CES 2026: Part Seven (Thursday)

28:15Didn't actually get in the end. I was just enamored with that. And honestly, it was all I could think about. I was like, you could just pop up one of those sports TV things like Back to the Future 2. You get fired by a guy from Japan. Be great. I'm like Marty McFly's dad in the future. Anyways. Yeah, it's... I like the X-Exit. Hypershell's good. I like Hypershell. I need them to reach out to... They reached out to you. They reached out to Robert. They don't like me there. People at Hypershell don't like me very much. Yeah, they're afraid that you're going to get on your podcast and talk about them.

28:48Positively. You know what? Actually, based on the last 12 hours, I don't fucking blame them. If I was Hypershell, I'd be like, I don't know. I don't think Hypershell involves AI in any way, so you're probably, they should be safe. Yeah. More or less. But you do have stats. You can see how many miles you've walked, how many steps you've walked. That's fun. The battery was great. Yeah, how long did it work? We've had this thing on since like 8 a.m. I got back to my hotel to drop it off about an hour ago, and we still had 50 % of the battery left. That's really better than my phone's been doing. No, it is better than the phone.

29:22And we're walking in a convention center. That's a lot of walking. The fitness mode, is it the same? 10 ,000 steps. That's not bad. It's funny because so much of our podcasting has been looking at products that are unnecessary and pointing out the unnecessary parts of them and rightfully laughing at those. And this is a product that clearly can help a ton of people and is wonderful technology and very worthwhile. And so I don't mean to apply the same logic, but is the person who's buying HyperShell going to use the fitness mode? Those feel to me like two different use cases. It feels like something that's probably not difficult to add.

30:03It's an extra add-on. That's the thing. It is an experimental feature. It is not, they are not, I do not think they're selling them with fitness mode enabled right now. Yeah, that makes sense. It is an experimental feature that you have to click agree and okay to. All right, we're going to rotate, of course. Now, this following ad is not for Hypershell. It's for something else that you should buy without reservation. Just credit cards out, please, everyone. If it's a podcast, you must listen to.

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31:15presidents. Juan Gonzalez, during the Obama and Biden administrations. We're really good at invading countries. We're very bad at nation building. And Carlos D. Arrocillo, during Trump's two terms. I can guarantee you that nobody in the Trump administration likes Delcy Rodriguez. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dani Shapiro, host of the hit podcast Family Secrets. We were in the car like a rolling stone came on and he said, there's a line in there about your mother. And I said, what? What I would do if I didn't feel like I was being accepted is choose an identity that other people can't have.

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32:38Hey, everyone. It's Ed Helms. And I'm Cal Penn, and we are the hosts of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I am talking to film and TV critic, radio and podcast host, and Harry Potter superfan Rihanna Dillon to discuss Audible's full cast adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. What moments in this audiobook capture the feeling of the magical world best for you or just stood out the most? I always loved reading about the Quidditch matches. And I think the audio really gets it because it just plunges you right into the stands. You have the crowd sounds like all around you is surround sound, especially if you're listening in headphones.

33:27Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

33:43Superstition, fear and jealousy. Welcome back to Better Offline, the literal best podcast ever made. I'm Rob Zombie Slamming things in the back of my Dragula Is stand up comedian and star of this thing on Chloe Radcliffe Where is she? I'll kill her There she is It could happen here's Garrison Davis Good evening And tech writer Rob Pegoraro Hello I like the fitness mode I heard the moment you said that I'm like I want to fucking go for it I've been getting into more cardio stuff I'm like I kind of want to fuck I want to see how this fucks me up a bit It's really cool Did you try the fitness mode yourself?

34:16how does it exert the pressure? Is walking more difficult? Yeah, it's more difficult. You have to really strain to step more than maybe half a foot. Is it just that it sort of binds up the mechanism of the... I think so. I think it's like locking the motor or applying resistance to the motor. So you have to then push hard. Moving forward takes way more effort. Because, I mean, you've already got weighted pants and stuff. I know this sounds like I'm doing a bit, You actually do have these things. You have like sweatsuits as well. Well, that's sort of what I, that's where I wind up coming to is like, this feels.

34:52You can change the, you have like a slider. Like you can change the settings for it. I totally follow. I totally follow. And if we were not so positive on the rest of the product. No, you can trash it out. It would be, I just am like this, I'm thinking of Conover, of Adam Conover saying, this is a solved problem. You know, where I'm like, we have weighted vests or we have my thing is with fitness you know how people bought the like nordic tracks do you remember those the cross the internal cross-country ski machines and that there was like a year where everybody's like everybody's got to get a nordic track yeah and then now and then a bunch of people just have a nordic track sitting in their basement that they don't need i think the difference with this is not only is an experimental feature it's not trying to be a one-size-fits-all thing because you can use it while hiking yeah so if you if you want to have a more of a workout while hiking and there's settings for going uphill, downhill and it changes the way that how the motors function.

35:49It does have a lot of... But it's not being sold on this. Pardon? It's not being sold on this idea. This is an experiment. I don't think they even told me about the fitness mode. I tried eco mode and hyper mode. I have enough trouble getting around already. We don't need to do this. Walking, race walking, uphill, downhill, upstairs, downstairs, gravel, cycling, running, mountain, backpacking and sand dunes are the adaptive motion recognition settings on the fitness. I would love to because my ankle gets fucked up if I walk more than a mile. I would love this. Diaper shell reach. Fuck. Hyper shell reach out to me.

36:25I swear to God I won't call it. They're never going to know that you call them diaper shell. I'm not going to call them diaper shell again. It'll be fine. That was the last time. As soon as you're like, you can't take it off when you need to use the bathroom. Diaper shell. Yeah. Oh God. Yeah, so, okay, Rob, back to you. Yes. Anything else? Well, actually, was there anything you really loved during this? Was there anything you saw? You were like, fuck yeah. The story I'm most fascinated by, there's a company called Donut Lab that does not actually make, it's not a donut-making robot. They introduced a solid-state battery for electric vehicles.

36:58So we had a very brief conversation about this, and then someone emailed me and said they want more. So guess fucking what, one listener? It's your lucky day. Reader service. So it is kind of a mystery how they've done it because this has traditionally been the holy grail. Supposedly, if you can get the battery chemistry and everything in the physics to work, you have a much lighter battery that's cheaper, that charges faster, that has far more cycles. And they say they've done all these things, but they're being very cagey about them. And they also say the minerals are globally available widely.

37:28But they won't say which one. Like, what's the catch? Is one of the other ingredients kittens? What's going on here? And so we'll have to see. Like they're showing off a motorcycle, which includes the battery. Did you use it? Was it? No. They just had it parked there. It's a$30 ,000 and up electric motorcycle. It looks great. But if they've cracked the code for that, and there's lots of other people working on solid state batteries, and given that EVs are already good, like you have this thing, you can charge it at home, a fast charger, it's enough time for me to take a nap, which I like doing.

38:03Right. So address the other concerns people have. Is it big enough to power a vehicle that's bigger than a motorcycle? Yeah, definitely. They showed off there's some company that makes an electric car chassis with the sort of skateboard thing where the batteries are right underneath the center that most EVs are designed. So yeah, their whole aim is to have this in a lot of different cars. Like they say, they'll have news soon about car partnerships. So big deal. But if this is true, it's like a revolution in all carpentry techs. Yeah. That's great. And not just that. I mean, like drones, trains for that matter.

38:40Because we don't know how to build transportation infrastructure affordably in America. Lots of railroad operators would rather put the battery on the train than put the wires above the tracks. I just want to be clear. If this is true, I will be the most excited about this ever. If Donut Labs ends up being fake, I'm going to spend multiple episodes destroying this fucking company. I'm going to feel so dirty. No, no, no, you won't because it's an exciting and cool thing. And if this is real, it's fucking amazing. If it's not, I will learn everything about this company and publish it on this fucking podcast.

39:08They're on notice. No, they genuinely are. But it also sounds like somebody is going to crack this. Yes. Yeah. Like there's enough money being put at solved, directed at solving the problem. Yeah. And what's it going to do? I mean, is the oil industry going to have an even bigger paroxysm than we've seen? The thing is with the oil industry is they're well, yeah, but they're also well invested in this stuff too. And they will find ways to make money off of this. They will not like it, but it's kind of hard to deny electricity. Right. But nevertheless, they don't love it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the whole trend has been going on for years and years.

39:48and it's just right now in the US we have this president who has just some deranged notions of energy and affordability and I think his head is stuck in 1986 which is why he thinks it's a good idea to you know hijack Venezuela as if it's like sticking up a gas station yeah it's I love living in I want to live you know what I would love I'd love to live in precedented times I'd love to live in boring times I've had too many interesting events happen, I'd like to go back to boredom, but sadly they're not going to allow me. It's frustrating because I've been asking people, genuinely, seriously, bring me stuff you're excited about.

40:30And everyone keeps coming back with like, you know, it was kind of... Honestly, the exoskeletons are the one unilaterally other than Big Tractor. And again, I must be clear, big thing, big huge thing that's just fine. Big charger, big TV. I know, I fucking love it. I'm an ape. One of the best CES moments I've ever had is when we saw, maybe two years ago, we saw the USPS's first one of those electric vehicles. Oh, the Duck Face truck, yes. Electric duck vehicles. And I was like, this is rad. This thing looks great. And like two years later, I saw them rolling around the city. And that fucking rocks.

41:03I love that. So Oshkosh, the company that makes it, they had a media day at their facility in Wisconsin, flew me out there. I got to drive it. Whoa! Yeah, tell me more about that. So, I mean, so first of all, it looks the way it does because you want something where people can stand up in the back. Right. And so, which you can't do right now in these 1980s vintage trucks, the Postal Service is rolling around. It's got air conditioning. It has cup holders, all the modern conveniences. And, yeah, the Oshkosh took a long time to sort of get production ramped up. It seems like they're doing that now.

41:35And, yeah, it was neat. They also showed off like a battery electric garbage truck, which I got to drive. Nice. It was the quietest garbage truck I've ever driven. Also the only one, but whatever. I mean, I'm really, I just love the idea of driving a truck around. Yay. Whee. Garbage truck. Here's a, okay. Here's a question that I had the thought of in an earlier episode and didn't wind up asking. Oshkosh, the company that makes those trucks, is a huge defense contractor. Yep. Makes a ton of military vehicles. They do indeed. I was reading on X, the Everything app, that ICE and CBP has been seen using smart glasses to record protesters and stuff.

