason Concepcion]

Right. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Like, you can. Whatever the. Whatever. Think about, like, how hard it was just to log on to AOL in 1997. Now we have instantaneous everything. So I'm sure the data is super easy.

[Jason Concepcion]

As a. As a dad of young adults. Of adults, what is. What do young people feel about mass surveillance? Like, my sense is from the younger generation, they've grown up with all these. All this technology with a phone in their pocket, et cetera, that they're just kind of like, much more blase than maybe their parents.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, there's another piece to this.

[Jason Concepcion]

Sure.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't think young people have shame in the same way.

[Jason Concepcion]

Interesting.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Because I think when you think about the 90s and, like, especially, like, when sex tapes were coming out, like celebrity sex tapes, it was like, oh, my God.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Now, 30 years later, I just don't think there's the same kind of shame. And I think they've grown up with it.

[Jason Concepcion]

I remember

[Bill Simmons]

right when the Internet was taken off, and I think you're probably barely old enough to remember this. In the late 90s, there was so much fear about putting your credit card on the trip. And I remember a couple friends who did it, and I was like, oh, my God, really? And then finally I got Amazon. I think my first Amazon order was like, 98. Just put your credit card in. And it was honestly, like, you know, doing shots. And, you know, you're just like, all right, it. I'm just gonna do it. And now people will. They'll do that. They'll put their stuff. You being an airplane, putting your credit card.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Got some guy two seats away. Could just be like, hey, thanks for your credit card. I'll be taking that and running with it.

[Tyler Parker]

I got an ipod mini in, like, 2005.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Jason Concepcion]

And.

[Tyler Parker]

And my dad was like, well, I don't know how we're going to do this because we're not buying anything off the Internet.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. You know, it was like, yeah, that was probably till late 2000. It was, you know, the fear of putting information on the Internet because it was going to be used against you. But then think about the movies back then, too. Yes, but the Net with Sandra Bullock, Enemy of the State with Will Smith. It was all about. They're watching you and you don't realize it. And. But those movies are right now.

[Jason Concepcion]

This is a perfect segue to my pop Culture Timeline of Mass Surveillance with I Grant Lynn and the ringer. For me, the philosophy of pop culture coverage is that pop culture is important. And one of the ways it's important to me is it measures how we feel about something.

[Bill Simmons]

It's an important point. We talk about this on the Rewatchables all the time. You can't judge a 1987 whatever, because that's what they were doing in 1987.

[Jason Concepcion]

So here is my pop culture and political timeline of mass surveillance. We started in 1949. George Orwell's 1984 Big Brother. The Endless War with Oceania. Big Brother's always watching you. And the public perception that I think comes from Big Brother is surveillance. It's the hallmark of tyranny, of authoritarianism. Right? 1954. The Lord of the Rings, the all seeing eye of Sauron, the Palantiri Stones that he sees through. And I think this just underlines that thesis that the one who is watching is the villain is a dictator. 1971 THX 1138 by George Lucas. His kind of like indie film.

[Tyler Parker]

Shout Out. Robert Duvall.

[Jason Concepcion]

Shout out. Rest in Peace. Rest in peace. The thesis being surveillance is dehumanizing. Like, it turns you into an object. The conversation. I feel like, Sean, we should FaceTime Sean for this. 1974 is the Conversation. This is in the wake of Watergate. This is an interesting twist on mass surveillance, which the thesis is kind of like, hey, the people that are watching you, they're people too. They may get titillated or thrilled by the things they're seeing. They're not just like passive watchers. Maybe they'll keep a photo or keep a video. Maybe they'll take it home and watch it later.

[Tyler Parker]

You know, it can also break these people. And psychologically they can just go off the deep end and it makes you play blow a hell of a sax, you know what I mean? Sexy, sexy sax from gene in that

[Jason Concepcion]

1984's Apple Super bowl commercial.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm surprised you didn't put 81 blowout in here.

[Jason Concepcion]

That's a good one. Blowout. Let's talk about blowout. John Travolta.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't want to interrupt your timeline. That's basically like the conversation crossed with Watergate crossed with Chappaquiddick. And I don't know, there's eight years there post Watergate where people are like, it's the government.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah, Is the government okay? Are we good?

[Bill Simmons]

Are they? And it kind of all culminates in blowout, where the government is not okay. They're doing shit. Watch this.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah, that's an interesting take on it, too, because John Travolta is a sound man for TV and film.

[Tyler Parker]

It's a great scream.

[Jason Concepcion]

And it's not necessarily mass surveillance. It's more like independent surveillance and the use of technology by a individual to unveil government wrongdoing.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes.

[Jason Concepcion]

Great movie. Very scary.

[Bill Simmons]

So what's in 84 then?

[Jason Concepcion]

84 is Apple's big brother super bowl commercial where the runner comes in. It's based on George Orwell's 1984. And the idea is technology can be the creative and independent antidote to authoritarianism. We can smash the monopoly of IBM, the government. Oh, the irony. Oh, the irony. 1985, Brazil. Terry Gilliam. The idea being the surveillance state can be clownish and incompetent. But that doesn't make it less dangerous. And I think that has a lot of lessons for today. 1999. 1998. Excuse me. Tony Scott's enemy, the Estate. I think before it's time. Bill I.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a classic, so it's interesting. You didn't put the Net in there. Visit. Because it's so bad.

[Jason Concepcion]

It was kind of because it was so bad. And not as as much of a hit.

[Bill Simmons]

Because that's the first time. Because the Net and disclosure, I think, are same year. And that was the first time. And it was like Hollywood's first relationship with email. They had no idea what they were doing. It's like you're gonna be in a room with gloves grabbing DMs from people. And we just could. But the enemy of the state, they kind of figured it out. That was the first time I was like, could you see. Could these satellites just watch us?

[Jason Concepcion]

Yes.

[Tyler Parker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Could I be, like, running across the street and some guy's like, camera two, like Scott Kahn and Seth Green. I forget who was in that. Seth Green was definitely in there.

[Jason Concepcion]

Will Smith, 1998. I don't even. I think I wanted a cell phone, but I didn't have one. And there's a scene in that movie where Gene Ackman. Rest in peace. Gene Hackman is like. Takes Will Smith's phone and puts it in a potato chip bag.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Jason Concepcion]

And come to find out, actually, not a bad idea today.

[Tyler Parker]

Yeah, it works.

[Jason Concepcion]

It works.

[Bill Simmons]

Why does it work?

[Jason Concepcion]

Because it blocks off all the signals. Today you can buy what's called Faraday bags that completely block the signal from your devices. If you're going to say a protest or something, you don't want them to know that you've been there, but the potato chip bag works.

[Bill Simmons]

Wow.

[Tyler Parker]

Good to know.

[Bill Simmons]

Good to know. Learning a lot already in this episode.

[Jason Concepcion]

1998, the Truman Show.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Jason Concepcion]

What if we are already being watched and our lives are being turned into content? Turns out that kind of true.

[Tyler Parker]

And everybody thinks it's awesome and is watching and is just, like, eating it up. I think that's like a scary aspect of that is just how, like, normal it seems to be, like watching this dude be tortured.

[Jason Concepcion]

And look how it's. How it's changed from 1984 to the. To the 2000s. It's like, this is really scary. This is what dictators do to, like, hey, it's kind of happening already to. Well, there's some good aspects. You can be a TV star, like, if they take all your stuff and turn it into content.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, it's. It's interesting that 98 is the year for this with Truman show and with Enemy of the State, because I think those are two important movies for this. It's probably. I got AOL, probably somewhere in 95, 96. I think that's when most people started to actually use email in a real way. And then there was this phase of, oh, that person I went to high school with also has email. It was almost like reconnecting was such a big part of it. And then at some point, it started to become part of your everyday life and you could feel it. And then those movies came out and it was like you could feel a sea change happening. Did you have Y2K in this?

