July 11, 2024 • 61 mins
Geist writes in from Germany, with a fascinating and conspiratorial first-hand look at the potentially insidious end goal of 'surge' and 'flex' pricing -- using personal info to determine how much you should pay for a purchase. Ralph prompts a re-examination of long-term underground living. The gang confirms that yes, Google search is indeed getting worse. All this and more in this week's listener mail segment.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Noela. They call
me Ben.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
We're joined with our guest superproducer Max the Freak Train Williams.
Most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. It's one of the
most exciting evenings of the week for us, fellow conspiracy realists.
This is where we hear directly from you. We're getting Oh,
(00:50):
it looks like we have extra letters from home. We're
very excited about that. We've We've got some Google results,
Google search results. I'm really interested in this conversation. We
have a an on the ground follow up to our
recent discussions of flex and or surge pricing. Before we
do any of that, you guys ever want to just
(01:14):
give up the podcasting thing and go get a bunker,
like an underground place to survive.
Speaker 5 (01:20):
I have my basement's kind of bunker like. I just
need to maybe reinforce the doors a little bit. I
hang out down here a lot. I got everything I need.
We were just talking off air. I got a mini fridge,
got a freezer chest.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
What else is? They're Vigie games.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
A place to brew your beer in the cold dank caves.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Yeah, exactly. That was my cold dank rainbow cave.
Speaker 5 (01:46):
And we're back with today's first piece of Listener mail.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
This one comes from flash who's a regular contributor.
Speaker 5 (01:55):
I think he probably dms each of us separately on
the Internet. I don't know if he's ever written in,
but he's a I don't want to give too much
away about the guy, but he's a really really impressive,
awesome I'm a lay.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Friend of stuff he should know as well.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Okay, very good.
Speaker 5 (02:09):
I'm not gonna he has to use the nickname Flashy
as sort of a public figure per se. He's got
one of the blue check marks, but really really talented dude.
I will leave it at that as to maintain his anonym,
and he goes that is in the spirit of Listener mail.
But he did right in in regards to a conversation
we were having. I can't remember what it was surrounding,
(02:31):
but I think I brought up the fact that I
feel as though Google search results have gotten here, and
I think results may may vary, and and there's a
good reason for That's just what we're gonna talk about today.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
I've definitely been talking with a lot of people on
social media to regarding this, because it's you know, there's
a threshold, I would argue all that after a certain
amount of people who don't know each other begin noticing
this phenomenals, right, we can't treat it as though, you know,
we can't treat it as so people are imagining something
(03:06):
or being gas lit.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Well, and it also depends on what you're searching for.
I don't want to get too ahead of the of
the curve here or too derailed from Flash's message. But
I actually saw a very interesting quote from Christopher Nolan,
the director, who had something very interesting to point out,
and I think this will be actually a really good
lead in to this story, and I'll just give you
(03:30):
the gist of it. He basically said he feels like
there isn't as much information on the Internet as people think.
Google is very good at certain things like cataloging your
personal data and selling it to the highest bidder and
using it to well, maybe not that necessarily well, maybe that,
but also specifically using it to serve you ads and
tracking your movements and your tastes and internet browsing habits,
(03:54):
but not necessarily search. He points out that if you
went to the library and like three different books and
flipped to some random pages and then searched for those online,
you would probably results would be more in the underwhelming
direction than they would be then having those results turn up.
(04:17):
And so I think there is something to be said
about that. I thought it was an interesting way of
putting it. But here is what Flash had to say
his message to us via Instagram. Something you might want
to have a look at. Just heard the podcast where
you talked about if Google search is getting worse?
Speaker 3 (04:34):
In short, it is. Here's a video explaining.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
How they are intentionally making it harder to find the
correct results. And he linked to an episode of the
Verge Cast. Big fan of the Verge all around really
good tech reporting. The folks that are on this particular
podcast are very much embedded, are entrenched in the SEO world,
(04:58):
which you know, to folks that are casual Internet users
or maybe more into like the technic side of things
can be a little bit of a snooze but we've
kind of lived and breathed SEO as part of big
websites and search engine optimization, search engine optimization one hundred percent,
and it's essentially the idea of making your content, whether
(05:22):
it be your website, you know, your blog, your company,
your brand UH be prioritized in search. And Google has
always kind of been a bit of a black box
in terms of like what they do to change their algorithms.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
They roll out these big.
Speaker 5 (05:37):
Changes and I remember back when we were more connected
to the How Stuff Works website, there would be I
don't know if you guys remember this, there'd be changes
to the Google algorithm that would change the way content
was was ranked in terms of quality content. Right, And
because some of the stuff on How Stuff Works were
these little kind of micro articles times or they were
(06:01):
divided up into multiple pages so you get served more ads,
we got hit by this idea of it was no
longer considered of a higher echemount of quality content. It
wasn't much substantive, substantive because it was too much little
snippets kind of not to say that taken as a whole,
this wasn't good writing. There's no shade on any of
(06:22):
the writers for how stuff worked. But a direction that
many of these types of websites have gone in recent
years is to break these things up so you can
get more ads crammed in there. And that's not you know,
the writer's decision. That is the powers that be, and
I think we're all annoyed by that. But that is
the kind of stuff that can't affect Google search results.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
But a lot of those have switched back now to
the one wagers.
Speaker 5 (06:47):
That's exactly right, and that's because of this very thing,
because it gets it's not worth feeding, it's not worthy
if you have more ads, but you have fewer eyeballs
on the ads. It doesn't really matter how many ads
you have, So I think it makes more sense to
prioritize the search engine optimization over cramming as many ads
as you possibly can.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
That way, you can sell the ads.
Speaker 5 (07:09):
That you do have at more of a premium because
you're getting more page views. So in order to operate
like that, guys, you have to kind of take a
company like Google at their word when they tell you
this is how we rank quality of content. This is
how we reward certain things with higher page rankings. You know,
(07:31):
the show them up in the results. And it's not
exactly them telling you how to quote unquote game search.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
That's what everyone's trying to do.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
And I think one thing that this Verge podcast pointed
out is the folks that are the most successful with
that are the ones that don't necessarily take everything Google
says as the law of the land. They do experiments
like I don't know if you guys remember when mister
Beast did a thing where he posted only thumbnails through
his videos with his mouth open. And again this is
(08:00):
a discuss in this Verge podcast. YouTube didn't tell him
to do that, He just tried it out and realized
that when he posted on image with his mouth open,
he got way better ranking in the you know YouTube and.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Eults wasn't out of the blue. He does a phenomenal
job explaining this, and I love what you're pointing out.
One interesting thing, just for context, that folks need to know,
and flash you are well aware of this. The vast
majority of people searching for anything on Google, no matter
(08:36):
what it is, the vast majority do not go to
page two of the results.
Speaker 5 (08:40):
Oh that's right, that's why they They have said it
for years, like if you're not on page one of
the results, you might as well not exist, you know.
I mean, that's it's it's sort of like being featured
in like like Apple podcasts, they call it a what
do they call their band carousel, their carousel. If you're
not in the first rung of that carousel before you
have to click next, you basically have it been featured,
(09:03):
you know, because unfortunately, I mean I tend to click through.
I don't know about you guys, and I do tend
to click through a few search result pages. But I
think the vast majority of folks won't click to the
next set of four image tiles or won't click on
the next page of search results.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
So if you're not, because people are.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
Kind of inherently a little bit lazy, even on the Internet,
where it's like a literal click, you know, to get
you some more stuff loaded on your screen to look at.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
But here's the kicker.
Speaker 5 (09:29):
What the Verge podcast is referring to as an article
that they posted on The Verge May thirty first of
twenty twenty four. So a little late to the party
on this story, but I think it is absolutely crucial
impression and information that we should all know and that
clearly Google does not want us to know the biggest
findings in the Google Search link by Mia Sato, who
(09:52):
is the Platforms and Communities reporter with five years of
experience covering the companies that shape technology and the people
who use their tools. Per The Verge, the subhead, a
set of twenty five hundred internal documents, including some related
to search, call them to question the past statements made
by the company, calling into questions things like what they
(10:15):
said didn't matter, things that they said they weren't keeping
track of, things that they said did not contribute in
any way, shape or form.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
To your Google Search rankings.
Speaker 5 (10:28):
There are things in this cash of documents that indicate
that Google has kind of been lying to creators. To
what end, It's not quite clear. It's a lot of documents,
but Google is, as it described, and I think completely
accurately in this document, the biggest gatekeeper of the Internet,
(10:52):
and they've always been a bit of a black box
in terms of how their search works, how this algorithm works.
They make it clear right off the at that the
Google Search algorithm itself has not leaked, and SEO experts
don't suddenly have all the answers, but the information that
did leak collection of thousands of internal Google documents is
still huge. It's an unprecedented look into Google's inner workings
(11:15):
that are typically closely guarded. It's something that I think
we should maybe even do a little bit of a
deeper dive into.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
This is a very extensive article.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
There's a lot of like other kind of sub you know,
articles that are sort of using this as a jumping
off point and doing further exploration that those that cash
of documents fully available to dig through ourselves. But one
of the things that I think is interesting is how
they have clearly been being dishonest about Chrome. Okay, so, Chrome,
(11:47):
as we know, is also the most popular web browser
in the world. And what this document, or this series
of documents indicates is that essentially, surprise, surprise, Chrome is
basically a key logger and all of your stuff is
getting reported directly back to Google. And I know that's
no shock because we all, any of us who got
(12:08):
an early Gmail account, it was so convenient, so snappy,
so it worked so well. You may all recall that
we basically agree to allow Google to read our emails.
That was the early caveat, and I.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
Spent a lot of time writing good emails.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I know you do. Ben.
Speaker 5 (12:28):
You are very you are very eloquent in both speech
and and and the written world. I hear you're one
of the great email writers of our generation. But I
don't give it about that.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Either, dude, I really don't care.
Speaker 5 (12:41):
I fully signed on for that, but they it's one
thing where they put that in the in the small
print or whatever, and it was it was not that
small because I remember that from way back when I
first got my you know, my original Gmail that I've
had for however many freaking years it's been. But with Chrome,
they unequivocally have said they don't do that. They don't
don't track your stuff, and which was just like why lie,
(13:03):
of course you are somebody. Again, this is pointed out
on the Verge podcast. At Google was like, isn't it
our job to like figure out what.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Kind of links people are going to? And like, how
do we do that.
Speaker 5 (13:16):
Let's build the most popular web browser in the planet
and now we know everything, and of course they're keeping
track of that. Certain Again I'm not an SEO expert,
but there are certain things, certain types of fields that
are kind of hidden fields in HTML or whatever it is.
The you know, the underlying code of a website that
(13:38):
they said were irrelevant. This indicates that many of those
things are absolutely relevant or absolutely being tracked. I just
think it's fascinating and and very you know, the whole
don't be evil thing, So no wonder they pivoted from that.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
It just feels like it's gone on the window. And
I want to open this up to the group best.
Speaker 5 (13:58):
When I read the last little quote from the piece,
journalists and publishers of information about SEO and Google Search
need to stop uncritically repeating Google's public statements and take
a much harsher, more adversarial view of the search giants representatives.
This is coming from SEO expert Rand Fishkin, who is
a SEO optimization veteran kind of a guru in that field,
(14:23):
and he interviewed for this piece with The Verge via email,
and another guy named Mike King, who is also in
that field. But absolutely, I mean not that we ever
should be in a place where we unequivocally believe everything
giant corporations tell us about their processes, because I think
if anyone's listening to the show enough and done enough
of their homework, so we know there's always some form
(14:45):
of obfuscation going on.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
But guys, does any of this a surprise you?
Speaker 5 (14:50):
And b is there anything you'd like to know more about,
because there really is almost too much to talk about
in terms of like the types of attributes fourteen thousand attributes.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
It's mentioned in the document this.
Speaker 5 (15:02):
You know this is going to be something that's going
to be dissected for a long time to come.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Yeah, I'd like to make this an episode. This is
fantastic because people know that it's true. A couple of
points to give some context here, Flash and our fellow
conspiracy realist.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
One.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
The clever thing about spinning off entities is that you
can pass the blame around like a hot potato, so
you could say, conceivably, we at Google never lied. Alphabet
made a decision, and that decision was not ours. I'd
also love for anybody wants to read that excellent Verge
(15:41):
article you mentioned.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Al.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
I'd also recommend a publication that came out I want
to say, January of this year, just search for is
Google getting worse? A longitudinal investigation of SEO spam in
search engines. And this came out right around the time
people were getting really hot about institutionalizing AGI or machine
(16:07):
learning or llms large language models, and this is it's
a long read. I'm not gonna lie. It's not super
sexy because it's scholarship, but it is incredibly insightful. The
last point I would make is incognito. Incognito is not incognito.