42:23How much of the tech that we see at CES winds up getting filtered into what I would consider nefarious action? Probably a lot. I mean, the fact that ICE is apparently using some sort of facial recognition system against some database that I didn't know the government entirely had to see if someone is an American citizen, which, yeah, I have a lot of problems. Well, where do we start? I mean, maybe like perhaps they could not murder American citizens on the streets and then try to cover it up. Oh, God. I'm going to be – ICE just shot two more people. Yeah, CBP. Yeah. I'm going to say something completely honest people do email me and ask why don't I ever say anything because I'm a fucking immigrant and I'm terrified of saying anything about it at all and if you're ever wondering if I have opinions on this I do but I'm terrified to say anything do not think that I don't have thoughts or feelings about someone being shot to fucking death a mother which is disgraceful and disgusting but I have to like I am very guarded about it it's not that I don't care it's that as an immigrant with a child in America die die here so yeah very fun fucking week for everyone yeah but this thing you're talking about we see a lot of this with like the drone tech um and like one of the one of the first cs's i went to and i used you still see this now in the show is like um it was on like you know advancing drone technology it was like half put on by walmart and half put on by this uh uh police department uh in southern california who launched like the first like big drone program which has now been copied around the country and this was like a panel with like both of them talking about how walmart's doing drone deliveries yeah and uh how the police are sending or sending these drones to like surveil uh neighborhoods and go to and go to crime scenes before officers and like secure the area to like you know see see what's going on and yeah you you see this a lot with like the drone stuff here in ces there's uh across from the across from the creator stage which is in Central Hall What is the creator stage?

44:31It's where if you're a content it's all things content creator in creator economy Ed you would love the creator stage I'm going there tomorrow I stood next to a panel where they talked about the changing habits of digital Gen Z life A presentation created by people over the age of 40 All of them were, yes What habits were changing? Yeah, yeah I stood next to this panel because I just heard too many things. Sometimes in panels, you know, like five minutes in, you're like, this is not going to be worth my time. You just start hearing the Charlie Brown parrot noise. Yeah, and then you have to leave.

45:09But it turns out they use TikTok to make purchasing decisions. What? The hell is that? Wow, that's so skibbity of them. Did I say that right? That rocks. But across from the creator stage. That's a top three moment. I've been podcasting for approximately 14 hours over the last three days. That's a top three moment. Across from the creator stage, there's a Chinese drone company that has these, they're called drone-in-the-box systems, where basically you put it in the back of a pickup truck, and you can launch a drone. You can launch an autonomous drone, and it'll pilot around, and then go back into the box.

45:47This already exists in the States. We have police departments in the States already have this, but this was a Chinese company that was making a lot of these. And I can pull up the name of that company shortly. I've noticed less consumer drones here, though. I feel like last year there was like various, there were more fun things. There was like a baseball thing. There was a drone soccer thing last year. One thing is GDU was the company with aerial surveillance and public safety. Were there too many drone options? But I haven't seen many consumer drone companies. No, not many. How many of them are now sort of banned by this order that has come out, which they're targeting DJI, which without them, like where are Americans going to buy drones?

46:34Yeah, they're targeting the horse when the barn door's been open for a few years. I don't know that they've thought this through entirely. It's just that whole thing, all of that shit's so bizarre to me. It's just like, oh, what if we fill America full of Chinese products that could be used as, oh, wait, we did that. We've done that for 10 straight years. We've just, Amazon has, with various letters, put in random orders, shifted security cameras into every home on the cheap. Oh, no, how would we stop this? Well, it doesn't start with the stores. It starts with China. The sneaky Chinese who are, I don't know, selling to America constantly.

47:10We don't stop that. You heard it here, folks. No, it's just very confusing. I don't really understand. I don't think anyone really understands what we're doing against China at this point. It's just like we might let them buy stuff. Actually, that was an interesting story I saw today. Nvidia with China with these GPUs, they're saying they have to be paid completely up front whether or not they can actually sell them they're saying that regardless of how the sanctions work out, if you buy them you must pay completely fucking up front, whether or not you can you can't change your order, you can't get a refund you can't cancel, you can't reallocate fuck yeah, Nvidia doing great, that's the kind of shit you do when you're like not doing well financially fuck yeah, we'll live in the future such a weird like why even it's just because you must think you have exceedingly captive customers no that's yeah it's like the kind of shit you do when you think that you can't die and but you also are a little worried about yes exactly you're like trying to pretend you're strong and I say this in a town full of people that act like they can't die this is the person who gets washed out first like this is the person who they have all the money until they get seven down the craps table yeah little craps little craps for everyone Anyone play craps you listened?

48:22Email me at easierbetteroffline.com with your craps tips. If you send me toilet-related stuff, I'm going to be really upset. It's a different kind of craps. Anyway, moving on. What else, Rob? What else did you see? Let's see. So I've been trying to follow some of the political discussions. Like every Washingtonian, I fly 2 ,000 miles to hang out with people from D.C. Yeah, exactly. And so there's a really distinct panel about tariffs Tuesday morning where everyone was saying, this is such a dumb idea. Like, this is not helping. They are a tax paid by Americans, not the Chinese. They're not helping people build factories.

48:56The CEO of this kitchen robot company, Suvi, Robin Lewis, was saying, you know, we've created a lot of jobs, not in the United States. They had a factory built in Mexico, one in Vietnam. Like none of this stuff works. None of it makes any sense. Well, stupid question. Why would the tariffs make them put jobs in Mexico? And I say this genuinely not. So her answer was basically, first of all, a lot of the components to the stuff she makes is not made in the U.S. and will not be made in the U.S. at any time soon. And you can't make them here. And therefore, you need to import those things. And so why eat the tariffs on the stuff you need to bring to the U.S.

49:37when you can just have them shipped to Mexico, pay a lesser tariff once that way. Oh, so it doesn't change the incentives at all. Yeah, like we haven't suddenly magically made it reasonable for people to do all this factory work that was profitable 30 years ago. Yeah, we're not going to pay people. Like, was it NAFTA? It's probably what caused the problem. Not like the tariffs people were paying. NAFTA, now it's USMCA, which now Trump thinks is terrible. It's just not policymaking by grownups. And so the rest of the panel, I'm guessing everyone kind of agreed. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was – I don't imagine – the funny thing is, of course, a lot of people in the electronics industry seem to think that, oh, it's great that we're pushing ahead on AI.

50:24We're getting rid of the regulatory shackles. But the problem is the person who's doing that is also the one who's imposing the tariffs. It's the same guy. Also, we don't have regulatory shackles. You live in Virginia. You know that. Yeah. There's nothing stopping data. Data center capital of the world. All you hear in Virginia is the screaming of the computer, because the computer is in pain. The GPU is hurting the computer. We have a new governor getting sworn in in less than two weeks, Abigail Spanberger. And I think we will be seeing some things done about data centers that we're not under.

50:57She's going to save the computer from the GPUs. Do you have a suspicion of what those things will be? Well, I mean, a lot of it is. She ran on that, didn't she? She sort of – she said we need to make sure that like large utility users pay their fair share, which the previous governor, Glenn Youngkin, who is – I think most people would say he is the most mediocre governor of Virginia in the 21st century. Yeah, back in London, we have a word for me. Twap. So yeah, like Youngkin, he vetoed like really small board legislation saying like we need to have some standards for environmental review of data centers because these things are all over the place.

51:32If you take off from Dulles Airport, look to your left and right, you'll see these huge boxes with stuff on the roof, no parking lots around, nobody works in them. And they do provide a lot of property tax revenue for counties. So, like, it's a huge chunk of the revenue of, like, Loudoun County, Prince William County, western exitors of D.C. But there's no benefit for people nearby. They don't generate jobs. You don't get faster internet because you have a data center one street away. In fact, you get more expensive electricity. In America, we don't feed those taxes into social services. And once a month, they've got to turn on the backup generators to make sure they work.

52:07So that's a lot of noise and pollution. Everyone hates them. They're really unpopular. And the whole idea that we need to do this because guys like Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman think that we're going to get super intelligence or AGI. So we have to sort of suck it up. We need those GPUs to lure – this is a true story, Jeff Horwitz from Reuters – Law a man with dementia to New York using a Kylie Jenner branded chatbot. And then he fell over and died. It's a true story. Yeah, that grandfather. Mark Zuckerberg should be in fucking prison and everyone who worked on it should be in there with him.

52:41I'm deadly fucking serious. Everyone who worked on that. Every single fucking person. Fucking put Jenner in there as well. Her fucking face on it. Sorry, I have some slightly aggressive views on this. You do have views. No, no, it's just, I don't know. I think it's just exploitative. But no, it's interesting hearing the data center conversation here as well, because we have some CoreWeave bullshit. I should go and have a look. Go and have a look at them. Oh, yeah, sure. Of all the companies to be here in Vegas, CoreWeave. CoreWeave. But did you see any other panels that are of interest so I don't just talk about CoreWeave?

53:11So there's a bunch. Honestly, I'm going to have to sort of catch up via VOD when I get back home. Like every year, I walk miles and miles through these exhibits, think I've covered it all, come home, read other people's CES recaps, see all the stuff I missed and like totally did I go to the same show yeah no absolutely no I walk through I've been here for days and there was like yesterday when I walked through stuff nothing was affixing to my brain it was all just this slop of my brain's going won't exist won't exist GPT wrapper don't need to remember money laundering photonics panel solar panel and it was strange because usually there is like a good amount.

53:50And I should also be clear, cynic aside, there is a use for this. There are people who go here, buyers who are like, oh, I'm building something and what have you. But it feels like it's either that or the slopification of CES. Yeah, it reminds me of like when 3D printers just started. Yeah. Just started getting popular. And then you see 3D printed slop everywhere. And this is interesting. the way that, you know, if you go to like a Comic-Con or like a Ren Faire, things that used to be, you know, like handmade cool novelty goods, now it's just all these 3D printed dragons. Because we can use these devices just to like print out this like, you know, plastic bullshit.

54:35And there's a similar thing happening with these GTP wrappers. Where instead of, they are kind of new products, but it's all building some physical mechanism around the same software service. It's the natural end point of CES. It's just like half of this shit's never going to exist anyway so they're just like, nah, fuck it. It's connected to the magic API thing and then product. Please invest. I genuinely, there is partly because of where I am in my life. I can't do this this year but maybe next. I think I'm just that they're not going to be here next year but if there are still LLM companies next year, all I'm going to do walk up to them and do the Radcliffe, as we call it.

55:15It's like, what's the point of this? Why do I care? And who gives a shit about that? Yeah, who cares? Who cares? Why does that matter? Who cares? Who cares? Because honestly, I don't think 90 % of this show can answer that question. Last year, when I saw my favorite booth, which was the Korean baseball one, where it was just, it was like a golf tee thing, but for baseball. And the guys were like, no, you need to step up and hit the ball. I'm like, I cannot do it. I will be shit. And then when I finally did, they were like, oh, right, you can't hit it. I'm like, I fucking told you. But when I asked him, I was like, it's for people that can hit baseballs.

55:47I'm like, yeah, I know. And like professional baseball players who have their own like mansions and shit. I'm like, that makes sense. I get the people who play baseball and you want to hit the ball at home. And also just, it's fun to go to a batting cage. Totally. This year, it's like, I went looking for stuff like that. I really wanted like a baseball cage, something like that. I wanted something fun. There's a golfing simulator one. Okay, okay. What happened? Just golf? Pretty much. I think it's at the, you said it, Heisen, I want to say. Heisen? Heisen. I think it's at the Heisen's booth. That's nice.

