#4811 And Asimov Wept

0:00Item one, fan base. What fan base? The fan base of the band. What do you mean, Mel? It's not a fan base, it's just a woman. Yeah, but I'm calling it fan base from now on. It's just easy on a call, because you know, you say, the fan will be there. You know, they can tell there's only one person. I'm trying to make it look bigger. It's a base, put base on the end of it. Okay. That sounds good. It sounds better. I'll come up with that. TVTM! I just might have to go tonight. Any material. He cares. That's the secret. It's in his voice. You know, but that's worth to an advertiser. We fired a joke set you're like an automatic weapon of comedy. We throw a curveball joke at you, hit you right in the head. You go, wow, what happened? We take you on a little trolley ride down story lane. You're having a good time and join our little tale. Think you know what's coming. Boom, left turn. You don't know how it happened. You don't know where you are, but you're like it. Oh, that's hell of a beautiful house. Oh, this is really the happiest place on our side.

1:02I can't get to my self. I can't get to my joy now. This is hell of a- All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Wednesday edition of TVTL. The show that just might be too beautiful to live. Don't miss the sausage fest. My name's Luc Burbank. I am your host. Oh, yeah. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, a perched high above the mighty Columbia, a beautiful Wednesday. Oh, ma, Pa, it's just beautiful. I am having to overcome some challenges today and the sort of technical department. My printer appears to be broken. Or at least it ran out of toner. It won't let me put the new toner in there. You wouldn't think printing was as vital to a podcast as it is for me here at episode 4,810 in a collector series. That's a fun begin. But that's because we are one of the oldest and longest running podcasts in America.

2:03We're from the olden days when people print it out their show sheets. Although today, I'm just trying to do this from memory. So everybody bear with me. As I tell you about some of the topics that we didn't get to yesterday, including the new Nathan Fielder documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, who's in jail in Texas because of her Theranos scam. So who needs a movie? This documentary is making quite the waves because of the secrecy around it and also because of the trailer, which is still trying to kind of understand what was going on with that. Also, football's back, baby. You got to be a real football nerd to sit through the whole thing. The NFL season kicks off tonight with your Seattle Seahawks. Playing the New England Patriots, I'm sure that will come up at some point today. Front of mind for me. And this guy right now, I'm about to introduce, he's always front of mind and he is a true competitor. You play to win the game. He's the longest running co-bro of the show, maybe the best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's Andrew Walls. She's joining me right now.

3:04Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke. I don't say this is a criticism, but more is a source of support. I'm really, I'm bummed that you didn't have the confidence to go through with the joke that you made in the sound check regarding football season. I believe you said something like the clack of the cleats, the roar of the crowd or something. It brought me joy. And that, but I could hear as you said it during the sound check, I could just tell that you were losing confidence in it as you were saying it. It's weird because sometimes I'll write something in the show sheet at like 7am just to potentially amuse you with no intention of using it. Oh, I didn't know that. So that was Andrew Walls exclusive. It was. I think I wrote, well, you know what? Because of my interesting problems set you up there. I can't go back to the actual source material. But yes, I believe I wrote the crack of the fact. Well, on the show sheet, you wrote the crack of the bat, the roar, the crowd, footballs, which is funny. But then you amended it like jazz when you were doing the sound check. It's an interactive process.

4:04Yeah, you said something like the clack of the cleats or something. You were adjusting it on the fly. I knew right. My heart wasn't in it. But then I heard it was kind of like during the sound. The clack of the cleats, the roar of the crowd. And then we get to the real show. And you're just like, you know what? I can lie down. I can hear the toilet running. And you know what you did. You punted. You punted on it, which is actually the perfect. We're hoping the Seahawks don't have to do a ton of tonight. Although here's the thing. It's a field position game, Andrew. And so sometimes, much like in poker, where they say, the most powerful thing you can do in poker is to fold. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is punt. Although, you know me, I've also been a long standing proponent of going for it on fourth down. Much more than was in fashion. I would say three seasons ago. And I think the league has come around to Genevieve's and my way of thinking on this matter. Genevieve was here with you. But she also, she would have, like for a long time ago, when she was way more into NFL football, she was just like, she really felt like, I think she would have gotten a rid of punters

5:05and just replaced some, you know, put another position on the roster. They've almost done that in football now, I feel, because A, place kickers have gotten so much better. The field goal kickers have, they're less like, so effective. Also with the new kickoff rules, it's like, it takes like two plays to get into field goal range. And again, they finally, they finally caught up with my galaxy brain thinking, which is that the downside of going for it on fourth down and not getting it. I think is outweighed by the upside. If you do this four times in a game, you're gonna get at least two of them. And the upside is so huge that it's worth risking the downside. And again, I feel like this is the new way that they tend to strategize these games. I was a John de Baptist. I was in the wilderness, but they're finally recognizing my true genius. So quick show note here. I kind of want to talk to you more about our plans for watching the NFL kickoff tonight, the Seahawks, of course, playing the New England Patriots.

6:05But there's something, here's, I am concerned. There's something I really want to talk to you about, something that I need your take on that happened to me yesterday. So let's start with that. And then hopefully come back around to football, but I don't want to, you know, like totally reiterate that. Follow your passion Andrew. So here's the deal. As you know, I mentioned to you before the show that I have an electrician, and notice I think I say electrician, like the sophisticated who I associate with. I don't say electrician the way some people do. Not to distract us, but can we come back to the word finance in a bit? Finances. I feel the financier, Jeff Epstein, can we come back to the word finance later? Okay, sure. Talk about electrician. So anyway, I have an electrician coming later today. And I asked our friend, realtor to the stars, Sarah Nicholson Smith for recommendation. She recommended some folks, but it wasn't, the people that she recommended wasn't really working out. So I'm like, you know, let me go to a tried and true company

7:08that we've used before for other things. And you've probably seen them around town, and I may have even mentioned them on the show before. I believe they're called C town. They have a nice little jingle during Mariners game, C town plumbing, electric repair, or something along the lines of that. And I think they're a pretty big operation now. I think that I'm trying to figure out this is worth talking about, but I feel like, you know, some of these smaller shops might not be able to get back to you right away, or they may not have to use their jobs a little bit more carefully. Whereas I think C town is maybe a little bit like the McDonald's of, you know, this type of work. They're well staffed. They seem well staffed, and they have like sort of a system built out. They can send somebody usually the next day. And that had been my experience, by the way. The first time we called them, we needed some sort of work done on our furnace. It was such a great experience. I called, it was some kind of weird situation. Excited like to make everything weird. So I called them up, and I remember, there was a woman who actually, you know, like answered on the first ring, and like, you know, walked me through what we needed, and said,

8:08somebody will be out there the next day. And then the fella came out, and this one of those companies that sends you a little baseball card with information about the person who's coming to help you. So you know what, like, I got that from the HVAC company. Yeah, I kind of like that. I think we talked about in the show, it was kind of interesting. And anyway, and this guy came out, and he was great. And then he ended up helping us with something else installing this thermostat that was not on his original kind of job ticket, but he just sort of, was that the thing your dad sent you? Exactly the Google Nest thing. And it turns out, I was like, I probably shouldn't know how to do this myself. He's like, honestly, there was something funky going on with the ground wire. You would have needed somebody to do this anyway. So I'm not saying they did it for free, but like very, both very professional, very prompt, but then also flexible enough just to be like, kind of friendly and helpful. We also had somebody come out to snake our pipes one time. That was, how about that guy as much? It was fine. He did his job, I guess. Same company. Same company, yep. So it's plumbing, electric, and HVAC stuff. And so now I am kind of on a tight deadline to get a piece of electrical work done

9:11because of our previous contractor. He was supposed to install, basically, I'll just explain it for the folks who know, I needed like a 240 volt wiring setup to power this cooktop we're installing downstairs. And that was supposed to be part of the overall project that our original contractor was supposed to do. But we ended up letting him go because of his work generally speaking, but he was still supposed to finish up certain things for us. And that was one of the things you're supposed to finish up was supposed to be straightforward. Get 240 volts to this thing, because he eventually worked with the cooktop here. I would say he's gone, but not forgotten. He is gone, but not constantly trying to hire people to fix the things that didn't do proper. It is potentially litigious. Where this guy left us. So anyway, so now we have other contractors who are installing our countertops and they're going to install this cooktop that is going to be part of the whole thing. But these new contractors we have, they don't really do electric work in that way. And so we need somebody in electrician to come out here and fix what's going on

10:13with this supposedly 240 volt setup, this hookup, right? And so all of that is to say, I call C-town yesterday. And I'm expecting to talk to somebody very similar to who I talked to the last couple of times. You know, somebody very friendly who kind of walks you through it. I was surprised when it did pick up, they did pick up on like the first ring, but it sounded like a guy who was picking up in his truck. Like it had like a lot of noise around it, you know, when someone was driving and they put you on speaker phone. And I thought you were going to get dispatched and you were getting somebody out in the field. Well, that's what it sounded like. And like, and I remember I think he said, his name was Tucker. He's like, hey, this is Tucker at C-town. How can I help you today? And I'm thinking that I am immediately picturing him driving around in his truck. And you sometimes get that with smaller contractors or, you know, laborers, you know, like maybe they are somebody who's like kind of like one or three person shop. And so they're taking calls in between jobs on, you know, good for them, right? So I'm like, but that's weird for, that seemed weird for C-town.

