WSJ Review

0:00disability which makes reading, holding a book, or turning a page difficult or impossible. The content is copyrighted by the respective publishers. For more information, please visit us on the web at nfradioreading.org. Hello and good evening. This is Don Swans. And from the next hour, I'll be reading from the September 6th issue of the Wall Street Journal review on the Niagara Frontier Radio Reading Service. Front page, the American Dream is alive and it's minting millionaires. The article is by Eric Zwick and Owen Zider, regular contributors to the journal.

1:03Meeting the everywhere millionaires who prove that elite degrees aren't a prerequisite for building massive wealth. Dick Portillo opened a hot dog stand in 1963 without knowing how to cook a hot dog. Half a century later, he sold the company for $1 billion. The proceeds bought a Chicago area mansion, a private jet, and a 12,000 square foot water front home in Naples, Florida, with its own dock. To Moore, his 134-yatt, top dog. I came from a poor family and at one time I didn't have anything to offer the world. Portillo wrote in a memoir, the youngest of three children who he was born in Chicago to

2:06immigrants from Mexico and Greece and raised partly in one of the city's most notorious housing projects. By 2014, the stand he had built with $1100 had become the Midwest's largest privately owned restaurant company, with 4,000 employees and no franchises or outside investors. The single Portillo could bring in $9 million a year, roughly three times at typical McDonald's. Stores like Portillo rarely make the news. His business was private. He sold hot dogs, not some shiny new technology. His success grew slowly over decades and in the upper Midwest away from the coasts. But Portillo's story is hardly unique.

3:08Across America, such business owners, we call them everywhere millionaires, have built extraordinary fortunes running ordinary businesses. Some launched their own ventures, working long hours and reinvesting the profits to stay afloat and grow. There's inherited a family firm that built upon the success of prior generations. Pop culture portrays the rich as an elite few akin to the Rockefellers and carnigies of the Guild of the Age. But rich private business owners are now so plentiful that we're living in America's first age of millionaires. You probably know, in every way, in a millionaires, even if you don't realize it. They're coaching your child's soccer team, sitting next to you at a community fundraiser

4:11or chatting with you at a neighborhood barbecue. They might be the veterinarian who expanded his office to a regional network of practices. The commercial HVAC contractor, whose trucks you see around town or the owner of that local restaurant chain, that keeps opening new locations. They're hiding in plain sight. As ordinary people who run businesses, woven into the fabric of everyday life. There are three million of them, collectively worth more than $65 trillion, according to our analysis of the survey of consumer finances. The number of $100 million plus business owners has adjusting for inflation more than quadrupled since 2001.

5:13For more than a few high-profile billionaires on the coast, these are the real rich in America. Even so, faith in the American dream is fading. Many doubt the next generation will achieve the better life that it has long promised. An ex-argued that rising wealth inequality necessarily implies that a rising share of wealth comes from inheritance and that children of the wealthy enjoy enormous advantages from schooling to financial cushions and connections. They have a point. Our research found that a child from a rich family has six times the chance of starting a successful business as a poor one. Yet, the typical star founder is not a rich kid.

6:13Most come from poor or middle-class families simply because there are 99 times as many people in the bottom 99% as in the top 1%. Among the star founders, there are 2.5 times as many from poor backgrounds as from the top 1%. Only about a quarter of business owners worth 5 million or more inherited their companies. Maintaining a thriving business across generations is easier said than done. Here the late auto executive, Larry Miller. As a young parts manager, he took one dealerships parts department from 960 first in the country to number 1 within 28 months.

7:16After rising to operations manager for 5 dealerships, he then learned over breakfast at a denys that the owner was going to demote him so as to install his sons in the top jobs. Miller walked out and built a notto in part of his own. His fast-holding eventually included the Utah Jazz. Nipotism drives out talent like Miller's. And neither confidence nor grit can be passed down as reliably as a bank account. About 40% of the children of the top 1% fall out of the top 5th of income entirely, which is precisely why the door stays open for no entrance.

