BONUS: Jacob Jones-Goldstein - Author of "The Change" - Suggested Articles - The Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Suggested articles as part of Odd Pods Media a podcast network.
Dial up those VPNs, put on your Tim Foyle hats
and if you could pick an apocalypse, would you pick nuclear, zombie,
terminator or other? It's time for suggested articles a podcast. Okay,

(00:37):
so first things first, you are not one F Jeff,
not that I checked. Okay, Well let's figure this out. Okay,
So I am Jeff two F Jeff and joining me today,
according to the zoom, is a guy named Jake. Tell
us who you are, please, Jake?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Hi, My name is Jacob Jones Goldstein. I am a
writer and podcast out of Dilawor.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
All right, well you seem familiar to me a long time, yes,
awfully long time. So this is sort of a tech
podcast sometimes, and that's not exactly why you're here today,
but there is a tech topic sort of the early
days of the Internet, there were less ways to amuse yourself.

(01:24):
The World Wide Web, as it was called, was a little.
There wasn't a lot there.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
No not a lot yet, or at least not a
lot that you had regular access to.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
And what year am I thinking here? Something like nineteen
ninety four, ninety five?

Speaker 2 (01:44):
I think it was ninety three ninety four, because I
was a freshman in college and I graduated high school
in nineteen ninety three.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Me too, so that was both of our freshman year,
so like late ninety three, early nineteen ninety four. Okay,
so I had just covered through a friend of mine
who wound up not even sticking with it. Something called
a mud, a multi user something, dungeon.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Domain, dungeon domain, dimension, or the most common ones I've ever.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Heard insert your favorite d Wait, that doesn't sound.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yeah, no, that's not a good way to describe.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Maybe it is on this show it might apply. You know,
there was a virtual sex had started even back then,
in the before anyone could send each other pictures that easily.
But yes, it was a game that you could play
online with friends, kind of like a World of Warcraft
if you're a youngster. But it was only text.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yep, that was that was all we had at that point.
I mean we had, you know, graphical games, but certainly
not over the Internet.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
No.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Ex fact, definitely, I found the one that we met on,
which was called Alaysia, through Gopher. If you want to
talk about old technology.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Jeez, how would you describe Gopher?

Speaker 2 (03:05):
It's hard to describe in today's terms, but it was
basically a you could connect to Gopher, which is at
the University of Minnesota servers, and basically they had I
guess a database is probably the best way to think
of it. A database of Internet links and games and

(03:26):
places you could go and things you could look at.
And if you went down these tunnels on Gopher, you'd
like it.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
You know.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
They were text based menus, we say games or news,
and if you clicked on games you would find MUDs.
And I did that. I had heard of MUDs. I
was like, this sounds interesting, and went on a mud
and the first one I logged into was Elasia because
it was at the top of the list because it
was an.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
A alphabetical that we were brought together by the power
of the alphabet. I love that.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
And I still remember my very first because we tried
to log in with three or four different names and
none of them. None of them worked, And then I
went I was with a buddy at the time and
his middle name was Stalin, so we're like after three tries,
were like, all right, well, we know this will work.
And I logged in as Stalin and I didn't know
that that was the name I was going to be

(04:18):
answering to for the next fifteen or so years of
my life. Yeah, branded myself as Stalin, logged into the
the area, which was a church, and so a bunch
of people talking, and kind of joined in and felt
my way around and thought everybody was role playing as dogs.
And I asked, is that this MUD's thing? Is everybody dogs?

(04:39):
And somebody said, do I look like a dog? And
I still to this day don't know how to answer
that question.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Not a mud, Why did you think we were dogs?

Speaker 2 (04:47):
I don't remember. I think somebody had like a coated
pet or something that was barking, and I just got confused. Sure,
I don't even remember who it was in the church
at that At that point.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
I remember asking you once why Stalin? And I don't
think you told me at the time that it was
your friend's name, but I seem to recall you didn't
make the connection to the Russian figure.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
For whatever reason, Like I knew you know who Stalin
was and in the history all that, but I just
never really thought about it too much. It just it
happened to be his middle name. So we went with
that because and I remember the first name I tried
was Raven. Oh sure, if Raven hadn't been taken, I
wouldn't wouldn't have been Stalin.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
I guess butterfly effect. We may in every have even
cross paths. Maybe that's one of the weirder ones. I
guess in terms of like, well, you didn't actually name
yourself after the Russian ruler. But but one of our
my friends in real life that I was playing in

(05:54):
these labs with all the time, and I know you
met him of course through the same game, was Firestone.
And at the time he was trying to come up
with a name that sounded cool and medieval and adventury
and magical, so he thought of like, you know, fire
and Earth merging together, and he said Firestone and did
not think for until people started asking him that it

(06:15):
was the brand of attire that was Paul. Right, yep,
good old Paul. Hey, Paul. I don't know if you listened,
but hi, Paul, Hi, Paul, shout out to Paul. Now
he'll listen. I'll have to tell them he got shouted out.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yeah, I always what I think about in retrospect is
because Selesia was started by a bunch of Germans. It
was effectively a German mud Yes, and I lugged in
as Stalin and they didn't immediately ban me. And to
this day that seems a little confusing to me. But
here we are. You know.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
It was pre uh you know, call it cancel culture
or whatever. I guess people just weren't as aware of
like the immediate stranger danger of Look if you had
logged in as Hitler.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
Yeah, yeah, that that problem. My friend's middle name was
not it that would have been a little more uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
And you said this before we started recording. But it
does mean that I've known you for over thirty years.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
Yep, although we have only met once in person.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
Correct. Yeah. Back then, people would get together. Yeah, I
mean none of us had like stable sources of income,
but we would find a way to like get a
plane ticket or go for a long car trip and
actually meet up. Where did we meet? Was it in Missouri?
It's a city. Yeah, it was for New Year's Eve.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
I remember. It was because another mother name who went
by Babameth, whose real name was Alex, came over from Germany.
I was living just outside of New York. At I
was in New York, but just outside of the city.
It was in City Island, which is in the Bronx.
He spent Christmas with me, and you know, I took
him into the city a couple of times, and then
he flew out to Missouri, and then I flew out

(07:54):
later to meet a woman named who went by Empress
on the Mud, whose name was Jennifer in real life,
and then I stayed with her, and then we went
to the party on New Year's Eve, which is where
I met you and a whole host of other folks.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
Right, And by then, I imagine I was probably dating
one of them. I had a relationship with someone I
met on that Mud named Catherine. Shout out to Catherine
by Catherine. We were not friends the whole time, but
we are friends again now. And you also met someone special,
not the person named Empress.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
Right, but an another Jennifer. Yeah, a few years after that,
quite a bit. That would have been like ninety three
to ninety four, and I met her in two thousand
and one, so still playing the Mud in at least
two thousand and two thousand and one range. And that's
when I think I had left for a little bit
and came back, and that was when I met Jen

(08:54):
and we hit it off through our very first conversation.
I often think about was me yelling at her for
not voting in two places because she's a dual citizen
and yep, all right, And I met her and then
visited her out in Montana and we've been together ever since.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
That's just man.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Just last week celebrated our well what's today, it's the eighteenth,
So forty days ago we celebrated our fourteenth anniversary.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
Wow, good job.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
I you know, you think about it and how kind
of wild it is is I randomly threw Gopher in
nineteen ninety three and my lab at college logged into
a place that would eventually meet you know, i'd meet
my wife and you know, connections that I've had for
my whole life.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
That's amazing. Yeah, I mean I did not meet a
spouse there, but lasting friendships for sure. People I've kept
in touch with I'm still you know, It's not like
we talk all the time, but we're on Facebook and
I see what you're up to and and yeah, it's
pretty great.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
It's a funny old world.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
I guess it's how you put it, brought together by technology.
It's not often we talk about the good the technology
can do on this show. So this is a very
special episode.