[Jason Concepcion]

I have Y2K and 9 11. Never forget, I think, two huge epochal events that changed our relationship to security and privacy. And then comes Minority Report 2002, which we are entering an era where that feels like it could happen soon.

[Bill Simmons]

It's an amazing thing we watch now. Yeah.

[Jason Concepcion]

AI predicting who will commit crimes is basically a product that is proposed by Flock. They have a product called Nova, which proposes to use AI to decide who could possibly commit a crime soon. Right. Very.

[Bill Simmons]

Tyler and I are working on a Minority Report, too, about Nico Harrison and the Luka Doncic trade. These trade precogs come in and try to stop it, but they're too late. It's workshop we don't really have.

[Tyler Parker]

I'm excited for where it's going.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. We have the first hour. That's about it.

[Tyler Parker]

We have David Harbour attached to play Luca. It's going to be like in the kind of sort of as old Luca looking back at some stuff.

[Jason Concepcion]

I mean, one of these days we're going to have to do. Whether or not the Cooper flag pick was legitly, legitimately transferred to the Dallas Mavericks in the wake of the Nico

[Bill Simmons]

deal, I thought you were going to go. Was there surveillance in the lottery room? We turned the cameras off. Did you?

[Tyler Parker]

Theoretically, probably. Someone knows.

[Jason Concepcion]

Someone out there knows not to hijack this, but you always hear in the wake of the draft, right, well, listen, Ernst and Young, there's no way.

[Tyler Parker]

It's impossible.

[Jason Concepcion]

It's literally a ghost. You can't do it.

[Bill Simmons]

Nothing's.

[Jason Concepcion]

Why can't we do it? Why can't it be done? Why can't it be fixed?

[Bill Simmons]

Listen, it just always coincidentally works out for the result the league needs.

[Tyler Parker]

The reason that it's because, like, I know there are people smarter than me. You know what I mean? Sometimes when those people are like, no, I've been. I've seen it happen. I've watched the ping pong balls pop out. It's totally legit. You can't fake it. And it's like, I don't know, man. There are smarter people than me.

[Bill Simmons]

See, we've hit the part of the episode where the people trying this out are like, finally, this. There's a podcast for me right now.

[Jason Concepcion]

Let me just say one thing about Ernst and Young. Who makes sure that the NBA draft is up and up. In 2002, the SEC fined Ernst Young $100 million, the largest penalty against an audit firm after hundreds of auditors were revealed to have cheated on their ethics examination. Wow. I'll just say that.

[Bill Simmons]

Wow.

[Tyler Parker]

Jesus.

[Bill Simmons]

Don't forget La La Land.

[Tyler Parker]

Yeah, that's what I.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yes. Continuing with the list, 2008, the Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan.

[Tyler Parker]

Yes.

[Jason Concepcion]

Which in the end feels like. I mean, it is a comic book movie, but it does feel fantasy land. That at the end of this, Batman would just be like, yeah, go ahead. Destroy the thing that tracks all the criminals. Go ahead, alfred, do it. 2010, the Social Network, which isn't necessarily about mass surveillance, but I think is an important step because for me, one of the things that made mass surveillance possible was like, these companies figured out, oh, let's make it fun, actually. Let's make it fun. Do you remember FaceApp 2019? FaceApp?

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, yeah.

[Jason Concepcion]

I talk about it in the cold open. FaceApp was a. You might remember right before COVID this trend of everybody taking a picture of themselves, uploading a picture of themselves old to social media. It would turn out, as I noted in the cold open, that this was a Russian company and nobody knows, like, this company has not gone on to do anything else. And millions upon millions of people sent them their biometrics, including the metadata and the. There it is. Guess what?

[Tyler Parker]

You had it ready to roll.

[Jason Concepcion]

Vladimir Putin's. Vladimir Putin's got all your data.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. And that was when the Russians had my W2s.

[Jason Concepcion]

So there is the pop culture timeline of mass surveillance. And yeah, again, I think one of the things that made this possible was these companies were like, well, what if we make it useful? You can reconnect with your old friends. Isn't that great? Hey, you can make a picture of yourself old. Isn't that fun?

[Tyler Parker]

I think one of the things about social network and Facebook and stuff like that is that these companies realize, oh, they'll just give us all this.

[Jason Concepcion]

They'll give it to us. We don't have to take it.

[Bill Simmons]

All right, so this is why I don't have a TikTok account.

[Jason Concepcion]

Interesting.

[Bill Simmons]

That was when I drew the line after. What was it called? Face mash, Face mesh. After I fell for that one and my kids all fell for that one, and we're like, look how funny this is. Look at mom as a 90 year old lady. And then realizing it was sinister, I was like, I'm out. And TikTok was where I drew the line. But I think something shifts between social network in 2010 and by the time we get to the end of the 2000 and tens. I never thought Facebook would become sinister. Right. We thought Zuckerberg might be a bad guy, but didn't really. Maybe I'm too optimistic. I personally didn't see where that was headed.

[Tyler Parker]

Well, Cambridge Analytica stuff.

[Bill Simmons]

But I'm thinking back to all the times I went to Vegas. You always knew you were being watched in a casino.

[Jason Concepcion]

Right.

[Bill Simmons]

But it was like, well, that's their business. But, you know, we'd be playing blackjack, we'd be winning. We'd be like, turn the overhead camera on. You better start watching us. The camera was already on. They're watching everything. They're seeing everything. It's weird that the world is now the casino.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

I think you can't get away with anything. This is why we're never gonna have a good serial killer again. JC that's it. We're done with serial killer.

[Jason Concepcion]

I love this theory that. Here's my take. What if they just put their phone in the potato chip bag, unlike the Idaho guy?

[Bill Simmons]

Or leave your phone. Why do you need a phone if you're a serial killer? Keep your phone at home. Then you have the alibi.

[Tyler Parker]

Absolutely.

[Jason Concepcion]

Have you seen those?

[Bill Simmons]

You zag against it.

[Jason Concepcion]

Have you seen Those, like, nylon 3D printed masks that have the full face on it? I saw one of Drake. Not to give any of the serial killer ideas. I don't want to do that. I'm just saying what's gonna happen is the serial killers are gonna level up, sadly.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, did you follow the Karen Reed case?

[Jason Concepcion]

Of course.

[Bill Simmons]

It was a huge Massachusetts case. It's amazing how much information they had. About four fucking drunk asshole cops and two girlfriends and a car going backwards with allegedly no cameras around. And they knew every piece of what happened the entire time. And that was another one for me where I was like, oh, man, this is like in East Bum, Massachusetts. Like, you wouldn't think they would have surveillance there, but they do.

[Jason Concepcion]

I love what you said about this generation having, like, a different shame value. It made me think of this. And again, not to hijack the pod. I think if Biden would have released a sex tape, he would have won. Wow. I think if he was like, look how fucking vital I am.

[Tyler Parker]

I still got it.

[Jason Concepcion]

I still got it.

[Tyler Parker]

But you think, look how happy Jill is.

[Jason Concepcion]

I still got it. You thought I was tottering around. I can't move. I can move. I think you would want anyway.

[Tyler Parker]

I think I agree.

[Bill Simmons]

It's pretty good.

[Jason Concepcion]

Are you taking any steps to not? You mentioned not having a TikTok. Here's what I do. I read several pieces. In the wake of the Pegasus hacking scandal, there's a product called Pegasus that allows governments or whoever has the application to basically see whatever you are looking at in your phone in real time. They deliver it by various phishing techniques. They can send you a text that looks like it's from your friend. You click on it and you have it. But if you turn your phone off regularly, they have to resend it to you. So I set up a thing that my phone turns off and turns back on at 3:10am every night.

[Tyler Parker]

Every night?

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

You can do that?

[Jason Concepcion]

Yes. You can do that.

[Tyler Parker]

Look at you.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah.

[Tyler Parker]

How do you play?

[Jason Concepcion]

Do you guys do anything?