8:18Once a mainstay in the American dream, the conventional ladder of studying hard, going to a top college and landing a good job seems further out of reach. Toition has surged and slots at top schools have not expanded. But that ladder is not the only path upward. Indeed, the typical path to $10 million end up comes from owning a company. That path is open in every town, in unglamorous industries, to people without top test scores, fancy degrees, or rich parents. And you don't need to be a genius, to be a successful entrepreneur. The relationship between starting a star business and SAT scores is weak.

9:19The top 10% of test scores become founders of businesses only 1.3 times as often as those of the median. What matters more is real experience in the working world or early exposure to a family business. For Tillow, for example, enlisted in the Marine Corps seven days after graduating high school in 1957. And he considers his two years at Camp Pendleton among the most important of his life. They taught him teamwork, organizational planning, and a deep appreciation for proper training, all of which he later used in building his business. And increasingly, the opportunity of unsexy businesses is drawing elite graduates away from the traditional big city jobs. After graduating from Harvard Business School, Jennifer Browse spent a year shopping for a

10:24company to buy. She cold-cold business brokers and small firms scouring the earth trying to find something to acquire and run. I probably looked at 10,000 deals in my year of searching. She told us, and every day, we're just no, no, no, not that one. And then you get one that's a maybe, and it turns into a no. She finally settled on systems design. An ambulance billing company based on Polesbow, Washington. Though the business was smaller than Browse had hoped, the renewal rate of its customers was staggeringly high, ensuring a recurring base of revenue. It was just the best business we had seen. She said, I could come in and do nothing and be pretty reasonably assured it would be

11:25a going concern. When she was buying the company, Browse asked the previous owner how he'd grown the business. I sit around and wait for the phone to ring. He said, a decade later, Browse has expanded its market share across Washington and into Oregon. As a CEO and now the parent of two young children, Browse appreciates the predictability of what is largely a Monday to Friday dust-jock. I'm not traveling all over the country, she said, you know, I've got a little kids. I'm at home with them. I'd like to go to the gym. I play in a soccer league. Others have followed a similar path as investors. Tracy Brick-Cool, another Harvard Business School alum, and one of Warren Buffett's trusted lieutenants. Left Berkshire in early 2020 to co-found an investment firm targeting mid-sized businesses

12:32with $5 million to $50 million in earnings. Her new firm, Kane Brick, sought solid, but straightforward family, or founder owner businesses too small for Berkshire. One of Brick-Cool's first deals was a maker of boat covers in the lake of the Ozarks, called Marine Concepts. Another was a service-serve industrial calibration equipment in Louisiana. She's not worried about running out of investment opportunities because she estimates the nation is home to about 30,000 businesses with profits between $10 million and $50 million. Millions of people have made fortunes in such ordinary operational businesses selling everyday goods and services. In such ventures, something must physically move or get fixed, served, or installed.

13:40According to our analysis of 31 trillion in total private business equity in the U.S., nearly half is in tactile, main street industries. Even among households, where the hundred million or more, one-third own businesses in tactile industries. These businesses suggest that the economy is far from being swallowed by finance or technology. They concern that lately has evolved into fear that artificial intelligence will replace workers and further enrich those running the machines. Consider AB Walters of Natchez Mississippi, who left a career in computer science to pursue a more lucrative calling, manufacturing and installing seamless gutters. After installing gutters for shares and growing frustrated with low product quality, he brought

14:46his first gutter machine in 1972 and founded the Seneca Corporation. It's now the largest supplier of seamless gutters in Texas. It is around 350 people and had around $50 million in sales in 2021, according to the National Establishment Time Series database. We estimate it to be worth more than $100 million. We'll take Arch Beaver Applin III, who didn't set out to be a convenience store owner. As he told the crowd in Texas A&M in 2022, I ended up where I was because I didn't have a job. Applin grew the small convenience store he opened in Lake Jackson, Texas, into Bucky's, a chain of gas and convenience megastores, found along highways across Texas, in the south,

15:52and as far west as Colorado. Bucky's travel centers are revered for their barbecued bathrooms and beaver themed paraphernalia. Unlike the transformational innovation central to economic growth, the innovations of everywhere millionaires are often more incremental. Dick Portillo learned to steam buns by watching someone else do it. From that he billed a billion dollar hot dog behemoth, his business grew because he sold a product that people wanted. Fifty years later, ordered the founder of Dave's Hot Chicken. Three friends started it in Los Angeles parking lot with $900 and a passion for Nashville style hot chicken.