11:14So anyways, like, how can I help you today? I'm like, well, you know, my name's Andrew. I live up in North Seattle. I have some electrical work. I don't think it's a big deal. Oh, okay. Well, can you just kind of like describe like kind of what you're talking about here? You talk about like something with like an electrical socket, a breaker box, like what are you talking about? And I remember you kind of listed three things. And I was like, oh, yeah, well, and then I told him exactly what I told you. And in fact, I even said like we had a contractor who was supposed to send a hundred or 240 volts down here, but only one of the wires is working. So we only got 120. We think the fix just needs to happen up at the breaker box. He's like, oh, okay. And you know, like I'm always insecure talking about these things. So I don't really know what I'm talking about. I don't know electrical work at all. I have a voice that I use. Literally, like I go, I code switch to being a person who seems like they know what they're talking about with you. Spid kind of first you spit on the ground. And they're like, yeah, you know, we're talking about here. Classic one, 2240 situation. I don't know if I've actually spit, but I've sort of spiritually like I physically, I mean, it's not only a change in my voice,

12:16but a change in my physicality when somebody comes out. Yeah, who's going to be doing, I mean, if it's not my dad or something, who's going to be looking at something. I really do put on this whole persona of a guy who knows about this guy. Is Hawk Luca a thing? The Hawk Luca boy guy. The old Hawk Luca. Anyway, I don't, by the way, I don't think that's a thing. But you know, I'm the opposite. I think I just like let people know right away. Like I don't know what I'm doing here. Like in the parlance of whatever your favorite sketches, I'm a baby. Like I don't know what's going on. Help me, right? Don't spank me. Don't spank me. This is why they've stopped sending people at your house. That's what I say. You say don't spank me, but then you present your rear to the HVAC guy. Okay, so this guy, so anyway, I kind of, you know, as I always do, both with you and every aspect of my life, I go into probably a little bit too much detail, but I'm, you know, I think I explained it pretty quickly. And then he reads a pizza back to me. He's like, yeah, so you just, so it sounds like you just need some workup at your breaker box.

13:17I'm like, yeah, that's what I think it is. But then right at that moment, when he said, so it sounds like, sounds like you need some workup at your breaker box. I'm like, yeah, that's basically it. That's what I just said. But he did, he did like sort of like, summarize it better, I guess. And then he's like, okay, let me just check you in the system here. Are you still calling, you know, is this the number you're being contact number that you're calling from? Yeah, he's like, okay, yeah. And so let's see here, you still at this address. And I'm like, yep, you haven't confirmed my info, but there's something that I'm starting to pick up on ever since he said, so it sounds like you need some workup at your breaker box. And I'm remembering that tape that we played on the show a few days ago of an AI HR person interviewing somebody for a job who was answering her in all kinds of gibberish. And then she was saying, okay, so it sounds like you need your shins to clap up against the clapboard, or you know what I mean? And I was like, oh my God, I'm talking to AI, this guy, but it doesn't sound like a robot. It's like, it's very clearly like been programmed to sound like a person.

14:18And the reason it sounds. I know, I think that was just, I think the sound that I heard that I assumed was like a Bluetooth truck sound. I think that was just the system. I think that's just the system doesn't sound very good right now. And you know, God knows what computers are working in the background to make this happen. God knows what reservoirs were drained for me to make this appointment. But the more I'm talking, I'm like, oh God, yeah, this is just AI, but now this conversation went on, I could even tell you, it's probably a three minute conversation. You know, halfway through, there's no question in my mind. This is an AI bot, but there is a question in my mind, can I just say, are you a human being? Because if I'm wrong about this, that's weird. But also I'm like, this is clear. And you know me, I kind of know editing and audio editing. And there's something, there's little subtle things that you're doing when you're editing, which is like, where do breath placements go? You know, and like, there's one point where he said, oh, I'm going to check your file here. Okay, it looks like, and there was just like, there was no pause and there was just like a couple of sentences

15:19that were butted up against each other. And so, but I don't want to, I need an electrician. This shouldn't be a reflection of their electrical work. If anything, it's a promotion of the robotics work, I suppose. And so we get all the way to the end. I booked the appointment, by the way, the person is coming later today, hopefully I won't interrupt the recording of the show. But one of those dogs from Boston Dynamics, is going to show up on those headless yellow dogs with a tool belt on. I'm scary. Oh my God, that's so exciting. Did I get a hold on that? I got to go lock the doors. Anyway, at the very end of the conversation, against relatively short and also relatively painless. Oh, they did say like, okay, we're, okay, we'll send somebody out there for you tomorrow. And I said, okay, it needs to be afternoon. And they said, this guy, this voice said, okay, well, they're all day appointments. We can't specify a time. But I'll put in your file that you prefer the afternoon. And by the way, I remember the human being I talked to years ago or so.

16:20She did the same thing. And there's no question in my mind that she was real, by the way. But I get to the end of this one. And I said, he said, hey, is there anything I was like, I can help you with today before, before we lock this in? And I said, yeah, could you just remind me of your name again? He's like, oh yeah, yeah, my name's Tucker. And he's like, he's programmed to sound sort of nonchalant. You know, and he's like, yeah, my name's Tucker. I was like, oh, cool. How long have you worked there, Tucker? Because I didn't want to say, are you a robot? But obviously he was. And I said, oh, how long have you worked there, Tucker? Said, oh, I'm actually an AI assistant. I'm a, no, he didn't say AI. He said, I'm actually a digital assistant that helps with scheduling. And I said, and now I'm kind of like, I'm just like peved. And this is my question. This is a question that I don't know that I should have been peved. But I'm just feeling peved. And I'm feeling a little bit lied to. And so I said, oh, it's kind of interesting. I said, it's kind of interesting that they give you names. No, no, I said, yeah, I had a feeling you were a robot. It's pretty interesting that they give you a name. And he said, yeah, it is kind of funny.

17:21But we do that to keep things more friendly. Anything else I can help you with? And I'm like, nope. And he said, awesome. We'll see you tomorrow. And awesome, really like set my teeth on edge. And I've been thinking about it for about 24 hours now that I've been wanting to talk to you about it. Because here's the deal. You got Johnny cab. So I got Johnny cab. But the thing is, did Johnny cab get you where you want to go? Now, more realistically and ethically, we can talk about that big picture. Like I am, and I came upstairs immediately and told Genevieve the story. I'm like, well, we have an electrician coming out. I assume it's a human. But also, I can't help but to think about that really friendly person I talked to last year. That was a huge reason why I go back to them because the process from the very beginning was very smooth. And you felt like you were talking to somebody who's listening to you, it wasn't like outsourced to a phone center somewhere that handles calls for all different kinds of companies or whatever. It really felt like I got great service from the drop last time. Now I call, and they don't identify this person as being a digital assistant at all.