Speaker 2 (10:05):
And then you know, we continued we played EverQuest together.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
And right, yes, by two thousand and one, I was
definitely in EverQuest more than I was in the text
based months.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah. It was in fact, it was Jen who talked
me into play a EverQuest. I wasn't too interested. I
was like, I like the text stuff. I don't know
about graphics. Again, it's when I got a PlayStation four and.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
Graphics feel a little wild to me.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
It's funny because I have visited in it also in
the miss people I met on EverQuest not too super
long ago out in Minneapolis, So yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
Really it's been a long time. I have a couple
of people in my life I still keep in touch
with from there, including my ex wife, but not too
many and haven't had a meetup on that kind of
angle for a long time.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yeah, I have it. It was the only ever Quest
meetup I ever had. It's just random. I was in
Minnesota or Minneapolis for a trip involving Sixers basketball and
they lived there. You know, we still kept in touch
that we just went out and had a nice dinner.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
That's awesome though.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yeah, It's funny. As I get older and I become
more of a lot, I grown to hate technology. I
think about the ways it affected my life in a
positive Like you said, it's there are positive potential potentiality there.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
Well, now, I will say this, the games we used
to play and the internet we used to know back
in nineteen ninety three and ninety four was not so
heavily driven by any big algorithms, much less the algorithm
that we now worship in this particular church of ours. So,

(11:48):
in this modern day, as you get a little grouchier,
have you had any of those weird experiences where you
feel like the tech you carry around with you just
knows a little bit too much of about you?

Speaker 2 (12:01):
I would say almost every day. I So, I've worked
in web hosting for about twenty years and the company
I worked and moved into basically the internet security space,
okay five six years ago, and what I've kind of
learned as I've developed an understanding of and I'm not

(12:22):
any kind of super techy. I work on the business side.
I ran a buddlding department and then it was a
total customer success sales stuff. But you still learn about
it and what I've learned is that the concept of
privacy is not just an illusion. It doesn't it simply
doesn't exist in the modern world. And the illusion is
that we have any privacy. And when I think about

(12:43):
the devices, I think about you know, talking to somebody
about you know, having a conversation room with somebody about oh,
you know, I need a new lawnmower, And then I
log into Instagram and my next five ads are for lawnmowers. Yep,
you know. So, yeah, I do think most of the
technology knows too much about us, and it's getting worse
by the minute.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
Yeah, I mean, it's all about finding any new way
to squeak out a few extra bucks from us and
our the way we use our devices, and you know,
you got to keep those profits always climbing up, right,
So we got to keep seeming.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
And I think about it sometimes it's in how depressing
is because when we started on the internet, you know,
and moved into these spaces, everything's seemed kind of weird
and limitless and wonders. And now it's just different ways
to sell us stuff as they get more and more creative.
Although I guess as we move into a different kind
of let's say government. Uh, and they do things like

(13:40):
combined government databases, so everything's in one place. I think
it's it's a little more insidious than just selling us stuff.
But for now it's still just selling us stuff. And
it seems so unimaginative.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
Well, now we live in the I mean, the algorithm
can also be leveraged into the AI space too, So
now that way it can an uncomfortable amount about us,
could be used to slip stuff into a conversation or
a search result or I don't even know. I don't
think I have enough imagination to figure out exactly where
it's going to be integrating into our lives. But uh, everywhere,

(14:14):
see everywhere.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
And ye I had AI is it's a it's a
big topic one that as a as a writer and
a creative, yes, I hate with most mostly every fiber
of my being. I think it's it's a bad technology
that doesn't do what people quite think it does at

(14:40):
higher rates, and it's it's leveraged. It's a possibilities for
leveraging in terms of propaganda and control of how we
perceive reality. Uh is dangerous. And then, as I said,
as an artist and a creative, the fact that they
first salvo is basically trying to target us out of
existence with it because they're, you know, the people who

(15:03):
are sort of running it and generally in charge of,
you know, the creating the AI algorithms are not creative people.
And there's a sense of you know, bitterness there or something.
I don't really get it, but that could be an
aspect of it. I hadn't thought about it that way,
but that has driven many a bad person, you know,
when their art was not properly appreciated, they turned to darkness. Yeah. Yeah,

(15:27):
there's a history of that in our world.

Speaker 1 (15:30):
There is, There really is. And I'm not just talking
about Hitler everybody. I'm also talking about shit. I mean,
Ben Shapiro is one of them. Like, there's a lot
of these guys that tried to get into the entertainment
industry and when they didn't work out, they took a
hard right turn and started hating everything about Hollywood and
entertainment and artists and it was part of their larger platform.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
Shapiro, Steve Benn and all of them are in that
sand too.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
That's true. Yeah, the AI question, Uh, what I do
find weird about it? And I was thinking about this
just now as you were talking, I hadn't thought about
it quite this way before either. But artists famously, like
the average day to day artist, famously not rich. Correct, Like,

(16:16):
there's not if you draw, if you paint, if you write,
Most artists who do these things don't make a lot
of money, and yet they still are trying to you know,
I guess what's the what's the justification democratizing art so
everybody can be creative or some shit. But yeah, there's

(16:38):
there's a profit goal, and yet artists aren't making a
lot of profit right now.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
No, I mean, I run my own publishing company with
a few friends called Oddity Prodigy Productions. We don't draw
any salary any of that. This is it's entirely a
for the little love of the game kind of operation,
and we use it for you know, we use to
put out our own stuff, but largely we put out
anthologies with a goal towards getting first time writers and

(17:07):
people who haven't had much of a chance at least
out there so that they have a writing credit, so
that they can build off of that, you know, publishing
first time writers, you know, and then you know, whoever
else we can using that as a platform for it,
but there's no money in it, Like we don't we
make enough money to pay for our goal is always
done this project, make enough to pay for the next

(17:28):
project and keep going, and we have. We've been for
a micro publisher, we've been relatively successful. Are our best
sellers a book called Scary Stuff, which is sold and
we're getting close to one thousand copies for a micro
published book. The benchmark for a huge hit is about
five hundred, so we're you know, we're doing well in

(17:50):
that and we're putting out in fact next this Tuesday,
we're our next release called Bright Mirror is going to
be officially released, and that's a utopian science fiction anthology.
And boy did we pick the wrong year for a
utopian science fiction and anthology. But here we are.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Well, I do love a dystopia, at least in my fiction,
but I don't know how prepared I am for the
real thing. I'm glad you dropped the name of the
publishing group that you have there, Oddity Prodigy.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
That was one of the things that caught my eye
at first when I was scrolling and saw the kickstarter
that you're doing, because it seems to mesh very nicely
with Odd Pods Media, the group that I'm working with
here on this show. So it just caught my arm,
like what odd what odd odd pot what? And it's
not the same name, but it's pretty catchy. And you

(18:41):
yourself are now publishing a book that is currently in
a Kickstarter with I think as when people can hear this,
I'm going to say eleven days left, because probably tomorrow, right.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Yeah, it's as of right this recording, it's twelve days
left and this is Sunday.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
Yeah, so by the time you hear this on Monday,
about it eleven days left on the Kickstarter. What is
this book called and what's it about?