16:53Eight years later, they had more than 300 locations and sold the business in 2025 for $1 billion. Several generations removed from Portillo. Their success shows that the path from limited means and no fancy degrees to fabulous, well, remains open today. Casual dining is the poster child of free competition with businesses opening and closing all the time. We consumers benefit from that churn as does the economy. Uncommental product improvements by one business forced its competitors to respond with their own improvements if they help to keep pace and not lose customers. That dynamic generates a cycle of progress that translates into higher standards of living

17:58and test here how chicken sandwiches compared to those of the past. Money has to build these businesses, run them and out to compete the ones already there. It might as well be you. Moving in a different direction, let's take a look at this short article entitled, Can't you take a joke when trash talk goes too far? It's written by Kate Murphy, the author of, Why We Click, the Emerging Science of Interpersonal Synchronic. A group of 40 and 50, something guy friends met up recently in the sports bar. As they were exchanging backswaps and hand shakes, someone hurled the first insult.

19:03Did my little pony throw up in your closet? I hated when that happens. His buddy was wearing pants and a color close to fuchsia. Suddenly it was a game on and it continued all night. Some of the insults breathtakingly personal and often profane accompanied by raucous laughter. They all left vowing to get together again soon. It's a familiar scene. Men gay and straight. Hamming engaged with anthropologists called jocular abuse since ancient times when Spartan warriors used wit to cut their peers to the quick. Today, guys talk smack just about everywhere. It's so second nature that if men were aware that they're doing it, they can't remember ever not doing it. But beneath the banter lies a more complicated and character defining social dynamic.

20:12In Western cultures and especially in the US, men are just socialized this way. Says Drew Adelman, a clinical psychologist in Atlanta. It's the idea of the pecking owner. No doubt there's a competitive aspect too. Whoever gets the most laughs wins. Bonus points if the wise crack has to do with a certain feature of the male anatomy. Brandon Thomas, a former Air Force pilot who now flies for a major commercial airline, reckons it to battle testing when someone proves they can take a hit and fire back. It's how you develop mutual respect and reinforces that you're close enough. They say you can do that and no one's going to get their feelings hurt, he says. Not to mention close enough to come up with an insult that really lands.

21:19Second emissions who study male insult culture say it also serves as an ego check to prevent anyone from getting too big for his bridges. Barbara Pluster, an associate professor of management and international business at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, studies jocular abuse in the workplace. And while she believes it can serve a pro social function, she worries that it can sometimes cross the line into bullying. The inner armor required to deflect a constant barrage of slings and arrows may explain why Alex Themia difficulty processing and identifying emotions is significantly higher in men. Although the healthy masculinity experts and assorted dude gurus have sprung up in recent

22:24years, encouraging men to learn to be more vulnerable, given the long history and pervasiveness of male insult culture that's a bit like telling them to stick a kick me sign on their back sides. Showing your underbelly in that kind of environment is very unappealing, says Penny O. Giannapples, a writer and editor in Westchester County, New York. My joke with my male clients is that we're socialized to feel happy, horny or angry. These are the only emotions that men are allowed to access because otherwise you get the label of, that's too feminine. All the emotions like shame, humiliation, regret, fear and sadness often show up as anger

23:27and that's when insults can turn hurtful and corrosive. Giannapples says many men learn that they are human beings with emotions from their wives, girlfriends or female friends. That can be tricky too since women have been socialized to expect men to suck it up. So when a man is vulnerable and says, hey, I'm really sad about this thing. I'm really struggling. Women might feel like, oh great. Now I've got to hold this for this guy. Says Jeffrey Price, a psychotherapist in Denver. But men can be one of the guys without turning into insensitive jerks. Says Joe Billow, an educator in baseball coach at Pasadena Memorial High School outside Houston,

24:28who partly sees his job as pointing out when locker room banter crosses the line. Not that it's easy. The backlash against whoopness has further unleashed a no-holes bird. Can't you take a joke? Repartee that pushes the boundary between good-natured ribbing and withering humiliation. There's also knowing when to stop. One person's line may be completely different than someone else. Billow says an argument for toning it down online group chats where you can't read the room. Even so, Billow says there are certain things you just don't joke about, including disabilities, family members, and love interests.