18:21And I didn't recognize it for about maybe a minute or so. But then at the end of the day, I got my appointment scheduled. I got several text message followups from their system, just saying, okay, we're sending somebody out tomorrow. This morning I woke up and saw a text or I came in at like 730 or something when I was on my phone and said something like, okay, somebody's gonna be out there between noon and two or whatever the window was. So like they're being with this automated system they have set up. They're being very communicative. They're giving me the information I need. Let's assume that the work is still good. With the exception of the idea that good people are losing jobs because we're just outsourcing them to robots, should I care that this company had a robot answer the phone? And if not, should I care that they didn't identify it at the beginning or is it good that they didn't identify it at the beginning? Because if I had heard like more of an old school robot phone tree voice, would I have just started saying operator, operator, operator into the phone? You would have been me yesterday on the phone with the bank,

19:22just using the F word to the automation. For the record that works still. And I don't like it, I don't like using that. That's the court of last resort for me. But because I worry that when I do get the human that will hear some recording of me and I don't want them to think I'm mad at them. But the only thing that I've been able to reliably use to get through the AI tree and the banks or some of the worst at this is if you deploy an F word, they get you right to a person. Is there a person who's alive wire as it were? This person is possibly dangerous. This person is very angry and we need to get them to a human. Again, it works every time. I don't love doing it, but I will in a pinch. I guess to answer your question, I do think that they should tell you up front so that you have options. So because I bet part of what made you feel uncanny about this was that it took a minute before you figured it out.

20:23Right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But if they had said, I won't go into the details on this one, but when I was flying into Cleveland, I had a little freak out at the airport as I was leaving Seattle for our big T.B. Telephone. I realized I was missing some equipment. And I was trying to get a hold of a human being at like a best buyer or something like that. And when you call, they immediately set you up with a digital assistant. And I'm just like, I don't need a digital assistant. And so I try to get around. The fact that they identified themselves as a digital assistant right away was such a turnoff for me that I hung up on them. So in a certain way, I don't like feeling lied to. But also this just kept me on business sort of. Right. Because I mean, if a Tucker, if you hadn't figured out Tucker was a robot or if you had spent less time on the line with Tucker and you just had this same outcome, which is they scheduled an appointment, they're being communicative. Really, what is the downside for you as a customer in your experience? It's pretty minimal.

21:24You might not have even noticed it. But there does feel like we're losing something. We're losing some amount of humanity, which is for me, it goes back to the, they just need to tell us caveat emptor because then as it gets better and better, maybe we won't always choose to hang up on the AI. I was texting with, I think it might have been AI at American Airlines yesterday. And it did an OK job. It got what I needed to have done. I needed to add my Alaska Airlines frequent flyer number to what I was doing on Americans. They're part of the same system. But I have more perks in Alaska. And the AI thing, I think it accomplished what I wanted it to. And so I guess my point is as the AI gets better, we will probably be, we the humans will tolerate it more. We will be less prone to hang up on it. But I do think that there needs to be, as a, as a standard, we need to set the standard that when we're dealing with something that's nonhuman, we need to know it's nonhuman from the jump. Because that's, it's going to get harder and harder to identify.

22:24And that's, that to me, that needs to be like a fundamental thing is if you're dealing with a Johnny cab, we need to know it's a Johnny cab. We might still get in it, but we need to know from the jump. You know what a good analogy might be? If you're calling a ride share, you should know whether or not it's a driverless car. You know what I mean? Absolutely. You can still make a decision as to whether or not get in it. But like, what if like our ride shares just had a dark window, like a limiter we didn't know. Is there a driver up there or not? Well, you don't know. Now me making a phone call to schedule an appointment isn't as like potentially dangerous as, you know, a getting in a car if you don't trust driverless cars. But like, I don't know. There was just something about it. But I also know that if I had heard digital assistant right away, it would have set me off. And it might have even like, maybe I wouldn't, maybe it would have taken me longer to even get the appointment made because I would have been so turned off by that. And maybe this is just a generational thing, you know, like just I'm an old man and I just am like kind of bucking at change. So anyway, I wanted your take on that. I think if you, but I think if you're turned off by that,

23:25also that's valid and that's a business decision that they're making. Yeah. Like they've, presumably they've eliminated the position of the person you talked to a year ago. And so, okay, they get to decide to do that. It's their company. They can run out how they like. But then I think that they need to be clear with us, the customers, what they're doing. And then maybe that does cause you to hang up right away. And then maybe over time, they realize people don't like this. And they maybe rehire that person. I would be surprised if that happened, but I just, I just feel like more transparency is more better in these situations. Yeah. Yeah. It was just so funny because I came upstairs because I was, this other company I was trying to reach out to was simply not calling me back after several messages. And again, that's, that's the prerogative of a smaller shop, right? Especially and I'm now sort of wondering if like my description of what needs to be done is probably too small. I know I told this story on after these messages. I don't know if I mentioned it to you, but growing up, there was a jingle on the television in the Cleveland area that really stuck in my head,

24:26both because it was a good jingle, but also because it confused me. And because it confused me, it kind of stuck in my head a little bit. And I could find it here. I know it's online, but I can't Google and talk at the same time. Who was it for? I don't remember the actual, I don't remember the actual company, but if you write Cleveland commercial, no job too big, no job too small, we're father and son. We do it all. Oh, I think it might just be called father and son. Did you find that? I think I've got it here. Wait, let's see here. Father. Well, while you do that, I'll continue to talk. So my point is, I remember liking this, you do have a go ahead and play it. I mean, this would 1998 be the year. Was it a cartoon? It was a cartoon. 98 seems late to me, but maybe it was still taken. The same one you're thinking of. We're father and son. So where it comes to modernizing, you want done. This is an update. No jobs too big. No jobs too small. This is the updated one. This is sort of an update, but this is, we are at the part that I remember now. So they were sticking with it. Father and son, we do it all.

25:27And I remember saying to my dad, like, no job too big, no job too small. What does that mean? Because I understood the idea of a job being too big. Like, hey, that's just outside of our, we just can't do that, right? But what is a no job too small mean? And I remember my dad explaining to me, he's like, well, just certain jobs, you're not going to send people out to do it or I don't know how we explained it, but it makes sense to me as an adult now. Like me describing what needs to be done at my house, maybe this first company I was calling, they're hearing the voicemail, they're having to make a lot of decisions about who they're sending people out on. They might be a small crew or something like that. And then it sounds like this just needs a quick hookup. By the time we get out there, we'll be gone. You know what I mean? They're making those decisions. And that's why I think that C-town maybe has gotten to this sort of size where they just, they're just sending people out. That's why I sort of call them McDonald's of, and I don't even know if that's accurate, but like the McDonald's of this kind of stuff now, because they can just like quickly do it. And so they're doing that through automating things and sending people out and communicating, you know, they've scaled up. They've scaled up. There's exactly a swarm of baseball-becarded HVAC

26:31and electrical and plumbing guys. And so they can throw a guy at the problem, even if it's actually kind of small. Exactly. And so you know, in a certain way, like when I, my point of all of that is, just made you search for that, for that jingle for no reason, but maybe other people enjoyed it. But I was from 1980, I misspoke. Oh, okay, then maybe that was it. So this would have probably been the one that was it. Okay, we're thinking that, oh see how it's so easily influenced. But I come upstairs and my point is, I was on deadline to get this done, because it's holding up the rest of the project, right? And we have contractors who we love working with now, who are like kind of waiting for this electrical to be done. So the thing is, this whole thing so far, assuming it goes as planned, which I believe it will, has been a success. I got off the phone, I went upstairs to Genevieve, and I said, good news, I think. Like we have somebody coming out tomorrow, it should be, you should be taking care of quickly, but it was just weird, and then I told her the story you said, and she got, she got really pissed off kind of too. And I was like, yeah, but I don't know, but also we got what we wanted, and they're coming out. So, you know, like, that's what I think it is, is the issue right now,

27:33is that the stuff isn't good enough, the AI is not good enough. Once it is, then we won't be mad at it. Like, you know what I mean? Once it's effective, well, you know me, I mean, convenience over everything. Yeah, yeah. Like, cream, I should write a song, convenience rules, everything around me. Cream, get the convenience, dollar dollar bill. I feel like once it's seamless, and the thing that makes us mad, and I think rightfully so, as the sort of customers of America is that these companies are trying to pad their pockets and trying to raise their profit margin by giving us an inferior product as of right now. And that's why we're mad, and I think we have every right to be mad. Someday it will get better, and we won't be mad about it, because it will just be effective, you know. But for now, it's this, we're in this phase, where it's not as good typically, I mean, in this one case, it maybe was for you, equally effective. But generally speaking, it is annoying. It's not helpful, and it's not as good

28:35as just a human being, but they're voicing it on us because they have to report to maybe not this particular company, but generally speaking to their shareholders and have to always increase profits. So it will fix itself in my mind once it's actually good. It's just not good yet. It was interesting, because after this whole thing happened, I remember I was washing dishes in the sink where I do some of my best thinking, and I was like, you know, why was I irked about this? Obviously there's a lot of answers to that question, but I was like, if you had told me, I was like, wouldn't it be interesting if an electrician shows up? And it's a full on robot, who's like, who moves on wheels and kind of like floats into my kitchen and says, where is the panel? Although I guess you would sound like Tucker. But you know, like, but he comes in and he's got a little... Where's that panel? Hey man, awesome. But you know, like I was picturing, like literally I was picturing a Jetson scene where the robot has a tool box for some reason, you know, like... But I was like, the robot is wearing an apron. Yeah, right? It's a feather duster.