[Tyler Parker]

We don't have any, like, Alexa Nest. Like, we don't have any of that stuff in the house. I mean, we got phones, so they're listening to us. But, like, in terms of any sort of, like, smart home devices or anything like that, that stuff's always made me uncomfortable. We just do not have it. So.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't know. A couple years ago, I saw one of those guys on Instagram who's like, 40 ways you can take all this off your phone in 45 seconds and just ran through it. And I actually did it and I had no idea. I never went into the settings and all the app stuff and to see the things you could turn off. And I was shocked by the. That, you know, that my microphone was on for all these apps. Why you. Their apps are like, what do you need? Why do they need my microphone and my camera like that? So there was just turning all the stuff off, which both saves your battery, but also like gives you security. I. I was shocked that I didn't know that stuff. And I would encourage people to actually put the time in and figure out how many things, like, even stuff like you could limit Instagram, Facebook, whoever, to your photo library.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Because right now it's like a fucking all you can eat buffet for them. Instagram could be like, I'm gonna go into JC's Instagram and I'm gonna just take all his photos and do weird AI shit. And you wouldn't be able to stop it.

[Jason Concepcion]

I do. Do not allow. TikTok is scary because it does more than that. It has like a memory cache that remembers, like your last. I don't know the amount, but like, however amount of text that you've typed into the phone. So it's like reading your texts, reading your search functions, like anything you use the keyboard for. It's like, let me remember that and I'll use that to create your algorithm.

[Tyler Parker]

Not into it.

[Jason Concepcion]

Sell you stuff.

[Tyler Parker]

Not into it.

[Jason Concepcion]

Is that good?

[Bill Simmons]

Do you think we would have been better off if y2k was real and all the computers just blew up in 1999 and we just had to start over? We bought ourselves 10 years.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah. I was listening to your mailbag with CR and you guys were saying, was it just better like back then before this news cycle, when you just read the newspaper once and it's like, I hate to be that guy, but I think it kind of was.

[Bill Simmons]

I definitely think it was.

[Tyler Parker]

I think it'd be way less stressful and you would not feel you part of it too, is like you almost feel a responsibility to know what's going on and to stay up to date on this stuff. And so you're like, well, I got to keep looking to know that I'm not misspeaking about X topic or whatever whenever it comes up. I would much rather live in a world where it's like, the news comes to me in the morning, I assess it, and then I'm like, okay, newspaper.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes.

[Tyler Parker]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

So I. I work a lot with the TV on, which I wouldn't recommend, but I think explains a lot of my passions. Watching things over and over again. So I've been. I've had the Olympics on a lot the last week and a half. And Channel four will just go into the news, right? So I'll be, like, looking for emails for a mailbag or doing work stuff or whatever, and it'll just come on. And I never watched the Daily News. I don't. I don't. I'm just not one of those people, I think. I'm not the right age yet. I'm not. But. But so it come on and you kind of get sucked in. And it really is like this evil beast. And they're doing Savannah Guthrie's mom every day. Coming up after the. A new break in the. And then it's not a break. Yeah. And then it's like, meanwhile, in downtown la, somebody died. Let's go to Bob. Yeah, Bob. Yeah. Somebody died here. And then it's like, let's go to this car accident here. And it's negative, negative, negative, bad shit. And I could see why if. If you were online and that was what you were predisposed to be going into and doing, basically, the Internet has whatever is like, your. Your weakness, right? If you love porn, it's got that. If you like gambling, it's got that. If you. If you like dark shit, it's got that. If you want to just be surrounded by terrible news, it's got that. And there's no regulations anymore. On top of us being watched with everything we do. So it's not great times. I kind of miss 1994. I gotta be honest.

[Jason Concepcion]

I think one of the things that made this possible is like, you know, we're. As Americans, we're so, like, stewed in, like, anti communist propaganda, which you know, centralized power. Not great. But that was the thing we were worried about, right? Like, oh, mass surveillance. If, like, the government is watching it.

[Tyler Parker]

Yeah.

[Jason Concepcion]

The difference here is that, like, it's companies, it's corporations. And to your point, like, I think one of the ideas of having the CEO or the founder of the company do the commercial is like, hey, we're just a mom and pop, right? To the mom and pop store. I like.

[Tyler Parker]

You like dogs. I like dogs.

[Jason Concepcion]

Look, come on. We're just a little. We're just a little small business that puts cameras all over the place. Little face recognition never hurt anybody.

[Tyler Parker]

You will be so safe. Just pay us money.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah.

[Tyler Parker]

And you'll be so safe.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, what about Alexa?

[Jason Concepcion]

I mean, I Have one. I turned the microphone off. It's probably still listening to me. But I remember when that first came out, there was the revelation that it was listening to you all the time and that the audio was.

[Bill Simmons]

They didn't tell us that one right away. Yeah, because I feel the same way about Siri.

[Jason Concepcion]

For sure.

[Tyler Parker]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

It's like, yeah, you should use Siri. Turn all this stuff on. And then Siri will help you with whatever you need. And it's like, will it.

[Jason Concepcion]

You know what? You know what makes me feel better about Ciri than all the other ones? Yeah, she's terrible.

[Bill Simmons]

She's so bad.

[Tyler Parker]

She can't even pronounce Los Angeles half the time.

[Jason Concepcion]

She can't do anything. She can barely get me the weather. She like I have to scream at her at the top of my lungs to get her to send a text. Right. That makes me feel a little. Yeah, that makes me feel a little better.

[Tyler Parker]

Jokes with Siri, I try to make a reminder that's more than like five words long. It's not happening.

[Bill Simmons]

No Siri. So Alexa and Siri, I think if you were a sinister leaning person, you could say. Yeah. That those things weren't necessarily meant to be helpful because it's all part of the same game. Right. They're trying to suck you into behavior that then can benefit whoever made the device or the app or the whatever. And. Yeah, not great.

[Jason Concepcion]

It's not great times. Just so they can sell you more

[Tyler Parker]

and more shit that's like the whole like this, you know, ring. It's not just cameras. Right. They sell floodlights, you know, like they sell all these different sorts of things. It's just a way to get in your. To dig in your pocket more and more.

[Bill Simmons]

Can we talk about this is a bit. I know you've the Reddit conspiracy boards. One of the only Reddit I go to. I've been a long time card carrying member of their content.

[Tyler Parker]

You got your tenure, you got a 10 year.

[Bill Simmons]

It's been 10. But I really enjoy seeing the angles. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate the angles. I don't necessarily agree with most of the stuff I'm reading. There's been a lot of victory lapping just in the conspiracy circles the last couple years with things. And I think the Epstein files is another example of like trying to tell you guys, but surveillance, I think was definitely one. There's been a lot of people that were seemingly crazy. Cause you didn't mention the Mel Gibson conspiracy theory movie, which was not a good movie.

[Jason Concepcion]

Not a good movie.

[Bill Simmons]

It really should have been a good movie and just wasn't.

[Tyler Parker]

That's one where he keeps buying Catcher in the Rye.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, he's a crazy cab driver. But then he stumbles onto some sort of. And that's like post jfk, this is like a. Different from the surveillance, but the post JFK assassination. The 90s really go into kind of setting up where we are now with Reddit conspiracy. I don't know. They have some good stuff in there, man. Like, they're really like on it with certain things and it's. It's hard to argue against sometimes.

[Jason Concepcion]

I will. I am in the Bell. Are you aware of Bell and Cat? Bell and Cat is a independent journalism site. They partner with the New York Times a lot. They partner with different outlets and they do what's called osint, like open source intelligence. Using the Internet to just discover stuff.

[Tyler Parker]

Sure.

[Jason Concepcion]

They'll analyze videos from January 6th and be like, here's all these guys. We figured out who these guys are. Their discord is great. It's like a much more curated and trustable version of the conspiracy board. Because all that stuff is in there. All the Epstein stuff, all the, like, everything that you are interested in that you're like, is that a conspiracy that'll be in there. Flock, cameras, everything we're talking about today. But it's like, it has the rigor of people being like, that guy's crazy. Get him out of here. Right? Yeah. Which I like. Because the thing about Reddit.