Speaker 6 (16:26):
You know.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
The rule remains from the early days of talking on
the telephone, back when the operators had to switch you
over to party lines and stuff like that. The rule
remains you should not ever assume that anything you do
online is private if in any manner, form or fashion.
Speaker 5 (16:47):
The verg folks pointed out a new browser that they
were all just raving about that apparent. I can't remember
the name now, but it was new enough that I
think if you look up new secure browse something, it'll
probably pop up. But that is the reason people like
to use things like Opera, UH and other you know,
browsers that that do potentially offer more private browsing. But man, yeah,
(17:13):
when you're I think we can all, for all intents
and purposes, assume that if you're using Chrome, which I
certainly am right the second, in fact, we are required
to use Chrome to run the streaming software that we
used to record this very show that you've got a
direct line to Google HQ with everything that you're doing
incognito or no.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Maybe they were talking about Brave Yeah, yeah, yeah, this
is something newer that I didn't recognize.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
I'll see if.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
I can find it by the end of the segment,
if not the episode. But Matt, I know this is
near and dear to you because you've been through all
of these algorithm changes as well and seeing all this
stuff in the way. You know, Google essentially is god
in this space. And I'm also wondering what you think
about why this is making search worse? Is it because
(18:05):
people are using their trying to do SEO based on
things that aren't actually accurate or like, as our listener
Flash pointed out, that Google is intentionally making search worse.
I didn't exactly get that from the documents. I didn't
know if you saw something that I might have missed.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Well, look, I don't know. I'm not an expert here,
but it does seem when you look at Alphabet's find financials,
like through Investipedia and a couple other things, they are
still getting most of their money through ads, right, That's
the way they make their hundreds of billions of dollars.
That's why they're such a huge company still. But they are,
like almost every other major tech company on the planet,
(18:44):
pushing AI as hard as they possibly can given them.
Speaker 5 (18:47):
They fell flat on their face with that first roll
out of it too, with like the glue and the pizza.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
And all of that.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Yeah, but given those developments, given the amount of money
that they're funneling into those efforts, given the amount of
information on everyone that they have, it does feel like
they will probably have one of, if not the most
robust AI, like personally catered AI system that will exist
(19:14):
on the planet in X years from now, and that
they're building really consistently over time, and it feels like
perhaps that's where all this is going or why things
are changing. We just don't get to see that back
end and understand it's how it is being how the
entire system is being modified, like for whatever the future
(19:36):
thing is supposed to be.
Speaker 5 (19:38):
I'll tell you something interesting that I learned recently. I
have a really good friend who contracts with Google. I'm
not gonna say anything about what he does exactly, but
he does deal with some of this AI stuff, and
a lot of it is finding people to figure out
what to do with this stuff and how to make
it a product that people will want to buy essentially,
(20:00):
or like want to buy into at the very least,
and you know, because everyone's got to use it.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
It's the new hot thing.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
And obviously there's things happening behind the scenes that will
make it very useful in terms of you know, maybe
optimizing search or whatever, perhaps any number of things. But
there are tons of people that there's younger people that
are being paid to like figure out stuff to do
with this technology, you know, and tons of money being
thrown out. To your point, that is all from the
(20:26):
inside perspective, completely true.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
And the browser is called ARC by the way. ARC.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
Oh, oh, there it is.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
I haven't played with that one yet.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
I'll check it out.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
We can keep this segment short because I really do
think it's worthy of a deeper expiration.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I'm glad you think so too, bim.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
I didn't really have any final words, just the fact
that these attributes, there's so many of them, and it's
just essentially what this thing, you know, indicates, is that
so many of these attributes that Google said they weren't
using to categorize quality, they weren't using to to rank search.
They are, in fact, at the very least keeping track
(21:04):
of Now I will say again I'm non SEO expert either,
but just because they're keeping track of it doesn't necessarily
mean that's the driving force, you know, I mean, more
data is more data and anyway, as we know in
this internet, you know world, the more data you have,
the more power you have, so you know, the more
grain or you can get. But to me, the biggest
(21:25):
and easiest to for most of us to understand takeaway,
who's this stuff about chrome?
Speaker 3 (21:30):
So there you go.
Speaker 5 (21:31):
Let's take a quick break, hear a word from our sponsor,
and come back with some more Oh thank you, by
the way, flash some more messages from you.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
We've returned and we are jumping to the phone lines.
Let's hear this message from Ralph.
Speaker 7 (21:52):
Guys, I'm just gonna go with You can call me
Ralph because I'm walking my dog and that's my dog's name.
I love the episode about holes and cave systems, but
I cannot believe that you didn't even mention Uber Pete
this town out in southern Australia where they just dug
(22:16):
holes into the side of this mountain, full sized houses,
just really cool shit, and you just pay for a
basic you know, whatever size that you want and then
you can go in and ship away at it and
like make your own shelves and stuff. But also here
(22:37):
in my neck of the woods, there's this place called
Subtropolis here out in a Kansas City, Missouri, and it
is the world's largest limestone nerd brown metropolis. I guess
that's why they call it Subtropolis. Really cool stuff. There's
(22:58):
like hundreds of mins files of roots to go down there.
They used to have I think they still do.
Speaker 6 (23:06):
They'll have like a bizarre little drift or a lee
market type thing going on down there.
Speaker 7 (23:14):
All that's really cool. On another note, third time in
a row that y'all have made a pet cemetery reference.
Have y'all watched pet cemetery here recently?
Speaker 6 (23:27):
I don't know what's the deal, man, You know, sometimes
sometimes dead is better. I love you guys, keep up
the amazing work, and I'm really looking forward to part
two of Fold Who isn't always looking for more holes?
Speaker 7 (23:50):
Y'all have a great day.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
Nice Thank you, Ralph, and thanks to your dog. This
reminds me we talked about this in our Vampire to
Missouri episode, Oh that was a spooky one.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
We talked about one of those yeh, subtropolis. We mentioned
that place that was the.
Speaker 5 (24:07):
Cult one, right, that's all, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this
is wild. The pet Cemetery rapsters. I think that that
movie just ruined all of us. I mean, no, I
know the book as well, but I saw that movie
way too young, and so a lot of that stuff
is embedded into me.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
And I think we really just liked doing the Fred
Gwyn kind of cartoonist main accents. It's just kind of
a fun thing to do. Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
But yes, Ralph, thank you so much.
Speaker 6 (24:34):
Man.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
We're very glad you enjoyed that episode. The first thing
you mentioned here is something that I personally had never
heard of and I wanted to see if you guys
knew about it. Kuber p d coo b e r
p e d Y. This is a place in Australia
where people have taken to living underground, fully underground, creating
(24:56):
structures underneath the earth. Because in this area, this specific
area that is what roughly five hundred and twenty seven
miles north of adelaide of the coastal plains, there in Adelaide.
This place gets so hot that birds are known to
fall from the sky. According to the BBC, electronics must
(25:17):
be stored in refrigerators often or you know, specifically cool down.
If you just had a house that was on the
surface of the earth there, it would get so hot
inside your house, no matter what kind of ace you
got going on, you have to put stuff in the fridge.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Dude.
Speaker 5 (25:31):
Here in Georgia, we've gotten situations where our phones will
Have you ever seen that message that comes up phone's
overheating just from it being on the dash. It's got
like a red triangle and an exclamation mark in it.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Oh, no joke, Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Oh, but I think maybe one of the reasons that
Ralph was so astonished that we didn't talk about Cooper
Pete is because that name is it's roughly translated from
an Indigenous Australian term that means quote, white man in
a hole.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Just where they belong, just stick them all in there.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Yeah, but it's literally like whole living I guess. But again,
this is just fascinating and the kind of thing we
were talking about just a little while ago when we
were recording a full episode before this episode was recorded
just this concept of wanting to live underground or in
a cave or in a place that the earth is
already modulating the temperature, so we wouldn't need technology of
(26:27):
any sort, no matter what happened to keep us cool
and livable in a climate that is livable. If anybody
has been to Cooper Pete, if you have any experience there,
we would love to hear from you directly. It is very,
very very cool, and it's not the only place that
you mentioned, Ben, As you said, we have discussed Subtropolis.
(26:49):
The second thing that Ralph mentioned, which is a huge
underground business complex, massive, massive, massive, massive. It was built
out of a limestone deposit where this company went through
and they basically, I don't know, board through the limestone
and created these huge places where companies can move in.
(27:10):
It's a temperature temperature controlled area and they can do
things like work on vehicles and manufacture specific types of
vehicles or at least uh basically you can lift F
four f one fifties there. There's a there's a weird
place in there that's all about vehicles. Anyway, it's super cool.
Have you guys seen pictures of this? We're videos of it.
(27:30):
We talked about it before.
Speaker 5 (27:32):
Yes, looking now it's super cool. I guess very rich
opal deposits. There lots of like precious gems and mineral deposits.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Coober PD is open to Australia. Yeah, yeah, what was
what do we moved on to?
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Sorry, we moved on to Subtropolis. Uh, the world's largest
underground business complex.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
Oh, got it, got it, got it, got it? Yes,
I know.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
The Koober PD is also really cool looking, very interesting
structures jutting out from the sides of these kind of kids.
Do you think we're going to go back to cave
dwelling guys? Is that is that in the cards for humanity?
Don't call it unforced underground?
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (28:07):
Rock the bells with that one.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
There there's a lot of speculation regarding this. I can
say on good authority that there are multiple not just
well to do individuals, but institutions that are increasingly looking
into this in sort of a futurism long term hedging
(28:29):
of bets. We know that good science fiction is only
fiction for a small amount of time. Ralph, you may
be interested, if you love sci fi at all, you
may be interested in some some of the descriptions in
Neil Stevenson's Seven Eves, which concerned the idea of how
(28:50):
to survive a global cataclysm. The difference here in what
is happening in Seven Eves is that that cataclysm is
relative quick. The cataclysms that the humans are facing now
are slow burn, slow boil cataclysms. Right, the kind of
(29:10):
thing where you look around you might realize the surface
of some part of the world is no longer habitable
without technology, arguably what's happening already, and then you decide
to go underground. So, in the parlance of corporate America, yes,
there are institutions trying to get in front of it.
(29:30):
And it's not a bad idea, It really isn't.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
No.
Speaker 5 (29:33):
I guess sorry, I'm laid to the party on this one,
but I am looking at the official website for Subtropolis,
which doesn't that in and of itself sound like the
name of a Neil Stevenson novel.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Like it truly, truly does it does? It's unbelievable, good lord.
Speaker 5 (29:47):
And there's a quote here again then this is like
for sales purposes, but apparently savings of one hundred and
twenty five five hundred dollars on utilities by locating operations underground. Yeah, sense,
you're getting shielded from a lot of the elements, from
a lot of the things that require you to just
blast ac I bet you can harness geo thermal stuff. Again,
(30:09):
not a scientist here, but I bet there's some kind
of way of venting. And I mean there has to be.
I'm just I'm curious as to what that technology looks like.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
But what is it? Seven million, eight hundred thousand square feet.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yes, and they have another six point two million expandable
square feet or feet four expansion basically in that limestone
deposit that they hollowed out already.
Speaker 5 (30:31):
It's certainly untapped real estate no matter how you look
at it, you know what I mean, the underground.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Well, the reason why I even wanted to talk about
it here today after Ralph brought it up, is because
there is a foreign trade zone inside subtropolis.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Guys. So this is like, is that like a freeport?
Speaker 4 (30:49):
Let the ports be free as above so below?
Speaker 3 (30:51):
Oh geez.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Yes, you can defer or avoid duties on imports if
you send them there first, yez okay, which is again
like a really attractive thing if you're going to build
a giant factory underground. Like many not. They don't have
a ton of places or companies there, but there are some,
and they are huge, and they are very large. There
(31:14):
is one place that is there that I thought you
guys would find interesting too. It is a film storage repository.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
That's right, I heard this.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
Yeah, I don't would be perfect for that, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
But we're talking preventing the sudden uh, the sudden combustion.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Yes, yeah, yes, but but we're talking actual you know,
film in inside the giant canisters and of things like
the Wizard of Oz, which we just mentioned in that
previous episode. But super cool, super super cool. The last
thing I wanted to bring up before we go away
from Ralph's message is a place called Oh, I'm gonna
have to say, I might say it wrong, Darren Kou,
(31:54):
I think is how you say this. This is a
place in Turkey and it is so so freaking cool.