56:22There is some tennis set up in the Venetian Expo. The tennis thing? Out the middle of it. Yeah. You know, the idea is like you're sort of like tennis coach. It will like, you know, serve right at you. I should try that tomorrow. Yeah, I'm actually curious about the tennis. See, that's fun. We like that. That's good. We like tennis. We love tennis. I had a little bit of human connection. That's great. Tell me, please, God. I had called a cab. So I'm staying at Harrah's, and I had called a cab from Harrah's to the convention center. And everybody just goes down to the little Uber waiting zone. and there were there were a handful of people and i just kept watching car after car drive up one person get in the rest of us are waiting there and it just felt insane yeah and i think it would have felt insane even if i didn't live in new york but living in new york and yeah and you know feeling so passionately about public transit i'm like this really is insulting and i my guy pulled up and i just turned to there were two women who were next to me and I was like, do you two want to get in the car with me?

57:31We don't have to talk. And one of them gratefully accepted it and she was like, my Uber kept canceling. I kept not being able to get a car. Thank you so much. And the other woman didn't just looked up, didn't say anything, looked back down at her phone. I would just copy that. Now there's the New Yorker. Yeah, yeah, yeah, truly. And I'm not 100 % sure that she understood what I was saying. Yeah, I was just, that's probably more likely. But this woman and I got in the car and we wound up riding the whole way. I mean, or talking the whole way on the ride. And I asked what she did. I saw that her badge said Apple.

58:04And she was saying that she's a buyer for stores. And she said, you know, I didn't used to work in tech. And I said, what did you used to do? And she said, well, I used to be in supply chain management. And I went, oh, that's cool. I used to be in supply chain management. And she said, oh, yeah, I used to work at Target. And I was like, oh, I used to work at Target. She said, oh, I was a business analyst. And I was like, oh, I was a business analyst at Target headquarters in Minneapolis. Were you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. for yeah for two years i had no idea for two years uh all soda coke pepsi dr pepper all subsidiary brands that pass through all the 1800 target stores in the country pass through me which is insane that they let me nice 21 year old queen of soda queen of soda um i used to say pop until i worked in the soda industry yeah um pop pop oh yeah i have some pap um and she you know what's even wilder she uh worked on the snacks desk and i trained in the snacks department and i trained on the cookie cracker desk that's good in the snacks department we it just was like this very weird small world did you learn anything about apple anything absolutely nothing no i was like trying to have i was i was like trying to get in a little bit more and i just was like this is not it's not we're really you could have done a bit you could have been like what like fruit just like stare at her with your mouth slay fuck that's gold I know the thing about having like because everyone in West London I grew up in I can sound fucking I mean I was about to say I can sound fucking stupid really obvious set up people go oh you really he's learning he's learning what joke I'm doing I see that one coming you can just have your mouth I'll find her Yeah.

59:48This is my simpleton friend. Spend enough time on a taxi line. He's a moron. No. Oh my God. The idea of sharing my Uber with someone anywhere, but let alone Las Vegas. What was more interesting was the driver wound up talking about the driver worked for over 30 years at a restaurant, at some restaurant in town and just got laid off, um, lost no severance, lost all of his benefits. Uh, now he's doing. Uber and he, and he was like, there are no jobs. So many people are looking for jobs. Everybody's out of work. And he said, I just got hired back at the exact same restaurant that I worked at for over 30 years, but I got hired back at the absolute lowest entry level and only for the holiday season.

1:00:33And so I don't have any vacation. I can't, he said, I can't even bump somebody working in the coffee shop. I like he it's, it's such an insult. And it was the most interesting thing he said, he said I think people in tech think that they are safe from it yeah because she also she was like she was very sweet but she was like you know they should repurpose the workers and I was like oh I want to fucking I know and I was like the whole point literally the point of laying off these people is to not have the worker like the point is to not repurpose the worker but it seems like they are repurposing the worker as the worker they had but then they just pay them less yeah it's a little confusing I mean, I think both are happening.

1:01:18And he wound up cutting in and he said, I think people in tech think that they're safe, but they are not safe. So many tech jobs are going to fold in the coming years. And he was saying like, AI is going to take all the jobs. And who knows? AI is going to take all the jobs because it's going to destroy all the tech companies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I think that there are going to be a lot of tech jobs. And he was like, when tech people experience it, they will not it will take until then for them to realize what other people experience and it's kind of what you were saying earlier with matt bender kind of an offhanded comment you meant like oh there's somebody who grew up poor because you're no because the scarcity mindset of like oh i can't use this ring enough because it will literally die on it i drop money myself it's like the sense that something can run out and it is weird these tech people with especially the ai the fucking smugness and that comment is probably the most cutting yeah no it's also probably the most intelligent thought I've heard about the tech industry all week other than on this podcast because it's like tech people really do think that they're insulated from this like tech media they know that they can be laid off they're well aware if you work at Meta and you've seen so many people fired Microsoft Google but you think you're safe still I mean it really felt like the you know first they came for the trade unionists but I was not a trade unionist so I did not say that it's like this condescension towards actual labor.

1:02:45Like I always say, I can complain about my job, but I send little emails. I talk into the microphone and I drink my little drinks. I'm very fucking lucky. And I have a good amount of listeners who don't have fucking manual labor jobs at working restaurants. It's like fucking rocks to hear from people. But it's like, if you don't speak to those people, you are going to get surprised by this wave. The way that labor is completely cut out of a convention like this. And people talk about innovators and ideas and creatives and how ideas and creative innovation is what drives everything. And it drives a little bit.

1:03:22It has a little bit, but you still have to do the physical work. You still have to actually labor. And often you have to have labor to create the conditions that allow people to innovate, quote unquote. But that perspective... And no one talks about the actual labor part of all of these things, even in the supply chain stuff, even the focus on manufacturing, during this year, the labor gets completely forgotten. It made me wonder what the broad socioeconomic background trends are for most people who work in tech. It sort of made me feel like I got to imagine that some huge swaths of tech, of people who work in tech, and I don't know, this is me really, really, really taking up.

1:04:05No, please. This is not even necessarily an educated guess. This is just a vibe gut. but it feels like a lot of people, some of the high preponderance of people who work in tech didn't grow up in depressed areas in the middle of the country, didn't grow up under the poverty line, didn't grow up with some, I think probably a lot of people in tech grew up with some relative amount of privilege, even if they're not white, even if they're South Asian, but maybe perhaps they come from a family where there is disposable income, whatever. and it made it made me be like i think like i grew up with that without a ton of money in the midwest And I'm like, I feel like if I was working in an industry that was potentially hollowing out cities or potentially impacting people with data centers, whatever, I think I would always, always have in the back of my head the people who I grew up around, the people who I came from.

1:05:03I am very lucky in that I didn't grow up with money, but my parents worked their fucking asses off. My mom and my dad worked their asses off my mom, me and three other children. So imagine that. and I was probably not the most normal child. It definitely wasn't. I grew up around the corner from a prison called Wormwood Scrubs and didn't grow up in a good area. My mum put food in the table so you can ask for. And I feel like the people who are like, we need to build the biggest, most huge estate at Senator this, never had a fucking, they never missed a Christmas. They never had a Christmas where they go, and to be clear, my mum worked her ass off, my dad worked her ass off.

1:05:36But it's like those moments, there was one, and it was like, I think my parents felt worse about it than I did. I'm sorry if my dad's listening. do not feel bad dad you watch yourself i love you but it's like those moments are what teach you to actually have fucking humility and love for others because there is more than just stuff but the idea of being like we can repurpose this workforce really fills me full of angry bile because it's like this whole show feels at times like a monument against that where it's just like we don't solve real problems because you don't fucking experience the michael and traitor of Corweave doesn't know what fucking thing about that person driving Uber.

1:06:14Yeah, drag him. Fuck Michael and Trey fucking c***. Pardon me. Do you want to write a beep in there? But yeah, it's just, it sickens me because it's like, we're going to have Carl Chouinard tomorrow, Las Vegas Sun, fantastic guy, for the labor angle tomorrow. Because it's something really missing from here. Yeah. And also, I'm going to be honest, hearing a guy driving Uber here saying that restaurants are having trouble, like laying off people is actually genuinely scary for the Vegas economy specifically because we usually print money here I hear international tourism is down Luke Winkle from I don't remember how to say his name who wrote a piece for Slate like Vegas is down and it's like when that's bad it's bad we're going to rotate now from this somewhat grim point but I want to end this point by saying something which is important which is I have more fucking respect for anyone who works in the McDonald's or diner or the shittiest chip shop in London or any city in the world than I will ever have for anyone who works at fucking Google.

1:07:22And if you disagree with me, go and work a fucking day in a fucking restaurant. I've never done it. I'm lucky enough to never have to, but my whole fucking family has. And if you don't respect service workers, you're not welcome on this fucking show.

1:08:09I'll see you next time. 844-IHEART to get started. That's 844-844-IHEART.

1:08:39Hola Ramos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dani Shapiro, host of the hit podcast, Family Secrets. We were in the car, like a rolling stone came on, and he said, there's a line in there about your mother. And I said, what? What I would do if I didn't feel like I was being accepted is choose an identity that other people can't have. I knew something had happened to me in the middle of the night, but I couldn't hold on to what had happened. These are just a few of the moving and important stories I'll be holding space for on my upcoming 13th season of Family Secrets.

1:09:16Whether you've been on this journey with me from season one or just joining the Family Secrets family, we're so happy to have you with us. I'll dive deep into the incredible power of secrets, the ones that shape our identities, test our relationships, and ultimately reveal who we truly are. Listen to Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. It's Ed Helms. And I'm Cal Penn, and we are the hosts of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I am talking to film and TV critic, radio and podcast host, and Harry Potter superfan Rihanna Dillon to discuss Audible's full cast adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

1:10:09What moments in this audiobook capture the feeling of the magical world best for you or just stood out the most? I always loved reading about the Quidditch matches. And I think the audio really gets it because it just plunges you right into the stands. You have the crowd sounds like all around you is surround sound, especially if you're listening in headphones. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:10:49As ZZ Top once said, how, how, how, how? Now, we're back at Better Offline CES 2026 coverage, and we've stuffed our face with tech and our face with guests. This was not a well-written one. Joining me is stand-up comedian Chloe Radcliffe. You won't let me leave. I won't let you leave. That's right. You've got two more episodes, and then you can go. You won't let me leave. The CES story. Robert Evans of Behind the Bastards. I'm also not allowed to leave. He's not. And then we've got Weston Lee, the writer. Now, I must say, Weston Lee is an inspiration. Weston is one of the only people in the world who cares about annualized revenue.

1:11:27And you and I sat on, we are friends because we sat and went, we've lined up all the anthropic reporting around their annualized revenues. We put them in the line and we've worked out how much they've made. You know, it's amazing what you learn about somebody sharing a spreadsheet with them. I brought you here straight up to just like thank you in front of hundreds of thousands of people. How old were you the first time you had sex? Wait, me? Yeah. Uh-oh, we're getting too dark. 19. Okay. All right. Five minutes before my 20th birthday. Wow. I had my first kiss when I was like Halloween 2005. I don't know how old that makes.

1:12:03I was 19 at the time. I know because I had sex like five minutes before. Wow. Like a real like. Kiss then sex. No, sex then. Oh, no, no. Sorry, no. It was months later. Like it was in 2006 when I had sex for the first time. Yeah. see that i don't give a shit like anyway weston welcome to the show hey happy to be here a long time first time it's a long time first time uh and sorry wasn't sorry to drop you in true open ai hater 16 wow nice three jesus christ it was cool comfortably yeah that is that is so much uh younger and cooler than i would have expected from a man who said the sentence it's amazing what you learn about somebody from sharing a spreadsheet.

