The Kelly Clarkson Tapes, Revealed: What Really Happened in That Brooklyn Store?

A beloved celebrity walks into a Brooklyn boutique, asks about a $15,000 mechanical bird, then riles millions of fans into a social-media frenzy. But since she's been gone, Pablo has obtained security footage — and more. Wyatt Cenac and Amin Elhassan take stock of a viral morality play at the intersection of class, discrimination and how to get what you want. BID IN THE AUCTION: • Win Kelly Clarkson's backup bird — and help cure glioblastoma https://ptfo.betterworld.org/auctions/kyra-fund-exclusive-auctions-he/items/juliarobert MORE PABLO: • Send us your confidential news tips https://www.pablo.show/p/tips • Subscribe to PTFO on YouTube for breaking news, greatest hits and live premieres https://www.youtube.com/@PabloTorreFindsOut PREVIOUSLY ON PTFO: • Debunking the "Magic" of Mentalist Oz Pearlman https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmEwYmEzZTczNmFhNmZiMDM3YjFiNTdk • The Agony and the Ecstasy of Competitive Bird-Watching https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/OTUyYzhmZGMtODRkZC0xMWYwLWFjNDUtODc4MDdhMjVkMzc3 (Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Apple Card.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out, brought to you by Apple Card. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:14Pablo Torre?

  Right after this.

• 0:18Speaker 01

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• 1:14Pablo Torre?

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• 1:59Pablo Torre?

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• 2:21Pablo Torre?

  I should explain that I don't think Amin has any idea what we're doing here today.

• 2:26Speaker 03

  Zero. We went to the Edward R. Murrow Awards last night, and you and producer Matt Sullivan, very rude, very rude. Guys sitting there texting away, and they're writing on their phones feverishly, and I'm sitting here, I'm like, hey, we need to respect the other award winners.

• 2:42Speaker 04

  But I also think that's the most respectful thing you could do at an Edward R. Murrow Awards, is be doing journalism. I think anyone who wasn't should have their award revoked.

• 2:53Pablo Torre?

  Thank you, Wyatt.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  To refresh everyone on this, Edward R. Murrow Awards, a very prestigious journalism award. Literally, everyone walking up on stage was like, and he spent six months in a hole in Afghanistan with the Taliban. And like, every story was-

• 3:07Pablo Torre?

  That was actually one of the stories.

• 3:09Speaker 03

  Life or death in a war zone. And then here come the silly sports guys.

• 3:14Pablo Torre?

  I should say, as Amin diminishes our own existence, that I do have new stuff that I want to show the internet.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  Why?

• 3:21Pablo Torre?

  And both of you guys here today for the first time. Thank you, Wyatt Zanuck, Amin Alhassan, for being here.

• 3:27Speaker 04

  Sure. And also, congratulations on your Edward R. Murrow Award. And for actually being serious and doing journalism while receiving an award.

• 3:38Pablo Torre?

  Well-

• 3:39Speaker 04

  I think if you're at the ESPYS, you should be playing sports. The ESPYS would be a hell of a lot more interesting if each row, you're just, Patrick Mahomes is just throwing footballs.

• 3:50Pablo Torre?

  For people who have never seen this show, by the way, an episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out before this one, we should say, yes, we are the Edward R. Murrow Award-winning Pulitzer Prize, quote-unquote, "sports show" that does investigate powerful people in sports, like Magic Johnson. But also, I mean, we happen to investigate stories about actual magic. Like, this episode from earlier this year.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  Debunking Oz Roman's tricks. Is he a fraud? Wow, that's great YouTuber-y right there.

• 4:19Pablo Torre?

  Meanwhile, another one of our favorite episodes, Wyatt, was a bit harder to advertise on YouTube, but it dove into the world of competitive bird watching. And this introduced us to the concept of a nemesis bird.

• 4:32Speaker 04

  A nemesis bird is, for anyone who's a bird watcher, that their white whale, that bird that they keep going out and trying to find, and they can't find because the bird is trying to hide from them. Or so they think.

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Thear she blows?

• 4:49Pablo Torre?