[Tyler Parker]

Stop being weird.

[Jason Concepcion]

Stop being weird. Get out of here. Because the thing about Reddit and I'm on all those boards, I'm on the Epstein board, I'm on the conspiracy board is, you know, you'll click on one that's like, holy. Wait. It's like cannibalism is cannibalism. And then you'll read a couple and you're like, okay, back away slowly from this post and never mention it.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, the Reddit tries to have the no bad ideas in a brainstorm. Sometimes there are bad ideas, but the, the funniest ones are like, I. I was really interested in the Idaho killer one. I thought that was like, just fascinating. And there was a really good Reddit board that emerged. And then it turned out the guy who was accused of the killings was in there trying to throw people off the scent and bring up other. Yeah, people think he was in there.

[Tyler Parker]

Wow.

[Bill Simmons]

And that was like the evolution. So the question for me, because I think we just finished this certain era and AI has now come in.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

And in real time we're now trying to decipher. Is that like I said to Sierra, did a cheetah really jump on that kid's older brother or did they make that up? And I think this is going to be really rocky the next two years where you can kind of. And we saw that for the first time with the KD files where it's like, are these real?

[Tyler Parker]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

I mean, I have my own opinions, but it's conceivable somebody could have created all of the, all the tweets, slash text, slash DMs.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And made it seem like he did them and he didn't.

[Jason Concepcion]

Interesting.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't think that's true.

[Jason Concepcion]

We must know now. And I think we added this.

[Tyler Parker]

We're. This will be brought up later.

[Jason Concepcion]

We'll put a pin in this and we'll talk about it.

[Bill Simmons]

But it's like, but that's, I think 20, 26, you have to put your AI filter on as you read some of these stories. Like, could they have made this up or is that real?

[Jason Concepcion]

Do you think that we will ever get to a place where they regulate AI enough that you will be able to trust stuff you see on the Internet, let's say in the next five years?

[Bill Simmons]

I think they will because they did this with the Internet.

[Jason Concepcion]

Right.

[Bill Simmons]

I think when technology moves faster than human behavior can handle, they move pretty fast.

[Tyler Parker]

Usually.

[Bill Simmons]

This is like really bad, some of the stuff you can do now with AI. Although I did enjoy watching Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise fight. I don't know if you guys saw that.

[Jason Concepcion]

I saw it.

[Bill Simmons]

It was fucking awesome.

[Jason Concepcion]

It did look. I was like, less scared of like, I know that Hollywood people were like, oh, my God, we're, we're screwed. I was like, is it, is it that big a deal?

[Tyler Parker]

Well, Disney and Paramount, like sued immediately.

[Jason Concepcion]

They had to sue.

[Tyler Parker]

Yeah.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is like, these are just like stealing machines.

[Tyler Parker]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Jason Concepcion]

And the thought is that if we steal fast enough and big enough.

[Tyler Parker]

Yeah.

[Jason Concepcion]

We'll become too big to fail. Which, you know, like the seven companies that are propping up our entire economy right now are all AI companies.

[Bill Simmons]

But this is, this was Napster 20 almost 25 years ago, which eventually led to Spotify figuring out the business model for. So I, I, I do feel like at some point the three of us will be like, want to come over and make a fake thing? A Brad Pitt fighting time. Let's be legal.

[Jason Concepcion]

Let's figure out what the story behind that is and actually make the feature.

[Tyler Parker]

Let's go The. I know. You know. Did you know that Shaq has an equity stake in Ring?

[Bill Simmons]

Really?

[Tyler Parker]

Yes.

[Jason Concepcion]

Shaq loves law enforcement, though. He loves stuff like this. Loves.

[Tyler Parker]

And he loves checks.

[Jason Concepcion]

He loves anything. He'll put his name on anything.

[Bill Simmons]

So you think Shaq got the call on, like, Tuesday? Yo, Shaq.

[Tyler Parker]

Heads up.

[Bill Simmons]

Just heads up.

[Jason Concepcion]

Do you think they send Shaq? Like, does Shaq have access to, like, the video archives? He's just like, scrolling through people's stuff. Oh, look at that. There's somebody stole a package.

[Bill Simmons]

That's one of the Ring. The lingering questions of Ring Nest.

[Jason Concepcion]

Absolutely.

[Bill Simmons]

Is there some mothership that has everything?

[Tyler Parker]

I mean, there's you. You in the. In the research. You. You found like in 2017, there was a Ring employee who it got found out he's watched thousands of videos from at least 81 women.

[Jason Concepcion]

This is my issue.

[Tyler Parker]

Like in their bathroom.

[Jason Concepcion]

This is my issue. We have AI and they're going to try to say, well, it's. It's AI that watches it. It's not a person much like Gmail, where it's like, listen, the advertisements are. Are created by an algorithm that's behind it. It's not actually people that are reading your email. It's the computer. So they're going to try to say that. But human nature is human nature, Bill. Right. If somebody has access to this stuff, somebody's going to watch it when they should.

[Bill Simmons]

You're banking on the best of people. And we already know that there's people out there that don't have their best.

[Tyler Parker]

And it's even like if you're delusional enough to think that, you know, the company is going to do this vetting of their employees to make sure they're just the most upstanding citizens or whatever. And in 2019 and 2020, hackers says hackers gained access to hundreds of thousands of videos from customers bedrooms and children's bedrooms.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, this goes back to the fappening.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yes, great point. Like, how did that happen?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, it happened because I think that didn't. The guy he got somehow got the icloud emails, he impersonated something, was able to get their information, and just basically went to town on every single celebrity that existed, mostly female, and found a bunch of stuff, downloaded everything. We weren't properly alarmed by the fappening, but that in retrospect, really alarming. And I think that was like mid 2010s. I mean, this is 14, 15 range.

[Jason Concepcion]

This is like the thing with AI where we're kind of downplaying like what the bad things are gonna be? It's like people are gonna get psychotic because they created an AI girlfriend that they think is real. And then when they update ChatGPT and my girlfriend goes away, I'm gonna go on a killing spree or something like that's real.

[Bill Simmons]

And by the way, we have movies about that. Like movies have predicted a lot of this shit.

[Tyler Parker]

And by the way, AI has already encouraged multiple people to kill themselves.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yes.

[Tyler Parker]

And has let like, you know, it's,

[Jason Concepcion]

it's an AI porn exists. And you can't tell me that there is not some freak somewhere in one of these, in the bowels of one of these companies that is creating vile stuff out of this totally technology. It's much in the same way that bitcoin. Hey, Bitcoin. Yeah, it's great. It's going to the future of money, but really it's like terrorists and like kidnappers that are like payment in bitcoin, Right? Yes. We downplay a lot of this stuff.

[Tyler Parker]

One of the things that I saw that gave me a lot of pause is in Ring's terms of service, it grants Ring and its licenses, quote, an unlimited irrevocable, fully paid and royalty free perpetual worldwide right to reuse, distribute, store, delete, translate, copy, modify interesting display, sell, create derivative works that modify.

[Bill Simmons]

That's horrifying.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah, that's not good.

[Bill Simmons]

That's in their terms of service.

[Tyler Parker]

That's in their terms of service. Oh my God, is that not scary?

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah, that means like in 15 years there might be a AI created Tyler Parker that Ring creates for their commercial and you gave them the right to do that.

[Bill Simmons]

Can we defend Ring for a second? Because I don't want to make them 100% evil.

[Jason Concepcion]

Sure.

[Bill Simmons]

I think they've produced some incredible Instagram videos over the last three years. There's been some great women. Women just getting into her house before the intruders behind her.

[Tyler Parker]

Sure.

[Bill Simmons]

There's been some good, good fights in front of the door.

[Tyler Parker]

Sure.