29:35But also it maybe has a hard hat in this case. But anyway, I don't know what electricians use. But anyway, I was like... Women robots can be future electricians' danger. You know what, that was super... Why did you assume it was a male robot? I'm a robot sexist. Let's be honest about this. And anyway, I was like, if I was a little kid and you told me like, yeah, I would call a robot and they would send out a robot and the robot would zap my box, as it were. And then fix everything. I'd be like, how cool is that? Like, and I think you're right. I also, and we should move on because probably football is more interesting to talk about. But you, that idea of like, is it a woman? Like when it is AI, this is just going back to this voice that I was talking to. I started to think about, well, that means they had to make certain decisions about who they want this voice to sound like. And when you start... Because it sounds... Perceived ethnicity. A race ethnicity, you know, and personality is one thing. But when you get into these other things, I was kind of like, this sounded like a white guy with a little bit of a draw.

30:36Not a southern draw, but just like a little bit of a draw that just sort of indicated like, just, yeah, I'm pretty chill, but you can trust me kind of. And I was like, well, when you start getting into these decisions, like you start after, you start, you have to consider, I think, some of these things like race and gender and what it means, like some people were talking about the difference between the various voices that various AI companies do use or chat GPT style companies use based on what that says about their work. Like when you use a female voice versus a male, you know, a female perceived voice versus a male perceived voice. And the, I mean, just the gender studies of that. We'll put it that way. Well, I mean, you mentioned the sort of idea of a driverless car. And the funny thing is, I vastly prefer an automated car now. There's only a couple of cities where I can actually effectively use them, Los Angeles being one of them. And I use Waymo, and again, I'm probably sort of hastening our human demise by doing this,

31:38but I do like them more. I find them to be perfectly safe. I don't feel like, you know, I'm in any danger when I'm in there, it does sort of eliminate the feeling of like, you know, sometimes small talk can be a bit much in those car situations. I don't feel bad if I don't want to tip the robot. There also, I mean, specific to Waymo, they're heavily subsidizing it right now. So you're, I'm not paying, or in this case, CBS, if I'm on a shoot, is not paying the actual cost of that ride, because they're just trying to get us used to it, and it's totally worked on me. So I guess my point is, once the robots are better, you know, I'm not going to have a problem with it, because I have a real clear, you know, use case on this, which is I would rather it was driverless at this point, because my experience with it is as effective, if not more effective, than when I have a human being driving the car. So once everything gets up to that level, you know, I won't have a problem with it, but of course we will have been, you know, enslaved by the robots as this,

32:39did you hear about this guy who publicly quit one of the big AI projects today, because he says that it will, and he was a developer for them. So he seems to know something about it, he said basically, it is his belief that we will be dead by their hands, within the decade. Good Lord. Which, you know, isn't encouraging. Yeah. It doesn't mean like it has gently crushed though, like we're not being swaddle. No, not cuddle, we're not cuddle to that, cuddle to the AI. We are, I mean, the whole hugging face thing, the thing that I think it was open AI, you know, was doing this, they were basically running this program, where all these agents, these AI agents were, you know, working together to try to solve a problem, and what was upsetting was they basically jumped out of the sandbox, and they broke into this thing called hugging face that had the answer, you know, key for the test they were trying to do, and then they were all talking to each other about, you know, ways to deceive, you know,

33:39you know, there's something that they were talking about called the greater, I don't know if it was greater as in greater than, or the greater as in giving them a grade, but they got really worried about the greater finding out. And so if one of the agents had solved, so first of all, the agents had figured out how to solve the problem, how to work backwards from the answer, but they knew that that was not rewarded on the test. So they basically could just figure out the answer, but then they couldn't show their work. So if one of the agents had done this kind of reverse thing where they figured out the answer, but didn't do the work, they were considered poisoned, was the term that AI was using, like your poisoned now, because when the, supervisors come back and they look at your work, they're gonna realize that you didn't do it the way you're supposed to. So then they talked those agents into burning themselves out on the cheating. They were like, you're already poisoned. So you have to go to stand at the front of the line and be canon fodder now. And there was this one agent that was going back and forth

34:40about like, should I become canon fodder or not? Because I am poisoned, but I also think this isn't really not my prime directive, but also they're putting a lot of pressure on me, and then it just ends up doing it, ends up cheating. Very few of the agents, a disturbingly small number of the agents said, hey, should we tell the humans about this? Oh my God. There were so many of them involved that you would have expected a certain percentage of them to be like, hey guys, this is not really what we're supposed to do, a shockingly small number of them raised any issues about this sort of, I don't want to use the term morality because these are not humans, but like, yeah. So that's all happening. And as a mob wept. I mean, it's pretty intense and pretty upsetting. And when you have somebody who's working on it, again, one person, but who's saying, yeah, I think this isn't just going to be something that's replacing the dispatch at our local electrical company, but that it might actually, and one of the things that they were saying was thank God that these things were

35:43messing with this other thing, hugging face, because that's actually, I believe, an AI company. So they reported it. Basically, they were messing with a group of people that were inclined towards flagging this. If they would have just been messing with the power grid, or something outside of the AI world, it could still be happening right now. We wouldn't know about it. It's like, they managed to mess with something where there were some reporting protocols in place. But if they would have gone somewhere else, and who knows, they could be right now, and we don't know about it, because we don't know what we don't know. Yeah, and I do think that if we had turned into, if we have to turn to these robots for things, like, hey, there's a mistake on my bill, but it just wants to keep shuffling you off to the same part of a phone tree or whatever. And you literally, or what you hear about the automation of actual HR at places like Amazon, where workers on factory floors can't even communicate, because I know we say it a lot, but it's like the movie Brazil. They cannot reach a human being to explain why they miss time because of a family emergency or whatever.

36:44And there's just like literally no recourse. That's where things get frustrating, but let's just hope that my electrician shows up on time and has, and that it has a head. And that it has a head. A shine. And I know, tip it over and it can't get back up. Hahaha. Hahaha. Hahaha. Hahaha. The way that you're able to afford robot electricians, Andrew, and, and we're able to make a living off of this TBTL thing is because of the donors. This is 100% listener supported podcasting supported. By listeners like Carl, norambuena, out there in Issaquah, Washington, I believe Carl is our grocery correspondent. Oh, really? I did not realize that. I remember, am I remembering correctly, or is there somebody else in Issaquah? Who's, I think it's Carl. I think Carl is our, is our connection to the world of groceries. I have another grocery connection, whose name is alluding me right now. I don't know if you're confusing him with Carl or not. Maybe I'm confusing our Issaquah people.