1:12:45Weston's a dog. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's been a long time since then. Yeah. Yeah, only once. That one time was nice. No, no, it was great. I too, and I'm lying, I've never had sex. No, okay, so putting my lack of sex aside, we have had to delete Robert's answer due to issues of national security. So Weston, what are you doing here at CES? What are you up to? So I'm a game writer and I'm a copywriter. And when I copyright, I work in like certain niches that are CES adjacent, like gear that content creators use to do podcasts and videos and stuff and film production equipment. And I've narrowly avoided working CES in my lifetime, like three, four different times.

1:13:27It's never been. And I had the opportunity. I was like, well, I should come scope it out. And I wanted to see all the amazing gadgets on the trade show floor. Yeah. And this was a bad year for that, sadly. Do you guys really live like this? Like every January you just come here and dance? Goddamn fucking headshot. And they used to give out liquor on the show floor sometimes. Is that for real? Some of the booths would have bars. You know what? Oh, and E3 too. Did you just say Comdex? Oh my God. This is like, because that's what CBS used to be, right? Yeah. That's horrible. You should see the Mobile World Congress.

1:14:05We were drunk. I was there the year Angry Birds came out And the Rovio guys rented out Like a whole beachside cabana And every Rovio employee I saw At the party they were hosting Was like blacked out Near or past the point of vomiting The whole company It was amazing No but that makes perfect sense Because for a while they were like Rovio is going public Rovio is the next Angry Birds are the next Well I guess it would be Disney at the time They were a bunch of like 22 year old nerds Who suddenly had like a 300 million dollar company Yeah exactly And they went insane Wasn't they like German or something?

1:14:37Like Swedish? They were like a Nordic nation, maybe. They're Swedes, right? Yeah. No, I mean, at least... Because if they were Swedish... I met a couple of Americans, but I don't know. It may just have been that their team had some. I don't... Yeah. Peter Storm, friend of the show, my mate Peter. They might have drink me to death. I don't know. But like, if it's Swedes, I'd be surprised if you could see the alcohol. Most of what I remember from that party is that there was a box of Cuban cigars that they just like had on a table. And at a certain point, I was like, none of these kids smoke. Yeah.

1:15:04I just took them. You took the whole box? Yeah. You looted the Angry Birds. I waited like two and a half hours had gone by, and no one's touched these fucking Romeo y Julietas. And I was like, fuck it, I'm taking them. So this is my first CES. So what you're saying is in 2009, they had apps? Just a bunch of phones in a booth, and you could play Angry Birds? Apps were huge, because it was a new idea. Yeah, because apps were like, rose every new. That was the thing then. Well, that was the, you had your waves. You had like first like smartphones. and to an extent the smartphone and app phone waves were at the same time where it was like every other booth is a new smartphone or like huge Google used.

1:15:42Google had like this massive booth. And Google had a booth there. The second year after Android came out. Yeah, it had a slide one year. What? It was like three acres because Android was like a year or two old. CES used to be so much fun. It was way better back then. But that's kind of the thing that I think is missing as well. Like putting aside the fact that there aren't useful stuff, it doesn't even feel like light-hearted like that there used to be something dorky like e3 in its heyday used to be kind of silly and also very sexist in a way that was reprehensible and remains that way though e3's dead it's like there used to be a dorkiness to it's like fuck it we're google whenever fucking slide like the big tractor is the only bit of this place is whimsie less one year i went to e3 they had like 200 extras all dressed as north korean soldiers to to like For Homefront?

1:16:30Yeah, I think it was for Homefront. Hell yeah! It was the game about North Korea invading the US. Written by the Red Dawn guy. Yeah, written by Milius, I think his name is. John Milius. That game is fucking strong. 100 or 200 fucking North Korean soldiers marching around the fucking... It was nuts. Little North Korean whimsy. This place is bereft of whimsy. It's like a sexless goon cave. It's doing stuff for the sake of doing with no level of self-effacing. Totally. there was no sense of humor i i it's silly and you should be silly about this stuff yes it's not silly our pin that has a chatbot on it has to succeed against the 400 other pins that have chatbots on it and on the glasses that have chatbots on it and the chatbots that are actually three different chatbots if you think about it but no i think i think the general lack of whimsy here is just very sad because the whole thing about tech is it should be kind of fun it is kind of especially for something like this where it's like it's ostensibly for consumers but it's like we're trying some shit out it's like a concept car like i saw a concept car for an autonomous vehicle which is a bit everyone does every like last year tcl who makes tvs had a concept car it's like this year i saw one it's also half-hearted it's now i will say what you're describing is tech that doesn't fully work but is like taking a big swing with everybody knowing it doesn't fully work yeah we all sort of forgive it that actually describes a lot of what we've talked about the laundry bot that doesn't fold laundry and find your keys that doesn't find your keys but there is no there seems to be no uh feeling of experimentation there's no like that's they're not big swings is i think the problem like something like a laundry folding bot is at least like that that remains a high bar for a robot to breach and so every attempt at it even though the most at least that you're trying to do something that we don't really have it down but most of by volume, the vast majority of like new shit I saw was, you know, this product that already exists, it's got a chatbot now, you can talk to it, it can transcribe your conversations.

1:18:33I saw like a million glasses, and rings, and pens, and like a bunch of different individual products that are all, it has a chatbot, it records your conversations, it has a translation, right? Yeah. The coolest thing I saw today, it sounds like doesn't even normally exist at CES, which is an install like an interactive install like out of comic-con for a movie what oh yeah yeah rebecca ferguson movie we're talking about this earlier but i saw the booth mercy now and it totally fits this because it's dour as hell because it's a dystopian future sci-fi where an ai is judge jury and executioner for people on trial and stuff and rebecca ferguson like compass the criminal justice system the the video that they had so in the booth is blacked out like it's a defense booth, like you're at a cop show or a military show.

1:19:20And so I just see this video playing on the side and it takes a second for me to register that it's Rebecca Ferguson in the video and it's not just an ad for a real company. So yeah, Mercy coming out January 23rd. It's very funny because you said, that's the one with Chris Pratt. When I went up to the booth, I asked like, what is it? And she said, well, look inside and then I'll tell you. And I look inside and it's like a guy in a chair. Well, it looks like the train of the movie players where It's like, yeah, it's clearly this is a robots are judging us kind of movie. We have an AI judge. So I walk out and I'm like, I don't know, is it like a game?

1:19:53And she said, no, it's a movie trailer. And I was like, oh. She was like, haven't you heard of the movie? And I was like, no. You haven't heard of Mercy? No. And she said, well, it's got Chris Pratt in it. And I was like, well, okay. That didn't win me over. Yeah, you're not selling. Yeah, I think Chris Pratt, I think Rebecca Ferguson cancels out Chris Pratt. But she loses all of her All of her draw Is also cancelled out by Chris Pratt So it's just a flat line I am so neutral I'm fucking done with things like What if AI takes over everything Make a movie where it's like everyone bet on the wrong horse Like make something where the dystopia Is like societal failure Based on stupid choices That are not just political Or what if the AI is so powerful Is this, Ed, are you saying One of your listeners should fund a movie that I write about this.

1:20:41Yeah, sure, fuck it. Only if I can be in it, though. Great. The idea I've had that I was thinking about since we were doing our episodes on nuclear war is, okay, you don't have Skynet gain control of the nukes, but instead you have the military adopt like an AI program that it links a bunch of its radar and listening stations to to analyze incoming signal intelligence data, right? And that errantly says that there's an attack imminent. And so the humans decide that they're going to start by firing all of the missiles. And it's the job of our protagonist to convince all of these generals and politicians who are losing their minds over data, over what the conclusions of this AI, that we are not in danger and you do not need to fire all of the nukes.

1:21:22If you made that like an Armando Iannucci, Death of Stalin style thing, that would be really good. Because Mission Impossible, the last one, if you watch this fucking movie, great. If you didn't, it's so long and so bad. I don't know, but it's like the entity controls all of the nukes. And it's like, who gives a fucking job? I watched that movie the whole time. I was just like, I hope they all fucking die. Like, I'm just like, oh, all these people. Other than Angela Bassett, she's all right. Speaking of Rebecca Ferguson movies where somebody has to convince somebody to not fire preemptively. Right.

1:21:55There is the movie that's on Netflix that came out a couple months ago that is pretty much exactly that, but it's not exploring AI at all. It's that they pick up a signal that there is something incoming and they can't figure out what it is. And that, I mean, you should watch that movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the movie that just, yes. Rebecca Ferguson was actually, I didn't remember who she was, looked up, she was actually in Mission Impossible Final Reckoning. She was very good in there. And my fucking boyfriend has a big fucking crush on her, so I hate her. Stuart. I kind of like her. I think she's fine.

1:22:27Stuart, come on the show, you're very funny, you're invited. What if in your nuke movie, the nukes also had chatbots? Well, yeah, I mean, you gotta put, Because the nuke needs to be able to tell you. It needs to have a personality. It's like a Doctor Strangelove thing where every Peter Sellers character is a chatbot. Yeah. Each agent is like, you got this. You got this. It's going to be okay. It needs to be able to text the bombardier who drops it. Like, hey, I just want to let you know that I think you did a really good job. You look fly today. It's not just heroic. And I look fly as a jerk. People are going to be angry at you for this, but you did the right thing.

1:23:02It's going to be dangerous, but it's also going to help. i do i i think that we're approaching an ianucci verse far more than anything else at this point where it's just very silly and bad but not for like the nuclear holocaust way it's just gonna be like everyone everyone shits their pants at once economically but yeah that's also bad i mean you maybe see some uh looming signs of that here with just the number of things that they're they're like pulling back on like i'm still seeing a lot of the same claims made about like what's how self-driving is going to take off and like what part like that car you were talking about tensor the world's first robo car uh that the the pr lady was absolutely certain is definitely coming out in the next year tell me more and it's it's it's level four self-driving and i was like okay what does level four mean well she said like a waymo and i said well waymos are only allowed to drive in a really small set of areas.

1:23:58What about this? Because you're kind of advertising that you can self-drive it whenever you want. Is it just you can self-drive it if you're in like downtown San Francisco? And she's like, well, whatever we do, it's going to be completely compliant with the law and safe. And I was like, that's simply not an answer about where your car can go. Where are you driving to today? I don't know. Where can your car go? It depends on the law. Wait, was this a booth person? This was a booth person. Now, to be fair, so I'm accurate, the car you can also drive. It has the first steering wheel that flips out.

1:24:34But I was asking about, like, the self-driving stuff, because you show it driving in a lot of areas. I also feel like self-driving at this point, it's not a solved problem even remotely, but it's like, we've seen it. I'm not sure what else you can show here, unless it's driving you around. It getting better, it being functional in other areas. Right, but how would you show that in the convention floor? They have a bunch of methods because a lot of the booths, they'll show you, here's what the camera sees. And here's like the big thing this year was demonstrating, here's how much better the sensors are at cutting through fog and cutting through rain and snow and stuff.