  It is an elusive quest that has driven various competitors mad, it turns out.

• 4:57Pablo Torre?

  All of this brings us today to the story that we're here to report. A story of magic happening right here in New York City, as well as the story of one of the most beloved celebrities in this country, Amin.

• 5:12Pablo Torre?

  Three-time Grammy Award-winning recording artist, noted Dallas Cowboy superfan, and former American Idol Kelly Clarkson.

• 5:20Speaker 03

  Kelly Clarkson!

• 5:21Speaker 05

  Singer Kelly Clarkson is locked in a he-said, they-said, social media feud with a Brooklyn store. It started when Clarkson claimed a store employee who didn't recognize her insinuated she couldn't afford an animated bird.

• 5:35Speaker 06

  One shopping experience left her feeling like this.

• 5:38Speaker 07

  Hi, hello, do you remember me? No, I'm sorry. I was in here yesterday. You wouldn't wait on me? Oh, you were on commission, right? Uh, yes. Big mistake. Big, huge.

• 5:52Speaker 06

  Well, Kelly's Pretty Woman moment started on Saturday when she posted on X, "Just drove all the way to Brooklyn to check out this store I thought looked really rad and had a few things in mind to buy." And literally was looked at as if I couldn't afford it, and was told he could find something comparable for me. "Wow, dude, you're an idiot and just lost a huge sale. But y'all should go check out Art of Play in Brooklyn if you enjoy being treated like Julia Roberts' character in Pretty Woman."

• 6:17Speaker 07

  But the store says the item Clarkson wanted, a mechanical singing bird, wasn't for sale, saying the bird is part of a show the store puts on. The store going on to say, "Imagine our surprise when our small, local business was suddenly attacked by 8 million people who have never visited our store. As a talented, popular singer once said, 'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.'" Clarkson responding, posting a photo she says shows the price tag. People on social media taking sides. One post saying, "When does the apology part happen?"

• 6:46Speaker 03

  It's crazy because, literally, on the way to the Edward R. Murrow Awards, I'm in a group chat where the sides have been taken. People divided. One side, Kelly Clarkson is an angel. How dare they treat her like that? The other side, she's an entitled, rich person. How dare she pick on the little, small, local business?

• 7:05Pablo Torre?

  Actually, Wyatt, what Amin does not realize is that he is, I think, a control group. He is somebody who doesn't quite know the backstory of this the way that you, longtime Brooklyn resident, may know. And I should point out here, the extent to which everybody now is weighing in on this is due to the fact that Kelly Clarkson's original post has been viewed more than 45 million times now. And this whole thing, yes, has mushroomed into a morality play. And this was evidenced by some more of that social media feedback that Good Morning America was referencing there, beginning in the store's Instagram comments.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  "Is it okay if I come to your store to look? Or is your space only for the uber wealthy? Like, richer-than-Kelly-Clarkson kind of wealthy? Maybe you only cater to billionaires."

• 7:54Speaker 04

  "I don't know. I believe Kelly. That woman is not controversial. And the one time she said something publicly is because, in fact, she was treated disrespectful, and I 100% believe her. Let's do something. Post the camera security, and let's clear the air. Either she's wrong, or you have to apologize in case you hired rude employees." Six likes.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  Clearly, no one should come to this store unless you want to be discriminated against. 90 likes.

• 8:27Speaker 04

  They're really throwing out those blue checks to anybody now. The craziest part of the Kelly Clarkson animatronic bird situation is the concept of them finding a comparable item. Were they gonna pull out Big Mouth Billy Bass? 72,000 views, which really seems like a lot. And 83 saves? Really? 83.

• 8:51Pablo Torre?

  And so what happened in response to all of this was the store, in question, Art of Play, released a new statement in an attempt to clarify some additional details about this, yes, allegedly comparable item.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  Quote, "During the five minutes she spent in the store, parentheses, Kelly Clarkson, inquired about our mechanical bird puppet named Molly. We explained that while Molly is permanently attached to the wall and serves as a de facto mascot for our shop, a nearly identical automaton is owned by the creator of the machines, a brilliant artist named Bliss Kolbe, who lives in Seattle. He told us he would be willing to part with Molly's twin for $15,000. We explained all of this to Kelly Clarkson. We also offered to show her a different singing bird automaton made by a traditional clock-making shop in Germany

• 9:46Speaker 03

  that she could have taken home with her that day."