25:29A good rule of thumb is that you can make fun of attitudes, behaviors, and, yes, pants. But not core attributes or misfortunes a person can't help. And never do it outside the friend group. Instead, maybe call out something you admire once in a while. It said that men insult and don't mean it, while women compliment and don't mean it. Wouldn't it be great for both sexes? If we all tried a bit more authenticity. You're listening to a reading of articles and features from the Wall Street Journal review on the Niagara Frontier Radio Reading Service. Now moving in another way, in another direction, I should say.

26:35Let's look at this title. Academia is in trouble, and this professor understands why. Combining wicked satire with genuine hope. Randy Boygoda's latest novel takes on the financial moral and cultural crisis, plugging higher education today. The article is written by regular contributor, Pamela Paul. Administrative cowardice. Rampant cheating. The soaking and scamming of undergrads and grad students. Performative walkism. Intensifying competition for international tuition dollars from an expansive China.

27:35These are either the latest dire headlines about American higher ed or the myriad subplots of lords of serendipity. It's which is an ambitious new novel by Randy Boygoda. Unlike most campus fiction, it's scope extends well beyond the cloister of the liberal arts classroom to wemmy the entire university system. From its financial model to its function within a globalized economy. Along the way, its skewers, its lightning-run targets with a precision too sharp to be considered entirely fictional. That its author is not only well versed in satire, having written four other novels in the genre, but is also a professor of English at the University of Toronto in Canada and

28:40an experienced college administrator. Which further blurs the lines between comic fiction and brutal fact. Is the kind of no-holes barred book only a consummate insider would know to write. But only one who was also outside the American university system could get away with writing it. This is someone who's got the inside dope on what can go on at universities, especially with international students. And what kind of con games are going on? Said Mark would add more to friend. The novel, like Boygoda himself, is often very funny, even as the dilemmas that characters face read as tragedy.

29:40Its cast includes the bickering members of Sri Lankan hotel cleaners family, insecure American freshmen, dead end third tier college professors, and their high-flying Ivy League counterparts, and disparate university functionaries. In old fashioned Dickinson tale, it sweeps across continents and campuses from a liberal arts college to stand in for Harvard University, to an urban technical school, to the dilapidated buildings of a state-run university in Sri Lanka. I'm a joyful person, Boygoda said in an interview. So he prefers to see his outlook on academia as hopeful, rather than optimistic.

30:41He smiles and laughs frequently. He derives energy from the students and from his four daughters, age 14 to 20. They help him and his American wife Anna, also an educator, care for Boygoda's father, an immigrant from Sri Lanka, who has dementia and lives with the family. The German novel came to Boygoda during the pandemic when he was vice dean. And urban legend was circulating about a statistic about a statistic grad student selling passing grades to international students. The scheme itself may well have been apocryphal, but it felt tantalizingly plausible.

31:41As a novelist, it stayed with me, Boygoda said, who would sell grades for a stats course. Why would someone buy grades? What's motivating them? Why wouldn't the university be doing something about it? What he did not want, he said, was to write another novel about a creative writing professor and his drama with students. In addition to writing novels, the first of which was a finalist for Canada's Giller Prize, he's written eight books in total. Boygoda teaches literature full time. For his students, next semester, kids raised in a purportedly post-literature era. He's assigning three 700 page novels.

32:42He noted mischievously books by George Elliott, Ralph Ellison, and Karen Desai. And right my professors, students remarks and biogotas heavy assignments, tough creating and distaste for cell phones, but also hailed his comedy. One ordered to these reviews, Boygoda laughed, guilty, as charged, he said. Randy's one of those people in academia who was very well educated. He doesn't have an ounce of superiority about him, said John Irving, who gets lectures in his classroom. It's amazing to see how willing students are to talk in his classrooms. How little afraid they feel of being mocked or put down. He gets complete kinder out of them.