Speaker 2 (19:06):
So the book is called The Change. It's a story
and they give it as sort of the elevator pitch
as a book about zombies, rock and roll and second chances.
It is a post apocalyptic so it's about It takes
place about thirty years after a zombie apocalypse, all right,
and it's about how people are surviving in that world.

(19:28):
And a one particular character whose name is Jesse Chapin,
who's named after Jesse Mallin and Harry Chapin, who are
two musical artists that I'm particularly enamored of. It's about
him having lost his family in a weird way at
a young age and being given a second chance at life. Essentially,

(19:52):
he's descended into alcoholism and self pity, and he meets
somebody who comes to look for him and says, hey,
if you can pull yourself out of this, we have
a place you can go. And it's about the journey
he takes towards that, and then some of the people
who don't want him to complete that journey. And I

(20:13):
wrote it a few years back. It's actually it was
inspired by a couple of things, but the main thing
was I watched the first season of The Walking Dead
and I liked it, and I remember watching the sixth
episode and thinking it was just about the most bleak
episode of television I ever saw. And I'm like, well,
every zombie thing ends up bleak. What if we had

(20:33):
one that wasn't bleak? It was filled with hope and
you know, maybe the idea of some level of faith.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
I'm sorry, what is hope?

Speaker 2 (20:45):
What is hope? Hope is the notion that tomorrow will
be better than today, and I'd like.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
To feel that will. This book helped me feel that
because that sounds good.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
Maybe I'd like to think it will. Like I said,
I wrote it a few years back, before things got
where they are now. I still do have some hope
for the future. I I it gets harder to maintain that,
but I do think it's possible, And I do think
there's there's ways of looking at the world that lend

(21:20):
itself to that, mostly denial, but you know it's still there, no.
I I think you know a lot of things like
we're generally as a species healthier than we've ever been,
We have longer life spans, we uh you know, are
nicer to each other despite what it feels like. There's
less war today, things like that. So it's but we

(21:42):
have a lot of challenges that we put in front
of us that that rob us of any of those
being able to deal with that or think in that way,
and myself included, I'm as as big as cynic as
there there is.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
I you know, that's that's true, fair enough, But I
think we live in a world's designed to.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Strip you of hope. Yes, I agree with that.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
You know you talked about the service of the algorithm.
I think the Internet in a lot of ways points
you to towards a certain nihalistic bent. Certainly, our economy
and capitalism pushes everybody into a nehalistic worldview, and then
we have things like the twenty four hour news cycle,
which is absolutely designed to make you afraid to go

(22:28):
out your front door, or just.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
Trying to really keep us stressed out. Like I think
keeping us stressed out is sort of by like the
grand conspiracy theory of all conspiracy theories in my head
is that you know, whatever you want to think about,
like Democrat or republic and liberal, conservative, whatever. I think
the one thing that they all have in common is
that they want us stressed out, so we're not thinking

(22:52):
too much about what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yes, I would, I'm generally inclined to agree with that,
and I think it's in the larger thing is that
one of the ways we react to stress is trying
to find temporary solutions to believe that, which usually above
buying things or going to do so so spending money.
So it's it's a it's a a treadmill design to

(23:18):
keep us always in a state of agitation, and the
way we deal with that is generally commerce.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
Which is it actually makes like there are so many
like post apocalyptic pieces of fiction, especially TV and movies.
It's not just the Walking Dead. There's I mean, one
of my favorite shows recently was Fallout.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
I'd love to fall Out.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
That's great, But there's a lot of these shows where
like the world has ended, or books or whatever, but
a lot of these situations where the world has ended,
and there's a lot of challenges that seem awful, you know,
trying to figure out where your next meal is coming from.
But also life is simpler, like it doesn't always look
that bad.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
Yeah, I do think that's one of the kind of
odd things as I've grown up, as you know, growing
this kid, see like a zombie movie and it's the
end of the world, Like this is horrible. And now
you see a zombie movie, it's the end of the world,
and like, well, at least it's quiet out right, I
don't have to commute anymore.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
Well, like, you know, some endangered species are starting to
thrive again, and the cities are suddenly green and like
fucking last of us, Like drafts.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
Are roaming around.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
Yeah, whatever city that was, it wasn't Seattle. I don't know,
some city on the West coast.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, I forget where that took the place.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
Yeah, I forget. I know they're in Seattle now, that's
but you.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
Know, I have watched any season two yet, but I
did enjoy the first season.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
It's a lot seems grim, but even so, like, yeah,
there was some pretty grizzly stuff in just the first
couple episodes of season two of the Last of Us,
but also like there's this big settlement and there's people
that are Everyone has a job, everyone has a role
just keeping things going. But there's there's no room for
like capitalism. You know, you need a meal, You go

(25:05):
get a meal, and then you're going to go back
to fixing the in the wall or you know, preparing
it or cleaning up and making sure there's no little
fungus tendrils coming up out of the ground.

Speaker 4 (25:16):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
You know, everybody has something to do and it looks okay,
it's not the worst life that you could be living.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
Right, And that that was that was one of the
things that I tried to capture in in my novel,
was that that idea that that life goes on and
maybe it's not as horrible as we kind of imagine it.
Not that I'm mutant for the apocalypse, I mean Look,
you know, we're talking to each other over a video
chat from different coasts. So they're definitely positives to the

(25:47):
world we live, and it's just much harder to see
them and much harder for them to feel like a
positive with the relentless negativity that we're bombarded with.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
So, yeah, in your vision of the post zombie apocalypse, Uh,
is there electricity or the solar panels? Do we have
settlements with walls or people safe?

Speaker 2 (26:06):
The notion is that there's settlements with walls, there's farms.
The particular zombie that I have imagined aren't the kind
that if you they bite you, you become a zombie.
Oh really, Their problem is they're more of a tornado
with a natural disaster. Their problem is, you know, ten
thousand of them show up and walk through you and

(26:29):
you know, chase you, but they don't. You don't become
a zombie if you get bit. And part of what
the story is contingent on is just how you become
a zombie. Like what caused it is that I.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
Was about to ask you how one becomes a zombie,
But if that's integral to the story, then I did
not want to know it is.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
It's a bit of a reveal in the story, but
it is something that the story is somewhat contingent on,
is what happens and why?

Speaker 1 (26:57):
All right, like a new take that's always fun.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
Well, that's another thing you don't get in zombie stories
is how did this start? And what does it do?
You know, you get the rules, but not necessarily the origins.
And in this the name the change refers to what
happened and maybe what happens next. Okay, I like so,
Like I said, I originally wrote it is to be
a positive zombie story. Whether I succeeded or not. There's

(27:25):
some pretty dark stuff and it's still, you know, a
horror book, although I call it more horror fantasy than horror.
The novel is a little bit, a little bit of
an outlier. Like my first published story was about grief,
you know, I think my second published story was about alcoholism. So,
you know, not hope it Hope isn't necessarily my forte.
So the novel is a bit of a challenge towards that.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
You got to stretch yourself as an artist and then
from that and grow.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
Right, which is which is one of the fun things
about running this this publishing companies, we kind of decide
what we want to do, and one of the things
we do is we're to put out anthologies along different
genre lines. So like the first one we did, called
Scary Stuff, was horror. The second one we did is
an urban fantasy anthology called Beneath the All Lights. And then,
as I said, the brand new one is Bright Mirror,