[Bill Simmons]

Old people falling on the ice.

[Jason Concepcion]

There's been some good.

[Bill Simmons]

So many good ones.

[Jason Concepcion]

So many good falling on the ice. Or like I have my, my grocery bags.

[Bill Simmons]

Right. Slip down the stairs and UPS boxes. Steelers with the things blowing up, which I never know if those are real or not, but I really enjoy when

[Jason Concepcion]

those guy putting up the Christmas lights and then the, and then the ladder falls and he's just hanging. Like all that stuff is added to this campaign.

[Bill Simmons]

Like, don't forget we have some good stuff.

[Tyler Parker]

Yes. Big dog chasing a woman down the street. She's trying to get to the house, and the husband comes out and stops the big dog.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah, I think, actually Ring has missed the opportunity to not do an America's Funniest Home Videos. Ring edition.

[Bill Simmons]

Still time.

[Tyler Parker]

Yeah, That's a fumble on that still time.

[Bill Simmons]

One funny video a day over one.

[Jason Concepcion]

Well, every episode we present our guest with our lucid score. Lucid is legs. Unintentional comedy.

[Bill Simmons]

I like this.

[Jason Concepcion]

Sinisterness, intrigue, and danger. One out of four for each category. Bill, does this story have legs? One to four.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, four is the highest we can go.

[Jason Concepcion]

We can go for you. We can go high.

[Bill Simmons]

No, I like four.

[Jason Concepcion]

Four.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, that's a four. You have four for that?

[Tyler Parker]

Yes, absolutely.

[Jason Concepcion]

Unintentional comedy. Is it funny?

[Bill Simmons]

A little lower on that one.

[Jason Concepcion]

We can go negative.

[Bill Simmons]

By the way, the dog a day is really funny. I'm gonna give that a 2.

[Tyler Parker]

The dog a Day, it really made it. That made it pass.

[Bill Simmons]

Dog a day is the fucking best

[Tyler Parker]

that made it pass. So many people.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't know what the right number is that I would have been impressed by, but it was that one dog a day. Like, 10 dogs a day. Like, all right, 10 dogs a day.

[Jason Concepcion]

This is a country of 600 million people. And how many dogs? What a day. I'm like, damn, we're doing pretty good in America.

[Bill Simmons]

Really proud of the one. I bet you.

[Tyler Parker]

I bet you just in general in the world you're there someone that doesn't have access to this is finding a dog. At least a dog.

[Jason Concepcion]

I'm saying things are pretty rocky in America right now, but we're only losing one dog a day.

[Tyler Parker]

Pretty good.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. All right, two.

[Jason Concepcion]

Okay, two for that.

[Bill Simmons]

What did you have on that one?

[Tyler Parker]

I'm gonna go one just because there's still too much scary stuff out there for me to fully laugh.

[Jason Concepcion]

Okay, fair sinisterness,

[Bill Simmons]

Easy for hardcore 4.

[Tyler Parker]

Without thinking.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yes, I agree.

[Bill Simmons]

I almost think this might. The scale might have to go to five.

[Jason Concepcion]

We. We.

[Bill Simmons]

Did you speak about this?

[Jason Concepcion]

We thought about it.

[Bill Simmons]

I trust you.

[Jason Concepcion]

We were originally gonna go 1 to 20, but when we started trying to add, like, 13 and 17.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jason Concepcion]

We just.

[Bill Simmons]

All right. Me in there?

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah. Intrigue.

[Bill Simmons]

I think it's a four. I think this has a chance to be, like, the story of the year once the Epstein files stop releasing stuff.

[Jason Concepcion]

There's millions of documents, and we don't have all the rest of them.

[Tyler Parker]

So maybe 100% of 4.

[Jason Concepcion]

And then finally, danger. Is it a dangerous story?

[Bill Simmons]

I'm going to give that a three.

[Jason Concepcion]

What Makes you keep it from a four.

[Bill Simmons]

Because I think deep down we knew this the whole time and we just didn't really want to.

[Jason Concepcion]

Somebody's gonna. Enough people are gonna, as we saw with the, with the, the uproar over the one dog a day super bowl ad, that people, enough people are gonna go like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[Bill Simmons]

This is crazy. Here's.

[Tyler Parker]

It's a matter of people knowing that it's hap. Like if, if enough people know that

[Bill Simmons]

it's happening, here's where it falls apart for America's case being revolted by this.

[Jason Concepcion]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

We all have been watching these true crime things for the last. Yes, 10 plus years. And even if you go back to Serial from a podcast forum. 15 years.

[Tyler Parker]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

If you go back to the network shows that, that goes back to the 90s Dateline and all those shows and the people always get caught with surveillance that you didn't totally know existed. So for people to be like, I, I can't believe this. The ring thing was a little different because I do think it brought in the element of, oh, I didn't know if they just have everything, even if I'm not paying them to keep it. That was, I think, the revelation here. But I think for the most part people know, right?

[Jason Concepcion]

I think they know, but they don't know. I think you're aware in the general sense, but I think people are like, you know, much like I was a few years back. Like, it's like a drop in an ocean. There's so much data. Like, who's really watching it? It's the development of AI now and companies like Palantir and others who are using that technology so that you don't actually have to have a person scrolling through all this stuff. Like a computer is going to do it and it's going to go, oh, I think that person, you know, maybe they're having trouble in their marriage and they're having. And they're in debt. They might steal or, you know, or maybe I can sell them something. Maybe they need another credit card.

[Bill Simmons]

The real life precocks.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

It's such an important point because AI, its ability to just kind of figure out everything on the fly in a millisecond versus having, you know, you go back to all the President's men, Woodward and Bernstein in the library, just going

[Jason Concepcion]

file by file, scribbling stuff.

[Bill Simmons]

And now AI just gets that done in a second. And these, the bigger, more expensive companies know this danger.

[Tyler Parker]

I have a hard time putting it at. At, I want to say, like you made a compelling case for three, but I think I feel like it's four just because I don't these people. I mean, you read the Palantir quote for me before we started the Palantir CEO quote. Like, I just have no faith in any of these people at the top of these organizations to do the right thing or to hire people that will do the right thing. It just feels I've lost a lot of faith in our institutions, obviously, over the last little bit, and I have a hard time with that.

[Jason Concepcion]

Here's that troubling quote from Palantir CEO Alex Karp asked by Andrew Sorkin, New York Times deal book Andrew Sorkin, you know, what's your lower purpose? And this is in reference to Karp saying, I think for a company like, you need a higher purpose and you need a lower purpose. Karp's quote is, I love the idea of getting a drone and having light fentanyl laced urine spraying on analysts that tried to screw us. Probably a joke, but I don't know if I love it from a guy who's got all my data and is creating an AI product that tracks people.

[Tyler Parker]

Also, I'm not in the, like, I'm not, I don't know about Lord of the Rings. Like, you know about Lord of the Rings. I did not know that Sauron, the stones that Sauron was looking to was, was using to see what other were they called?

[Jason Concepcion]

Palantiri.

[Tyler Parker]

Yeah. Not a fan.

[Jason Concepcion]

That.

[Tyler Parker]

That's the name that they chose for the company.

[Jason Concepcion]

A lot of what's happening today is rich guys and CEOs saw Lord of the Rings and like, got the message totally wrong. They were like, sauron, that guy had a good idea, he just kind of executed it wrong.

[Tyler Parker]

Love the scope, though. Love the scope.

[Jason Concepcion]

He has another quote that really scares me. Alex Karp quote. This is to Fox Business. I think the central risk to Palantir in America and the world is a regressive way of thinking that is corrupting and corroding our institutions. That calls itself progressive but actually and is called woke, but is actually a form of thin pagan religion. Listen, I think woke can be annoying, but a thin pagan religion is. Bro, take a nap. Please relax.

[Tyler Parker]

Please take a nap.

[Jason Concepcion]

Alex. Carp, relax.