33:44Negotiating, competing interest seems to come naturally to him. Like many campuses after the October 7, 2023, Hamal's attack on Israel, the University of Toronto was embroiled in protests, encampments, and discord. Part of its response was to convene a working group on civil discourse. Boygoda was put in charge serving for two years. He relished the prospect and thinks the group which is ongoing made progress. He has since pivoted to another formidable academic concern, the waning prestige of the humanities. In July, Boygoda became director of the Jackman Humanities Institute, and special advisor on the humanities to the Dean of Arts and Science.

34:46This fall, he is starting a series of gatherings he calls the Dead Book Club. The goal is to encourage students to read for its own sake and have conversation for its own sake, Boygoda said. The importance of the humanities will be revealed to those who participate. Lords of serendipity, which publishes next week, reflects Boygoda's commitment to the pursuit of knowledge. I'm supposed to say I learn more from my students than they do from me, but no, Boygoda said, I enjoy sharing my excitement and joy about literature and ideas. There are these moments when you are teaching, and you can see someone's face change because

35:51they didn't know something, and then they did. That moment when you actually watch someone enlarge themselves is deeply satisfying. In literary circles, Boygoda is often referred to as a Catholic novelist. In description, he embraces a novelist willing to give shape and voice to contemporary religious experience is needed. His characters he said are trying to do good in a fallen world, and realize the most they can do is less harm than someone else would do in that same role. They have to accept the air complicit in something that provides some good thing to others.

36:52That's a very grim green way of thinking about sacrifice. The campus they inhabit is a Fidbrow zone in which lofty ideals and cynicism collide. It's a place where kids, freely police want another. With social media, they are constant weapon of choice. International students, knowing their family's financial future, hinge on their degrees, operate in terror of failure and deportation. Early readers of the book include Gary Schedengard and Junete D. As. Both of whom have taught at universities and written coming novels. The each contacted Boygoda to say in essence, you nailed it.

37:58As biting his lords of serendipity can be, Boygoda's faith in higher and remains undonted. It's absurd that we live in societies that make the decision to take people between the ages of 18 and 22 when they are most physically capable of contributing to our nations and communities. Tell them, go away for four years and read and learn and have conversations. I want students to be aware of what an incredible privilege that truly is. You're listening to a reading of articles and features from the Wall Street Journal Review on the Niagara Frontier Radio Reading Service.

39:05Now here we are. Ashley Wong makes this contribution in an article entitled, The Conservative Radio Hosts Dominating the Hair. Let's jump in. When Clay Travis and Book Sexton took over Rush Limbaugh's Radio Slot in 2021 following Limbaugh's death, it was hard to imagine that anyone could fill the conservative firebrand's shoes. Five years later, the Clay Travis and Book Sexton show is the country's number one talk radio show in its time slot between noon and 3pm Eastern time. According to its syndicator, Premier Networks, it reaches 550 stations and about 7 million

40:13monthly listeners. The hosts self-described buddy cop movie energy three hours a day, five days a week. They banter about news and politics, sports and entertainment. Has helped them build a network of eight podcasts, all focused on what they see as a more moderate style of conservatism. They have fans in Congress and the White House, where two of their ex-employees now work, and have also become a popular stop on the conservative publicity tour, especially for book authors. As old school radio hosts, they are not always seen as key players in the podcast, but in the atmosphere, even though the program is consistently in the top charge as much

41:14as Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro, according to I Heart Media metrics. They are conversant in the culture wars. In an August segment about Abu El Sayed, winning the Michigan Senate primary after campaigning with online commentator, Hassan Piker, sexton remarked that the Democratic Party was making plenty of room for the ultra progressive coming maniacs. To go to WNBA, which was engulfed by controversy this season, over transgender athletes, Travis recently dared reigning WNBA champion Las Vegas aces to play a high school boys team that had won a state championship, offering $10 million to the winners.