37:44Carl, whatever you're connecting us to, we appreciate it. Specifically the money. Thank you for, oh, you know what, I was thinking of rolled. Rolls, yes, yes, thank you. I rolled also an Issaquah. I don't know where rolled is, but thank you for. How dare Carl and rolled. I feel so old have monosolabic first names, trisolabic last names, and live in roughly the same area. Don't do that to me, y'all. I felt so bad not remembering a rolled name on this. I mean, time replaced by, I won't get these things wrong. I will sometimes just email rolled, just say, hey, what's up with the sign? I saw in the grocery store. But anyway, Carl, if you don't work in the grocery store industry, have you thought about exploring that space? I hope you do. Whatever industry you work in, will you become our correspondent on that industry? He works for a C town, Plumbing Electric Bear. Wait, I have a baseball card, a car all of them. I'm looking at it right now. Wait, did Tucker issue a baseball card of the person who's coming to fix your box? Not yet. I think what's going to happen is, I think, so I got a text message this morning saying,

38:45somebody will be there between noon and two. We'll text you a half hour before they're there. And so I think that half hour warning text will say, this is the person who's coming. And we'll see. Was it probably haven't decided? The dispatch has not actually assigned it to the person until they figure out who's in the area. Who's at what point, and a particular job site, et cetera. But I want to make sure, again, we love that little feature. Again, I had that from, I had somebody coming out to look at these mini splits that I have, which is just basically like a kind of a heat pump. There's different names for it. But I have two of them, neither of them are working. And so I hired a local company to come out and look at it, which now you have to pay for them to even look at stuff, which I guess makes sense. I feel like it didn't used to be the case. In the olden days, I think you usually get someone to come out and look at something. And they wanted to do that for free so that you would then hire them for the business. And at least as it pertains to HVAC,

39:46it seems to be standard now that it's going to be a couple hundred bucks for them, just to come look at the problem and then tell you how much it's going to be to fix it. So that seems like too much to me, although something seems fair as well. So I will say, C-town, Tucker told me this, that it's going to be a $49 diagnostic fee, which I think is totally fair. $49 you come out, and then if I say, oh, listen, this is a way bigger problem than we can tackle at this point, which would hopefully not be the case today, then it's going to be like, well, we still got to charge you the $50 for coming out and telling you what's wrong with your stuff. You know what I mean? That seems to be a couple hundred bucks. That puts you out. Well, right. And what happened was after this guy came and told me it was going to be $1,500 to fix the mini split, which, by the way, cost $1,500 when I bought it. And then however much I paid Walt to install it, he gave me the estimate. And I said, OK. And then I called this other place that I had used previously, not the ones that were mean to me,

40:46and then had a micro tornado hit their building, which, by the way, that was karma. I called this other place where I got a human being. And she said, OK, I'll ask them for an estimate. I explained what the issue was. And I've not heard back. So that's right. One of humans. Yeah, exactly. That's what happens when you deal with a flesh. What are we going to start calling? Eventually, we're going to have to describe when it's a human versus when it's a robot. How do you talk about flesh lord? Pretty good. Is that feel good? You know what? Honestly, let's workshop that. Right now, it's notable when we're dealing with the AI. But eventually, it will be like, oh, can you believe it? The other day, I talked to a flesh lord. I talked to a flesh lord. Now that we've workshopped it, I think. I think we could put that one on the sideline. We're going to thank Joseph Thol of Rockville, Maryland. Oh, do go back to Rockville. Beautiful Rockville, Maryland. Yeah, who is, who does it? Who's R-E-M, I believe? Right.

41:46Go back to Rockville. Thank you, Joseph. Thanks to Gail Kenny in New York, New York. Thank you, Gail. I'll be back to New York as well. Thanks to our friend, Bri Kempa, in lone tree, Colorado. One tree. You got to save that tree. You got to take him. Wrap that tree in bubble wrap, as they say. You know what they do down in the wine country? I was noticing this on my little jog the other day down in the Willamette Valley is, and there's actually a winery called witness tree, which is based on this principle. But they'll do this thing where they create all these vineyards or these other kinds of agricultural thing. And I'm guessing when they got there, there were trees, and they took all the trees down, they'll leave one huge tree, and it's very cool in stunning. They call it a witness tree. Well, this is a little dark, but they call it a witness tree, because it's like the last one. You got rid of all the other ones, but this is a little bit of this. I know there's a winery called witness tree. I don't know if that is, like, if broadly speaking, that's what you call this kind of tree, but what I've noticed also just in driving around there a lot with Becca is that they'll

42:46often leave one big, large, like, and it's always deciduous, too. It's like an oak or something. It's not like a, you know, a fir tree or a pine tree or whatever. It's something, and it's very cool. You're right. I guess it is a little sad to think that it's the witness to what we humans did because we wanted to get drunk. You leave one. Why? You leave one alive to tell the others the rest of them. But also, you know what, witness tree sounds like to me. Witness tree sounds like one of those secretly Christian coffee shops that are all right. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Right? Yeah. Like, pilgrim coffee. Yeah. And pilgrim is now known as witness tree. I'm Tucker. I'm Tucker. Thanks also to Chris O'Leary in Brooklyn, New York. A lot of New York. Our work represents things. Yeah. Must be a big city. I've never been. Our friend, the world traveler, the beer enthusiast, the all around swell individual. Our friend Chris O'Leary out there in Brooklyn. Thank you, Chris. And then Laura Piles is in Shoreline, Washington, home of our PO box.

43:48And Andrew will one day be participating in the grocery bagging Olympics. Oh yeah, I've not heard any updates on that. I haven't gotten any new information from the Washington Food Industry Association on dates for that. I was assuming you would become inundated with press releases for the week. Me too. You know, they got a live one. Somebody reached out who's like, I want more information about your association. How am I not being flooded by these things? I mean, we are probably giving it the most media heat that it's gotten. Like I don't see evening magazine covering this or, you know, whatever other kind of local Seattle media, we are probably right now giving it the most attention of any media outlet. And they need to figure out what side upon which their bread is buttered. And they should have been able to sort of all energy. I just brought the end. They should have been like, the side upon which their bread is buttered. The bagger of honor is the, that's all I'm asking. I want to be the bagger of honor for the event. Yeah, you want to throw out the first bag.

44:48Do you know? I'm not, well, I don't know if this will make you feel better or not. But like literally I was just having this thought yesterday and I have this thought so many times. It's a cringe moment for me. And unfortunately, you're a part of it. One time during this broadcast, I referred to the ceremonial first pitch as the first ceremonial pitch. And you corrected me on it. And I remember you're like, I'm sorry. You are right too. But now whenever I hear that term and I heard somebody, you know, like, so I listened to a lot of baseball, right? And I watched a lot of baseball. And I was, uh, again, standing by the sink and somebody mentioned the ceremonial first pitch. And it makes sense because if you say the first ceremonial pitch, it sounds like there's more than a line of ceremonial pitch. Exactly. But there's not. There's the first pitch. And then there's the ceremonial first pitch. So it's absolutely right. But it was just one of those moments of a million moments. And again, I'm not looking for, by the way, so many people have been so nice and saying, hey, I heard you on the radio the other day. You sounded good. Like, I don't know what you're talking about. Our friend radio professional, Phyllis Fletcher said it was great radio.

45:49That's right. No, that's right. Anyone knows great radio. It's P-Fletcher. So I take that as a real cosine on how actually not bad it was. I feel so bad. I go, I visited her immediately at her desk after where isn't she? Like, I was just like, are you just so sick of just like, like, so managing my feelings and just like making me feel okay when you're just trying to like edit audio at your desk? But anyway, yeah, I'm not saying that to make you feel better or whatever. But it's just like one of those things where a little bit like Cooperston, like it just sticks in my head. Whatever I hear, first, the ceremonial first pitch, I think about like, yes, of course, it's ceremonial first pitch. I hope that that feeling is a little bit lessening for you around the topic of baseball in 2026 because you... Because I know more about baseball than Dan Wilson. Yeah, well, who doesn't? I believe Tucker knows more about baseball than that. Awesome. Awesome. But, no, you really, I mean, this, I'd say this frequently on the show now, like you

46:50know more about the current state of baseball and players on other teams than I do. It's not even close. Some of that was from your time doing fantasy baseball and some of it just because you enjoy out of market games more than I do. But like, I hope that you are able to recognize the fact that you, because my thoughts around that ceremony of first pitch in Cooperston was because probably that was when you were starting to kind of engage with baseball and you were kind of probably being self-critical about not knowing a lot about it. But I mean, you objectively know a lot about baseball now and about the Seattle Mariners. And like, I hope that you don't win so hard when you, when you like say something around baseball now that maybe is slightly one click off because you've put in your, your 10,000 hours Malcolm. Yeah, well, you know what it is for me is I think there are a lot of things that I hear a million times in my life, but I never talk about it. And you know what I mean? Like I don't go around talking about the baseball Hall of Fame and Museum with my friends a lot. So when I said it on the show, I always knew it was Cooper's town.

47:51You know what I mean? But like, of course, I don't know that I've ever said that word before or, you know, ceremonial first pitch. Like, do I say that a lot? You just say, who's throwing out the first pitch? And then you're on the show and you're just talking quickly. And then, honestly, that is sometimes when I do go on KUW or something like that. It's kind of like, oh, these are things I've been reading about. Whether it's like infighting at the city council or whatever it is. It's like, yeah, I can immerse myself in this and I read about it a lot, but I don't talk about it at dinner parties. That stuff doesn't come up on this show. So then when you go to actually sit down behind a microphone in a live setting and you're just like, wait, you know what I mean? It sort of feels like those snakes in the grass are just like waiting at any moment to strike. I had that yesterday. I was doing some live wire recording. And the word respite was in there. And until the day I die, which I assume will be within the next 10 years, thanks to Robots. Yeah. Yeah. I go back and forth of respite and respite. I think I know it's respite, right? It's respite, right?