[Bill Simmons]

Was that the character in Landman that was the cheerleader's. Her mate. Wasn't her name Pagan?

[Jason Concepcion]

He was called Reagan Landman. Oh, Jesus Christ. Well, Bill, we end every episode with the Doom scroll. You want to hang out with us for the doom Scroll?

[Bill Simmons]

I'd absolutely love to. I'm having a great time.

[Tyler Parker]

Let's get into it. All right, the Doom Scroll. All right, this is the Doom scroll, where we run through some stories that have been in the news recently that made us raise our eyebrows a little bit. We're monitoring some or just some. We just wanted to say out loud to kind of make sure that they're real, that we didn't hold hallucinate them whenever we looked at it. First thing we got. You heard about Obama on aliens. Obama.

[Bill Simmons]

Pretty quick. 180.

[Tyler Parker]

Pretty quick. Pretty quick.

[Jason Concepcion]

180.

[Tyler Parker]

Obama was on no Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, and as part of the show's lightning round, Cohen asked him, are aliens real? The quote, they're real, but I haven't seen them. And they're not being kept in Area 51. There's no underground facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the President of the United States States.

[Jason Concepcion]

Okay.

[Tyler Parker]

A few days later, Obama expanded on his comments on Instagram. As you do. That's where you go if you want to really set the record straight.

[Jason Concepcion]

Right.

[Tyler Parker]

You want to go somewhere like that. I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round because you

[Bill Simmons]

got to honor it.

[Tyler Parker]

You got to honor the spirit of the speed round.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah.

[Tyler Parker]

It's important. You don't want to mess with the integrity. But since it's gotten attention. Let me clarify.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Tyler Parker]

How could it have possibly gotten attention?

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah.

[Tyler Parker]

I think statistically the universe is so vast that the odds are good there's life out there, but the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we've been visited by aliens is low. And I saw no evidence during my pregnancy that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really?

[Jason Concepcion]

Okay. I mean, that's a significantly different, I think, statement, but. Okay, what's next?

[Bill Simmons]

Wait, can I. Yeah, sure. Please take on the Obama thing.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

The best case for aliens not being real real is if they were real, I feel like Trump would have talked about this openly. I talked to the aliens.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah, they're beautiful. They're beautiful.

[Tyler Parker]

You know, they've got a funny looking.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah, they got a very nice spaceship. We're working on that right now. That technology with the spaceship, I love it.

[Tyler Parker]

Beautiful, beautiful spaceship.

[Jason Concepcion]

It goes very fast. The spaceship goes very fast around the galaxy and it goes very fast. They're very little. They're very little. Gray, but very cute, and I like them very much.

[Tyler Parker]

This is a beautiful spaceship.

[Bill Simmons]

Big, big, beautiful. What's the next one?

[Tyler Parker]

All right, Kevin Durant and the Burner account. Rumors as we. As was, you know, brought up during our talk earlier. We don't know that it's real.

[Bill Simmons]

Allegedly.

[Tyler Parker]

It's allegedly Kevin Durant using these burners. Some files leaked on Twitter, some. This is. The reason that this was so plausible to a lot of people is back in 2019, Durant admitted to using burners. He got caught on Twitter using burners dogging Westbrook and the Oklahoma City organization and other things like that.

[Bill Simmons]

So if it was fake, somebody was doing the greatest impersonation of Kevin Durant.

[Tyler Parker]

They got the voice. They got the voice right.

[Bill Simmons]

This was like some Frank Caliendo.

[Jason Concepcion]

Now, I will say that I initially lean towards fake only because. Well, primarily because this is. I've followed him for 15 years now or whatever on social media. He. He posts a lot of weird stuff.

[Tyler Parker]

Yeah.

[Jason Concepcion]

You know, like about egg sandwiches and Scarlett Johanss's bathwater, et cetera.

[Tyler Parker]

A classic.

[Jason Concepcion]

And it's like all of those leaks were heaters like. Like, designed to make the NBA Reddit and, like, NBA Sentel crowd go crazy. Where's all the weird stuff? You know, like, where's all the other stuff? And so that made me feel like. Feels a little scripted, but I don't know.

[Tyler Parker]

Do you think maybe. Do you think maybe there were those within what the people saw, but they were like, this isn't gonna get the. This isn't. This doesn't have the heat that these other ones do. So we're just gonna focus on these, I guess.

[Jason Concepcion]

And I was also confused about, like, the format. Is he. Who's he talking to? Is he talking to himself?

[Tyler Parker]

Well, supposedly it's like there's, like, a. Some of them are DMs. Some of them might be, like, in a group chat of some kind.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a Twitter group chat. The theory is it's a Twitter group chat and somebody leaked this stuff.

[Tyler Parker]

The account, which is now. Which actually is now Locked.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah. Get off my Dickerson.

[Tyler Parker]

So the handle is ethire77. The username, get off my Dickerson.

[Jason Concepcion]

I see.

[Tyler Parker]

And I do have a lot of questions about get off my Dickerson. Is this Eric Dickerson?

[Bill Simmons]

Michael Dickerson.

[Jason Concepcion]

Michael Dickerson.

[Tyler Parker]

What are we. Where is that coming from? Did he just, you know, get off my Dick was already taken. And so I guess username, you can kind of go with whatever you want.

[Jason Concepcion]

I feel like Conspiracy Bill might know more than the average NBA fan about this.

[Bill Simmons]

I would urge people to think about the behavior for him.

[Jason Concepcion]

Interesting.

[Bill Simmons]

When this revelation was starting to percolate

[Tyler Parker]

in a real way, a Lot of

[Jason Concepcion]

incriminating him, being on his phone throughout,

[Bill Simmons]

how he behaved the entire day, how a guy who goes off on everything at all times, which we love about him, was kind of quiet about it for three days. I didn't think was a great sign for him. There's some bad signs today.

[Tyler Parker]

There has been. No, he has not said he.

[Bill Simmons]

Has he.

[Tyler Parker]

What did he say?

[Bill Simmons]

They asked about him. He was like, I'm not going to get in that Twitter shit.

[Jason Concepcion]

That's the thing that makes me think maybe it is him. Because I think if it wasn't, it's very easy to just go, no, it's not me. Now, two days ago, when that. When he had not commented, I also thought, he's a guy who posts so much, he might be thinking, hold on, did I say that?

[Bill Simmons]

Which burner account?

[Jason Concepcion]

Which burner account? Did I say that?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, there's the conspiracy. Bill's favorite theory is that this actually was a known thing like a month ago. And this explains why the Rockets are backwards. I have a bigger KD question. I thought of this actually, as you were talking.

[Tyler Parker]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Because we always say this with people in our life, right? Like that you should probably log off. Like, yes, you're online too much. Like, you always worry. Like, I worry about that with my kids. Like, my son is on this brain rot app now that prevents him from going on these things. And he's like, I feel so much better.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah, great.

[Tyler Parker]

Nice.

[Bill Simmons]

Is Katie the number one? If he just wasn't online, we would think about him in a completely different way. Celebrity.

[Jason Concepcion]

Not even just athlete, I think so.

[Bill Simmons]

Has he hurt himself the most in public perception with the online stuff?

[Tyler Parker]

There's a group of people out there who love how, like, he's. How candid he is and how he claps back and, you know, he's like, well, man, he's just like me. You know, like that sort of stuff. This sort of thing, though, it's like, can you really not get out of your own way on this?

[Jason Concepcion]

That's where I am.

[Tyler Parker]

For it to happen again, it's one thing for it to happen once. I mean, one of the craziest things about whenever it initially happened was at first he sort of tried to act like he had a dissociative episode or something like that. And then he just wound up admitting, like, no, I got burners and I'm gonna keep doing it or whatever. But. So it's like there's. There is some part of him that's like, that initially there was some part of him that was like, this is a bad look I gotta have.

[Bill Simmons]

Like, how do I get out of this?

[Tyler Parker]

I gotta have a better reason for this than just like, I was.