There are rumors of how it was discovered. There are
humans living on the surface right in this area, right,
and chickens that were kept in some of these houses,
at least according to the rumors, started to go missing.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
They're like, man, the chickens.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Keep going missing. There haven't been any attacks, There are
no signs of attacks. Where the heck are the chickens going?
And then one person at least according to some writing
in the BBC and a couple other places, back in
twenty twenty two, one homeowner found that the chickens were
going down into this hole that he'd opened up as
he was doing some work on the house, where wherein
(32:37):
he discovered a giant underground series of tunnels which led
into a huge underground city there in Turkey. It's in Cappadocia,
a freaking cool place that I've never heard of before.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Carcosa.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
It's like Carcosa, I guess, Casque.
Speaker 7 (32:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
You can look at this up if you'd like to.
The article is titled Turkey's Underground City of twenty thousand
people and it is in BBCBBC dot com. It's eighty
five meters beneath the chimneys of Cappadocia. That's what it says,
A subterranean city. Its super stinking cool. Eighteen levels of tunnels.
(33:19):
Imagine that, guys, eighteen levels of tunnels. If you're thinking vertically, right,
whoa I mean?
Speaker 5 (33:25):
There's some really cool information on history dot com. There's
an article with a list of I think ten or
so underhistorical underground cities, places like Orvieto in Italy, and
let's see another one is called Petra is a very
famous one which I believe was featured in Indiana, Jones
(33:45):
and the last Crusaide.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
So I mean the people of the past, certainly dug it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Now, a lot of these living spaces are reported in
the West as like underground cities or underground towns or
things like that, but often they are built into the
sides of mountains, which isn't necessarily the same thing. Darren
Cooyu was very different because it is built down into
the earth, which I don't know, I think separates it.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
I agree, I agreed.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
You can also look up something called Nevshar I think
is how you would say it. This is one of
those that is built more into the side of a mountain,
and it's reported, of course in the BBC and other
places as an underground city.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Sorry, guys, I went on the rabbit hole now, Ben,
I bet you're aware of this.
Speaker 5 (34:28):
Beijing has an underground city that was essentially built as
a giant bunker, you know, in the sixties and seventies
due to the threat of nuclear war.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
M dude, this is very interesting to me. There's lots
more to learn here about underground living. Maybe there's something
we can do on this in the future about.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
H perfect for that, maybe how to.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Live underground, Like how do you, let's say, if it
was two hundred five hundred years ago, how do you
just dig down far enough to have his stable ceiling
underneath you right where if anyone, like let's say an
invading army is coming through, how do you make sure
the ceiling above you is going to be safe? How
do you make sure there's enough room to live down there?
(35:14):
And the people whoever was that actually built, Darren Coou,
they figured out that they need to make very small
tunnels where you would have to actually like hunch over
to get through the tunnels, so that anybody who was
trying to invade and come through would have to be
in that posture as they're going through, so you, as
a defending army could say, uh, you got speared son.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Anyway, just thought that was an interesting tidbit.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
All right, that's it for this segment on Ralph. Thank
you so much Ralph for calling in with that information.
I've got one letter from home, guys. You want to
hear that really quickly? Yeah, okay, here we go. This
comes from an anonymous SO and so.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Hey, guys, I just wanted you to check out this
Tubbaca impression.
Speaker 5 (36:02):
All right, I have a great day.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
I was very good.
Speaker 5 (36:08):
Oh man, you guys. I posted this on Instagram yesterday.
But I saw a guy I think it was sort
of famous or with viral, a dude doing an impression
of a Kerragg machine, and it was just the best
impression that I've ever heard, next to this guy's impression
of Chewbacca.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Excellent.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
All right, we will say goodbye and we will be
back with more messages from you.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
And we have returned. I had a tough time this
evening going through some correspondence, but thought this would be
apropos to many of us listening along at home. Wherever
we find ourselves in this wide world, on the surface,
in the skies or beneath the ground, Geist is coming in.
Hot Geist says hi.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Guys.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
You can refer to me as Geist. Done bro, longtime listener,
first time mailer from Germany, love your work. Just finished
your recent listener mail about your little detour on digital
price tags. Let's call them ETags and flexible pricing. I
am no whistleblower and have no leaked documents to share,
(37:17):
but what I do have are a very particular set
of skills, skills I have acquired for a very long
career as an IT project and portal to manager in
nearly every industry. We'll cut the voice there out of
respect for you, guys, guys Sean Connery, I like, guys. Yeah,
We're multiverse in it, guys, says I often find myself
(37:39):
in the realms of CRM and customer loyalty. Yes, points, cards, badges. No,
that is not everything there is to know about it, guys, continues.
In Germany, flexible pricing is not immediately illegal, but it
is considered so improper that, with the exception of a
few pilot projects, it is hardly applied in practice, although
(38:02):
some large retail chains have had the infrastructure for it
for years, the ETags are only used for central price control.
Now I'm gonna pause here, guys, I don't want a monologue.
Can we give like a quick and dirty on flex
or surge pricing? I thought we had really good discourse
about this earlier, for sure, and we.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
Made a couple of fun videos about it. I mean,
it's just the idea that things can be much like
airline tickets or concert tickets or whatever, like, demand can
in real time affect the price of things, which I've
always come down the side of that kind of doesn't
not make sense.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
That's a double negative.
Speaker 5 (38:41):
It kind of makes sense to me to a degree,
but I know it can also be gamed and taking advantage.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Of the best way to see it in action is
to attempt to take a car writing service or a
car share service at certain times of day, Like the
same trip will cost you vastly different prices depending on
time it is.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
And as I mentioned I think previously, you can case
test this. If you'd like to do a little experiment
at home, you can take here in the West. You
can take the two most prominent ride share apps, those
being lifted Uber, and you can open them, open them both,
put in the same trip, and then close them and
(39:21):
then reopen them. And sometimes you'll see not a big difference,
but you will see an adjustment as they're attempting to
scope out how much you will pay.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
For a given ride.
Speaker 4 (39:34):
And you can see this regardless of the time of
day pretty often.
Speaker 5 (39:37):
And in that we also know I think I've maybe
mentioned someone has mentioned that, you know, they'll often be
a wight and save option that you know says, oh
it'll take up to fifteen minutes extra or whatever, but
it'll cost like five dollars less. I swear I've never
had a situation where I picked that option and the
card didn't come just as fast as the regular one.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
So we know there's.
Speaker 5 (39:58):
Multiple ways of them gaming, tricking you into thinking you're
getting a deal in a way that benefits them logistically.
It's yeah, you're right, man, it is the perfect way, serge.
I mean that term really honestly has become kind of
one of those.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Eponyms I guess is that the right term bend.
Speaker 5 (40:15):
Like for like like that as people think of that
where and they think of search pricing, car car service.
Speaker 4 (40:21):
Yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, you can also,
for instance, to your example, Noel, you can see things
like paying a premium for priority delivery in food delivery
services and it does not arguably does not change the
actual order of operations other than costing you about five
extra bucks. This is brand new ground for a lot
(40:45):
of people. But as Geist will go on to prove
to us this evening, a ton of work went into
this before the public knew what was going on. So
back to Geist, Geist says, the holy grail of retail,
not just in Germany, I suppose, is not flexible pricing
to get this individual pricing at the customer level. Although
(41:07):
technically possible with a combination of E tags in FC
and or fencing, these are kind of we'll get in
the weeds on this maybe in an episode in the future.
These are a little bit, you know, they're kind of
like the spell language of the it guys in Geist's profession.
But Guy says, with a combination of various things, a
(41:30):
different approach can be taken here. Moreover, at least in Germany,
this would face immense civilian resistance, but thank you for this, Guist.
Here's where it gets crazy. I've been involved in lots
and lots of projects with almost every major grocery retailer
in Germany and have developed loyalty programs that reward customers
(41:51):
based on their behavior and history at the item level. Right,
how often do you buy cheese its or kinderregs? And
when these rewards consist of coupons via indirect methods like
points and badges and so on, coupons for specific items
completely tailored to the individual customer. There's no compulsion to
(42:12):
use the program yet, but usually the incentives are so
substantial that one really believes the illusion that it's worth it,
which calls to mind. Pausing here calls to mind our
earlier conversation about the rollout of the UH the loyalty
cards here at US grocery stores. Do you have a
Proger card? If you don't, you're paying a tax for
(42:34):
not having one.
Speaker 5 (42:35):
Yeah, but the tax, the illusion of savings is just
not paying the tax, right like it's and they're getting
your data, They're knowing exactly what you're getting. You do
tend to have access to some nice coupons.
Speaker 4 (42:49):
I suppose, what does this guy need with so much
garlic at three am?
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Yeah, but but it is a weird thing to think
you are going to buy flower or somewhere. So if
you don't buy flower at the place where you have
some kind of loyalty program, then you're gonna buy it
at a place that just has some flour at whatever
price it is that they sell it for. And then
what goes into that company's idea of how much that
(43:18):
flower should cost outside of the standard stuff that everybody's
looking at.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
That is interesting.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
They just this concept that there's an illusion that it's
worth it. But in some way it's gonna be worth
it somewhere for someone, because you're gonna find the cheapest
replica of whatever. That type of flower you're looking for
is somewhere. It just depends on if it's at the
Loyalty place or not.
Speaker 4 (43:42):
It's the home here in the States. It's the home
of the pursuit of happiness. Why would the pursuit of
savings differ in any logical way? I agree with you, guys,
Max Paul. Can we get a hand washing noise as
we return to geist perfect there it is, guy says,
as a retailer, I can wash my hands of any
(44:03):
wrongdoing and say, of course Ben pays a different price
for flower than Matt does. But this is not individual pricing.
It's solely due to the Loyalty app and its behavior.
We have no influence on that. The use of credit
score data is often hidden in the terms of service
of these programs. To our earlier note about Google Search
(44:24):
and Gmail, So even in the privacy conscious Europe. It
is possible to extract more money from people in less
highly rated areas, for example, by specifically reducing non essential
products as a purchase incentive while keeping flower prices the
same because they have to buy the flower anyway. And
(44:45):
guy says, they tested the software, we implement it, says Geist.
We made purchases based on several test accounts, and we're
able to generate a range of twenty euros with the
same shopping cart on the same day with a shopping
cart total of fifty euros. So when they say generate
a range, they mean they were able to make people
(45:07):
pay twenty dollars more and just sneaking it in. And
then you know it says we can, and then goes
on to say you can add pretty graphics, gambling mechanics right,
gamify it, loot boxes, skinner boxing, behavioralism stuff, financing models. Remember,
says guys, we're talking about groceries, and voila, the shopping
(45:28):
dystopia is complete. Anyone who thought I don't chop online
because I get exploited or lied to should consider that
retail might be slower, maybe less technically adept, but it
loves money just as much as Amazon and Co. And
will do anything to survive poor geist. You have met
(45:49):
more than once an ethical crossroads. It sounds like, because
you say, I still work in this industry and try
to bring more ethical solutions to the table. In the end, however,
we always end up in I love this part, dark
conference rooms with long robes, whispery about individual pricing.
Speaker 5 (46:08):
Why they always be whispering like that, because it's a
crazy up.
Speaker 4 (46:12):
It's a crazy idea we can't hear.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
Well, especially in Europe, where as Guys is saying, if
you try to enact some of this stuff, you'd go
you'd hit right up against the privacy laws, right, so
you gotta whisper it.
Speaker 4 (46:26):
So there's also I mean, it is a frightening dystopian thing.
Speaker 3 (46:30):
You know.
Speaker 4 (46:31):
Imagine a world wherein you go to the same grocery
store as other people in your neighborhood, but due to
the data that has been collected about you, the price
of your case D or case D ingredients differs just
enough that you won't notice it, but you could get fleeced.
Speaker 5 (46:51):
I guess, and not the Devil's advocate. Not to say
that I support this, I do understand, you know, gas
prices shift based on the market, based on what them
You know, people are always trying to get as much
as they possibly can based on what the market will allow,
what consumers are willing to pay.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
How is that any different than than.