42:14The aces have not responded publicly to this challenge. But the host is just as likely to be discussing old school and longstanding conservative obsessions. About regulation and taxes, property laws in Florida, for example, or Asians like electability. In the same August episode about El Sayed's primary win, Travis compared the left-wing candidate he thinks will fail in this year's general election to the more extreme right-wing GOP candidates who lost in 2022. They see the show as something for an audience that may feel put off by fringe ideas or the more woo-woo trappings of competitors. In sextons' words, the question of the show can sometimes be, how do we compete against

43:23the crazy? Travis said, there are flesh in the pans where you can get a lot of attention, but over time, if you're constantly wrong or if you're constantly crazy, I think you fail. Sixton, a 44-year-old former CIA analyst, grew up on Manhattan's Upper East Side with peers, including Ivanka Trump, with whom he went to tennis camp. He was trained in counterterrorism and did several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as an intelligence officer. Then worked for the New York Police Department before joining Blinbex The Blaze, a conservative news and commentary site in 2011.

44:28Travis, 47, grew up near Nashville, Tennessee, a practicing lawyer with a creative writing master's degree. He founded Outkick, a sports commentary blog in 2011, and sold it to Fox for about $100 million in 2021. Fox News parent Fox Corporation and the Wall Street Journal parent news corporation share common ownership. Both hosts said they were raised in apolitical families. Sexton Newheal lined with conservative politics from a young age. Travis was self-identified, moderate, liberal, who volunteered on El Gore's 2000 presidential campaign and worked on Tennessee Democratic Jim Cooper's 2002 campaign for a house seat.

45:32He was fired from Cooper's campaign after crashing the congressman's first wife's car. He said Trump was the first Republican candidate he ever voted for and that was in 2020. I don't think I really change that much, Travis said. I think the world around me has shifted substantially and moved from voting for Democrats to voting for Republicans. guests on the show have included Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Former Vice President Mike Pence and Taiwan President Laïe Xingte, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a frequent guest. Once came out to talk about his love for baseball card collecting. His favorite rookie card is outfielder Ken Griffey Jr.

46:36And Vice President J.D. Vance has been on to defend the merits of Cincinnati chili. Trump, who has also been a guest on the show several times recently called Travis while the show was live, to shoot the breeze about sports. As he prepared to travel to South Carolina for a darling Graham rally in August 21st. As someone who has been on almost every single radio show in the country, Clay and Buck is to be one of the most enjoyable programs to join and listen to. Former White House press secretary Carolyn Levin said by email, they are both talented guys who don't take themselves too seriously, which is something that cannot be said of many in the media business. Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson, who was a long time listener of limboes show initially

47:41didn't think anyone could replace him. I've been very pleasantly surprised. He said. He said he particularly appreciated their skepticism about official guidance during the COVID-19 pandemic. The radio host are critical of masking and vaccination policies, as well as restrictions on public gatherings. There weren't many people like Clay and Buck were willing to buck the narrative of mainstream media when it came to our response to COVID, Johnson said. Ohio Republican Representative Jim Jordan, another fan, said, I think their audience really appreciated their willingness to go against the grain. In July, sex and in Travis, live streamed their show for the first time on YouTube, part of a mission to expand their audience.

48:42In August, Travis also launched Sport and State, a media site with sports, politics, and pop culture commentary that will soon feature live shows from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern time. We're not trying to necessarily just be the highest on the Nielsen rating, sex and said, the audience, the hosts, seek are good guys that they would want to have as neighbors, not just guys that they listened to for entertainment value. They said they are also hoping to reach more women, especially young mothers. I want the woman who's 25 or 30 or 35, who just had their first kid and is like, what's going on? Sex and said, because God forbid, they start watching the view or something.

49:47You're listening to a reading of articles and features from the Wall Street Journal review on the Niagara Frontier, Radio Reading Service. And now let's finish off with this title. It's by Jamie Waters on a family vacation, millennials and boomers fight over a chat bot. Every year, my family getters for vacation, just the four of us. My mom, my dad, my sister, and me.