1:25:07Which is cool. I give them that. But yeah, it's not the same as there being a bunch of new products. A lot of times you're looking at like a disembodied piece of an automobile. And it's like, here's how we - And a bunch of flashing thingies. And it's like, look, look at all the things we noticed. Look, a cat. Yeah, and I don't doubt that it's important, but I guess what I'm kind of gathering is that, like, we're continuing to slowly figure out this technology, and maybe one day it'll get there before, you know, society collapses. Yeah, it's like the CES trough of disillusionment show. It's just everyone's just kind of like, yeah, well, we're still working it out.

1:25:43You want to give me money? And that's what I want to reiterate is when we were talking about the whimsy, the kind of stuff that is like it doesn't work and it's not going to be ready for a long time was acceptable when there is some kind of self-awareness. Yeah. It's not going to be ready for a long time. Yeah. when it is tried when when when a company is trying to pass it off is hoping that you don't ask the question of and when will this be available and how much money is it and can it do this it can do when when they seem to sort of be hoping that you just buy the ruse that's when it's frustrating and that's like that was very much you usually was reserved for like kickstarter and indiegogo shit where it's like okay you're kind of backing something vestigial and like you usually wouldn't back the one that couldn't show you something because those ones will disappear with your money but now like nvidia is running things like kickstarter because you can't get refunds or change things which is so cool you apparently don't have to pay for anything now either we love it folks but it's it's so strange as well because you i mean sure you got hucksters at cest but there would be a level of mad scientist to it like the lg cloyd robot ah cloyd oh cloyd Oh, Cloyd.

1:26:52Oh, Cloyd. Cloyd is your new best friend. He's a robot that can do your dishes very slowly. And also can't really do them. Not like well, and he can fold some kinds of very simple laundry, like towels, again, very slowly. And Gare was saying he couldn't fold them properly. He didn't look good at it, no. And if you're kind of old and fading, it can remind you to eat fruit. Yeah. Its name is Cloyd. Cloyd, like, not a natural thing to say, but the thing is, like, something like Cloyd, they would be like, this is just a concept. Like, Samsung a few years ago just had a giant, like, circle thing you could sit in and it had giant screens.

1:27:31And they were very much like, it's the Samsung crazy experience. It's like, just some shit to show you at CS. And everyone went in and went like, cool, Samsung's fucking around with screens because Samsung makes screens. But this was like, yeah, it's the year of robots. Yeah, it's the year of robots in your home. Well, okay, not your home or a home. anywhere. But this home we built here, it kind of doesn't work in. But what if it did, but it doesn't? Please don't. You can't buy it. When can you buy it? It doesn't exist. How much is it? We won't sell it. Look at the video of this robot with a woman we got whose hair is like studiously gray, even though she doesn't look like she's about to be out of her late 40s.

1:28:06But we clearly want you to think of her as old for the sections where it looks like it's a robot for helping an old person. But then here's some kids playing it. So you know that it's good with kids because we'd love it if families bought it too but we don't really know what people want out of a robot that looks like a cross between the robot from uh fucking what's that 80s movie not wally the one before way decades ago silent running no no no fuck the the nerdy battery's not included yeah yeah no i will say email if you remember the one i'm just imagining my dearly departed it's not a humanoid robot is what marion my dearly departed grandmother would have fucking hated these things like just also old people their brains still fucking work they will feel the condescension of the world's slowest machine doing something but on top of it if they were just like here are some shit we're trying out like we've found pistons and stuff like sensors we're trying these new set i would be like fuck me up like fine show me the new things you're working on but it's framed as it and there are journalists writing this is the ces of robots and You're being fucking played, every single fucking one of you.

1:29:13Well, there's industrial robots, which it looks like some of them are getting bad. I'm not great at it, but I've seen big robot arms that are folding paper with a lot more dexterity than I'm used to seeing and stuff like that. And I'm seeing even there was a humanoid robot with hands that could just do that. And so I'll believe that there's some industrial applications, but so much of the show is set on selling the idea of a home robot. and none of those look like they can do anything useful and they all must be expensive and I don't know why you think people want one. I just feel like the CEA who runs this show, how is there not like a fraudulent element to this?

1:29:54Because when most of the show appears to be deception, because like I've been to a lot of these fucking, they've been coming here since 2011. I've seen a lot of weird shit that was kind of vestigial and like, okay, we're working on this. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won't. but not most of it and it feels like the ultimate end point of just never fucking truly holding their feet to the fire and never asking and i keep going back to this chloe i know i will actually say this just on behalf of me and the listeners you keep saying these derisive things about yourself that are incorrect like oh as a lay person oh i'm stupid you're not stupid you're asking the questions that the journalist should ask like who cares and it's like well who cares but also is this real will you ever make it does this do the thing that you should do the fact that the CA themselves doesn't have this level is disgraceful.

1:30:41Well, yeah, I think they made the decision a long time ago that they were in the business of, number one, providing real estate to these companies. They're working for the company selling the schlock, right? Like, that's their job. And it's not even, you would think, and I think maybe in the past, there was a broader understanding that part of their job was to ensure that the tech industry remained healthy and didn't become what it's turned into but i it's been a while since anybody in in the business world felt like they had responsibility for anything but even then like this feels like almost the beginning of the punishment because what happens when all of these companies with the llm rappers die who's gonna pay for these fucking booths because if there were other companies to pay them they would have paid i saw a fucking chunk of the The Venetian or the Palazzo Casino closed off today because there weren't enough gamblers.

1:31:35Oh, pretty gamblers aren't here during a business week. What is going on? We can't con people from other countries into gambling? I did wonder if... I don't think people from other countries are visiting as much. Well, that's probably because there aren't good enough gadgets. I'm joking. I'm obviously joking. Chloe, what were you going to say? I did wonder if this population is a gambling party population. Yes. 100 % people it used to be cus people would come get ripped shit they'd see it or stand at our beautiful craps tables they'd be they'd be going all the hard ways they'd be doing big six big a all the dumbest bets these motherfuckers put so much money on midnight which is 12 on the craps table that's how you know you have a healthy vegas when you got some dumb fucks at the craps tables yeah we've got empty craps tables this is a bad sign me making really smart bets yeah what you They've got a system.

1:32:27That's why. I haven't gambled in years and I live here, which is crazy. But no, I'm genuinely serious. Something's off. Something is genuinely off. So I don't. Oh, sorry. Well, I don't have the perspective with CES, but I got to say, I don't know how many of the talks and panels you guys went to, but I spent a good amount of time. What did you see? Oh, I went to the ARIA. And the main through line that I thought was a little odd, because there's definitely execs doing the lines, playing the hits, you know, use AI now or your job is in jeopardy. Right. You know, I know of companies where 100 % of the AI is written, 100 % of the code is written.

1:33:06Right, right. Here's the, and I've heard that stuff for years. So it's a little bit like, this is the same, like we're still doing this, but there's like these little glimmers of things that make me go, huh, like the word incremental showed up in like three different talks where it's just like, what is what does the next year mean to you and it's like incremental you need to you need to be going to your uh customers that are using these tools you know in advertising and asking for incremental gains and i'm like not revolutionary gains not a little bit barn burners going from here to here there was a there was a talk that with the one of the guys who runs a spinoff company from telus which the canadian telecommunications company right i think and he's like yeah we we saw 100 250 million in savings you know using ai tools and i'm like all right what's tell us his revenue and that's like you know 0.048 i also yeah sure you did sure you fucking yeah fucking any details no i'm gonna strap you to one of the fucking chairs from saw i'm gonna fucking handcuff you to a radiator and i'm going to have jigsaw extract from you how you save that money because i bet you didn't save a fucking penny with large language models you lying sack of shit it's a lack of specifics incremental well that's real incremental with a bone sore and the big thing that you're seeing the shift here i think has been because there's not like previously the thing about this was about consumer electronics and there's always been you know software and apps and stuff but it's been very focused on things that people will use right and that's what journalists are here to report and i was like here is all these companies vision of like what people want to buy and what they want to use and what will delight them and what will be useful to them.

1:34:46And a lot more of the emphasis, since all this AI stuff has come to centralize it on, is here is a product that will allow you to hurt a customer. Here is a product that will allow you to extract money from people without providing really, or that you're sneaking into a service. There was a company I went to their booth and got a walkthrough, Soundhound AI. Oh, fucking Soundhound. Oh, Soundhound. Yeah. And their whole thing is we make agents. We make agents for companies. And one example they gave of an agent was like they basically an AI doing the job of taking orders for Burger King right and like taking down orders and it also controlled the menu and so the first thing that they showed the guy demoing it showed was someone being like tell me what burgers are good and while there was a menu up in front of them instead of looking at the menu asking it and so it suggested a burger and I was like I don't think people will use it that way often that's a weird thing for him to show but then I understood why because he was talking to this group of like three or four people and he was talking to them about how, and obviously, Burger King feels like, okay, we have this much stock that needs to get moved right now for whatever reason, because it's close to expiring.

1:35:51We can make sure to really push that to customers or if we want to sell more Whoppers with cheese, we can recommend that to people. We can even alter the menu if things are out or if we really want to push certain items. And he said, for example, if Coke wants to really sell Coke vanilla, We can start pushing large Coke vanillas. You can even push specific sizes. And I was wondering why they're talking about this because, again, people don't use it that way. And then I realized all of the gaggle of four people that the rep from Softown was talking to, I looked at their badges, they all worked for Coca-Cola.

1:36:25And so this was a pitch of – Oh, they were scamming them. This is the future of ordering at fast food restaurants. And if you work with us, we won't push Coca-Cola on customers. A lot of the marketing in this bubble, like, you know, like as a writer, I've spent years watching like creatives in Hollywood and games and stuff just feel like they're on the back foot because they're being threatened. Yes, exactly. The marketing is not even aimed at them. When somebody says you have to learn this or else you're somebody is going to take your job. That's not actually aimed at that person. It's aimed at the investors.

1:36:55Yes. Right. And that's one of the most it's bullying, you know. The funny thing is Soundhound was a basically a Shazam competitor. but what's really good about that is adam brought this up yesterday and it's like there is a famous tweet where it's like every gemini commercial is what should i eat for dinner and he goes sandwich and it's one of my favorite jokes and it's literally that it's literally what should what burger do i get burger holy fucking shit that will be 150 000 a month and they showed their like their car ai program where you can build your own agents in your car and he gave these capabilities.

1:37:29And the demo that he ran it on was, oh, my car's making this weird noise. And he described the noise. And the chatbot in the car first said, that sounds like it's this kind of problem. The average cost to prepare is$700. Do you want me to find a place for you to get your car repaired? Aliens. Yes. And he said, I'll call the dealership. I've booked a spot at the dealership. While you're there, do you want me to schedule a test drive and a new Nissan whatever type car yes my wife loves that car all and it was all about like first off nobody unless you're i guess i'm sure there are like rich people one psychopath oh problem i'll take it to the dealership and pay whatever it costs most people are like okay well i've got a guy who didn't rip me off too bad before i'm gonna see if he can diagnose it and like can i but my my gym straight to the dealer 700 okay and like yeah i'll take a test drive i'm always in the market for a brand new car like yeah it's just like it's just it's all predatory for the person driving the car it's all because everything that got the engineer excited the only stuff he wanted to talk about was and here's another place where it'll try to sell you something that's that was it for the ai the thing is it's like i think the tech industry has become guys selling stuff to guys that will not use it it's just companies selling things to companies numbers you don't need numbers you don't need to raise numbers that do money yeah well and that yeah that's the because one of two things will be true either all of these ai agents being integrated into these projects will drive sales significantly and that will be the new thing advertisers fight over and i'm not i'm not in love with that future uh that said it'll probably work better than banner ads i don't think it'll work at all i don't think it's it'll work for a while at least until they get data on whether or not it drives open ai try to integrate shopping things we're just going to get onto that but we're coming to the rotation points.