Speaker 5 (47:11):
Uber knowing where you are and that you're trying to
go to the airport and that it might be more
important for you to get there quickly and overcharging you that.
How is this different than that in terms of ethics?
Speaker 4 (47:22):
Oh, ethically, I think we have to bracket the ethics
at this pin fair look at efficacy. The next time
you guys are on the road with me, Let's play
a game, not a saw a reference. Let's open up
our phones, let's pull up the same ride share app,
and let's see what prices which. Because I believe this
is already occurring.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
I heard something really neat the other day.
Speaker 5 (47:43):
The CEO of Arizona Iced tea yes and made a
big deal saying it's God always be ninety nine cents
or this giant Honkin forty ounce malt liquor size can
of you know, sweet tea product. And since he came
out and said that, people have been kind of watchdogging
Arizona Iced tea at stores and and calling out stores
(48:07):
that overcharge for Arizona iced tea, and if you.
Speaker 4 (48:09):
Report it to the company, they will stop supplying that store.
They're very militant about it, which I applaud.
Speaker 5 (48:16):
I think that's super cool. But like, I can't think
of any other examples of that. And and at a
certain point, is it just the prerogative of the distributor
and or the retailer to decide what the price should
be or what their market will allow, like does does
the does the manufacturer never enter into it? Like I know,
it's it's different with cars. You know, there's like there's
(48:38):
like list prices and you know certain products there's list
prices that are set and you can discount it up
to a certain point, but how deep you go with
that discount You do have some wiggle room. But I
just wonder, you know, who's who's who's driving the ship,
who's steering the ship here?
Speaker 4 (48:53):
Well my answer would be no one, But perhaps that's
a little bit nihilistic. The you're you're right right, It
differs industry by industry to end Geist correspondence here, which
again geist eye opening and thank you guy says I'd
love to hear your opinion the American perspective on this
topic and leaves us with some breadcrumbs. We're gonna follow
(49:15):
up to your question this idea of determining price. Another
comparison would be the famous hot dog of Costco.
Speaker 5 (49:26):
It's a loss leader, but it has a benefit in
optics and just you know, getting butts through the door.
You know, it's or whatever. There has to be some
calculation there. But they will always lose money on that,
but they gain and it's a good pr story, right,
I mean, yeah.
Speaker 4 (49:44):
There are other examples or areas of opportunity for this
kind of thing. Right. The majority of movie theaters make
their money off of not the movies they show or
the films they show, but through the concessions. And just
like with you know, hot dogs have a very high
profit margin if you do it correctly, so you can
take an l on hot dogs. Popcorn has a cartoonish
(50:08):
profit margin and it kept a lot of those theater
companies afloat, so we can we can see the game
writ large. And I'm wondering too to hear from you
guys before we get to a letter from home that
we always like to end with. Do you guys see
this as inevitable in some form, or is this going
(50:29):
to be like an NFT thing that gets rejected full disclosure.
I'm kind of on the side of this sort of
customer specified or targeted pricing. I'm kind of on the
side of it being inevitable at this point.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
I don't know. I can see it working in conjunction
with a lot of other things, and it does feel
like it is going to be that way, just based
on again, if I think right now specifically about how
much Kroger knows about me since I've been buying from them,
that's the that's a grocery restore here where we live,
and then it's a lot of place.
Speaker 3 (51:02):
Yeah, he's in that same number for twenty years.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
Easily, easily, and they know exactly what I buy, when
I buy it, and how much of it I buy,
and it's all that's probably already factored in if I
was using their app, because I know in their app
they do the thing that Geist is talking about where
they offer specific coupons to individuals, right, so I think
they are already trying to do that thing he's talking about.
(51:25):
I'm not buying into that yet, So I think if
there's enough customer buy in, then that's going to exist
because otherwise, right now, how are you going to walk
into a Kroger, And let's say the three of us
walk past the same cereal aisle and raisin brand costs
three different prices when we walk past it, right.
Speaker 3 (51:45):
Do you think?
Speaker 2 (51:46):
I mean, that's possible if you've got those electronic price
tags on everything and you just as you walk past,
oh it's now three seventeen versus three twenty six or
something like that. I mean maybe, but I don't see
how you do that unless it's a fully online experience
where when you go to check out with your specific
(52:06):
loyalty number and your credit card that's associated with your
credit score, then you could achieve it.
Speaker 4 (52:13):
So you don't see it as inevitable at this point.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
I don't see it inevitable inside a brick and mortar store,
So as long as those exist, I don't think you
can have this type of thing. But if everybody, the
vast majority of people, are ordering all of their products online,
then I think it's an easy yes, because then all
your stuff is in one warehouse that's getting sorted by robots,
(52:36):
that gets shipped to your house.
Speaker 4 (52:38):
We could also consider, and I appreciate that point. We
could also consider the idea that increasing facial recognition technology
is going to scale and become much more affordable for
a lot of institutions, a lot of private institutions, even
unto the grocery stores, meaning that there is a possibility
(53:00):
of the world I to me the idea that this
is inevitable. I agree that it will roll out or
already exist online right shout out Amazon groceries, but the
idea of it going to brick and mortar is definitely
on the table.
Speaker 3 (53:15):
In my opinion.
Speaker 5 (53:16):
It makes me think of, like, you know, the whole
homogenization of culture that comes along with these algorithms that
we don't really have a say in which ones we're using.
We're all kind of being driven with, you know, what's
being presented to us by these algorithms in terms of
the content we're consuming. I'm kind of wondering if there's
an associated homogenization of like product choices and you know,
(53:39):
food items and grocery habits that are very similarly linked
up to something like that one percent.
Speaker 4 (53:47):
So Here in the American South, for instance, people become
loyal to a certain brick and mortar grocery store because
it has things they can predict it supply. Right, So
if you've gone to, for example, uh Kroger's for many years,
when you walk into a Trader Joe's, a Whole Foods,
or a Publix or a we still have the Pigley
(54:09):
Wiggly now Morland if you walk into Yeah, if you
walk into one of those, you're going to find that
they satisfy the general miligew of customer needs. But they
do it through different brands because they may have agreements
with different suppliers or different facets of Unilever, I should
say at this point.
Speaker 5 (54:29):
Whereas a Trader Joe's visit might be sort of like
a treat, you know, because you stock up on some
specialty fun items.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
You know.
Speaker 5 (54:37):
I don't use it Trader Joe's as my regular shop,
but boy, when I go there do I have a
good old time.
Speaker 3 (54:43):
And there was also one right next to the movie theater.
Speaker 5 (54:45):
We like to go to, so it's a great place
to sneak in some sneaky movie theater snacks.
Speaker 3 (54:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (54:51):
I think we mentioned this before, but a huge organization
like Trader Joe's at this point is a massive corporation,
uh crow.
Speaker 3 (54:58):
Masquerading as A and pop kind of right, it be.
Speaker 2 (55:01):
Funny, But they just bought Albertson's Kroger Did they just
merge with them? So they're all it's homogenizing the way
you're talking about with the manufacturers of the food as well, right,
So it I don't know. Yeah, the more I think
about it, I'm leaning towards the way you're thinking, Ben,
that you could do it at the store.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
You could.
Speaker 2 (55:19):
This is all happening already, it's in. It's everything they
needs in place. You just currently do it through an app,
and that's how you control the price.
Speaker 4 (55:29):
The conspiracy is real. Please don't ever forget This stuff
goes deeper than the government's debt whatever. We're going to
end one of my favorite things for listener mails letters
from home. So just some nice, nice vibes some how
you doing how your folks, and we'll give you this one.
Allow conspiracy realist. What's a good nickname that starts with
(55:52):
an L? Like a cool nickname that starts with.
Speaker 3 (55:55):
The letter L.
Speaker 4 (55:56):
Lavender La Loo Lavender Law writes in to say, hey, guys,
I'm just writing in because I know you love these
lottery style, odds games. But when I choose to listen
to the new stuff, they don't want you to know
episode or my current audio book. I didn't think it'd
be a notable choice.
Speaker 3 (56:12):
I was wrong.
Speaker 4 (56:13):
You mentioned in the podcast that Mandate for Leadership the
Conservative Promise was about as long as the unabridged version
of the Stand, And he guessed what my current audiobook is.
You guessed it the uncut version of The Stand. It's
a nearly forty eight hour listen.
Speaker 5 (56:29):
So that came up when we were talking about Project
twenty twenty five. That's my buddy Harry. He was visiting
and he has read the on it. It's a little shorter.
I think the Project twenty twenty five is a little
bit shorter than this, isn't it weird?
Speaker 4 (56:41):
Yeah, you get to like page one thousand and you think,
oh man, So for the Stand, and Lavender Lolo says,
this is my second time listening to it, and since
you drew the parallel, I'm wondering if The Stand would
be an even better bible to base our next president's
office off of the current state of affairs. It seems
(57:01):
fitting to me, and then continues, we're going through some
of this. To paraphrase Lavender says, anyways, not account of taste,
but you guys always seem to catch my attention. Thanks
for the endless stream of fantastic topics. I've been listening
for beat Me Here, Max and Paul Holy eight years
beat Me Again. I'm old.
Speaker 3 (57:23):
I did originally feel right.
Speaker 4 (57:26):
I did originally run back all your episodes in the
first three years or so, so I'm mostly up to date.
Huge fan of Ridiculous History too. I was actually a
listener there first. This is the heartwarming part. This is
why we do letters from home. Thanks for being something
I can be proud of in my city that I
was born and live in. People who live in Atlanta,
and my opinion, truly have earned their title at alien
(57:49):
as they are most likely not from here. I really
do feel down about my hometown as I don't feel
like it's home anymore. It's changed so much. I don't
know if it's because I'm old and crotchety, but I
remember my Atlanta being a better place back in the day. Anyway,
I got way off topic. I just wanted to express
why I value such a positive influence in you guys
(58:09):
with seriously good values. And conversation skills like our boys
in the military. I'll throw this against the wall. I'd
love to buy everybody some wings at the local to
say thanks. Hit me up if you want otherwise, keep
on keeping on, homies.
Speaker 3 (58:22):
Oh we must what a sweet What a nice thing
to say, Lavender.
Speaker 4 (58:26):
Oh man, I hope you liked the nickname man, Thank
you so much. Go to to actionable out there. But
I think it's it's a vibe we can all agree
with and in the spirit.
Speaker 3 (58:36):
Had local wings and ages.
Speaker 4 (58:38):
I would love they're doing new sauces. No way, yeah, yes,
way too.
Speaker 2 (58:43):
Don't get me anything, but that's so on dry Tomato,
get out of town.
Speaker 3 (58:45):
I like that soundred tomato. I like that lemon pepper wet.
Speaker 4 (58:48):
They're messing with the ghost peppers.
Speaker 3 (58:50):
Matt what okay, can get so you could? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (58:57):
So we're ending on a cliffhanger here, big, big thanks
to everybody who took the time to tune in. Thanks
you guys, thanks to Lavender, to Ralph Anonymous, Chebaka, thanks
to Flash, and thanks to you folks. We hope you
join us for future explorations of weird Rain. Future explorations.
Oh my gosh, we got all sorts of stuff Skyjelly look.
(59:19):
Just hit us up online. We try to be easy
to find there.
Speaker 5 (59:22):
Sky Jelly also not a bad band name, or maybe
a really bad band name.
Speaker 3 (59:25):
I don't know. I can never tell. It's usually one
or the other.
Speaker 5 (59:27):
We are conspiracy stuff on YouTube, or we have video
content coming your way on the regular xfka Twitter as
well as Facebook, or we have our Facebook groupeers where
it's crazy on Instagram and TikTok. You can find us
in the handle conspiracy the show.
Speaker 2 (59:42):
Put this number in your phone right now one eight
three three st d w y TK. When you listen
to an episode and you've got a cool idea, you've
got something that you can relate to us from your
personal experience, call that number and tell us everything in
three minutes. Of course, when you do, you call in,
give yourself a nickname. Whatever it is.
Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
We don't care.
Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
We're just excited to hear it and let us know
if we can use your name and message on one
of these listener mail episodes. If you've got more to
say than can fit in a three minute voicemail, why
not instead send us a good old fashion email.