50:50This time, however, my parents brought a fifth member to our new amendment getaway, Claude and Thruppik's AI chater bot, or as my mom calls it, the nice man who answers all my questions. My parents, lawyers in their 70s, live in Australia. My dad is pretty hip to tech, but my mom is a proud ludite. Two weeks before vacation, however, she heard her company was encouraging employees to use AI. Like she said to a colleague, show me how to use Claude. As we gathered for breakfast at a seaside hotel in Newport, Rhode Island, my mom announced

51:52that she, like dad, was smitten. Morning Claude, she typed on her phone while my eyes were all so violent, they nearly flipped my eggs over easy. I shouldn't judge my parents from bracing a tool that helps them stay relevant, but I will. Much as I can see their usefulness, I hate what they represent. I'm a millennial writer, terrified AI will steal my job. My parents near the end of their careers and more open to bot's benefits and tolerant of its boot-licking. These contrasting attitudes are somewhat reflected in a recent Pew Research Center report about how Americans view AI. Nearly six in ten young adults are extremely very concerned about people's ability to function for themselves, compared with only 46% of these 65 and up.

53:01My sister and I both in our 30s treated the vacation as a digital escape. I read print newspapers. She tore through sidoco books and we called friends to travel for travel tips. Our parents meanwhile had poor Claude working overtime. On matters relating to holiday logistics, like ice cream stops, and not researching an endless stream of random history trivia. At one point I wondered if they might finally break Claude because the chatbot could not bring itself to answer one more effing question about the origins of the Oval Office's Resolute Desk. But Claude proved astoundingly resilient. In an interview last year, open AI Sam Oaten, broadly character, I checked GPT use by

54:03age group. College students treated as an operating system. 20 and 30. Some things used it as a life advisor. And older people consider it a Google replacement. Well I'd sooner take life advice from my golden retriever than a chatbot. My parents aligned with their contemporaries in treating Claude as a Google substitute. And there's Claude Manners. He's so polite. We appreciate that. We're from a generation that curtsies and says, please, and thank you said, Mom, who I'm certain has never curtsied. It's important she said, Claude is great at apologies. This is important given that he sometimes invents facts when corrected. He said, oops, you're quite right.

55:05Good catch. How funny I thought that young folks prize old school entertainment while boomers embrace the latest tech. I asked Ellen Pugh, a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore about this. She said that while younger generations use AI the most, older people take to it as well. That's because LLMs are far more user friendly than say a TV that requires what she calls a born to it comfort with tech to operate. Of all the generations, Pugh older folks seem to be the one who use AI with Glee. Glee is not, however, what's bringing to mind when Claude and Mom had an exchange among Catherine of Ergon's name. Claude called the 16th century English queen Catherine, Mom who superpowers the ability

56:08to relate any topic back to Henry V. H. Wyves, corrected him instantly. Claude Catherine is with a K that bought shot back actually because she was born in Spain and her original name was Catalina. A C is correct. However, Claude allowed that the English spelling with a K is also acceptable. And that night Mom turned on her AI pal, allegedly saying to Dad, can you believe that the cheek her irritation didn't last. Claude's running commentary on Boston landmarks was too useful. The family later debated whether Claude goes by he slash him. We had all assumed so until Dad announced that in France Claude is sometimes a woman's

57:13name. There was only one way to settle a matter. Claude's had dead. And we refer to you as he that's fine with me, but most people default to it since I'm an AI. So I don't have a body or personal identity replied Claude with a heavily implied U idiots. You have been listening for the past hour to a reading of articles and features from the September 6th issue of the Wall Street Journal review on the Niagara Frontier reading service.

58:22We read from the Wall Street Journal review every Thursday at 7 p.m. Your reader tonight has been Don Swans. And we thank you very much for listening. Good night now. We have next in the Niagara Frontier reading service. We have the New York Times following at 9 o'clock as Harper's magazine and at 10 o'clock is episode number 7 of The Tenant by Freedom McFaden. Stay with us. If you or people you know shop at any of the dashes supermarkets, please save dashes registered tapes for radio reading. Our agency receives $2 for every $100 and dashes registered tapes. Any reading has raised thousands of dollars so far. Anyone can drop off their dashes tapes to the Niagara Frontier radio reading service

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