[Bill Simmons]

Because if he didn't have all this stuff, we would just think of him as this enigmatic, incredible. The best scorer ever. Really great career. One of the best 15 players ever. But I do feel like this is going to be mentioned when we talk about him. Big picture. Like, also some weird shit off the court. Nothing bad.

[Jason Concepcion]

Right.

[Bill Simmons]

But just a little strange.

[Tyler Parker]

The other weird part about it is that this is now another team after the warriors, the Nets and the Suns were like, some bad vibes. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Like, just. Yeah. Almost like milk in the fridge.

[Jason Concepcion]

I have. If I was kd, I would give him some version of the when they go low, you go high take. Oh, I trust people in my life. You know, like these. Are you gonna tell me that in your group chats you're not complaining about work? You don't complain about work. You don't complain about your boss. You couldn't complain about your co worker.

[Bill Simmons]

Totally offensive.

[Jason Concepcion]

Somebody broke my trust. Who? I was just griping about work about, like, you know, I just got off a game and we lost the game, and I was hot because I. I'm a competitor and I want to win. And I always feel like I was venting. I was venting. You've never vented before. That's what you do.

[Bill Simmons]

But you guys look in the mirror.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Why don't you look at your own group chats?

[Jason Concepcion]

How would you like your group chat leaked about work?

[Tyler Parker]

You who have played sports, you don't get mad at somebody when they miss a big shot. Like, are that sort. Like, should we read some of the.

[Bill Simmons]

You're 100% right.

[Jason Concepcion]

That's what he should do.

[Bill Simmons]

Maybe this should be a part of the podcast device. PR Emergency, PR firm.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Just go on the offensive and point the finger at everybody else. That seems to work in 2026.

[Tyler Parker]

Yes. You. You act. You act like that we're all, like, lower at a lower point intellectually than he is because, like, we're titillated by this. Like, you know, this stuff happens.

[Jason Concepcion]

He's got to do it.

[Tyler Parker]

Should we read some of the stuff that he said? Or is there no time?

[Jason Concepcion]

No, keep.

[Tyler Parker]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Jason Concepcion]

Okay.

[Tyler Parker]

All right.

[Bill Simmons]

Wait, wait. Do you want to do your top three?

[Tyler Parker]

Yes, I'll do my top three. Let me do my top three.

[Bill Simmons]

My favorite. Well, I'll say.

[Tyler Parker]

Well, no, you give your favorite.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, my favorite was Triple Double Cocaine Bear. That was unbelievable. Things I've ever seen. I was dying.

[Tyler Parker]

I have a check. Basketball reference. But if that's not under Westbrook's nicknames thing like yesterday, we got a problem.

[Bill Simmons]

We could have spent 20 hours in a room and not come up with Triple Double Bear. It's incredible.

[Tyler Parker]

And that's kind of why I. That's another reason. I think it's him, because Durant, he's nice on the keys.

[Jason Concepcion]

You know what I mean?

[Tyler Parker]

The pin game is strong. He's good.

[Jason Concepcion]

There were some things that surprised me in here. The fact that Kevin Durant would reference Mussolini and Stalin dictators. I was like, whoa. And Kim Jong. Kim Jong. With the proper hyphenation. I was like, whoa. Okay.

[Tyler Parker]

The proper hyphenation was really impressive.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Tyler Parker]

Yeah. No, I mean, I thought your franchise player can't shoot or defend. That's a way bigger issue than my turnovers. Talking about Albert and Shingun.

[Bill Simmons]

So again, that could have been just venting.

[Jason Concepcion]

That could have been just venting.

[Tyler Parker]

Yes.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah, that's venting. Mad.

[Bill Simmons]

They lost by one. He's mad at Shingoon.

[Tyler Parker]

Other than the cocaine Bear, this was my favorite. I swear, I miss Ben Simmons.

[Jason Concepcion]

Now.

[Tyler Parker]

What happened? At least. Least he would give me the ball.

[Jason Concepcion]

Now, that one is another one that made me think maybe this is fake because they only played together for like, 28 games or something. Like less than 30 games.

[Bill Simmons]

I agree. It was the one red flag where I was like, maybe somebody is setting him up.

[Tyler Parker]

Really good point. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Who misses Ben Simmons? Nobody has ever played with him.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah. Give me a break.

[Tyler Parker]

And he wasn't. It wasn't like Ben Simmons was really soaring on the nets.

[Jason Concepcion]

He was not, like, on the court all the time. No.

[Bill Simmons]

He wouldn't dribble over the three point line because he didn't want to get fouled.

[Jason Concepcion]

So that one raised a flag for me.

[Tyler Parker]

That's a good. That's a good point.

[Bill Simmons]

That should have been part of the Durant defense.

[Jason Concepcion]

He has

[Bill Simmons]

crazy.

[Tyler Parker]

How dare you think I would miss Ben Simmons. Oh, that's really Good. Okay. Shia LaBeouf and his Mardi Gras bar crawl. We're gonna be keeping an eye on this as new.

[Jason Concepcion]

It made me sad, actually.

[Tyler Parker]

New revelations develop. It sucks that this is where he's at. He's basically partying his way through Mardi Gras. If you haven't seen.

[Bill Simmons]

I felt sad. But I also would have followed the Reddit thread about his Mardi Gras. Like, I thought if it was an actual subreddit, I will say that leading

[Jason Concepcion]

up to that fight, my algorithm was giving me all of these videos of people just in random bars who were like, oh, my God, I hung out with Shia LaBeouf last night. We were. And then one of the comments. I'm not even kidding. I'm not even kidding. This is before the fight. One of the comments was. The top comment was like, if you offer to wrestle Shia, he will do it in a heartbeat. That was the top comment on one of these videos. And look what happened.

[Bill Simmons]

They say that about Joe Mazzulla with Jiu Jitsu.

[Jason Concepcion]

Really?

[Bill Simmons]

For real?

[Tyler Parker]

That makes sense. I don't know if it's true or

[Bill Simmons]

not, but it's always been percolating around the Celtics.

[Tyler Parker]

The. So he. There's one bartender who I guess requested anonymity, who think about that sentence in the Bardi grab.

[Jason Concepcion]

Don't use my name.

[Tyler Parker]

He served him last Thursday and said, quote, he is terrorizing the city.

[Bill Simmons]

And I didn't even back out today. So we're taping this side on late Wednesday morning pt. He was out. He just circled back. He's like, another day. Let's get after it, guys.

[Tyler Parker]

At one point, he's at this bar, Ms. May's 24. 7 bar. The people there described him as inebriated and belligerent. Sounds right. Allegedly attempting to pay with a credit card despite about 50 cash only signs in the bar. Another bartender quote, he asked me three times if he could use his credit card. The bar has at least 50 cash only signs. And then really good. Thank you to Justin Sales for finding this. Why don't you go back and dig holes? She said, a reference to the actor's

[Jason Concepcion]

breakout movie Holes in 2004 starring Sigourney Weaver. Good movie. Good book as well. Holes deep.

[Tyler Parker]

Pull deep. Pull deep pool.

[Bill Simmons]

Because I remember him from the Affleck where they tried to make the movie.

[Jason Concepcion]

Project Green Light.

[Bill Simmons]

Project Green Light.

[Jason Concepcion]

Project Green Light.

[Bill Simmons]

They picked Shia.

[Jason Concepcion]

They were like the Ballad of Shaker Heights. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

We found the next big actor. It's this guy.

[Tyler Parker]

Well, what, like Spielberg called him the next Tom Hanks. I mean, like, he was. This is. This was my favorite part. And then we can go to the next one, but. So apparently when he gets into a fist fight just after midnight with multiple people.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yeah.

[Tyler Parker]

The video begins with just him and another dude talking on the street while LaBeouf's arms were tucked inside his shirt. Let me tell you, a person that I'm not going to get in a fight with is somebody who's crazy enough to tuck their arms inside Their shirt at the start of the fight. That's not.