Speaker 4 (01:00:15):
We are the entities that read every single email we get,
and gratefully so actually following up on some more correspondents
this evening. When you send us an email, we can
all read it, we can all respond. Just be aware.
Sometimes the void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or whoever you listen to your favorite shows
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Noela. They call
me Ben.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
We're joined with our guest superproducer Max the Freak Train Williams.
Most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. It's one of the
most exciting evenings of the week for us, fellow conspiracy realists.
This is where we hear directly from you. We're getting Oh,
(00:50):
it looks like we have extra letters from home. We're
very excited about that. We've We've got some Google results,
Google search results. I'm really interested in this conversation. We
have a an on the ground follow up to our
recent discussions of flex and or surge pricing. Before we
do any of that, you guys ever want to just
(01:14):
give up the podcasting thing and go get a bunker,
like an underground place to survive.
Speaker 5 (01:20):
I have my basement's kind of bunker like. I just
need to maybe reinforce the doors a little bit. I
hang out down here a lot. I got everything I need.
We were just talking off air. I got a mini fridge,
got a freezer chest.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
What else is? They're Vigie games.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
A place to brew your beer in the cold dank caves.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Yeah, exactly. That was my cold dank rainbow cave.
Speaker 5 (01:46):
And we're back with today's first piece of Listener mail.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
This one comes from flash who's a regular contributor.
Speaker 5 (01:55):
I think he probably dms each of us separately on
the Internet. I don't know if he's ever written in,
but he's a I don't want to give too much
away about the guy, but he's a really really impressive,
awesome I'm a lay.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Friend of stuff he should know as well.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Okay, very good.
Speaker 5 (02:09):
I'm not gonna he has to use the nickname Flashy
as sort of a public figure per se. He's got
one of the blue check marks, but really really talented dude.
I will leave it at that as to maintain his anonym,
and he goes that is in the spirit of Listener mail.
But he did right in in regards to a conversation
we were having. I can't remember what it was surrounding,
(02:31):
but I think I brought up the fact that I
feel as though Google search results have gotten here, and
I think results may may vary, and and there's a
good reason for That's just what we're gonna talk about today.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
I've definitely been talking with a lot of people on
social media to regarding this, because it's you know, there's
a threshold, I would argue all that after a certain
amount of people who don't know each other begin noticing
this phenomenals, right, we can't treat it as though, you know,
we can't treat it as so people are imagining something
(03:06):
or being gas lit.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Well, and it also depends on what you're searching for.
I don't want to get too ahead of the of
the curve here or too derailed from Flash's message. But
I actually saw a very interesting quote from Christopher Nolan,
the director, who had something very interesting to point out,
and I think this will be actually a really good
lead in to this story, and I'll just give you
(03:30):
the gist of it. He basically said he feels like
there isn't as much information on the Internet as people think.
Google is very good at certain things like cataloging your
personal data and selling it to the highest bidder and
using it to well, maybe not that necessarily well, maybe that,
but also specifically using it to serve you ads and
tracking your movements and your tastes and internet browsing habits,
(03:54):
but not necessarily search. He points out that if you
went to the library and like three different books and
flipped to some random pages and then searched for those online,
you would probably results would be more in the underwhelming
direction than they would be then having those results turn up.
(04:17):
And so I think there is something to be said
about that. I thought it was an interesting way of
putting it. But here is what Flash had to say
his message to us via Instagram. Something you might want
to have a look at. Just heard the podcast where
you talked about if Google search is getting worse?
Speaker 3 (04:34):
In short, it is. Here's a video explaining.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
How they are intentionally making it harder to find the
correct results. And he linked to an episode of the
Verge Cast. Big fan of the Verge all around really
good tech reporting. The folks that are on this particular
podcast are very much embedded, are entrenched in the SEO world,
(04:58):
which you know, to folks that are casual Internet users
or maybe more into like the technic side of things
can be a little bit of a snooze but we've
kind of lived and breathed SEO as part of big
websites and search engine optimization, search engine optimization one hundred percent,
and it's essentially the idea of making your content, whether
(05:22):
it be your website, you know, your blog, your company,
your brand UH be prioritized in search. And Google has
always kind of been a bit of a black box
in terms of like what they do to change their algorithms.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
They roll out these big.
Speaker 5 (05:37):
Changes and I remember back when we were more connected
to the How Stuff Works website, there would be I
don't know if you guys remember this, there'd be changes
to the Google algorithm that would change the way content
was was ranked in terms of quality content. Right, And
because some of the stuff on How Stuff Works were
these little kind of micro articles times or they were
(06:01):
divided up into multiple pages so you get served more ads,
we got hit by this idea of it was no
longer considered of a higher echemount of quality content. It
wasn't much substantive, substantive because it was too much little
snippets kind of not to say that taken as a whole,
this wasn't good writing. There's no shade on any of
(06:22):
the writers for how stuff worked. But a direction that
many of these types of websites have gone in recent
years is to break these things up so you can
get more ads crammed in there. And that's not you know,
the writer's decision. That is the powers that be, and
I think we're all annoyed by that. But that is
the kind of stuff that can't affect Google search results.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
But a lot of those have switched back now to
the one wagers.
Speaker 5 (06:47):
That's exactly right, and that's because of this very thing,
because it gets it's not worth feeding, it's not worthy
if you have more ads, but you have fewer eyeballs
on the ads. It doesn't really matter how many ads
you have, So I think it makes more sense to
prioritize the search engine optimization over cramming as many ads
as you possibly can.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
That way, you can sell the ads.
Speaker 5 (07:09):
That you do have at more of a premium because
you're getting more page views. So in order to operate
like that, guys, you have to kind of take a
company like Google at their word when they tell you
this is how we rank quality of content. This is
how we reward certain things with higher page rankings. You know,
(07:31):
the show them up in the results. And it's not
exactly them telling you how to quote unquote game search.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
That's what everyone's trying to do.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
And I think one thing that this Verge podcast pointed
out is the folks that are the most successful with
that are the ones that don't necessarily take everything Google
says as the law of the land. They do experiments
like I don't know if you guys remember when mister
Beast did a thing where he posted only thumbnails through
his videos with his mouth open. And again this is
(08:00):
a discuss in this Verge podcast. YouTube didn't tell him
to do that, He just tried it out and realized
that when he posted on image with his mouth open,
he got way better ranking in the you know YouTube and.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Eults wasn't out of the blue. He does a phenomenal
job explaining this, and I love what you're pointing out.
One interesting thing, just for context, that folks need to know,
and flash you are well aware of this. The vast
majority of people searching for anything on Google, no matter
(08:36):
what it is, the vast majority do not go to
page two of the results.
Speaker 5 (08:40):
Oh that's right, that's why they They have said it
for years, like if you're not on page one of
the results, you might as well not exist, you know.
I mean, that's it's it's sort of like being featured
in like like Apple podcasts, they call it a what
do they call their band carousel, their carousel. If you're
not in the first rung of that carousel before you
have to click next, you basically have it been featured,
(09:03):
you know, because unfortunately, I mean I tend to click through.
I don't know about you guys, and I do tend
to click through a few search result pages. But I
think the vast majority of folks won't click to the
next set of four image tiles or won't click on
the next page of search results.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
So if you're not, because people are.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
Kind of inherently a little bit lazy, even on the Internet,
where it's like a literal click, you know, to get
you some more stuff loaded on your screen to look at.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
But here's the kicker.
Speaker 5 (09:29):
What the Verge podcast is referring to as an article
that they posted on The Verge May thirty first of
twenty twenty four. So a little late to the party
on this story, but I think it is absolutely crucial
impression and information that we should all know and that
clearly Google does not want us to know the biggest
findings in the Google Search link by Mia Sato, who
(09:52):
is the Platforms and Communities reporter with five years of
experience covering the companies that shape technology and the people
who use their tools. Per The Verge, the subhead, a
set of twenty five hundred internal documents, including some related
to search, call them to question the past statements made
by the company, calling into questions things like what they
(10:15):
said didn't matter, things that they said they weren't keeping
track of, things that they said did not contribute in
any way, shape or form.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
To your Google Search rankings.
Speaker 5 (10:28):
There are things in this cash of documents that indicate
that Google has kind of been lying to creators. To
what end, It's not quite clear. It's a lot of documents,
but Google is, as it described, and I think completely
accurately in this document, the biggest gatekeeper of the Internet,
(10:52):
and they've always been a bit of a black box
in terms of how their search works, how this algorithm works.
They make it clear right off the at that the
Google Search algorithm itself has not leaked, and SEO experts
don't suddenly have all the answers, but the information that
did leak collection of thousands of internal Google documents is
still huge. It's an unprecedented look into Google's inner workings
(11:15):
that are typically closely guarded. It's something that I think
we should maybe even do a little bit of a
deeper dive into.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
This is a very extensive article.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
There's a lot of like other kind of sub you know,
articles that are sort of using this as a jumping
off point and doing further exploration that those that cash
of documents fully available to dig through ourselves. But one
of the things that I think is interesting is how
they have clearly been being dishonest about Chrome. Okay, so, Chrome,
(11:47):
as we know, is also the most popular web browser
in the world. And what this document, or this series
of documents indicates is that essentially, surprise, surprise, Chrome is
basically a key logger and all of your stuff is
getting reported directly back to Google. And I know that's
no shock because we all, any of us who got
(12:08):
an early Gmail account, it was so convenient, so snappy,
so it worked so well. You may all recall that
we basically agree to allow Google to read our emails.
That was the early caveat, and I.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
Spent a lot of time writing good emails.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I know you do. Ben.
Speaker 5 (12:28):
You are very you are very eloquent in both speech
and and and the written world. I hear you're one
of the great email writers of our generation. But I
don't give it about that.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Either, dude, I really don't care.
Speaker 5 (12:41):
I fully signed on for that, but they it's one
thing where they put that in the in the small
print or whatever, and it was it was not that
small because I remember that from way back when I
first got my you know, my original Gmail that I've
had for however many freaking years it's been. But with Chrome,
they unequivocally have said they don't do that. They don't
don't track your stuff, and which was just like why lie,
(13:03):
of course you are somebody. Again, this is pointed out
on the Verge podcast. At Google was like, isn't it
our job to like figure out what.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Kind of links people are going to? And like, how
do we do that.
Speaker 5 (13:16):
Let's build the most popular web browser in the planet
and now we know everything, and of course they're keeping
track of that. Certain Again I'm not an SEO expert,
but there are certain things, certain types of fields that
are kind of hidden fields in HTML or whatever it is.
The you know, the underlying code of a website that
(13:38):
they said were irrelevant. This indicates that many of those
things are absolutely relevant or absolutely being tracked. I just
think it's fascinating and and very you know, the whole
don't be evil thing, So no wonder they pivoted from that.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
It just feels like it's gone on the window. And
I want to open this up to the group best.
Speaker 5 (13:58):
When I read the last little quote from the piece,
journalists and publishers of information about SEO and Google Search
need to stop uncritically repeating Google's public statements and take
a much harsher, more adversarial view of the search giants representatives.
This is coming from SEO expert Rand Fishkin, who is
a SEO optimization veteran kind of a guru in that field,
(14:23):
and he interviewed for this piece with The Verge via email,
and another guy named Mike King, who is also in
that field. But absolutely, I mean not that we ever
should be in a place where we unequivocally believe everything
giant corporations tell us about their processes, because I think
if anyone's listening to the show enough and done enough
of their homework, so we know there's always some form
(14:45):
of obfuscation going on.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
But guys, does any of this a surprise you?
Speaker 5 (14:50):
And b is there anything you'd like to know more about,
because there really is almost too much to talk about
in terms of like the types of attributes fourteen thousand attributes.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
It's mentioned in the document this.
Speaker 5 (15:02):
You know this is going to be something that's going
to be dissected for a long time to come.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Yeah, I'd like to make this an episode. This is
fantastic because people know that it's true. A couple of
points to give some context here, Flash and our fellow
conspiracy realist.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
One.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
The clever thing about spinning off entities is that you
can pass the blame around like a hot potato, so
you could say, conceivably, we at Google never lied. Alphabet
made a decision, and that decision was not ours. I'd
also love for anybody wants to read that excellent Verge
(15:41):
article you mentioned.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Al.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
I'd also recommend a publication that came out I want
to say, January of this year, just search for is
Google getting worse? A longitudinal investigation of SEO spam in
search engines. And this came out right around the time
people were getting really hot about institutionalizing AGI or machine
(16:07):
learning or llms large language models, and this is it's
a long read. I'm not gonna lie. It's not super
sexy because it's scholarship, but it is incredibly insightful. The
last point I would make is incognito. Incognito is not incognito.