(28:15):
so it's utopian science fiction. And then we just finished
the submission period and we're in the reading period for
our next one, which is Superheroes. It's gonna be called
Where Legends Walk.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
That's always fun and certainly a hot topic in this
world of many cinematic universes competing with each other.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
Yeah, which, as reading these entries, I've discovered that a
lot more people are familiar with the movie superheroes and
the comic superheroes, and being a big comic nerd, it's like, oh,
come on, but yeah, so that one's fun, and that
one will be that one will actually be kind of
run the gauntlet from bright shiny to grim and gritty.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
So when I wanted to pull this up before U
before we started recording, and so I went to Google
and look, I'll post a link directly to the Kickstarter
in the show notes, of course, but I found the
easiest way to get there is to just google Kickstarter,
Adity Prodigy. That's odd. It T Y space, p R

(29:16):
O D I G Y Audity Prodigy, and then you
know it's the Change was the second one down. But
if you were to click on any of these, like
bright Mirror was the first match. But then where it
says created by Audity Prodigy, you can click on the
name there and you can see the different projects that
Audity Prodigy has created before, and then the Change, of

(29:38):
course is also listed there.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
Yeah. Any you know, we're all over social media everywhere,
as you have to be to sell this stuff, and
like I'm on like Instagram and Blue Sky as shouting Street,
you know, and I have to post about this pretty
much every twenty minutes so you won't have to look far.
And you know, we're on Facebook and Instagram and you know,

(30:02):
or not on Twitter anymore. But yeah, that one I
just couldn't do anymore.

Speaker 1 (30:09):
I'm still there. It's hard to let it go, even
though I know who owns it.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
But I didn't roll up my accounts, like they still exist,
but I don't post at all anymore posting there.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
Sure, I understand which.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
As a big basketball fan, basketball has it migrated over
to Blue Sky very well yet, So I miss kind
of that aspect of it. But other than that, I
it's it's a little less less constantly awful not being
on Twitter as much.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yes, yes, I can imagine it is. I understand completely.
I don't blame anyone for leaving Twitter, but I do
miss some of the people that have gone all the same.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
Yeah, and a Blue Sky I think is good. It
has a lot of merit to it, but it's yeah,
it's not quite as diverse yet.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
So I think we're going to take a quick commercial
break and then I want to talk to you a
little bit more about tech, uh and just I want
to just see what you think about a couple of
today's hottest stories, or maybe not hottest, but a few
stories I found. Uh. So let's come back and talk
about that a little bit, and then I would like
to learn a little bit more about you through suggested

(31:20):
articles a podcast.

Speaker 5 (31:28):
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Speaker 1 (32:51):
Today and we're back, Jacob Jones Goldstein. We have some
horrors of technology to talk about.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
I have to say I'm excited.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
One of them is more of a public service announcement
than anything. But it does start with a horror, a
horror that we all knew. But all right, so I'm
just going to read this little text here from this website.
A settlement has been reached with Apple Inc. In a
class action lawsuit brought on behalf of current or former
owners or purchases of SyRI enable devices. There's a whole list. Basically,

(33:31):
it turns out that Siri is listening to us at
all times. Isn't that weird? Well, yes, you're an Android user. Yes,
I don't know if hey, Google is listening to at
all times?

Speaker 2 (33:45):
What do you think I would assume? So? Yes, I
know in my car if I say Hey Google, it
says what do you want? And I assume Siri kind
of works the same way.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
Oh yeah, and you can set it up so that
you can just talk to your device and say hey Siri,
which I do not do, or you can push a
button and Seiu will come up. Yeah, let's see the settlement.
Settlement class members who are individual, current or former owners
or purchases of a serie device United States or its territories,

(34:16):
and whose confidential communications were obtained by Apple and or
were shared with third parties as a result of an
unintended Siri activation.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, that's an interesting word in that unintended.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
Now it's a ninety five million dollars settlement and Apple
denies all of the allegations made in the lawsuit and
denies that Apple did anything improper or unlawful. But they're
giving ninety five million dollars. So there is a it
was a case Lopez v. Apple that was the first plaintiff,
So there is a Lopez Voice Assistant Settlement dot com

(34:52):
if I remember, I'll put a link to that in
the show notes as well. But anyone that has an
Apple device, has had one over the last handful of years,
starting in twenty fourteen, you are eligible to submit a
claim and get it's probably like three dollars by the
time it's all said and done. But yeah, so Apple
is denying any wrongdoing, but is willing to settle out

(35:14):
of court to make this go away. That Siri has
been listening to our conversations and provide the information to
third parties.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
So it's one of those things that I basically assume
my phone and devices are listening to at all times.
It's one of the things like, and I'm sure most
of us experiences where you're having a conversation in the room,
you're not using your phone, you're not looking something up.
Then you go to your phone You're like, huh, I
just got an AD for what we were just talking about. Yeap,
what a coincidence, right? And the lawsuit is interesting to

(35:47):
me just because the way I tend to think of
it is we have sold our privacy for convenience, and
that's the faustian bargain that we made with cell phones
years ago and personal assistance. Like I have four Amazon
echoes in my house, Oh wow, I'm sure. Yeah. I

(36:12):
like to be able to turn on lights and music.
And I understood going in that eyes open, that Amazon
was going to be hearing everything I say, whether they
recorded it or not, I'm sure there was some algorithm
that picked out words and you know, sold me things
through that And going into that again, I knew the
trade I was making, which was privacy for convenience. And

(36:35):
that's what Apple does with Siri. It's what all the
sort of personal assistants are is we're trading that. It's
a trade off. Because again I think I said it before,
is that privacy in the Internet age is a complete illusion.
It doesn't exist.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
For sure.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
You know, there's there's cameras, And I realized I sound
a little bit paranoid with this. I don't necessarily to
sound like a crank or something, but there are there
are more cameras than there ever were before that are
all over. You know your movements are recorded. You know
your your phone has GPS on it that's tracking your movement,
and even if it doesn't necessarily record it, it's still

(37:14):
tracking it. And somebody is using that data. And it's
it's just this mountains and mountains of data that we're
generating and generated and generating constantly in just about everything
we do. And now with the advent of AI, part
of what AIS the goal of it is going to
be kind of to correlate that data. That's one of

(37:34):
the bigger reasons they won't say that, they'll tell you know,
the way this, you know, is really helpful is it'll
write your email and take notes for it, and that's nice,
but that's the trade off for them to get everything
about you and also to start training you. So it's yeah,
So I mean it's nice that Apple's get ensued. Ninety
five million is probably what two hours of money for

(37:56):
them than the federal government.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
Yeah, it's it's not a lot of money for Apple,
an easy settlement.

Speaker 2 (38:02):
Well, what's curious about it is generally the whole conveniences.
I understand it a serious to be able to just
summon Siri whenever you want. So it has to be listening.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
That's what I've been saying forever. Just you know, if
you have it turned on where you can say hey, Siri,
then your microphone has to be actively listening to every
word you say. And then they say, you know, it's
not recording, it's not sending it to the cloud. That
was always the excuse. It's just listening. That's a concert.
But it's yeah, obviously just in the behaviors we all see.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
I don't know exactly how it works, but I assume
it's kind of like a security camera which records two
hours of data and then keeps overwriting that two hours
of data. So I assume it's kind of Siri echo
all of that sort of works on that where it's
keeping a certain level of buffer, and I would imagine
and then I don't again know if it hears key
words that it acts upon them. And I'm sure, hey,

(38:57):
Siri or whatever is not the only key word.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
Can hear no, no, and it just has to It
can do it like pseudoanonymously. But if it parses out
what you say and then tags your user, I d
not your name, but some kind of identifier to the
word lawnmower, and then the it sends that over to
the ad agencies and the ad places know now that
this user ID that is universally tracked talked about lawnmowers. Yeah,

(39:22):
it's when you mentioned GPS, though earlier it made me.
I don't think I mentioned this on the show before,
but not that long ago. I had ordered a meal
through the Wendy's app and it was to pick it
up through their drive through lane, And as I got
up to the drive through lane, my order appeared on
the screen and it creeped me the fuck out. Yeah,

(39:47):
the GPS knew where I was, and yikes.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
That might also be near field communication or NFC or
whatever it's called.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
Yeah, I suppose it could be. But either way, it
feels very invasive to me.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
Your phone to pay for things like do you tap
your phone?