[Bill Simmons]

I've never seen that in a hockey fight.

[Tyler Parker]

No, he immediately. But he starts headbutting him, of course, at that point. But yeah, it.

[Jason Concepcion]

Here's the thing that makes me sad. This is a guy with a history of substance abuse. So much that on the website for the first class treatment facility, Seasons in Malibu, he has a page on the blog. They just are like, hey, let's talk about Shia LaBeouf.

[Bill Simmons]

Jesus.

[Jason Concepcion]

So I worry about him. Shia, stop serving this guy. Just put his picture up. Like, if you see Shia LaBeouf, don't let him in. What else you got?

[Tyler Parker]

All right. Alexei Navalny, allegedly poisoned with dart frog.

[Jason Concepcion]

Ecuador. Ecuadorian dart frog.

[Bill Simmons]

So I know there will be a frog poison episode at some point.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

I've always been fascinated by it, the different uses of frog. Sometimes it can also be a hallucinogenic drug.

[Jason Concepcion]

Lick the frog.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't see friendship.

[Tyler Parker]

See friendship today.

[Bill Simmons]

The frog area, I just don't know. So I know maybe that'll be like episode 48.

[Tyler Parker]

This. The neuro. It's. The neurotoxin is called epibatidine, I think if I'm pronouncing it right. And it is classified as a chemical weapon and is reportedly 200 times stronger than morphine.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yes.

[Tyler Parker]

Oh, my God. Officials claim that could only have been carried out by Vladimir Putin's government. Yeah. It's historically been used by indigenous South American tribes in blow darts. Navalny, when he died.

[Bill Simmons]

Blow darts.

[Tyler Parker]

Navalny, when he died, was in a Siberian penal colony. That was nearly two years ago. Siberian penal colony is definitely not on my top five places list of places I want to live.

[Jason Concepcion]

I think that place was above the Arctic Circle as well. Not good.

[Tyler Parker]

Doesn't sound like fun, but yeah. Officials have not detailed how the toxin was administered, so. But they say it could only have been so far.

[Bill Simmons]

We have Siberian penal colony. And what was the urine? What was that one?

[Tyler Parker]

Lightly laced or fentanyl laced Urine.

[Jason Concepcion]

We're off to a heart. A very, very hot start.

[Tyler Parker]

There's one more if we want.

[Jason Concepcion]

Let's go. Okay.

[Tyler Parker]

I don't know if y' all saw there. There's an AI dating cafe that opened in New York City.

[Bill Simmons]

What does that mean?

[Tyler Parker]

It's the world's first AI dating cafe. It's a pop up in New York City. People bring their phones with their AI, boyfriends, girlfriends, what have you on a physical date. They sit across from them on, like at a table, and there's a little holder for their phone. They put their phone there. It says the space is designed to simulate traditional dating, but with a digital partner as the plus one company side of research claims nearly one in three men and one in four women under 30 have interacted with AI companions for conversation, emotional support, or, and this is the weirdest one, stress relief.

[Jason Concepcion]

I will tell you that this is one of the most diabolical data farming operations I have ever heard. There is no way that. There is not. That WI fi is not scraping every conversation between people and their AI. And this is yet another example of people, like, willingly giving it over.

[Tyler Parker]

But this is another entry, like, into. This could possibly be the saddest place on Earth.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yes.

[Tyler Parker]

Like this.

[Bill Simmons]

Possibly.

[Jason Concepcion]

I mean, wait until the robots. When they merge the AI with the robot, that's when we're cooked.

[Tyler Parker]

Cooked.

[Jason Concepcion]

We're officially cooked.

[Bill Simmons]

Are we at the end of the podcast? Because I had an idea for a closing segment for the guest.

[Jason Concepcion]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

They introduce a conspiracy theory they've been thinking about lately that they kind of sort of maybe believe in. So I watched room 237 over the weekend. I got fired up for the Shining. I watched with my son, who loved it. He's getting in a Kubrick. And it's great. It's basically centered around all these different guys. And there's a couple ladies, too. Yeah, they just see different things out of the Shining. And there's a moon guy in there who's probably the most convincing. He's basically like, I had all these thoughts about the moon landing and what happened. And then I saw this movie and it just exploded in my brain. I was like, finally I knew I was right about this. And the theory is that Kubrick filmed the Apollo landing. The Neil Armstrong, they hired him to do it. And he feels guilty about this. And that leads to him taking Stephen King's book the Shining, and twisting it into this whole different thing that this guy interpreted as an apology to his wife for being involved with this and these little signs. And that room turned 37, which he changed in the book. It was 217. He changed it to 237 because that's how many thousand miles away the moon is. When Danny goes. Walks toward the room, right?

[Tyler Parker]

He's got the.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, he's got the Apollo 13. What is the Apollo 11? Apollo 13. I can't remember the spaceship. And he's like, this is the theory. So the question has always been, did the moon landing happen? And if you think it didn't happen, you're a lunatic, right?

[Jason Concepcion]

Right.

[Bill Simmons]

My question is, where's the camp for people who think we did land on the moon, but we didn't videotape it?

[Jason Concepcion]

Ah, I like this.

[Bill Simmons]

Where's the hybrid model of.

[Tyler Parker]

It was a reenactment.

[Bill Simmons]

We reenact what would have happened on the moon. We show that like it's happening and it is actually happening. But this is 237,000 miles away. No way we would add video because that's. That's kind of insane when you think about it. In 1969 that we would be able to transmit this. What if.

[Jason Concepcion]

What if interesting.

[Bill Simmons]

We both filmed the fake landing, but the real landing happened. What if both sides are right?

[Jason Concepcion]

I like this theory.

[Tyler Parker]

This is a great theory.

[Jason Concepcion]

I don't fully buy it, but I like this entrant into this particular theory.

[Bill Simmons]

Half baked conspiracy ideas.

[Tyler Parker]

This is good. I like this segment.

[Bill Simmons]

There's a lot to work with here.

[Jason Concepcion]

I mean, Kubrick kind of shockingly comes up in another conspiracy more recent, which you may be aware of.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, I'm fully aware.

[Jason Concepcion]

What do you mean that Eyes Wide Shut is about Epstein?

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, yeah.

[Tyler Parker]

I'm very eyesight for a later pod.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm being like number one on Tubi and like number 12 on iTunes right now.

[Jason Concepcion]

Eyes.

[Bill Simmons]

Watch out. A movie that came out in 1999. Yeah. I think the guest has to come on at the end and provide a half baked conspiracy theory that they actually kind of believe.

[Tyler Parker]

Good call.

[Jason Concepcion]

We will add that to the round.

[Bill Simmons]

I like the pressure the guest has to perform at the end.

[Tyler Parker]

You said that Ben is getting into Kubrick. What's his. Does he have like a favorite right now?

[Bill Simmons]

So he's.

[Jason Concepcion]

He's.

[Bill Simmons]

We're only three in. He always loved the Shining, but he watched 2001 and then. And then Full Metal Jacket.

[Jason Concepcion]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

So now he's like, what's next? I'm like, I'm here for this ride with you.

[Tyler Parker]

That's great.

[Bill Simmons]

You know, one of Ben's takes was tell.

[Jason Concepcion]

Let's hear it.

[Bill Simmons]

Really good director Stanley Kubrick. Really good at this.

[Jason Concepcion]

Let me drop that one.

[Bill Simmons]

Type that one down.

[Jason Concepcion]

That's great.

[Bill Simmons]

Nothing is funnier than 17 and 18 year olds becoming like movie experts. Yeah, like we watch Good Will Hunting. It's like, this is really good.

[Tyler Parker]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Half like a Damon wrote this. Like just. You get to just. Is really fun. Yeah, I've had a good time.

[Jason Concepcion]

Conspiracy. Bill, thank you so much for joining us.

[Bill Simmons]

Such a pleasure. I'm glad we finally did this.