Speaker 6 (16:26):
You know.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
The rule remains from the early days of talking on
the telephone, back when the operators had to switch you
over to party lines and stuff like that. The rule
remains you should not ever assume that anything you do
online is private if in any manner, form or fashion.
Speaker 5 (16:47):
The verg folks pointed out a new browser that they
were all just raving about that apparent. I can't remember
the name now, but it was new enough that I
think if you look up new secure browse something, it'll
probably pop up. But that is the reason people like
to use things like Opera, UH and other you know,
browsers that that do potentially offer more private browsing. But man, yeah,
(17:13):
when you're I think we can all, for all intents
and purposes, assume that if you're using Chrome, which I
certainly am right the second, in fact, we are required
to use Chrome to run the streaming software that we
used to record this very show that you've got a
direct line to Google HQ with everything that you're doing
incognito or no.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Maybe they were talking about Brave Yeah, yeah, yeah, this
is something newer that I didn't recognize.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
I'll see if.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
I can find it by the end of the segment,
if not the episode. But Matt, I know this is
near and dear to you because you've been through all
of these algorithm changes as well and seeing all this
stuff in the way. You know, Google essentially is god
in this space. And I'm also wondering what you think
about why this is making search worse? Is it because
(18:05):
people are using their trying to do SEO based on
things that aren't actually accurate or like, as our listener
Flash pointed out, that Google is intentionally making search worse.
I didn't exactly get that from the documents. I didn't
know if you saw something that I might have missed.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Well, look, I don't know. I'm not an expert here,
but it does seem when you look at Alphabet's find financials,
like through Investipedia and a couple other things, they are
still getting most of their money through ads, right, That's
the way they make their hundreds of billions of dollars.
That's why they're such a huge company still. But they are,
like almost every other major tech company on the planet,
(18:44):
pushing AI as hard as they possibly can given them.
Speaker 5 (18:47):
They fell flat on their face with that first roll
out of it too, with like the glue and the pizza.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
And all of that.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Yeah, but given those developments, given the amount of money
that they're funneling into those efforts, given the amount of
information on everyone that they have, it does feel like
they will probably have one of, if not the most
robust AI, like personally catered AI system that will exist
(19:14):
on the planet in X years from now, and that
they're building really consistently over time, and it feels like
perhaps that's where all this is going or why things
are changing. We just don't get to see that back
end and understand it's how it is being how the
entire system is being modified, like for whatever the future
(19:36):
thing is supposed to be.
Speaker 5 (19:38):
I'll tell you something interesting that I learned recently. I
have a really good friend who contracts with Google. I'm
not gonna say anything about what he does exactly, but
he does deal with some of this AI stuff, and
a lot of it is finding people to figure out
what to do with this stuff and how to make
it a product that people will want to buy essentially,
(20:00):
or like want to buy into at the very least,
and you know, because everyone's got to use it.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
It's the new hot thing.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
And obviously there's things happening behind the scenes that will
make it very useful in terms of you know, maybe
optimizing search or whatever, perhaps any number of things. But
there are tons of people that there's younger people that
are being paid to like figure out stuff to do
with this technology, you know, and tons of money being
thrown out. To your point, that is all from the
(20:26):
inside perspective, completely true.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
And the browser is called ARC by the way. ARC.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
Oh, oh, there it is.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
I haven't played with that one yet.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
I'll check it out.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
We can keep this segment short because I really do
think it's worthy of a deeper expiration.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I'm glad you think so too, bim.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
I didn't really have any final words, just the fact
that these attributes, there's so many of them, and it's
just essentially what this thing, you know, indicates, is that
so many of these attributes that Google said they weren't
using to categorize quality, they weren't using to to rank search.
They are, in fact, at the very least keeping track
(21:04):
of Now I will say again I'm non SEO expert either,
but just because they're keeping track of it doesn't necessarily
mean that's the driving force, you know, I mean, more
data is more data and anyway, as we know in
this internet, you know world, the more data you have,
the more power you have, so you know, the more
grain or you can get. But to me, the biggest
(21:25):
and easiest to for most of us to understand takeaway,
who's this stuff about chrome?
Speaker 3 (21:30):
So there you go.
Speaker 5 (21:31):
Let's take a quick break, hear a word from our sponsor,
and come back with some more Oh thank you, by
the way, flash some more messages from you.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
We've returned and we are jumping to the phone lines.
Let's hear this message from Ralph.
Speaker 7 (21:52):
Guys, I'm just gonna go with You can call me
Ralph because I'm walking my dog and that's my dog's name.
I love the episode about holes and cave systems, but
I cannot believe that you didn't even mention Uber Pete
this town out in southern Australia where they just dug
(22:16):
holes into the side of this mountain, full sized houses,
just really cool shit, and you just pay for a
basic you know, whatever size that you want and then
you can go in and ship away at it and
like make your own shelves and stuff. But also here
(22:37):
in my neck of the woods, there's this place called
Subtropolis here out in a Kansas City, Missouri, and it
is the world's largest limestone nerd brown metropolis. I guess
that's why they call it Subtropolis. Really cool stuff. There's
(22:58):
like hundreds of mins files of roots to go down there.
They used to have I think they still do.
Speaker 6 (23:06):
They'll have like a bizarre little drift or a lee
market type thing going on down there.
Speaker 7 (23:14):
All that's really cool. On another note, third time in
a row that y'all have made a pet cemetery reference.
Have y'all watched pet cemetery here recently?
Speaker 6 (23:27):
I don't know what's the deal, man, You know, sometimes
sometimes dead is better. I love you guys, keep up
the amazing work, and I'm really looking forward to part
two of Fold Who isn't always looking for more holes?
Speaker 7 (23:50):
Y'all have a great day.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
Nice Thank you, Ralph, and thanks to your dog. This
reminds me we talked about this in our Vampire to
Missouri episode, Oh that was a spooky one.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
We talked about one of those yeh, subtropolis. We mentioned
that place that was the.
Speaker 5 (24:07):
Cult one, right, that's all, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this
is wild. The pet Cemetery rapsters. I think that that
movie just ruined all of us. I mean, no, I
know the book as well, but I saw that movie
way too young, and so a lot of that stuff
is embedded into me.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
And I think we really just liked doing the Fred
Gwyn kind of cartoonist main accents. It's just kind of
a fun thing to do. Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
But yes, Ralph, thank you so much.
Speaker 6 (24:34):
Man.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
We're very glad you enjoyed that episode. The first thing
you mentioned here is something that I personally had never
heard of and I wanted to see if you guys
knew about it. Kuber p d coo b e r
p e d Y. This is a place in Australia
where people have taken to living underground, fully underground, creating
(24:56):
structures underneath the earth. Because in this area, this specific
area that is what roughly five hundred and twenty seven
miles north of adelaide of the coastal plains, there in Adelaide.
This place gets so hot that birds are known to
fall from the sky. According to the BBC, electronics must
(25:17):
be stored in refrigerators often or you know, specifically cool down.
If you just had a house that was on the
surface of the earth there, it would get so hot
inside your house, no matter what kind of ace you
got going on, you have to put stuff in the fridge.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Dude.
Speaker 5 (25:31):
Here in Georgia, we've gotten situations where our phones will
Have you ever seen that message that comes up phone's
overheating just from it being on the dash. It's got
like a red triangle and an exclamation mark in it.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Oh, no joke, Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Oh, but I think maybe one of the reasons that
Ralph was so astonished that we didn't talk about Cooper
Pete is because that name is it's roughly translated from
an Indigenous Australian term that means quote, white man in
a hole.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Just where they belong, just stick them all in there.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Yeah, but it's literally like whole living I guess. But again,
this is just fascinating and the kind of thing we
were talking about just a little while ago when we
were recording a full episode before this episode was recorded
just this concept of wanting to live underground or in
a cave or in a place that the earth is
already modulating the temperature, so we wouldn't need technology of
(26:27):
any sort, no matter what happened to keep us cool
and livable in a climate that is livable. If anybody
has been to Cooper Pete, if you have any experience there,
we would love to hear from you directly. It is very,
very very cool, and it's not the only place that
you mentioned, Ben, As you said, we have discussed Subtropolis.
(26:49):
The second thing that Ralph mentioned, which is a huge
underground business complex, massive, massive, massive, massive. It was built
out of a limestone deposit where this company went through
and they basically, I don't know, board through the limestone
and created these huge places where companies can move in.
(27:10):
It's a temperature temperature controlled area and they can do
things like work on vehicles and manufacture specific types of
vehicles or at least uh basically you can lift F
four f one fifties there. There's a there's a weird
place in there that's all about vehicles. Anyway, it's super cool.
Have you guys seen pictures of this? We're videos of it.
(27:30):
We talked about it before.
Speaker 5 (27:32):
Yes, looking now it's super cool. I guess very rich
opal deposits. There lots of like precious gems and mineral deposits.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Coober PD is open to Australia. Yeah, yeah, what was
what do we moved on to?
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Sorry, we moved on to Subtropolis. Uh, the world's largest
underground business complex.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
Oh, got it, got it, got it, got it? Yes,
I know.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
The Koober PD is also really cool looking, very interesting
structures jutting out from the sides of these kind of kids.
Do you think we're going to go back to cave
dwelling guys? Is that is that in the cards for humanity?
Don't call it unforced underground?
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (28:07):
Rock the bells with that one.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
There there's a lot of speculation regarding this. I can
say on good authority that there are multiple not just
well to do individuals, but institutions that are increasingly looking
into this in sort of a futurism long term hedging
(28:29):
of bets. We know that good science fiction is only
fiction for a small amount of time. Ralph, you may
be interested, if you love sci fi at all, you
may be interested in some some of the descriptions in
Neil Stevenson's Seven Eves, which concerned the idea of how
(28:50):
to survive a global cataclysm. The difference here in what
is happening in Seven Eves is that that cataclysm is
relative quick. The cataclysms that the humans are facing now
are slow burn, slow boil cataclysms. Right, the kind of
(29:10):
thing where you look around you might realize the surface
of some part of the world is no longer habitable
without technology, arguably what's happening already, and then you decide
to go underground. So, in the parlance of corporate America, yes,
there are institutions trying to get in front of it.
(29:30):
And it's not a bad idea, It really isn't.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
No.
Speaker 5 (29:33):
I guess sorry, I'm laid to the party on this one,
but I am looking at the official website for Subtropolis,
which doesn't that in and of itself sound like the
name of a Neil Stevenson novel.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Like it truly, truly does it does? It's unbelievable, good lord.
Speaker 5 (29:47):
And there's a quote here again then this is like
for sales purposes, but apparently savings of one hundred and
twenty five five hundred dollars on utilities by locating operations underground. Yeah, sense,
you're getting shielded from a lot of the elements, from
a lot of the things that require you to just
blast ac I bet you can harness geo thermal stuff. Again,
(30:09):
not a scientist here, but I bet there's some kind
of way of venting. And I mean there has to be.
I'm just I'm curious as to what that technology looks like.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
But what is it? Seven million, eight hundred thousand square feet.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yes, and they have another six point two million expandable
square feet or feet four expansion basically in that limestone
deposit that they hollowed out already.
Speaker 5 (30:31):
It's certainly untapped real estate no matter how you look
at it, you know what I mean, the underground.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Well, the reason why I even wanted to talk about
it here today after Ralph brought it up, is because
there is a foreign trade zone inside subtropolis.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Guys. So this is like, is that like a freeport?
Speaker 4 (30:49):
Let the ports be free as above so below?
Speaker 3 (30:51):
Oh geez.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Yes, you can defer or avoid duties on imports if
you send them there first, yez okay, which is again
like a really attractive thing if you're going to build
a giant factory underground. Like many not. They don't have
a ton of places or companies there, but there are some,
and they are huge, and they are very large. There
(31:14):
is one place that is there that I thought you
guys would find interesting too. It is a film storage repository.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
That's right, I heard this.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
Yeah, I don't would be perfect for that, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
But we're talking preventing the sudden uh, the sudden combustion.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Yes, yeah, yes, but but we're talking actual you know,
film in inside the giant canisters and of things like
the Wizard of Oz, which we just mentioned in that
previous episode. But super cool, super super cool. The last
thing I wanted to bring up before we go away
from Ralph's message is a place called Oh, I'm gonna
have to say, I might say it wrong, Darren Kou,
(31:54):
I think is how you say this. This is a
place in Turkey and it is so so freaking cool.