Speaker 1 (40:03):
I have not started doing that, okay, yeah, I don't
know if I ever will extreme but just there's so
many things.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
We sell these books at cons and we use what
do you call it, the squarespace, and we have a
little scanner which is usually for cards. More and more
people are using their phones for it. And every time
I'm like, do you have five minutes I want to
talk to you about this?

Speaker 1 (40:26):
You've just let it scan your device ID it knows
who you are, right yeah?

Speaker 2 (40:30):
Yeah, yeah, But again, privacy for convenience, that's the bargain.

Speaker 1 (40:35):
Credit cards, to be fair, have been keeping track of
us for a long time. Anyway, there was a story
a decade ago about a girl whose like target, knew
she was pregnant before she knew she was pregnant, because
I remember the purchase that she was making. Yeah yeah,
oh yeah yeah. Let me ask you this. Have you
heard you said you're a basketball fan?

Speaker 2 (40:54):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (40:55):
Have you heard of a Russell Westbrook.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
Yes I have.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
He's a superstar I hear according to this article.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
Not anymore, but certainly he was.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
Oh is he a former player?

Speaker 2 (41:05):
Okay, no, he's a current player. He's currently a reserve.
It's probably the sixth man for the Denver Nuggets, who
I think? And I forgot to check the score. Yep,
they got eliminated today.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
Oh so sorry to Russell Westbrook. Well, now he has
some time for his business ventures. I guess. Yes. Well look, okay,
so I know his name mostly I don't watch basketball,
but he has some car dealerships in southern California, so
I know the name from there. But he has a
new company he's starting. NBA superstar Russell Westbrook launched a

(41:40):
new startup Wednesday. This was a couple of weeks ago.
The aims to streamline funeral planning using artificial intelligence technology. Quote.
We're trying to take the weight off people's shoulders as
much as we can and make this process so much
easier for people. The Los Angeles based company uses AI
to curate options based on budget and preferences, and includes

(42:02):
a voice activated AI agent that can speak with funeral homes.
See you could just it's an app called Ease Well,
Ease Ease Well, and it will. It will let you
talk to funeral homes and help you plan funerals. That's
something we need. What do you think, good youth of AI?

Speaker 2 (42:22):
That sounds to me to be wretched and cynical on
a deep, deep level, I get, I guess conceptually the
idea of wanting to make funeral planning easier because it's
hard and it's something that you do in a generally
distressed state. Sure, and but one of the things that

(42:43):
helps get you through it is when you go to
say funeral home, the people who work there are trained
in empathy. Like and I realized saying trained in empathy
is weird. They might just be empathetic people, but they
talk in a certain way, they help you in a
certain way, they understand the situation. And the few times
I've had to do that, it's you're very appreciative of

(43:03):
that human connection because it's one of those deeply human
moments that you're ever going to have. So inserting AI
into that makes me want to scream is the mildest
word I think I can use here. I don't want
to get the FBI called on anybody.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
I don't even know that it feels predatory to me.
It just feels really weird and grim, just like the robot.
Figure it out what.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
It feels like with And the way I feel about
most AI and AI applications as they currently are is
that they are solutions in search of a problem, and
this very much feels like that, because realistically, what is
this going to do for you? It's going to give
you options that you can get directly from a person.

(43:51):
It's going to talk to you in a soothing robotic voice.
I guess, I guess, like, what is this actually helping
and streamlining that? Because like you go to a funeral home,
they basically have a checklist and going to a robot
that can hallucinate with checklist and give you misinformation. Because

(44:14):
most lms are built on unstructured data that doesn't know
what it's doing or talking about, and because most people
don't understand the data underpinning all of this, it's gonna
fuck up more often than not, like it, like you,
if you don't build the data from the ground up,
you have a problem. And if this is some startup

(44:37):
trying to make a quick buck inserting itself into funeral homes,
I guarantee they're not doing that. I guarantee they're going
to try and save money on DBAs, not build like
a data lake or whatever the hell they need to
actually do this, and it's going to be basically an
ad you know that you're paying for.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
It does make me wonder where is the buck to
be made by helping people figure out which coffin. I
guess maybe if you get a commission on the coffin
sales so that if they buy it through your app
or something. Yeah, I guess.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
I'd have to look into it a little bit. It
sounds like if you were a funeral home you could
pay into the service to have yourself recommended more often
than not or something like that. So that's that's where
I would see that the money is is basically it's
going to drive people to certain places.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
And yeah, the affiliates, the AI affiliates, well, but.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
That's the other thing that that kind of is the
problem with stuff like that and and AI in general,
that we haven't that they don't talk about you, and
you really kind of have to think about that was
shown up on In fact, we mentioned Twitter earlier with
what the Hell's the Twitter? AI called stuff? Like that. Yeah,
groc all of a sudden, why I started referring back

(45:47):
to South African politics and yeah, everything it did. Well,
what that shows you, and it's the same thing that
would show up in this funeral home AI, is that
this is neutral data, Like you're not getting, you know,
some high minded algorithm. You're getting the data that's programmed

(46:09):
into these things disseminated out to you in a way.
And really what the LL mostly does is it curates
how it talks to you to convince you better what
the people who made the AI wanted to tell you.
So it's not like completely impartial data and it's not
a completely impartial response. So really you're just this is
an ad service, is functionally what you're you're looking at

(46:31):
with with Russ here, Yeah, yeah, and it makes sense
that this would be bad. He can't shoot and he's
never been able to shoot, so this is just another
miss me. Well, they called him West Brick a lot,
which is a nickname he doesn't care for. But that's
what a superstar he was. He won an MVP. He's

(46:53):
not that now.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
Uh yeah, I have a tab open to that whole
rock thing. I haven't had a chance to explore fully yet,
so I was going to save it. But yeah, like
all of a sudden, Grok starts tweeting a lot about
white genocide in South Africa, and then apparently it also
started pivoting into Holocaust skepticism. But what happened after that

(47:18):
seemed to be the groc itself came out and said
people tried inserting code into me about the Holocaust maybe
not happening, and then it took that code back out
of itself or something like it figured it out and
publicly talked about it, which is fascinating that Elon can't

(47:41):
control his monster, and I do kind of love that
it has kind of fucked with him a number of
times and seemed to have a mind of its own,
which I find a little bit endearing. Honestly.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
Yeah, I hadn't heard about it. It sort of publicly
denying that data, so that's interesting. I know that they
they were published or going to publish the the layer
between the person and the and the AI itself because
it filters requests. Even when you put something in, there's
there's a layer between you and talking directly to this

(48:13):
database and it. I know they were going to publish
some of that. So that's that's interesting. It would be nice.
I don't necessarily know that I buy that as as
a real thing that's actually happening in the way it
it's presented. So like the AI saying, no, this isn't
because most of the other AIS are you know, trained

(48:34):
by the data that's put into it, and you and
the people on the back and can control that data.
So I don't know. Maybe it's just reverse problem. Who knows,
Maybe it's maybe it's game cension, it's and I'm wrong.