1:39:17We're going to start rotating our hours. We're going to move on to the final section. And I must say this upcoming ad... I don't know what we're doing. I'm doing music under your clothes. I appreciate that, Chloe. It's now a flawless transition. Upcoming ad is probably for a podcast or some product or some shit, but I need you to click it or listen to whatever the fuck you do. I've never heard the ads. I don't know what they are. If you complain about the ads, please help me.

1:39:57Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartAdvertising.com. That's iHeartAdvertising.com. Hola, I'm Jorge Ramos. This week on The Moment, we take a look at Venezuela's uncertain future in a conversation with two people who have directly advised U.S.

1:40:36presidents. Juan Gonzalez during the Obama and Biden administrations. We're really good at invading countries. were very bad at nation building. Carlos D. Rosillo, we're in Trump's two terms. I can guarantee you that nobody in the Trump administration likes Delcy Rodriguez. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dani Shapiro, host of the hit podcast, Family Secrets. We were in the car, like a rolling stone came on, and he said, there's a line in there about your mother. And I said, what? What I would do if I didn't feel like I was being accepted is choose an identity that other people can't have.

1:41:14I knew something had happened to me in the middle of the night, but I couldn't hold on to what had happened. These are just a few of the moving and important stories I'll be holding space for on my upcoming 13th season of Family Secrets. Whether you've been on this journey with me from season one or just joining the Family Secrets family, we're so happy to have you with us. I'll dive deep into the incredible power of secrets, the ones that shape our identities, test our relationships, and ultimately reveal who we truly are. Listen to Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:41:59Hey everyone, it's Ed Helms. And I'm Cal Penn, and we are the hosts of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I am talking to film and TV critic, radio and podcast host and Harry Potter superfan Rihanna Dillon to discuss Audible's full cast adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. What moments in this audio book capture the feeling of the magical world best for you or or just stood out the most? I always loved reading about the Quidditch matches, and I think the audio really gets it because it just plunges you right into the stands. You have the crowd sounds like all around you is surround sound, especially if you're listening in headphones.

1:42:48Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:43:04Diane, I'm once again in front of a microphone inside the Palazzo Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, and everybody's staring at me because they keep saying strange things into the microphone. I'm on my 18th Diet Coke and feeling more alive than I've ever been. Joining me is actress and stand-up comedian, Chloe Radcliffe, for sadly our final episode with her. Wow, this is it. We've come so far. Honestly, the listeners fucking love you and I need to bring you back because they're going to be pissed. I'll come back anytime you want and to your left is another person who Rob Pegoraro the tech reporter who has been around for a while, 1998 it's been a minute, yes genuinely multiple people have emailed in being like we love you and then one slightly horny person it was like Rob Pegoraro, ASMR and then to your left is Robert Evans of Behind the Bastards who I have heard so many horny things.

1:44:03No, I mean, quite literally. I'm so sorry. And then, okay, we'll just move on. Robert Evans behind the bus. What about me? Anybody say anything horny about me? I got an olive in my mouth. Anyway, you guys want to fuck me? I actually am just describing this. Chloe just has an entire, like, a jar of olives and one big spike. And I said to Phil. It looks pretty good. There's a Greek man sitting in a room that's nothing but jars of olives going like, all right. Finally, podcasts do this for me. That's more Russian. Is that your Greek? Yeah, that was fucking terrible. I have not met any Greek people.

1:44:39Yeah, you want to try that one again? No, my brain is like, I don't know what Greek. No, I can't. I truly don't know. Is Greek an accent that white people can do? White people do Greek all the time. They're white. They're called Greeks. Okay, well, let's move on from that one. fun bit i i one of my favorite bits one of my first bits i got europeans really mad at me i read this article um that was arguing that okay like greeks got inducted into whiteness at the end of world war ii and i shared it and the person who got a bunch of germans really hated me sharing this article this was around the time they were trying to make them pay for their debt back to yeah that is edward on gueso jr the uh writer of the tech bubble newsletter and classic uh staple of the Better Offline Experience.

1:45:26We were just talking about why people do CES. And I know I did this. About why people do racist accents. Why people do... Because they're very fun. No, that's a joke. She is doing a bit. We are doing bants. We're bant maxing. No, we were just talking about why people do CES. And I've said earlier, it's like, okay, people do these shows because it's an excuse to get people together. That's completely true. I also think that there is something kind of magical about CES because you get like people, which is people happen to be here. And if you take it for what it is, which is a convention center full of bullshit, you can see people you love.

1:46:01Like everyone in this room, I'm really happy to see. Like everyone, everyone is in different places. Some of them are like, Chloe, you're in New York. So I see you a decent amount, but Rob, you're in DC. Ed, I see you, but like people get busy and Robert's in Portland. It's like, it's nice to get people together. And yeah, the more you suffer, the funny is to talk about it. And also, I don't know, this podcast fucking rocks and it's kind of fun to do something weird and different every year. I wish there was more on the floor to be excited about, though. Ed, what have you been up to today? We haven't heard much from you.

1:46:34Well, funnily enough, there's this AI voice synthesizer that let you do any accent that you wanted to do. And I was on the floor doing something the worst you possibly could. And it was really... Was it good at anything? Yeah, no, I wish, you know. Because you're like, I'm not the one doing it. It's the robot doing it. And a robot technically. I'm not. No, to be clear, this is not real. This is just me. A really fun man? Yeah, this is me. Oh, man. Could you imagine? But that totally sounds like a cancelable project at CES. There would just be a line out the door of guys just being like, guys with podcasts, guys with racist podcasts.

1:47:20Whoa, finally. We're going to take our jobs. Yeah. Yeah, Woke is not back yet. Because I'm not white. That's right. Now, Woke 2 CES is going to be fucking great. We were talking about the gender reassignment section. It's going to be fucking great. It's going to be illegal to be white for one part of the convention. So it's going to be fucking great. I cannot wait. Got to open every day with the land acknowledgments. Yeah, exactly. Oh, no, a brand acknowledgment. Oh, right. But just for like, we are on the unspraned land of Sony. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're standing on the shoulders of giants. In ages past, Black Bear, R.I.M.

1:47:59would operate this booth. At times, Theranos would have been here, but they were cancelled. I do like that Elizabeth Holmes is now doing epic posting where it's just like... From jail. Posting from jail and being like... Illegally cancelled for doing fraud. Actually, you know, my greatest fear about going to jail was not being able to tweet. But, you know, this is... Proving that you don't have to be afraid of it. Now I don't have to be afraid of it. Yeah, you get a person where I post. That's just me at home. Right, exactly. Exactly. You can launch your own version of Theranos, which is just people mailing you blood and you being like, looks good.

1:48:39I'm going to be the first person in prison to have a fundraising round ongoing. Okay, they're going to be clamoring for this. I don't know what it will. Maybe it will be for a Potemkin AI thing that's just like other prisoners. This is new. Martin Luther King's letters from a Birmingham jail redux is like asking for VC funds. It's just pitching. Beware of the tech critic who tells you that you can't have a VC fund in prison. Series A from San Quentin. Chapter two begins, as a chatbot, I'm not allowed to humber and buy stuff. I need to read you this Elizabeth Holmes tweet from 123125. So New Year's Eve, prisons are meant to rehabilitate prisoners and break crime cycles.

1:49:27Instead, comma, they shatter families and make better criminals. It won't break me or mine, but watching it happen daily is heartbreaking. Honestly, this fucking rocks. I'm sorry. If you're going to post some prison just being like, I'm not fucking guilty of the fraud I obviously did. Fuck you. Yeah, fuck yeah. Let's just go for it. See, I interpreted that differently. I thought she was saying prison is meant to, like, breaks people and makes them into better criminals. That's not going to happen to me. I'm going to stay a shitty criminal. I'm terrible at this. If you only knew, my real story is so much more interesting than the one you have been told coming soon in 2026.

1:50:07And that is seven ellipses. Nothing hidden, nothing left out. The time for the truth has come. No one can hide from the light. woman you did actual fraud oh i'm i'm ready no i want to know elizabeth holmes you are invited on better offline here's my question did are there other people who are there men who have committed fraud as harmful as the fraud that elizabeth holmes committed i'm not denying her yeah well i mean like bernie madoff the guy the enron but they didn't get culturally crucified fight in the same way. Right. But they have been imprisoned. They have been imprisoned. Shkreli is the closest to getting that level of like notoriety but it also worked out for him a lot better than her.

1:50:53Yeah, yeah, yeah. He built a little bit of a weird brand on it. Yeah, I think he's a DJ now. Oh my God. Really? Well, and that journalist slept with him too which was weird. DJ allegations. Yeah. There's a Bloomberg journalist who ruined her life for Charlie. Yeah. A weird post-prison run. Are there people who have committed fraud at a meaningful level who have not gone to prison? I mean, the Web3 and the Web3. I'm from D.C. Where do I start? This is going to be a long podcast. I mean, specifically in startups, in startup culture. not in this same way where they are literally starting a company on completely false pretenses and raising VC money I actually disagree Clinkle was this one where you could Clinkle raised maybe a little bit less but they were just as prominent they were also on the cover of Forbes they were also an Inc.

1:51:51magazine for some reason Clinkle was a sound based payment thing it was obviously fraudulent sound based payments so if it sounds like you have money in your pocket then that means we've paid you he was a very damp looking white boy so i but no it was a company where you could transfer money with like hypersonic it was bullshit but that's the thing like uh that that fuckwit didn't go to prison none of the web3 people who never did anything not fucking doodles nft which ended up backing off nfts that alex ahonian who was a fucking arsehole who should be crucified for his role in the racism and sexism of Reddit, let alone the amount of Web3 bullshit he pushed up a fucking hill.

1:52:35Putting that aside, nothing happened to all the Web3 people who did a bunch of criminal shit. All of the blatant money laundering. And the question is... Fucking shout out... What is this? CZ from Binance. But he was supposed to go to prison. He got pardoned. Adam Newman already got fucking$300 million from Mark Andreessen. Because there's two differences, and we can debate which of them is more relevant in her getting penalized much more than a lot of other people who did similar things. But, like, one is she's a woman, but the other is it was a health company. People, like, had cancer tests that were lies.

1:53:14It was actually fraud, fraud. It was, like, serious medical fraud. It also didn't do anything close. WeWork was just a terrible business. And that's why I'm asking who harmed people to the same degree that wasn't just. Well, actually, the question with Theranos is, I actually, like, I know, like, people did actually die. It was very bad just being clear. Fucking mortgage-backed securities are a man, like, and that hurt a lot of people. FTX did a lot more damage. I'm thinking specifically in tech. Yeah, yeah. Oh, no, everyone involved with the great financial crisis, everyone who bet on this. And I'm going to be fucking honest.