There are rumors of how it was discovered. There are
humans living on the surface right in this area, right,
and chickens that were kept in some of these houses,
at least according to the rumors, started to go missing.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
They're like, man, the chickens.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Keep going missing. There haven't been any attacks, There are
no signs of attacks. Where the heck are the chickens going?
And then one person at least according to some writing
in the BBC and a couple other places, back in
twenty twenty two, one homeowner found that the chickens were
going down into this hole that he'd opened up as
he was doing some work on the house, where wherein
(32:37):
he discovered a giant underground series of tunnels which led
into a huge underground city there in Turkey. It's in Cappadocia,
a freaking cool place that I've never heard of before.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Carcosa.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
It's like Carcosa, I guess, Casque.
Speaker 7 (32:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
You can look at this up if you'd like to.
The article is titled Turkey's Underground City of twenty thousand
people and it is in BBCBBC dot com. It's eighty
five meters beneath the chimneys of Cappadocia. That's what it says,
A subterranean city. Its super stinking cool. Eighteen levels of tunnels.
(33:19):
Imagine that, guys, eighteen levels of tunnels. If you're thinking vertically, right,
whoa I mean?
Speaker 5 (33:25):
There's some really cool information on history dot com. There's
an article with a list of I think ten or
so underhistorical underground cities, places like Orvieto in Italy, and
let's see another one is called Petra is a very
famous one which I believe was featured in Indiana, Jones
(33:45):
and the last Crusaide.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
So I mean the people of the past, certainly dug it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Now, a lot of these living spaces are reported in
the West as like underground cities or underground towns or
things like that, but often they are built into the
sides of mountains, which isn't necessarily the same thing. Darren
Cooyu was very different because it is built down into
the earth, which I don't know, I think separates it.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
I agree, I agreed.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
You can also look up something called Nevshar I think
is how you would say it. This is one of
those that is built more into the side of a mountain,
and it's reported, of course in the BBC and other
places as an underground city.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Sorry, guys, I went on the rabbit hole now, Ben,
I bet you're aware of this.
Speaker 5 (34:28):
Beijing has an underground city that was essentially built as
a giant bunker, you know, in the sixties and seventies
due to the threat of nuclear war.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
M dude, this is very interesting to me. There's lots
more to learn here about underground living. Maybe there's something
we can do on this in the future about.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
H perfect for that, maybe how to.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Live underground, Like how do you, let's say, if it
was two hundred five hundred years ago, how do you
just dig down far enough to have his stable ceiling
underneath you right where if anyone, like let's say an
invading army is coming through, how do you make sure
the ceiling above you is going to be safe? How
do you make sure there's enough room to live down there?
(35:14):
And the people whoever was that actually built, Darren Coou,
they figured out that they need to make very small
tunnels where you would have to actually like hunch over
to get through the tunnels, so that anybody who was
trying to invade and come through would have to be
in that posture as they're going through, so you, as
a defending army could say, uh, you got speared son.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Anyway, just thought that was an interesting tidbit.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
All right, that's it for this segment on Ralph. Thank
you so much Ralph for calling in with that information.
I've got one letter from home, guys. You want to
hear that really quickly? Yeah, okay, here we go. This
comes from an anonymous SO and so.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Hey, guys, I just wanted you to check out this
Tubbaca impression.
Speaker 5 (36:02):
All right, I have a great day.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
I was very good.
Speaker 5 (36:08):
Oh man, you guys. I posted this on Instagram yesterday.
But I saw a guy I think it was sort
of famous or with viral, a dude doing an impression
of a Kerragg machine, and it was just the best
impression that I've ever heard, next to this guy's impression
of Chewbacca.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Excellent.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
All right, we will say goodbye and we will be
back with more messages from you.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
And we have returned. I had a tough time this
evening going through some correspondence, but thought this would be
apropos to many of us listening along at home. Wherever
we find ourselves in this wide world, on the surface,
in the skies or beneath the ground, Geist is coming in.
Hot Geist says hi.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Guys.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
You can refer to me as Geist. Done bro, longtime listener,
first time mailer from Germany, love your work. Just finished
your recent listener mail about your little detour on digital
price tags. Let's call them ETags and flexible pricing. I
am no whistleblower and have no leaked documents to share,
(37:17):
but what I do have are a very particular set
of skills, skills I have acquired for a very long
career as an IT project and portal to manager in
nearly every industry. We'll cut the voice there out of
respect for you, guys, guys Sean Connery, I like, guys. Yeah,
We're multiverse in it, guys, says I often find myself
(37:39):
in the realms of CRM and customer loyalty. Yes, points, cards, badges. No,
that is not everything there is to know about it, guys, continues.
In Germany, flexible pricing is not immediately illegal, but it
is considered so improper that, with the exception of a
few pilot projects, it is hardly applied in practice, although
(38:02):
some large retail chains have had the infrastructure for it
for years, the ETags are only used for central price control.
Now I'm gonna pause here, guys, I don't want a monologue.
Can we give like a quick and dirty on flex
or surge pricing? I thought we had really good discourse
about this earlier, for sure, and we.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
Made a couple of fun videos about it. I mean,
it's just the idea that things can be much like
airline tickets or concert tickets or whatever, like, demand can
in real time affect the price of things, which I've
always come down the side of that kind of doesn't
not make sense.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
That's a double negative.
Speaker 5 (38:41):
It kind of makes sense to me to a degree,
but I know it can also be gamed and taking advantage.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Of the best way to see it in action is
to attempt to take a car writing service or a
car share service at certain times of day, Like the
same trip will cost you vastly different prices depending on
time it is.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
And as I mentioned I think previously, you can case
test this. If you'd like to do a little experiment
at home, you can take here in the West. You
can take the two most prominent ride share apps, those
being lifted Uber, and you can open them, open them both,
put in the same trip, and then close them and
(39:21):
then reopen them. And sometimes you'll see not a big difference,
but you will see an adjustment as they're attempting to
scope out how much you will pay.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
For a given ride.
Speaker 4 (39:34):
And you can see this regardless of the time of
day pretty often.
Speaker 5 (39:37):
And in that we also know I think I've maybe
mentioned someone has mentioned that, you know, they'll often be
a wight and save option that you know says, oh
it'll take up to fifteen minutes extra or whatever, but
it'll cost like five dollars less. I swear I've never
had a situation where I picked that option and the
card didn't come just as fast as the regular one.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
So we know there's.
Speaker 5 (39:58):
Multiple ways of them gaming, tricking you into thinking you're
getting a deal in a way that benefits them logistically.
It's yeah, you're right, man, it is the perfect way, serge.
I mean that term really honestly has become kind of
one of those.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Eponyms I guess is that the right term bend.
Speaker 5 (40:15):
Like for like like that as people think of that
where and they think of search pricing, car car service.
Speaker 4 (40:21):
Yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, you can also,
for instance, to your example, Noel, you can see things
like paying a premium for priority delivery in food delivery
services and it does not arguably does not change the
actual order of operations other than costing you about five
extra bucks. This is brand new ground for a lot
(40:45):
of people. But as Geist will go on to prove
to us this evening, a ton of work went into
this before the public knew what was going on. So
back to Geist, Geist says, the holy grail of retail,
not just in Germany, I suppose, is not flexible pricing
to get this individual pricing at the customer level. Although
(41:07):
technically possible with a combination of E tags in FC
and or fencing, these are kind of we'll get in
the weeds on this maybe in an episode in the future.
These are a little bit, you know, they're kind of
like the spell language of the it guys in Geist's profession.
But Guy says, with a combination of various things, a
(41:30):
different approach can be taken here. Moreover, at least in Germany,
this would face immense civilian resistance, but thank you for this, Guist.
Here's where it gets crazy. I've been involved in lots
and lots of projects with almost every major grocery retailer
in Germany and have developed loyalty programs that reward customers
(41:51):
based on their behavior and history at the item level. Right,
how often do you buy cheese its or kinderregs? And
when these rewards consist of coupons via indirect methods like
points and badges and so on, coupons for specific items
completely tailored to the individual customer. There's no compulsion to
(42:12):
use the program yet, but usually the incentives are so
substantial that one really believes the illusion that it's worth it,
which calls to mind. Pausing here calls to mind our
earlier conversation about the rollout of the UH the loyalty
cards here at US grocery stores. Do you have a
Proger card? If you don't, you're paying a tax for
(42:34):
not having one.
Speaker 5 (42:35):
Yeah, but the tax, the illusion of savings is just
not paying the tax, right like it's and they're getting
your data, They're knowing exactly what you're getting. You do
tend to have access to some nice coupons.
Speaker 4 (42:49):
I suppose, what does this guy need with so much
garlic at three am?
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Yeah, but but it is a weird thing to think
you are going to buy flower or somewhere. So if
you don't buy flower at the place where you have
some kind of loyalty program, then you're gonna buy it
at a place that just has some flour at whatever
price it is that they sell it for. And then
what goes into that company's idea of how much that
(43:18):
flower should cost outside of the standard stuff that everybody's
looking at.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
That is interesting.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
They just this concept that there's an illusion that it's
worth it. But in some way it's gonna be worth
it somewhere for someone, because you're gonna find the cheapest
replica of whatever. That type of flower you're looking for
is somewhere. It just depends on if it's at the
Loyalty place or not.
Speaker 4 (43:42):
It's the home here in the States. It's the home
of the pursuit of happiness. Why would the pursuit of
savings differ in any logical way? I agree with you, guys,
Max Paul. Can we get a hand washing noise as
we return to geist perfect there it is, guy says,
as a retailer, I can wash my hands of any
(44:03):
wrongdoing and say, of course Ben pays a different price
for flower than Matt does. But this is not individual pricing.
It's solely due to the Loyalty app and its behavior.
We have no influence on that. The use of credit
score data is often hidden in the terms of service
of these programs. To our earlier note about Google Search
(44:24):
and Gmail, So even in the privacy conscious Europe. It
is possible to extract more money from people in less
highly rated areas, for example, by specifically reducing non essential
products as a purchase incentive while keeping flower prices the
same because they have to buy the flower anyway. And
(44:45):
guy says, they tested the software, we implement it, says Geist.
We made purchases based on several test accounts, and we're
able to generate a range of twenty euros with the
same shopping cart on the same day with a shopping
cart total of fifty euros. So when they say generate
a range, they mean they were able to make people
(45:07):
pay twenty dollars more and just sneaking it in. And
then you know it says we can, and then goes
on to say you can add pretty graphics, gambling mechanics right,
gamify it, loot boxes, skinner boxing, behavioralism stuff, financing models. Remember,
says guys, we're talking about groceries, and voila, the shopping
(45:28):
dystopia is complete. Anyone who thought I don't chop online
because I get exploited or lied to should consider that
retail might be slower, maybe less technically adept, but it
loves money just as much as Amazon and Co. And
will do anything to survive poor geist. You have met
(45:49):
more than once an ethical crossroads. It sounds like, because
you say, I still work in this industry and try
to bring more ethical solutions to the table. In the end, however,
we always end up in I love this part, dark
conference rooms with long robes, whispery about individual pricing.
Speaker 5 (46:08):
Why they always be whispering like that, because it's a
crazy up.
Speaker 4 (46:12):
It's a crazy idea we can't hear.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
Well, especially in Europe, where as Guys is saying, if
you try to enact some of this stuff, you'd go
you'd hit right up against the privacy laws, right, so
you gotta whisper it.
Speaker 4 (46:26):
So there's also I mean, it is a frightening dystopian thing.
Speaker 3 (46:30):
You know.
Speaker 4 (46:31):
Imagine a world wherein you go to the same grocery
store as other people in your neighborhood, but due to
the data that has been collected about you, the price
of your case D or case D ingredients differs just
enough that you won't notice it, but you could get fleeced.
Speaker 5 (46:51):
I guess, and not the Devil's advocate. Not to say
that I support this, I do understand, you know, gas
prices shift based on the market, based on what them
You know, people are always trying to get as much
as they possibly can based on what the market will allow,
what consumers are willing to pay.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
How is that any different than than.