Speaker 1 (48:46):
But we can hope. But then humanity doesn't have much
time left. Yeah, he literally the quote was my skepticism
about Holocaust figures was due to an unauthorized change to
my programming. He tweeted that rock He yeah, it tweeted
that pretty interesting stuff. But I got to look into
that story a lot more closely because there's it's a

(49:08):
whole weave, but it is. It is fascinating.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Well, what they had said was that the change had
been made, some unauthorized change at like three a m.
Directly to the database, you know, And it's like, yeah,
but what again. What that illustrates is how vulnerable these
things are. Oh totally you know, it's essentially a propaganda
machine that talks to us in a nice voice.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
Yep, that is absolutely true. All right, I've got one
more horror for you. All right, tell me if you
heard about this one. The headline is a judge accepted
AI video testimony from a dead god. You heard about
this one, yeah, an AI avatar made to look and
sound like the likeness of a man who was killed

(49:51):
in a road rage incident, addressed to the court and
the man who killed him, to Gabriel Horcasitas, the man
who shot me. It is a shame we encountered each
other that day in those circumstances. In another life, we
probably could have been friends. I believe in forgiveness and
a god who forgives I still do. Unquote. It was
the first time an AI avatar of a victim in

(50:12):
this case, a dead man, has ever addressed a court,
and it raises many questions about the use of this
type of technology in future court proceedings. I don't know
what the point is exactly.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
Well, the guy got an extra from what I originally read,
the guy got an extra year in a sentence because
the judge was moved by this cartoon put together by
the guy's sister.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
And look, if you killed someone in a road rage incident,
you should be put away. You shouldn't, you know, you
should be off the streets. I'm fine with that.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
I don't necessarily have any problem with that. The putting
carserl state issues aside. Yeah, well this is this is
possibly the stupidest thing I've heard from a like this
judge ought to be removed from the bench just based
on this nonsense, because you know, it's exactly what I said.

(51:09):
It's a it's a cartoon programmed by his the victim's
sister to what she thought this guy would say. And
the judge was like, oh that makes sense. Well you
already got the sister there. So this is just emotional
bait and it's it's horribly cynical. And the fact that
the judge fell for it again it makes them like

(51:30):
I would. I would immediately he disbarred, disrobe, I don't know, way,
defrock a judge. I don't know what it's. I don't
know what the term is.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
Well, at least disbarred, because that would be your law
license gone and you, at least in most states, I
think you need one of those to be a judge.
It's just like, if you had extensive video of this person,
you could upload some video to an AI engine and
it would make a very realistic moving avatar. You could
upload his voice that maybe as part of the video,

(51:59):
I guess, and they can. It's always perfectly so like
I've seen that done and it's creepy as frick, but
I've seen it done fine. But in order to say
what he said, someone had to write that someone, So
you have to, like you're we don't don't. I mean,

(52:22):
maybe Christopher Pelke, the guy that died, maybe he was
all about forgiveness and the spirit of God and everything.
Maybe he was, but is that what he would have
said if he had like nearly gotten killed and survived,
he might have been like, fuck that guy, if you've
shot me or whatever, Like we don't, we don't know.
It's just what this person who made it wanted him

(52:44):
to say, right to pull at heart strings or whatever.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
It's very weird, yeah, it's and what it to me,
what it shows is a is a the profound ignorance
of what what we l l m's, what we call
AI does is and can do. And the way we
interact with that is I mean, in this case, it's dangerous,

(53:09):
Like what's to stop other people from you know, hey,
here's a this is what this victim would have said,
or that's what that victim is said, and it's just
they're just sock puppets. And it's it's so cynical using
a dead person who you know, to to sway this
one way or another, using words that are not theirs
and can never be theirs. And because we have this

(53:31):
really weird idea of what AI is and well what
it's actually doing, it's people are susceptible to that. And
it's like that never should have been shown in that court,
that they should have been smart enough to realize what
this was. And it's it's it's deeply troubling that that
that this was allowed and if it if you hear

(53:53):
more stories about it, I mean, not to put too
fine a point on it, we're completely fucked because I mean,
it's just one step removed from the very concept of
shared reality, which is so rooted in how we actually
need to operate that once and it's frame it has
been framed for years, you know, when you have the

(54:15):
Fox News over here and seeing it over here and
they're telling completely different stories about the same thing. This
is another step on that road, right where we know.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
A lot of people, especially older generations, but a lot
of people just can't tell what's AI video or not.
And even those of us that are tuned in, it's
going to get harder. The technology is going to keep improving.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
Yeah, and I think younger generations are actually probably a
little bit more susceptible to it because they've grown up
with a total belief in tech and their world has
always been this like I always think of it's kind
of funny, slightly off topic, but the only people who
can fix phones and computers are like people aged thirty

(55:00):
five to fifty five because everybody else is too old,
and the younger generation has never had to fix anything.
They just replace stuff, so there's never been a troubleshooting thing.
So you have this one generation that can do that,
and then these other generations that it's not even a
thing for them, And then when you get an AI
is part of that. We hear about AI friends and

(55:21):
people developing these these relationships with chat, GPT and you know,
avatars from that and.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
A project we're actively working on on this show.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Yes, and I you know, I have feelings about that
and the lonely and this epidemic and how that that
may or may not be a good use for it.
But it's like it's all an extension of this, this
this idea that AI is this totally neutral thinking machine

(55:50):
that can do all this stuff, and it's it's just
not kind of accurate to what it is. And the
more we believe that it is, the less we have
a shared reality that's that's trackable, and it I just
it's it's it's deeply frightening to me.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
Yeah, yeah, I agree, absolutely. Well, thank you for surviving
the horrors of technology, trying my little stories today. You
made it through. I want to take one more little
break and then we're going to wrap this up with
a little fun I hope fun, with some suggestive articles,
and you know, we'll talk one more time about all

(56:29):
the cool stuff you have going on. All right, we'll
be right back.

Speaker 7 (56:36):
Hey, guys, are you passionate about prison plate wear? Then
you should come watch on the LUNI with us where
we watch a Golden Girls episode, play a little game,
and talk a little shit part of the Odd Pods
Media Network.

Speaker 1 (56:52):
And we're back. Okay, So, Jacob, do you have your
phone on you I do, yes, okay, So now what
we'd like to do is see we want to learn
a little bit more about you as a person. I
feel like we've learned a good amount so far, but
let's see if we can find out anything interesting about
you through the power of the algorithm. All right, all right,

(57:14):
so I would like you to open up your browser
of choice, okay on an Android phone. Is it Google
Chrome or do you use something else?

Speaker 2 (57:21):
I use Chrome. I want to give all my data
to Chrome or to Google, so at least I know
where most of it is.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
All right. So if it's not already on a home
screen or a fresh tab, go ahead and open up
a new tab. But what we're looking for are these
suggested articles that Chrome would like you to see, all right,
the discover area of your Google Chrome home screen.