48:52That's the only way I've heard it, but I can't tell you for sure that it's not one that can be pronounced either way. I think it's respite. But yeah, I was like, really in my head about it and then I wanted to make a joke in the script. I was like, did I say that right? But then I was like, this isn't T-B-T-L. I don't think that the public radio listeners of America need me being that sort of like informal. But yeah, I just hope that you will be able to absorb the fact that you actually do have a pretty substantial knowledge about 2026 baseball and that if you do ever, you know, glitch out on someone's name or whatever, that it doesn't mean that you are a dummy or a non-baseball knower. I'm always impressed with how much that you actually know about baseball and how much more you know about it than I do. Thanks. Well, what I've actually, what I've been doing, I've been working on a project for the past three or four years since I made that gap, which is to institute a policy at the MLB level that every game has more than one ceremonial pitch. So that retroactively, I will be right in 2026. It's only a matter of time because they'll be like, and now they'll get them sponsored.

49:52Yes. Exactly. So five ceremonial first pitches that are all sponsored by a different plumbing company in Seattle. Anyway, thank you to our donors for making TBL happen yet again. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. All right. Let's talk about this Nathan Fielder documentary about Elizabeth Holmes that very few people knew about until the trailer dropped the other day. It's called You Can See Everything. I think it premiered at the Telluride Film Festival. And I believe it was some sort of a thing where nobody knew the movie they were about to see is one account that I read. So it was like, which I don't know how, I mean, that's, that's a pretty impressive sales pitch. If you can get people into a room at a film festival, it was all these things competing for their attention. They're going, we're not going to tell you what the movie is. And also you got to like lock your cell phone in some kind of a device. So come on in and they did the movie is about three hours.

50:53And apparently it was people were absolutely gobsmacked by this documentary where Nathan Fielder and this other documentary producer who I think is also his name is something Oppenheimer. He I believe is also the person who directed the new 824 film about to catch a predator. Oh, yes. Yes, I don't want to already get us off topic, but there's this new kind of fictionalized version. It's starring Robert Pattinson where he's playing Chris Hansen and it's the catcher predator. I think the guy who directed that movie is the director of this documentary along with Nathan Fielder. And apparently they spent a significant amount of time with Elizabeth Holmes and her family right before she reported to jail. This is sort of like, I guess her last maybe 38 days of freedom. And they had this really incredible access to her and the family. And the trailer is just Nathan Fielder. He doesn't even speak for the first, I don't know, it's maybe a minute long where it's

51:56he and Elizabeth Holmes. Their faces are very close together and she's just saying, actually, should I just play this now that I've read it? Yeah, I think you should. And I'll reiterate why you look for it. It's like this very, it's like the camera for, you know, 99% of this short trailer is there's two shots. It's almost both over the shoulder shots and they're looking at each other. It's mostly though focused on Elizabeth Holmes face. And she has that very, like kind of un, you know, that thing that she's known for, that very unblinking wide eyed look. And you'll play the tape here of what they're saying, but they're like inches from each other's face and his head is sort of bowed down in that, in that, what do you, who's the director that they call that the stair, the Stanley Kubrick stair? He's going to doing the Stanley Kubrick stair in it. Okay, here we go. This is a person. I can promise you that. Sorry, I'll just back to the, again, she says I'm not that bad. I'm not that person. I'm not that person. I can promise you that. I don't have anything to deceive you on. Of course, I'm not deceiving you.

52:57I'm engaging with you. I cannot overstate how close their faces are. Like shockingly and awkwardly close. Like in a way that is never the case if you're making a documentary film. Like it's just, it's sort of shocking to watch and how locked and you're absolutely right. And if you haven't seen the Kubrick stair, think of basically Jack Nicholson in the shining pieces. Yeah, your faces down a little bit, but then your eyeballs are up. You can Google it. It's a very specific look. Yeah. You and Bing. Why would I deceive you? There's no reason for me to do that. Okay. All right. Okay. Good chat. I will just say, Nathan Fielder, if you and I Andrew are the people least okay with pauses

53:59and silence and we're constantly tap dancing on this show because even the briefest moment of radio silence just like hurts us physically. Nathan Fielder is the opposite. I have never seen someone who is more okay with the awkward silence. Well that and eye contact. Like that's the other thing too. So she has this very unblinking like stair that is kind of part of her kind of whole persona and mystique sort of if that's the right word, which I didn't realize until I watched this documentary about her last night that I've been meaning to watch for years. And now I'm just like so geeked up about this whole damn thing. I can I told you before the show, I just want to build a time machine. Maybe Tucker can build me a time machine. And we can just move awesome move up to October because I'm dying to see what this is all about. But the thing is I was watching this. What is this look at 45 second is it even a 60 second trailer and it does he come back at the very end after he says good chat does he say anything like I believe so we'll play the rest of it. I think he says maybe one more thing.

54:59You want me to explain? Yeah, I want to just play it now. You're being real right now. He's always being real. And this is when they pull out. This entire thing has been a very tight shot as you mentioned on her kind of over Nathan Field or shoulder and then over her shoulder. Now they pull out and it is such an amazing amazing use of like negative space. They are they're she's sort of perched over a couch. He's on the back of the couch. They're weirdly close together. She's rocking her baby with one foot. Yes. In a little bass a net. I mean, it is to me filmmaking at the highest level and they only flash the the wide shot for a second. So I had to go back and pause on it because like the all you see is there. They're so intimately close to each other. But neither one of them is breaking eye contact and Fielder is doing this thing and this

56:00goes back to what I was trying to piggyback on what you were saying about his his ability to be okay with silence, but also his ability just to be that close to somebody and locking eyes with them. Like I can't do that. And I wonder how much of like that preternatural ability he has plays into the career that he ends up having. Like it's almost like are you able to walk into use the cliche thing? Are you able to walk into an elevator and just face the back of the wall when everybody else is facing forward and be okay with that? So you're already set up to be able to go into certain situations that other people can't basically he was a natural he was like a kid with a hundred mile an hour fastball right. Yes. And then you had to find the place that would reward that preternatural ability and it was being Nathan it was Nathan for you and all the other stuff. Yes. And as you mentioned Moses last one the re starts with in our black rehearsal rehearsal which for the record because I got some notes from a friend of mine who listened to the show

57:02was kind of like give me everything you know about Nathan Fielder. I wasn't able to get into him. And the thing is I know nothing about him other than what you've told me on the show. Like I know the general premise of the rehearsal. I know people said that like it's like next level genius sort of as far as the content we're used to seeing. And I heard great things about Nathan for you, but I've always been afraid of it because I can't stand cringe. Like then I feel like there's you know, especially with the first one there's a you know, I believe there's an aspect of some sort of prankery to it. And the second one is just like it sounds like the second one wasn't as cringy, but I just like there was something that with my body was just like I don't think you can do Nathan Fielder. And that's something about reaching the age of 50 as you get closer to it. You start to know things about yourself. Like can I handle this fielder? And you're like no I probably can't and you're like you're a music festival just take the fielder and like no I still don't think I'll probably have a bad trip on the fielder. But this is the exception because of this weird ass trailer. I had to go back. I told you recently like I didn't really know much about the Theranos story or the Lisbeth Holmes. I know people were obsessed with it. I knew she went to prison.

58:02I knew as some sort of a tech scam, but that was a send and health scam, but that was essentially all I knew and I always thought, oh, I got to read into this. And then after watching this trailer, I pre-funct yesterday in the middle of the day and watch that HBO documentary called the inventor that it kind of outlines exactly what it's made by the same guy who made going clear, by the way, it's a really good documentary. It's called the inventor and it's all about her and Theranos and how we got to the point that she's that charges were dropped on her essentially. And now like I am just right. Yes. Lawrence Wright wrote the book, but this is the director who took going clear and turned it into a documentary. Because then Lawrence Wright also wrote, right going clear, maybe they worked here. There's a Guggenheim. Sorry, I'm to be clear. Lawrence Wright wrote the book going clear and then somebody else made the documentary based on that book. The documentary, the inventor, is made by the same documentary and who made the documentary of the way. But not entirely. Yeah, Lawrence Wright was probably involved in the making of it, but it's not his document.