Speaker 5 (47:11):
Uber knowing where you are and that you're trying to
go to the airport and that it might be more
important for you to get there quickly and overcharging you that.
How is this different than that in terms of ethics?
Speaker 4 (47:22):
Oh, ethically, I think we have to bracket the ethics
at this pin fair look at efficacy. The next time
you guys are on the road with me, Let's play
a game, not a saw a reference. Let's open up
our phones, let's pull up the same ride share app,
and let's see what prices which. Because I believe this
is already occurring.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
I heard something really neat the other day.
Speaker 5 (47:43):
The CEO of Arizona Iced tea yes and made a
big deal saying it's God always be ninety nine cents
or this giant Honkin forty ounce malt liquor size can
of you know, sweet tea product. And since he came
out and said that, people have been kind of watchdogging
Arizona Iced tea at stores and and calling out stores
(48:07):
that overcharge for Arizona iced tea, and if you.
Speaker 4 (48:09):
Report it to the company, they will stop supplying that store.
They're very militant about it, which I applaud.
Speaker 5 (48:16):
I think that's super cool. But like, I can't think
of any other examples of that. And and at a
certain point, is it just the prerogative of the distributor
and or the retailer to decide what the price should
be or what their market will allow, like does does
the does the manufacturer never enter into it? Like I know,
it's it's different with cars. You know, there's like there's
(48:38):
like list prices and you know certain products there's list
prices that are set and you can discount it up
to a certain point, but how deep you go with
that discount You do have some wiggle room. But I
just wonder, you know, who's who's who's driving the ship,
who's steering the ship here?
Speaker 4 (48:53):
Well my answer would be no one, But perhaps that's
a little bit nihilistic. The you're you're right right, It
differs industry by industry to end Geist correspondence here, which
again geist eye opening and thank you guy says I'd
love to hear your opinion the American perspective on this
topic and leaves us with some breadcrumbs. We're gonna follow
(49:15):
up to your question this idea of determining price. Another
comparison would be the famous hot dog of Costco.
Speaker 5 (49:26):
It's a loss leader, but it has a benefit in
optics and just you know, getting butts through the door.
You know, it's or whatever. There has to be some
calculation there. But they will always lose money on that,
but they gain and it's a good pr story, right,
I mean, yeah.
Speaker 4 (49:44):
There are other examples or areas of opportunity for this
kind of thing. Right. The majority of movie theaters make
their money off of not the movies they show or
the films they show, but through the concessions. And just
like with you know, hot dogs have a very high
profit margin if you do it correctly, so you can
take an l on hot dogs. Popcorn has a cartoonish
(50:08):
profit margin and it kept a lot of those theater
companies afloat, so we can we can see the game
writ large. And I'm wondering too to hear from you
guys before we get to a letter from home that
we always like to end with. Do you guys see
this as inevitable in some form, or is this going
(50:29):
to be like an NFT thing that gets rejected full disclosure.
I'm kind of on the side of this sort of
customer specified or targeted pricing. I'm kind of on the
side of it being inevitable at this point.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
I don't know. I can see it working in conjunction
with a lot of other things, and it does feel
like it is going to be that way, just based
on again, if I think right now specifically about how
much Kroger knows about me since I've been buying from them,
that's the that's a grocery restore here where we live,
and then it's a lot of place.
Speaker 3 (51:02):
Yeah, he's in that same number for twenty years.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
Easily, easily, and they know exactly what I buy, when
I buy it, and how much of it I buy,
and it's all that's probably already factored in if I
was using their app, because I know in their app
they do the thing that Geist is talking about where
they offer specific coupons to individuals, right, so I think
they are already trying to do that thing he's talking about.
(51:25):
I'm not buying into that yet, So I think if
there's enough customer buy in, then that's going to exist
because otherwise, right now, how are you going to walk
into a Kroger, And let's say the three of us
walk past the same cereal aisle and raisin brand costs
three different prices when we walk past it, right.
Speaker 3 (51:45):
Do you think?
Speaker 2 (51:46):
I mean, that's possible if you've got those electronic price
tags on everything and you just as you walk past,
oh it's now three seventeen versus three twenty six or
something like that. I mean maybe, but I don't see
how you do that unless it's a fully online experience
where when you go to check out with your specific
(52:06):
loyalty number and your credit card that's associated with your
credit score, then you could achieve it.
Speaker 4 (52:13):
So you don't see it as inevitable at this point.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
I don't see it inevitable inside a brick and mortar store,
So as long as those exist, I don't think you
can have this type of thing. But if everybody, the
vast majority of people, are ordering all of their products online,
then I think it's an easy yes, because then all
your stuff is in one warehouse that's getting sorted by robots,
(52:36):
that gets shipped to your house.
Speaker 4 (52:38):
We could also consider, and I appreciate that point. We
could also consider the idea that increasing facial recognition technology
is going to scale and become much more affordable for
a lot of institutions, a lot of private institutions, even
unto the grocery stores, meaning that there is a possibility
(53:00):
of the world I to me the idea that this
is inevitable. I agree that it will roll out or
already exist online right shout out Amazon groceries, but the
idea of it going to brick and mortar is definitely
on the table.
Speaker 3 (53:15):
In my opinion.
Speaker 5 (53:16):
It makes me think of, like, you know, the whole
homogenization of culture that comes along with these algorithms that
we don't really have a say in which ones we're using.
We're all kind of being driven with, you know, what's
being presented to us by these algorithms in terms of
the content we're consuming. I'm kind of wondering if there's
an associated homogenization of like product choices and you know,
(53:39):
food items and grocery habits that are very similarly linked
up to something like that one percent.
Speaker 4 (53:47):
So Here in the American South, for instance, people become
loyal to a certain brick and mortar grocery store because
it has things they can predict it supply. Right, So
if you've gone to, for example, uh Kroger's for many years,
when you walk into a Trader Joe's, a Whole Foods,
or a Publix or a we still have the Pigley
(54:09):
Wiggly now Morland if you walk into Yeah, if you
walk into one of those, you're going to find that
they satisfy the general miligew of customer needs. But they
do it through different brands because they may have agreements
with different suppliers or different facets of Unilever, I should
say at this point.
Speaker 5 (54:29):
Whereas a Trader Joe's visit might be sort of like
a treat, you know, because you stock up on some
specialty fun items.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
You know.
Speaker 5 (54:37):
I don't use it Trader Joe's as my regular shop,
but boy, when I go there do I have a
good old time.
Speaker 3 (54:43):
And there was also one right next to the movie theater.
Speaker 5 (54:45):
We like to go to, so it's a great place
to sneak in some sneaky movie theater snacks.
Speaker 3 (54:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (54:51):
I think we mentioned this before, but a huge organization
like Trader Joe's at this point is a massive corporation,
uh crow.
Speaker 3 (54:58):
Masquerading as A and pop kind of right, it be.
Speaker 2 (55:01):
Funny, But they just bought Albertson's Kroger Did they just
merge with them? So they're all it's homogenizing the way
you're talking about with the manufacturers of the food as well, right,
So it I don't know. Yeah, the more I think
about it, I'm leaning towards the way you're thinking, Ben,
that you could do it at the store.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
You could.
Speaker 2 (55:19):
This is all happening already, it's in. It's everything they
needs in place. You just currently do it through an app,
and that's how you control the price.
Speaker 4 (55:29):
The conspiracy is real. Please don't ever forget This stuff
goes deeper than the government's debt whatever. We're going to
end one of my favorite things for listener mails letters
from home. So just some nice, nice vibes some how
you doing how your folks, and we'll give you this one.
Allow conspiracy realist. What's a good nickname that starts with
(55:52):
an L? Like a cool nickname that starts with.
Speaker 3 (55:55):
The letter L.
Speaker 4 (55:56):
Lavender La Loo Lavender Law writes in to say, hey, guys,
I'm just writing in because I know you love these
lottery style, odds games. But when I choose to listen
to the new stuff, they don't want you to know
episode or my current audio book. I didn't think it'd
be a notable choice.
Speaker 3 (56:12):
I was wrong.
Speaker 4 (56:13):
You mentioned in the podcast that Mandate for Leadership the
Conservative Promise was about as long as the unabridged version
of the Stand, And he guessed what my current audiobook is.
You guessed it the uncut version of The Stand. It's
a nearly forty eight hour listen.
Speaker 5 (56:29):
So that came up when we were talking about Project
twenty twenty five. That's my buddy Harry. He was visiting
and he has read the on it. It's a little shorter.
I think the Project twenty twenty five is a little
bit shorter than this, isn't it weird?
Speaker 4 (56:41):
Yeah, you get to like page one thousand and you think,
oh man, So for the Stand, and Lavender Lolo says,
this is my second time listening to it, and since
you drew the parallel, I'm wondering if The Stand would
be an even better bible to base our next president's
office off of the current state of affairs. It seems
(57:01):
fitting to me, and then continues, we're going through some
of this. To paraphrase Lavender says, anyways, not account of taste,
but you guys always seem to catch my attention. Thanks
for the endless stream of fantastic topics. I've been listening
for beat Me Here, Max and Paul Holy eight years
beat Me Again. I'm old.
Speaker 3 (57:23):
I did originally feel right.
Speaker 4 (57:26):
I did originally run back all your episodes in the
first three years or so, so I'm mostly up to date.
Huge fan of Ridiculous History too. I was actually a
listener there first. This is the heartwarming part. This is
why we do letters from home. Thanks for being something
I can be proud of in my city that I
was born and live in. People who live in Atlanta,
and my opinion, truly have earned their title at alien
(57:49):
as they are most likely not from here. I really
do feel down about my hometown as I don't feel
like it's home anymore. It's changed so much. I don't
know if it's because I'm old and crotchety, but I
remember my Atlanta being a better place back in the day. Anyway,
I got way off topic. I just wanted to express
why I value such a positive influence in you guys
(58:09):
with seriously good values. And conversation skills like our boys
in the military. I'll throw this against the wall. I'd
love to buy everybody some wings at the local to
say thanks. Hit me up if you want otherwise, keep
on keeping on, homies.
Speaker 3 (58:22):
Oh we must what a sweet What a nice thing
to say, Lavender.
Speaker 4 (58:26):
Oh man, I hope you liked the nickname man, Thank
you so much. Go to to actionable out there. But
I think it's it's a vibe we can all agree
with and in the spirit.
Speaker 3 (58:36):
Had local wings and ages.
Speaker 4 (58:38):
I would love they're doing new sauces. No way, yeah, yes,
way too.
Speaker 2 (58:43):
Don't get me anything, but that's so on dry Tomato,
get out of town.
Speaker 3 (58:45):
I like that soundred tomato. I like that lemon pepper wet.
Speaker 4 (58:48):
They're messing with the ghost peppers.
Speaker 3 (58:50):
Matt what okay, can get so you could? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (58:57):
So we're ending on a cliffhanger here, big, big thanks
to everybody who took the time to tune in. Thanks
you guys, thanks to Lavender, to Ralph Anonymous, Chebaka, thanks
to Flash, and thanks to you folks. We hope you
join us for future explorations of weird Rain. Future explorations.
Oh my gosh, we got all sorts of stuff Skyjelly look.
(59:19):
Just hit us up online. We try to be easy
to find there.
Speaker 5 (59:22):
Sky Jelly also not a bad band name, or maybe
a really bad band name.
Speaker 3 (59:25):
I don't know. I can never tell. It's usually one
or the other.
Speaker 5 (59:27):
We are conspiracy stuff on YouTube, or we have video
content coming your way on the regular xfka Twitter as
well as Facebook, or we have our Facebook groupeers where
it's crazy on Instagram and TikTok. You can find us
in the handle conspiracy the show.
Speaker 2 (59:42):
Put this number in your phone right now one eight
three three st d w y TK. When you listen
to an episode and you've got a cool idea, you've
got something that you can relate to us from your
personal experience, call that number and tell us everything in
three minutes. Of course, when you do, you call in,
give yourself a nickname. Whatever it is.
Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
We don't care.
Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
We're just excited to hear it and let us know
if we can use your name and message on one
of these listener mail episodes. If you've got more to
say than can fit in a three minute voicemail, why
not instead send us a good old fashion email.
Speaker 4 (01:00:15):
We are the entities that read every single email we get,
and gratefully so actually following up on some more correspondents
this evening. When you send us an email, we can
all read it, we can all respond. Just be aware.
Sometimes the void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or whoever you listen to your favorite shows
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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