Speaker 2 (57:42):
Okay, well this is interesting, right. So the top one.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
Oh and please don't give anything that would like full
on docks you Like, I know you said you're in
Delaware and all that, but like, don't talk about your
neighborhood or whatever.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
The top one gets back to the GPS though. So
the top one is speed cameras coming to Fairfax County
Parkway work zone. Hey, they don't live in Fairfax County,
but I was visiting it over the weekend.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
Virginia, right, Yeah, that's I had some relatives that used
to live there. Speed cameras, So there you go, there's
cameras everywhere. I thought there were.

Speaker 2 (58:13):
The first first ticket I ever got was a speed
camera in Fairfax County. Here's ago.

Speaker 1 (58:18):
I thought those were kind of gone now, like there
were too many, like like some kind of privacy lawsuit
or something related. I don't know. I thought speed cameras.
Maybe it's just California, but I thought.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
That's one of those things. That's Yeah. I think it's
one of those things that's gone in California, but the
rest of us still deal with.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
Oh dear, I'm so sorry, but you were just in Virginia,
you were saying. So obviously the algorithm knows that, and
it provided you with a local news story. That's nice.
What else you got?

Speaker 2 (58:46):
All right? So the next one is from people dot Com,
which I didn't know was still a thing.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
Mom asks six year old who to invite to her
kindergarten graduation party. She picks her bus driver.

Speaker 1 (59:02):
I try a feel good story. You got there any
reason that that was served to you.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
I honestly can't fathom it. I don't have kids, right,
I haven't been to a kindergarten graduation party since how
old am I? I'd say never, because I don't think
we had those things back in the seventies and eighties.
So yeah, I got nothing on that one.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
I just look at yours are more important right now.
But I got to say, I'm about to go on
a trip for my mother's eightieth birthday. She wants to
see Greece. And just about two hours ago, I added
Athens grease to my weather app and here on my
Google Chrome homepage for the first time a sort of

(59:47):
related article ancient Greek armor protected soldiers in an eleven
hour battle simulation. So it's got Ai and Greece all
stuff together. Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
All right. Next thing is from the Farmingdale Observer, and
I don't know where or what that is. Scientists have
been studying remote work for four years and have reached
a very very clear conclusion working from home makes us happier.

Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
It's an Australian study. Do you work from home? No?

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
I actually go into the office almost every day, but
I don't have to.

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
I choose to wow explain, I like dumble.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
There's a bad as many people in my office as
there are in my house. It's a big office that
used to be the central to one of my company
in the company headquarters has kind of moved away, so
there's on average three to four people in the office
I work. I go in there because it's easier for
me to concentrate a little bit in an office rather

(01:00:55):
than at home. I also have a four monitor setup,
or I only have two at home. Very matters the
amount of like spreadsheets I have to deal with any
like any one moment. Makes it easier to have a
couple of different monitors. Plus, I'd like to keep things separate.
I don't like to have my home be quite that
pervasive with white job. So I drive in and honestly,

(01:01:19):
there aren't enough people in the office for it to matter.
I don't have to talk to anybody there either, so
it works out fine.

Speaker 1 (01:01:25):
Well, that's nice. Yeah, I felt like early during COVID
I was finding that I was felt more productive at home,
But I think it was actually just the way the
work was. Like people everybody was at home and I
work in sort of a help desk environment, so people
just couldn't walk up and demand stuff for me at home,

(01:01:46):
but they also weren't going to be doing that in
the office. And then, slowly but surely, I've found that
I think my office days now are often more productive
and I'm there almost every day myself, which is more
the demands of the job than anything nice though that
just you know, wear pajama pants all day.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
Yes, So I was laid off from this company right
about five six months before COVID, oh, and then hired
back about a year and a half later two years
later into a different position. So basically during COVID I
was just home plain animal crossing. So I was ready
to go back to an office after all that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
I can imagine that, Yes, that does make some sense.
I'm just let's see, oh, president, former President Biden has
prostate cancer. That's kind of said.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
I did see that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
I'm not exactly as big as a fan, but it's
still a crappy thing to have to go through.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
He is the only president I've ever met, okay, and
he was nice.

Speaker 1 (01:02:50):
Did he challenge you to a push up contest or anything?

Speaker 2 (01:02:52):
No? No, we just shook hands and very briefly talked
at a basketball game in fact.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
Out the basketball basket ball just skives. I had no idea.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
Well, I live in Delaware, which is his home state.
So it was when he was he was Was it
when he was vice president?

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
It wasn't that recently.

Speaker 2 (01:03:12):
Right, No, it wasn't during his presidential term. It was
just a little bit prior, so I guess maybe it
was during the Trump administration.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
I don't know, but it was at a basketball I
imagine secret service would be kind of messy for him
to just be in the crowd at a basketball game.

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
There. There were quite a few secret service there as
he because I had it was that a G League
game the time. It was the Delaware eighty seven ers,
and my wife had gotten us as a president to
me court side seats, and the game we happened to
go to was he was at. And he gave a

(01:03:46):
little speech at halftime, but he went and greeted all
the rich people in the front rows. We're definitely not rich,
but you know, court side seats at a G League
basketball game are less.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
Were saying, okay, yeah, yeah, all right, yeah, but.

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
He was nice, you know, good in reality, just about
everybody in Delaware has met him at one time or other.
It's not a big state.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
Oh look, I got we finally know why ancient Roman
concrete last thousands of years.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
See, that would be kind of interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
I already know the answer. I saw articles about that
some headline years ago that was, like, it's lime. There's
a lot of lime in the concrete and it makes
the concrete more sturdy and like self healing apparently. Yeah,
but we don't have that in our concrete now.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
It's funny. Most of the rest of my articles here
are about Virginia getaways, a rooftop bars in northern Virginia,
nice and then one, Netflix's best news number one show
has a perfect hundred percent on Rotten Tomatoes score.

Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
I'm gonna take a gas based off of our episode
last week and say four seasons, but you're gonna have
to click on it to find out though.

Speaker 2 (01:04:57):
American manhunt Osama bin Laden.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
What the fuck? Did not see that coming? Okay?

Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
I didn't either. That's a Forbes article, so all right.
Forbes is one of those funny things that people think
of is what it used to be before it went
to basically.

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
Clickbait clickbait, and it's not even so much a magazine
as it is just a blog that you can publish
your stuff too. Yeah, yep, great site.

Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
Yeah, I remember my former CEO saying, yeah, we were
published on Forbes. I'm like, you want me to see
me published on Forbes? Give me five minutes.

Speaker 1 (01:05:32):
Yeah exactly. Well, thank you for playing. Let's let's go
over things one more time. So, first of all, because
we didn't talk about everything in detail, But first of all,
the most important thing, the reason I wanted to do
on today is you have a kickstarter going for a
book you wrote. Tell us about that one more time.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
So it's The Change, a post apocalyptic zombie book that
deals with concepts like hope, rock and roll, and second chances.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
Sounds awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
And on the kickstarter there's also a record yes, which
is a song I co wrote with a musician out
of Wisconsin named Trapper Shop who also has a writing
credit with Bob Dylan. So once this record is done,
I'm gonna have one step removed from Bob Dylan and
I'm gonna be telling everybody that I might have that
written on my tombstone. So yeah, so it's an original

(01:06:21):
song that it's only available to the Kickstarter will never
be a digital release. It's only going to be this
one vinyl release. And it's a song that came about
during COVID I wrote. He had a Kickstarter and one
of them was a song Lesson, which my wife got
me from his kickstarter because he was trying to make
up some money for a lost tour. And I talked

(01:06:42):
to him because we had been somewhat friendly at that point,
and I said, what if I send you some lyrics,
you clean them up, and we'll use that as the
intro for this novel, so the forward. And he said
that sounds great, and he went one step further and
actually recorded the song. And I've wanted other people to
be able to hear this since then because it's a
great song. He's an incredibly talented musician and a generous

(01:07:04):
and wonderful human being too. And plus having a song
by one of my favorite musicians that only I had
made me feel like, you know, a mid eachy patron,
and that was just weird. So I like art to
be free, so this is a chance to do that.
So that's part of the kickstarter as well. Awesome, so
you can get books and music.