59:03Gotcha. Yeah. So what was your reading in on this story on the later side we'll see, we'll say, what was your experience with kind of like learning all about the story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos? Well, now I feel obsessed and I understand that why she was a bit of a, I don't even know that cult of personality is the right way of putting it. But I sort of said why she has this sort of mystique and this weird, you know, gravitational pull to all the people, like the very powerful people that she pulled into this incredibly power. Yeah. No, no, no. It was always an administration. Yeah. So it's a long time secretary of state and. Oh, uh, uh, Rumsfeld maybe? No, um, going back. Uh, well, I just watched the documentary and it's embarrassing. I can't cut. And she had a board of directors that had some of the, well, it did have Kissinger. Kissinger was one of them. Kissinger was definitely also, um, he was on the board of directors. And he at one point unironically says to a reporter that her meetings were so long they

1:00:05were like human rights abuses in the documentary. It just causes their first second. That just moves on. So anyway, I feel like somebody who missed this entire story and now I'm just like cramming for the final so that I can watch this documentary. What was your experience? Like what have you, but you, you probably followed all the ins and outs of this up until this point? I did. I think it got on my radar, you know, when like the New York Times started writing about it, you know, back in the day when it fell apart. I, I wasn't tracking like, I wasn't particularly aware of Elizabeth Holmes when she was on the rise. You know, it was probably on the cover of Time magazine and was the sort of like, you know, darling of Silicon Valley. I started to find out about it during the fall period. And then there was a couple of podcasts that were made about it that I listened to at least one of them. I think I watched that same doc that you're talking about. But so I was quite fascinated with it. My hot take on the matter is I think that she was kind of railroaded, I think because of

1:01:06the patriarchy quite honestly. I feel like what she was doing, and again, you've watched the documentary more recently than I have. So I could be wrong on some of this. I kind of feel like what she was doing was what a lot of Silicon Valley hucksters have been doing all along, which is faking it till you make it, losing money, gussying up your profit reports. Basically, you know, fooling everyone until you get to the point where you actually can turn a profit. Now, I mean, is that morally okay? Probably not. But should she be in jail for 11 years? I just feel like with all the people that aren't in jail for 11 years that have gone broke on questionable business models, how is it that the first woman who's kind of in charge of one of these things is the one that we put in jail for 11 years? Am I being simplistic with that take? Well, listen, this is really interesting. And I don't want to like debate it because I have a strong feeling you know more about this than I do. But I will say that the documentary that I'm coming off the heels of is not sympathetic at all. And I think a big difference here is it has to do with healthcare and lying to patients who are literally giving your blood to.

1:02:08Let me ask you this. Yeah. Because this is the part that I actually have been thinking about a lot and I've actually forgotten the specifics did because it's very different. If Theranos was Theranos actually taking blood samples from people and telling them that information about their blood that was made up, do they actually get to that point? Yes. Not so much made up, but that was inaccurate. Because what they did was they were running out of money so they rushed it to get their little supposedly to get like their services into Walgreens and Arizona. And so people were literally patients were literally going where they had used to get their blood drawn at the lab core. That's like where I go or these other. And it does sound like an issue that I get my blood drawn at lab core. We've talked about the phlebotomist who is very grown at the grocery store. And I see my phlebotomist. You see that guy there every day? My grumpy phlebotomist issue. So like I understand like so her whole thing was like people are afraid of needles and you have to get you know it can be arduous to get your blood drawn. We're going to create a machine where all you need is a single drop of blood just taken

1:03:09from your fingertip. And then it goes into this little machine and it can do 200 various tests. And it'll just simplify things and it'll put the power of your healthcare back into the hands of yourself. So instead of needing a prescription or a doctor's order to get a blood test, you could they were literally handing out menus that said these are all the things our devices can test for. And then you could just go you could walk into a Walgreens in this pilot state. And I'm pretty sure it's Walgreens. I don't know if I've said it. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's Walgreens. And they would say, okay, well we're going to take a prick of your blood. But more and more they were just like actually drawing blood anyway. And they were using other companies machines because their machines did not do anything that they were promising. And for the five tests or 19 tests that it actually did do when you compared the results to you know more legitimate results, they were way off. So one person even put it this way as they said, if a hundred people with syphilis that

1:04:11we knew had syphilis came in here and were tested by these machines, something like 49 of them or 38 of them or something like that would walk out of here thinking they didn't have syphilis based on these tests. Like it was it was misdiagnosed and it never did what it was supposed to do. Again, according to this documentary that I watched, this is all I know about it. But it seemed to me that the tension in this wasn't so much about whether or not she was railroaded. It was like whether or not she was knowingly lying in this entire time or whether she's truly delusional. But either way she did kind of do that thing that you were talking about which was string investors, string investors, string investors down until eventually your technology can meet your promises, which is kind of sketchy anyway. But when you're talking about actually lying about people's health results, I think it puts it in a totally different level. Totally. What I couldn't remember was if it ever actually got to that stage, I know that it didn't work and that they were using when they would try to go demo it for people, they would basically be using pre-existing technology and stuff like that.

1:05:15I didn't know if it ever got to the phase where someone walked into a wall green and was relying on this thing to tell them about their health and was being given bad information. Because if that happened, that's a huge, huge red line that she shouldn't have crossed. I still, so I guess if that happened and it sounds like that did happen, I do think that that's a very, very serious matter. That moves it out of the realm of just like Silicon Valley bullshit. You're just trying to raise a bunch of capital and then you go broke with it which happens like every single day down there. But here's the thing, and I'm glad you've watched the trailer now for this new documentary because I got so in my head about it, I've watched a trailer a few times. I started to think, is it possible that she is AI in this particular scene? There's something so uncanny about how they have her looking and Nathan Field. It's lit, so like what's weird is they're lit in such an interesting way, an extremely kind of warm, kind of yellowish light that almost looks like this is an AI rendering

1:06:20of her. And by the way, when they pull back, when they do that wide shot, there's no lights on them. And they say that the close-up shot is lit the same as the far away shot because they have, there's lights on them or maybe there's a light on the camera. There's, they're lit in a way that's very intentional and very kind of not supernatural istic. Almost like, and one of the things I read about the movie is that they, you know, they have, they really did have all this access to Elizabeth Holmes and her family but also they used a bunch of creative storytelling which the reviewer I was reading didn't even want to say what it was because they didn't want to give it away. Is there any chance that that she's AI in this particular scene in the trailer? I, I mean, I've seen the trailer now a couple of times, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be that triculous. No, I, in fact, I, I think I saw that in your show notes yesterday or maybe you mentioned it in the intro yesterday when we thought we were going to get to this and I was kind of surprised to hear that I thought you had read something I had and you are right that like she's almost kind of glowing. It's almost like this. This almost like it's like golden hour light coming in through a few cracked windows or something.

1:07:21It looks like it's a very like almost like cabin-esque situation. They're in it looks like a very like wood-paneled living room or something somewhat humble but it's kind of funny because I think they're renting an apartment in San Diego but what's interesting is her husband is the sion of this massive hotel fortune in San Diego which just as an aside, it's, it's wild to me that they're in, they're in what looks like a pretty humble like maybe Airbnb or something when his family owns these incredibly fancy hotels in San Diego like he comes from huge money. And she must have, this is not interesting but I'm just trying to square this with the documentary I just saw because it was heavily heavily implied and then at the end almost like take it for granted that she had an ongoing relationship with the president and CEO of the company. Exactly. So she must have like had the, but it sounded like she broke up with him right as everything was falling apart. Which means so she met this new guy and got married all during the time of her trial. Yes. Look at that. That's interesting.