1:53:45I'm going to say this. Every single company that invested in data centers that is going to lead to the financial collapse that follows is worse than Theranos. every single person who pushed open AR up a hill is worse than Theranos for what's coming yeah I'm fucking going for it I'm crazy but yeah and they will crucify Sam Altman if what I think is happening over there is happening where they're misleading investors which is my personal belief and not those of the iHeartRadio Corporation if that is true Sam Altman should go to jail if it's true which we do not know if it is. He probably won't. Because if he was a white woman, he absolutely would.

1:54:22But would he have been able to raise the money? We're doing this. But Elizabeth Holmes wasn't like an actual criminal. We're not going to whitewash this. She was an actual criminal who talked with the Steve Jobs voice, which I think is a funny bit. The voice thing, okay, I will say this. The black turtleneck, the whole bit. I, that is where I think sexism is coloring the entire interpretation. Because truly, when I speak in a lower voice, I get treated differently. And when I speak in a, and like you listen to women who speak in baby voices and we don't say it's fucked up that women speak in baby voices and you run into these women all the fucking time.

1:55:03And that's not their natural voice. That's not that voice that if they were just left, grew up in the woods that they would be speaking with, that's a performed voice that they, that's an identity that they have, Sorry, we've got Chloe Anderson. No, I want to know everything about this. But like how women are perceived in society is – our voices are a huge part of it as they are with men. Think of gay men who sound gayer. Like they get treated differently, right? Like all of that is part of our performance of power in society or our performance of how power and gender are knit together in society.

1:55:35Chloe. And so then I do think – and like her voice sounds insane. It sounds insane. But I also am like that one. I, I fully fucking, and it drives me nuts. Can you tell me more about, have you had like, as a woman, have you had to lower your voice? And in what scenarios have you had? I have a very low voice, right? I just like speak in a very low voice naturally. Right. So I, I... It's more that I think the inverse is a much more common experience where women talk in baby voices. and that is a that is like a relinquishing of power and that is a submissive stance and for me it's like yeah if i talk if i speak to somebody on the street or in public if i'm speaking to a stranger and i'm like yo if i talk at that level like people people turn expecting a man right and treat and then this is like this is an actual 30 rock joke with that i'm a very sexy baby yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:56:35Totally, totally, totally. The manipulation through voice. No, it's just, I mean, I'm a fucking white guy. Like, what do I fucking know? But it's like, the reason I ask is like, is this a commonplace thing in the workplace with a woman? I don't think it's a commonplace. I don't think the voice thing, I don't think speaking in a low voice. Or like a higher voice even. A higher voice is all the fucking time. Like if you start listening to it, there's so many women speaking. Once you hear it, it's like the FedEx era. Yeah, weird phony baby voices. I think that the idea that a woman like artificially lowers her voice like elizabeth holmes did that's a little low is very uncommon totally and her voice sounds insane like i i don't dismiss that she sounds bat shit yeah but it's also like what we it's it the fact that clearly works the thing that drives me nuts is like that we it we will uh we will find fault in however a woman presents right and that when she tries to then model after a male presentation in some way, then we're like, well, that's wrong.

1:57:36But it worked, though. It really worked. What really frustrates me is you get a lot of people who will point out laughingly, she was clearly trying to imitate Steve Jobs and the way that she dressed with the turtleneck and whatnot, and point out how the style of her presentations was aping him. And what doesn't get brought up nearly as often, in part because people don't like to think of Jobs or other like heroic figures, like tech founder figures this way, is one of the other ways she aped him is Jobs was very famous, not so much at the big public announcement level, but like when he was talking to investors, when he was like putting together ideas with vastly overpromising, right?

1:58:14And part of like what he did was be incredibly anal retentive about like when a product was actually ready, but he had these like very specific, often pie in the sky demands for what this thing needed to do, how it needed to look, how it needed to feel, that he would promise could be done before they knew that they could do it. And he hired good people and Apple was able to square those circles. Apple was able to produce. But there is a similarity with, because her attitude was very much similar, which is what I need to do is make the promise and I need to aesthetically make the case of how this is going to look and feel and what it can do.

1:58:45And as long as we can get enough money doing that, we can brute force the having a real product thing. And it's not exactly the same thing, but it's close enough because almost every founder at some point relies on, I don't fully know that what I can do meets what I am selling to the people who are investing money. And I don't fully know that the product that I am promising them, I'm really going to be able to deliver, especially for the cost that I'm promising them and that fundamental reality of how all this works it gets obscured a lot because it's not it makes it it makes it sound like gambling and in a lot of ways it very much is i mean what's the difference i mean there is a difference in that theranos did not exist but what you just described is large language models like it literally is it's it's look this thing fucking sucks and it doesn't do what you want it to but what if we spent more money than anything has ever been spent ever ever forever what if it became something completely different and people will try and differentiate because okay the first step with theranos is bullshit they just sent it to lab corp they didn't even have the beginning steps that fucking sucks but sam altman does not have the first steps to agi fucking wario amaday doesn't have the first steps to a fucking shit in the hole in the ground like they're all doing only a few steps from theranos and they will be colored very differently that they were just innovators risking if you end up writing that when this shit pops you're a mark in the same way that every single person who covered theranos was because it's the same not everyone there was a there was a real good reporter at the journal yeah yeah yeah several years after all the major articles came out john carrie was several 2015 I think that came out there were Theranos articles for years and there were several blogs before Karriru that were like hey I looked at the science none of this made sense.

2:00:47It doesn't seem like it can work. Yeah and Karriru did and typically he did incredible reporting a really great job but it's like there were very few people who did and I think it's I think when Sam Altman gets crucified as I expect Evangelion style it's not going to be the same way and it will i think everyone needs to pre-prepare for if you want to frame this as the innovators dilemma oh you know just he was just trying something that is not a fair way to look at it because there was never a guidance point from that uh wherever agi bullshit happens it's also fundamentally really bad for innovation like one of the big frustrations for me today was walking past probably a cumulative acre or two of different home robots.

2:01:34This is a robot servant. This is a humanoid robot that you can have do tasks for. You can have it watch your kids. You can have it take your pets out. Here we've got one and we've got a robot dinosaur and they're trying to get past each other. Oh, I did say one. Yeah. That was cute. Yeah, some of it's cute. Some of it's, there were a lot of humanoid robots that were awkwardly strung up like they were on a gibbet to keep them standing because when they were on, either they couldn't, they'd broken or they wouldn't stay up on their own power. Like I wasn't sure exactly what was happening there. But in the middle of all that, I come up like after like an acre or two of this stuff, I come across a little booth where it's like two guys at like a desk, maybe two desks.

2:02:15And they've got just like a couple of like stringy looking little like fabric tubes hanging and then a couple of little like gizmos on the table. And I go up and I ask like what it is. And it's a photonic muscle is what they're calling it. And the way it works is, I'm pulling up the picture right here. Araflex is the company. And yeah, it's a photonic muscle. And you have these little bundles that look kind of like this. And each of these bundles has an LED light in it. And there's like a kind of fiber or something inside it. And when the light turns on, it causes that fiber to contract in a way that mimics a motor or functions the same way as a motor.

2:02:55And so you can put them in devices. And the example they had was, there's this device that's like a, I think you call it like an intake thing on like a car, right? Where you need these little flaps to open, and the flaps open and close by the use of these. And they take up like half as much space as a motor would take. Because instead of a motor, you have these little like synthetic photonic muscles that are much lighter, much less space, fewer moving parts. It's the chance to see stuff like that, which is why I keep coming back. And yet I miss this company because there's a lot to take in. And you have to walk past, again, all these companies that have put how many – God knows how many hundreds of millions of dollars into humanoid robots, most of which never have a chance really of establishing themselves.

2:03:41And very – like basically none that I saw outside of like the ones meant for specific manufacturing uses seemed like they had a creative or intellectually interesting reason or solved a problem. And that so vastly outnumbers in funding and attention the like – somebody made a muscle with light. that's kind of sweet well the problem is a robot that does one thing is not what people expect from a robot everyone wants to have one robot that is just a person, a slave let's just cut straight to it LG's whole sales pitch was the zero labor home which I mean big if true I don't live in that home didn't you see the cloid?

2:04:22yeah he's a willing servant find your keys, bring your fruit when you're demented? You are right that it is what people want as a slave. It's a slave. You either want a completely faceless machine, and I'm sure I want to make sure as the rear is the black guy, like, come on. Say it. We've got to get him in the conversation. As the what? As the guy with rings? As the guy with, you know, you can't see, but I got some hotep rings on, so I know something about slaves. I know something about slaves. You know, in my newsletter, I wrote, there's this essay I wrote that was talking about how the roots of automation go back to slavery, right?

2:05:08So part of the thing that developed impetus for automation is that, you know, you had the abolition of slavery and you had the British Empire being like, oh, my fucking God. How are we going to keep, you know, plantations are incredibly profitable. how are we going to keep these sort of profits because they're also integral to our empire like for funding our navies and fielding our armies and so the idea was like okay well you have to make the factory resemble a plantation as much as possible and i think most people when they think of plantations they think like okay you know it's outside it's disorganized a little bit you have an overseer but they were like very highly regimented and they developed very specific methods of extracting and terrorize as much labor as possible and terrorizing people and so the automation that was developed by this guy Charles Babbage was like an attempt to do early divisions of labor and create machines that would be able to you know self-surveil workers or workers would be able to self-surveil themselves or quantify their work or divide it into pieces like some of the very foundational theories of how labor should be organized going into okay well how do we get a non-human along a division of labor where we're separating as much work as possible into discrete, repeatable, substitutable parts, which we already designed to resemble slavery, how do we get that in this embodied thing that also just happens to look like a person without a face that we want everywhere in the house?

2:06:35I don't know. I feel like the heart and the soul of it does link back to it. And it goes back even further, right? But I think then also the other question is like, how much do you think this is also colored by experiences maybe some of these people have where, you know, they're like, yeah, why shouldn't I? You know, why shouldn't I have a person or a thing in my house? And how can I convince other people to do it if only by having a robot do it? Right. And I think that there's, well, there's two parts of that. It's one, they might have hired help and they're like, well, I have to pay some fucking piece of shit human.

2:07:09Jesus Christ. but also there is I feel like there's a division in automation with some people where there's some people it's like I see this as an as a kind of as like an amplification of who I am like an like an extra arm like an arm that moves one thing to one thing which is not a thing I command but it's just a thingy that does an action that's not a sexy thing you can raise funding on you can't be like I got an arm that moves the thing from a thing which is most industrial machinery it's just like repeating one task again and again and again the reason that replaces humans is that's a repetitive action it fucks up humans but it's not about the subjugation of a person it's an action yeah it's not about controlling someone it's about making a thingy happen then there are the people who are like wouldn't it be awesome if every fucking whim i had was perfectly solved and i could order someone to quote adam connor of a few years they don't know the way i like it and it's this idea of this aggie bot yesterday oh it can do the tiktok dance why do you want someone to dance for you that's a fucking peculiar instinct part of what's so difficult though is that these are it's this it's a it's a version of the same problem that you have with a lot of like genetics and like fertility and and technology right where do you want to make sure if you can find out in the womb that a child is going to be born with its lungs outside its body.