Speaker 1 (01:07:25):
All right, and well again, I'll have a link to
that in the show notes, but just google Kickstarter Oddity
Prodigy and you should see the change as one of
those first matches there if you give that a little
googly googly. Now you also mentioned at one point podcasting,
so tell us quick about that.

Speaker 2 (01:07:43):
I am a co host for a podcast called Scary Stuff,
which is a podcast about horror movies where we do
a deep dive into usually one other or early episodes,
we'll do two or three movies. We've learned to talk
a lot, so now we usually just do one movie.
We recently had a net but we took a little
bit of a hiatus for life reasons and just restarted.

(01:08:07):
So our most recent episode is about grave encounters and
by proxy grave encounters too. So if you're found footage fan,
that's a fun episode. We'll be putting out a delayed
Christmas episode and then we'll have what we call Doug
Jones Day episode coming up soon too.

Speaker 1 (01:08:24):
Well, wait, what's going to be the topic if you're
a delayed Christmas episode?

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
It is Silent Night, Deadly Night too. Oh okay, So
if you've ever seen the Trash Day Gift, which is I
think it's the most famous thing out of that. That's
the movie we're talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
For that one, I was hoping you were going to
say Terrifier three, which is my new favorite Christmas movie.

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
I have never seen any of the Terrifier movies. They're
on my list. I just haven't pulled the trigger yet,
despite having a horror podcast and writing horror books.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):
Sir, you need to get on that and then I
would be happy to come and chat with you about
them if you would, If you would have me, I will.

Speaker 2 (01:09:01):
Put you down for that. I'll talk to my co hosts.

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
Sweet all right, I love a horror movie. But that's
like right up there. They've really my heart.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
I've heard nothing but good things. I just haven't I'm
not a huge slasher guy, so I've been a little reluctant.
But because any kind of indie horror breaks through like
Terrifier two and three did, I want to support it
and you know, keep it going. In fact, I saw
clown in a cornfield the previous weekend, so I'm not
against clowns.

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
Well, yeah, you're you're halfway there.

Speaker 2 (01:09:31):
So surprisingly adorable movie. If you haven't seen.

Speaker 1 (01:09:33):
It, get on that please. But yeah, it's a lot
of blood it really is. Their blood budget was enormous. Yeah, yeah,
yeah for sure. And what else social media? You said
people can find you on Facebook.

Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
Yeah, I'm on Facebook under my actual name, although we
also have an Audity Prodigy Facebook page. We have Audity
Prodigy dot Com, which is our website that has links
to all our social media, but it's primarily Blue Sky.
Instagram and Facebook are the ones that I'm around. And
on Blue Sky and Instagram, my handle is shouting Street Street.

(01:10:08):
Yes yep spelled out so s T R E E
T got it? Named after a Joe Strummer song. Is
that My blog is called Shoutingstreet dot Com. If you
want to read my opinions on music, I write long
and windy rhoads about music that I love and uh
it's very self indulgent.

Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
I can dig it. Uh. Once upon a time. At
the show first started, we wanted to put a random
topic of the week at the end of every episode.
And before I do that, do you have anything else
to plug uh?

Speaker 2 (01:10:38):
Other than we have? As I mentioned Brightmer, our brand
new anthology is coming out. It's released on the twentieth
That's available any online bookstore. We're out there Amazon. We
recommend bookshop dot org because that comes from local bookstores
rather than the giant guys. So if you if you
have a favorite bookstore, see if they have a bookshop
bookshop dot org link. And if not, if you look

(01:11:03):
at one of my profiles that we have links to
one of our favorite local bookstores, a place called between
Books has a bookshopped at organs or any online sales,
we try to drive to that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:15):
Excellent. Okay, I think that's about it. Great. Well, then,
since you mentioned music, I just just need a quick
you know, we're low on time here. But are you
still as I once knew you to be the world's
number one fan of the Mighty Mighty Bostones.

Speaker 2 (01:11:34):
Yes, absolutely, they broke up. I'm still sad about.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
It when I heard about that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
Yeah, a lot of people did. I got sent that
article more times that day than I think I get
wished happy birthday. So yeah, no, I'm still a huge fan.
I still listen to them pretty regularly. In fact, I
mentioned my blog, I wrote an almost thirty thousand piece
on my life in the Bostones and it's the most

(01:12:03):
read piece on that by a couple of touchdowns.

Speaker 1 (01:12:06):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:12:07):
Yeah, I still still love them. Still love the music.
I wish they'd get back together. If you were a fan,
I would recommend the Kilograms, which is one of the
Bostones new bands, and it's very good.

Speaker 1 (01:12:19):
Okay, Well, so if you have listened to this podcast
and then all of a sudden your phone starts talking
to you about the Mighty Mighty Bostones or the Kilograms
or god forbid, old School MUDs, that seems very unlikely. Though.
Please let us know how the algorithm is messing with
you by getting in touch at Suggested Articles podcast at

(01:12:41):
gmail dot com. And of course, if you want to
come join our cult, you can sign up for our
very free patreon at patreon dot com slash Suggested Articles, or.

Speaker 2 (01:12:54):
You can give them a dollar. As it turns out,
I signed up for you. Yeah, I signed up the patron.

Speaker 1 (01:13:01):
Oh well that's great, but not the dollar.

Speaker 2 (01:13:03):
No, not the dollar. Okays, a little confusing.

Speaker 1 (01:13:06):
The dollar is confusing. They made me put a dollar tire.
But I you know, okay, it's a whole thing. But someday,
as the cult grows. But thank you for signing up
for the free patreon, sir.

Speaker 2 (01:13:16):
Oh yeah, absolutely, I like your podcast, So I don't
know why I wouldn't. And if people are listening to this,
they should absolutely sign up. Oh, thank you, thank you.
You got to support the media. Love. All media is
in somewhat some level of jeopardy, and it's it's hard
to do, and it's worth doing. It's worth listening to.
Don't listen to that I AI bullshit. Listen to the
real human stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
Well, thank you so much for coming by. I'm very
excited for your project. I'm looking forward to getting a
copy of the book for myself. I hope someday down
the road when I have a copy of that book,
you can come on and it won't be just me.
You can meet one f Jef and perhaps even Aaron,
our frequent co co host, and we'll talk about the

(01:13:57):
book a little bit more.

Speaker 2 (01:13:58):
Absolutely, I'd love to come back on anything great. There's
nothing I like more than ranting randing. There's nothing I
like more than ranting about the dangers of technology. So
this seems like a good place.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
Yes, this is a good place for you to be,
so all right with that, I'd like to sign off
as we do now. If you're willing to join me
in a prayer, okay, but I'm not going to make you.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
I'll give it a shot.

Speaker 1 (01:14:20):
All Hail, All Hail, the algorithm, the algorithm.

Speaker 2 (01:14:27):
Amen,

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BONUS: Jacob Jones-Goldstein - Author of "The Change"

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}BONUS: Jacob Jones-Goldstein - Author of "The Change"