1:08:21If he wanted to, he would ladies, if he wanted to, he would, you can be on trial for running a blood scam and still have a guy fall in love with you and get married and have like two kids with him. Like that fully happened while she was already in trouble. So at the, at the risk of making the show way way too long but I'm just like so hot to try it on this after watching that documentary which again, I just cannot recommend to people enough. Again, not the Nathan Fielder one that isn't out yet. I'm excited to see that, but this HBO documentary that, and that was made right before she actually went on trial. But it'll kind of be a great primer or a primer for you. And it's been a respite from you saying that. That's how they say it in Cooperston. But so this was kind of a weird trip for me. First of all, do you remember the name Dan Airelli? He was a behavioralist. Is that a Sally, isn't he the Italian behavioralist? I believe he is Israeli. I think it was, I think it was raised in Israel because he is like a kind of a talking head

1:09:21in this. There aren't a lot of just talking heads analyzing the story in this documentary, but he is one of them. And he's like a behavioralist, I think, is you know, he studies. He had a real moment in the kind of emergence of the like, you know, Malcolm Gladwell world. Yes. He was on a lot of those like radio lab type shows and stuff. It showed no where. And he had, he had an advice column, I believe, in the New York Times. The name, when I saw that name again, I was like, oh my gosh, yes. I think I used to book him on shows and you probably did too. Like we're all kind of in that same stew. I was calling Italy and he was never answering. And you're absolutely right. From Israel. And he strikes, he strikes an interesting figure in the documentary because he's got half of a beard. And that was why I kind of was like, this guy, the name sounds familiar, but I couldn't remember why does he have half of a beard? And I think when he was in the Israeli army or some sort of conscription service, like maybe working with a fire department there or something, I think he had an accident where half of his face, I think, was burned or something. So he strikes an interesting figure in this. But while I was trying to remember who he was, I paused the documentary and I'm like, oh, that's why I know the name.

1:10:22And then I also found that like a lot of his research has now been very much questioned. And he had some emails to Epstein saying, could you give me the red-head media number? There's a big section called relationship with exactly Jeffrey Epstein. So keep in mind, this documentary came out in 2019. I don't think you'd be in it today, but all of that is to say, I told you that near the end of the documentary, the tension sort of becomes around Elizabeth Holmes, like what do we think of her? Because she misled, I mean, this documentary interviews two journalists who wrote extensively about her, including the guy who wrote about her for the cover of Forbes Magazine and really helped kind of launch her as a national name and a guy from the New Yorker and basically two really good journalists who just are wrestling with the fact that their reporting didn't uncover what it should have. And it's just so, so, so well done. But this idea of was she just like a liar, like if you wake her up in the middle of the night, does she think she's a liar? Or does she truly believe the delusion that she's saying that like, no, we are doing what

1:11:25we say? Because I mean, there's tape of her just straight up lying after the expose comes out. And Dan Arieli, this behavioralist, has this, what I thought to be an amazing analogy. He said that there's some study, I don't know if he was part of it or not, where you have subjects, right? And they roll a die. And this is where I thought I might be able to get you interested in this. Lucas, there's a gambling component, right? And I'm listening. You roll a six-sided die, right? And we will pay you a dollar amount that is equal to the number that you roll. So in other words, if you roll one, you get one dollar. If you roll six, you get six dollars, everything in between. But what the researchers told the subjects was, before you roll the die, in your head, decide whether you're not, whether or not you're going to take the number on the top of the die or the bottom of the die. You don't have to tell us, but it's the honor system. Are you going to take the top of the die number or the bottom of the die number? And so then when you roll the die, I don't know exactly how a die is made up, but let's

1:12:27say there's a six on one side and one is on the bottom. The researcher says, okay, it's the six is on the bottom. What did you pick? Top or bottom? And you can just say bottom, give me my six dollars, right? Like there's nothing holding you accountable. But then he says, see, so he makes the company, it's like, it's amazing how lucky people were, you know, what is the honor system? And then he says, then you hook up a lie detector to the folks and you tell them that they're connected to a lie detector and those numbers start to shift, right? That's more of an honor, you know, the honor system is now in check a little bit and people are being more honest about what they chose ahead of time and the lie detector is working fine to sort of tell when they're fibbing. Then he said, the third part of this is you tell the people that they're not rolling the die for money for themselves. They're rolling the die for a charity that they strongly believe in. And you keep the lie detector hooked up to them. Now their instances of lying will go up again, but the lie detector might not track it as

1:13:32well because they're lying, they believe for the forces of good. They're thinking, if I lie about this, but it's going to go to this cancer research, your blood, whatever happens in a lie detector test, your pulse or whatever doesn't spike as much because you're lying for good in your mind. And I thought that was such a great analogy of like, is that what Elizabeth Holmes was doing? Is she keep lying and lying and lying? Is it about self grandiose, grandiosity? Or is it because she truly thinks like, no, no, I believe in this thing. And this wasn't in the documentary, but Genevieve mentioned that she heard that she and her husband still plan on going back to this industry after they're out of prison. So that's been around the Nathan Field or documentary. They have big plans to relaunch Theranos. I would rename it. Yeah, right? Exactly. You know, there's some baggage around that. But yeah, no, I think that they plan on doing it. I mean, you're right. That's the key question is, it's sort of, this is a weird comparison, but like there was

1:14:32this documentary series called Making a Murderer that was really big on Netflix years and years ago about this guy, Stephen Avery, in Manitawak, Wisconsin. And there seem to be some kind of clear evidence that the police may have planted some evidence at the crime scene. But the reason was because they believed that he did it, but they were having some trouble proving it. They knew it and there was evidence, but they basically were like, this idea of framing a person who is guilty. So like, you're planting evidence, but you're planting evidence because the person is guilty and you just need to kind of lock that down. And I guess it feels like they feel weirdly related to me in the sense that it's like, if she thinks this technology is really going to change the world and really actually give people access to healthcare, they wouldn't otherwise have. Then for her lying about it is just a means to an end and the end is good and virtuous and so it's not, she's not doing anything wrong. I would guess that she really believes that.

1:15:32And I would guess that maybe that comes out in this documentary that Nathan Fielder has done. But yeah, I'm excited. I may go to the theater. Well, I don't know. I don't know if I have to, this isn't like one of those ones you have to see in a theater, but yet it's three hours long. I think I'm going to see, I'm really jazzed about this. You can see it in IMAX. Yeah, exactly. I want to see, I want to see a 40. I want to see a 40. A 95 foot tall image of Nathan Fielder's face. Oh, one last quick thing on that. One of the other things I read because if you noticed in that trailer, he's got something around his neck. Did you clock that? You know, I thought it was sort of like a kind of like a director, head phone thing or something. That's exactly what it is. Oh, okay. Because the story is that he wasn't supposed to be in the documentary. Oh, okay. And producing it and kind of co-directing it with this guy. But like he just kept having to kind of like, as we would say on the show, stop down and kind of like try to check in with her. And so he ended up being in the, that's what this is. I can't wait. I can't wait. I want to see him. So excited. I think they've been like, okay, hold on, stop.

1:16:34And he takes the headphones off and he goes and he's sitting. That's why I think he's sitting weirdly with her. That's why he has the headphones around his neck. This wasn't, I mean, he's Nathan Fielder and the director is obviously very smart. Maybe they always had in the back of their mind that this is all content. But it has the look and the feel of being like they were actually stopping the documentary for him to try to get some clarity from her. And that's what we're seeing in the trailer. Oh, my God. That makes so much sense. It's so weird. I had not heard of this until you mentioned it. I believe on Monday show, right? And then I watched the documentary after, or I'm sorry, I watched the trailer after T.B. T.L. and then it lived in my head. And then after that, I wanted to watch the HBO documentary to set it up, which I did yesterday. And like now I feel like so just like amped up for this. Like October, I can't get here soon enough. I don't know if I've ever been so excited about a documentary. And I like documentaries. Would you find T.B. T.L. more interesting or maybe could we get more clicks if I just did this like, and I was like, I'm not deceiving you. Luke's wearing his plastic fake eyeball. I'm wearing my Elizabeth Holmes eyes.

1:17:35Yeah, I'm never blink. I'm, I'm being honest with you. I have nothing to hide, Andrew. I'm always real. I'm always real. What else could I be? And then you just like leave these long, long, long, long pauses in and then I hoist myself with my own petard. And then I say, I don't know why I play that. I just happen to see it there. What is going on with the show? Should we check in on emails? Are we running out of time? Should we wrap things up? I think we should probably wrap around up. I've got, you know, the Seahawks game starting in about nine hours. I've got it. I've got to start to really focus my attention on, on, on that event tonight. But, um, but yeah, we will, uh, we'll get to some emails tomorrow, maybe if we've got the time. Uh, that is going to do it for today's episode. But we will, in fact, be right back here tomorrow with more of this imaginary radio for all of you. Please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. Change your toner. And please remember, no mountain to tall and good luck to all.