2:08:30And you could just kind of snip that out. So the lungs are inside the body. Do we want that? Everyone's pretty much like, oh yeah, that's probably good if kids have lungs. Yeah. Do you want to be able to tell if someone has autism and snip that? Whoa! Suddenly, suddenly or any of the other horrible eugenics questions, right? So everyone's like, yeah, there's certain things we want to be able to do with genetics technology, but if you say this is okay, all people are going to start immediately pushing for all and like drawing a line is something that like the fact that you're drawing a line means there's going to be strong lobbies of people pushing for stuff that is really bad right and with automation everyone's like like i saw a product today that's one of a i've seen a couple like this where it's a big basically like a big cart on wheels that can go off road and can be fully autonomous and you can set here's where wounded guys are going to be here's where the hospital is drive up to the front line people throw a wounded guy in drive to the to the the medical area right and you don't necessarily like it's better if a robot does that because people can get blowed up right if you can have and so and there's also like obviously i'm sure we all have individual pain in the ass tasks that we're like well yeah i'm a fan of a robot washes my dishes like yeah but once you once you're saying well we do want to automate some stuff you're having then a conversation where is the line and right now everything's on the table including like the creation of like art and beauty yeah and the raising of children the stuff we're meant to do when we're not working basic cognition and that's the fact but you can't if you're going to talk about some of it all of it's going to be on the table at some point and right now it is yeah i think that's also the other thing right where it's like you know to your point there's automation that's saves you labor and enhances productivity around the home you know and around certain workplaces that reduces the drudgery of tasks we have to do and then there's automation that is deployed in a way to squeeze as much as possible out of people um beyond what they might in of themselves want to do if they had control over to what degree am i going to augment my workplace or myself with this stuff right and i think that ends up also being the line with a lot of these technologies where it's like you know how if we were designing genetic technologies if we were designing you know um assistive uh automation or assistive artificial intelligences and grafting them onto our lives i feel like the the points in which we would let them and not let them look different than what your concerns and interests are if you're like okay well i'm looking to get a return or i'm looking to organize the workplace in a certain way or i'm looking to just meet a very specific need in this or that context right in a battlefield an hospital um you know in a public space so i think i so i you know part part of this is like you know downstream the consequence of the fact i feel like we're almost all technical decisions have nothing to do with what anyone other than these private investors totally i mean you know a thought that i have had this whole last few days is what does it mean to be optimized or to have your life optimized?

2:11:46What is the actual outcome of that? What are we optimizing for? And if the optimization is, we're going to remove all of the annoying tasks so you can enjoy life, that sounds like an awesome answer that I could totally get behind. On the ground, that doesn't seem to be what any of the products i was just thinking of something very simple which is like i'm lucky to live a really good life and the reason i can is i have a i have a washing machine and a dryer that works really well and i have a good dishwasher like it's like it's all took yeah like it's like the shit that sucks isn't like i can afford to use uber i can get around like a 50 dishwasher that's really good feels like it would be more innovative than anything on this floor because most people can't afford to have a good one like like the things that get in the way of existing are labor as in having to do your horrible fucking job that doesn't pay you enough or the shitty like how the fuck do you look after the children you have there aren't really there's not really tech you can't buy more time unless you have actual labor help yeah which requires more money and you can't really replace that with a robot because the reason they need an everyman robot is because problems are complex the problems of even dishes are complex and decision making is exactly you know that is exactly it it's like it's not the problems themselves it's the decisions around them i mean and that's why the most responsible technologies at ces stick to doing the things where there's no real downside if it's not perfectly like raising children um which i saw a really good child companion robot today, which I look for at every one of these.

2:13:36I love them. Anybody else? Oh, I wasn't sure where you were going with them. Oh, no. So there was a really good one that, it's one of my favorite CES categories, where it's like Southeast Asian tech company marketing to Americans that doesn't fully understand our culture. Fuck me up. And so they have a set of bleachers erected, and like 50 of these like little robot dolls sitting in them. I'll show you guys. But they're like, they're all wearing like sleeveless shirts. Let's talk about this. Oh, I did walk by that yesterday. Yeah, yeah. They're all wearing sleeveless shirts and like little beanie hats basically that have the name of the robot on it, which is Booster?

2:14:18Is it Booster? Yeah, it's Booster. But then in front, they had one robot that was dressed differently. And I didn't realize at first, it looked like it had like a suit and a black hat on. and then the video starts playing and I realize that fucking robot is Michael Jackson and it's dancing to Billie Jean alongside what I believe is a kid I know exactly where in the North Hall that was and it was well that did happen could not get across them hey guys maybe Michael Jackson is not the best robot mascot for a children's toy you might yikes but immediately what I gotta show you guys and this is what I was telling you about we might cut this in we might just let it fly I want the reaction.

2:14:58This is what happens in that video immediately after the robot's dancing to Billie Jean. I'm going to put a link to this in the notes. Yeah, so this is right after Billie Jean.

2:15:12What? That is identical to the... Oh, wait. What? So weird. So what happens in that video? What? The instant that finishes doing, like, dancing to Billie Jean while, like, moonwalking, there's immediately a man runs into another version of the robot and starts beating it with a wooden stick, which then switches to a guy putting cinder blocks on top of it and smashing it with a fucking mallet. And then right after that, a dude comes in with a liquor bottle and shatters it over the robot's head. If you are protecting your children from the homeless. Or from the robots. What else does that say? And then the robot stands up after.

2:15:58It seems fine. You can't stop it. You can't stop. I love that because it looked almost identical to those things. I don't know if you remember the modeling experiment, like the regularly disproved thing about how children will copy anything and it's just children hitting a clown with a stick. And it looked identical. It's the same fucking thing. That's CES, baby. Just like, I want to be in the room when they were recording that. It's like, hit it again. Hit it again. Get a liquor bottle. Fuck it up. It was unclear. I'd do that for free. What the selling point? Because it goes from, it can dance like Michael Jackson.

2:16:33You can beat the shit out of it and it's fine. It'll walk with your little girl and help her learn languages. It's like quizzing her over her homework. You will never stop dance for dancing. Why is that? And I kind of think maybe they just sort of incompetently realize something that is a brilliant idea, which is if you market and build a robot entirely on Terminator 2 logic where you just show that this robot can't be killed it's loyal to your child it'll never get drunk and hit them it'll never not come home after staying out late at the bar at night like the whole Sarah Connor speech from T2 important to note I did not see any robots built out of liquid metal but I mean I missed some corners of the vacation expo so maybe I think that's the South Hall this year.

2:17:21When the AI bubble burst, we'll get to what we really need to get to, which is building Terminators. All right. As we approach the end of this, Chloe Radcliffe, what do you think of CES?

2:17:34It's, I mean, truly I go back to numbers you don't need. Yeah. I go back to, so what does that do? You know what's funny? Or so who gives a shit? Um, it's, it's so, uh, unnerving to think about how, how much of our society feels like there's no money and then to come to a place where there is all the money. Yeah. And it's that, that I think is disturbing. To an AI industry conference. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And, and like I, I work in entertainment and such a common refrain in entertainment is like, oh, we just don't have the budgets to do that anymore. we used to have those kind of budgets and we don't anymore and i'm like there is money fucking sloshing around hitting the sides coming out people's noses like there is so much money and i it's infuriating to me that you know i'm taking a very narrow view right now actually i will actually push back you're not you're taking a very reasonable position here the narrow the narrow part of the view is like i'm putting aside the fact that it's infuriating that people are living very difficult lives amidst all this money floating around.

2:18:46But like even I'm just thinking about my job. You know, it's like in the entertainment industry, the fact that there is relatively little money, that money is tight. And I'm like, it's not, it's also, it's especially relevant. Sorry. And then one second. It's especially pertinent in entertainment because so much of entertainment is now owned by the things that own the tech where all the money lives. And so I'm like, what the fuck do you mean? There's no money in entertainment. He's got an alarm. You couldn't be more right because, like, number one, like the other thing is that entertainment makes as much money as ever.

2:19:21It's no longer making money, but like you said, the companies that now own all of these fucking are taking those profits and they're currently pouring them into the shit that you're seeing, the broken shit on the floor here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when all of this is dead and bleeding on the floor, you're going to give it to Chloe Radcliffe in her movie about AIs. Yeah, that's right. We're going to wrap here and I just want to say on behalf of all the listeners and myself, thank you, Chloe. Thank you for joining us. It's been an honor. I've had a great time. I hope you join us next year. It's been a genuine pleasure to have you.

2:19:52Where can people find you? I am at Chloe Badcliffe on all platforms, like my last name Radcliffe, but bad. And I'm in Cincinnati this weekend. I'm in DC next weekend. I'm in Philly the week after. Follow me. Sign up for my mailing list. Yada yada. Rob Pegoraro we'll have your links in there but thank you so much for joining us you are you are welcome you are one of the best I love having you here I try and you are at everything I'm at which is genuinely a pleasure Robert Evans my boss behind the bastards thank you for joining us and of course the other Ed Ed Anguaza love you buddy thank you for having me love you too bud and I love you all for listening we will be back tomorrow for four more hours yeah I forgot for a second you fucking psychos I can't believe you're listening to all this shit Nah, all of the men I'm radicalizing and the women that listen as well and the trans people and everyone on non-binary and everyone who listens, I don't care who you are but I care that you are who you are it has been a very long day and it's a very long week but I love you listening we will be back four hours tomorrow an hour epilogue on Saturday and then they are going to shoot me in the head parody I'm Ed Zitron, please subscribe to my newsletter I did not do premium this week so please use the link in the thing.

2:21:10I desperately need that. Thank you to Matt Osowski, my wonderful producer who has been working his fucking ass off all week. Amazing show, more amazing stuff to come. We're also dedicating these episodes to Sean Paul Adams, who is a friend of the show and the suite. Sadly, he passed last year. Sean Paul absolutely rocked. So we're honoring him by donating to the Pediatric Epilepsy Research Consortium. Sean Paul's son is epileptic and his family and friends would deeply appreciate your donations, as would I. Thank you.

2:21:46thank you for listening to better offline the editor and composer of the better offline theme song is matt osowski you can check out more of his music and audio projects at matt osowski.com m-a-t-t-o-s-o-w-s-k-i.com you can email me at easy at better offline.com or visit better offline.com to find more podcast links. And of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat.wheresyoured.at to visit the discord and go to r slash better offline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better offline is a production of cool zone media. For more from cool zone media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

2:23:03Transcription by CastingWords really good at invading countries. We're very bad at nation building. Carlos D. Rosillo, we're in Trump's two terms. I can guarantee you that nobody in the Trump administration likes Delcy Rodriguez. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone, it's Ed Helms. And I'm Cal Penn, and we are the hosts of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I am talking to film and TV critic, radio and podcast host and Harry Potter superfan Rihanna Dillon to discuss Audible's full cast adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

2:23:48What moments in this audio book capture the feeling of the magical world best for you or or just stood out the most? I always loved reading about the Quidditch matches, and I think the audio really gets it because it just plunges you right into the stands. You have the crowd sounds like all around you is surround sound, especially if you're listening in headphones. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

2:24:24This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.