• 9:51Speaker 04

  Because she did drive all the way to Brooklyn.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  All the way to Brooklyn. I seized on that one.

• 9:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  All the way to Brooklyn. I don't like the way that sounded.

• 9:57Speaker 04

  No, I'm sorry. Where are you coming from? North Dakota?

• 10:00Speaker 03

  Let me finish the quote. "It cost about $2,000. She did not stick around long enough to see it." End quote.

• 10:09Pablo Torre?

  I love that part. The whole, "How dare you show me an automaton fit for a sex worker", AKA the profession that Julia Roberts-

• 10:17Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 10:18Pablo Torre?

  -has in Pretty Woman, when she walks into the store in, you know, her street clothes. Big mistake. And it also feels like Wyatt, we should disclose here that one reason I wanted to investigate this is because you and I have both been customers at this very store before.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  Get out of town.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  Bum bum bum.

• 10:38Pablo Torre?

  We both have bought things there, I believe.

• 10:40Speaker 04

  Yes, yeah.

• 10:40Speaker 03

  Automatons?

• 10:41Speaker 04

  No, they're too steep for my blood.

• 10:45Pablo Torre?

  We've also both talked a bunch in the past with one of the owners, a guy named Adam Rubin, who declined to comment to Pablo Torre Finds Out, but who notably, I mean, happens to be the author of the bestselling children's book Dragons Love Tacos.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  Really?

• 11:00Pablo Torre?

  That's right. But most importantly, Wyatt, you and I have witnessed Molly the Bird's crucial role in what they do there in the back room of Art of Play.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  In the back room, they do close-up magic shows after hours. And there's a secret passageway that one enters. And before you do all of that, they do a performance with Molly the Bird, which when you're in the shop, they have a sign that says, you know, nobody should touch this because it's very fragile. And the only time they operate it is to welcome people into the magic shows that they do after hours.

• 11:41Speaker 03

  Forgive me, I might sound ignorant here. What exactly does Molly do?

• 11:47Pablo Torre?

  I mean, I'm so glad you asked because I was scrolling through my phone over the weekend endlessly, and I did find this video I took from November 20, 2025. Molly is a mechanical puppet, what's known as an automaton. She was designed and built by our friend Bliss Cole out of Seattle, Washington. She is one of two in the world. So Molly is very rare, and she's very delicate. So we only ask her to perform on special occasions like tonight. When I turn this crank here in a second, Molly's gonna sing and dance, like I said, but please keep in mind there are no electronics involved. Everything you see is made by hand. These nine wooden cams and these seven metal strings, that's what controls the movement. That's what makes Molly dance.

• 12:30Pablo Torre?

  The leather bellows at the bottom, a brass whistle hiding at the back, that's what controls the sound, that's what makes Molly sing. But when I turn this handle, all that machinery disappears, and Molly comes to life.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  I mean, it looks like something that you would like churn butter with if you went to some trad wife's ranch and they said, oh, would you like some butter? And then they're cranking some stuff and making it for you on like from scratch in the moment. But in this case, turning that crank makes this bird move and its wings flap and it moves around and it also is singing. And yeah, behind the crank, there's a whistle and the way in which all of the gears turn.

• 13:19Pablo Torre?

  Yes, the wires attached to this crank. And I mean, I would love a shop bird to live in this studio. I get why Kelly Clarkson would want to buy Molly for $15,000.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  What kind of Molly are we talking here?

• 13:31Pablo Torre?

  I mean, something that is somehow even more addicting. Molly, the automaton bird, and the question around this vile morality play, which is about class and discrimination and customer service, really, I think about getting what you want. This question is why we're here. It's to decide the question of like, okay, how do we assign responsibility for who did what in this story? And responsibility in a story like this, as you can imagine, is incredibly difficult to prove. Because to fact-check the anatomy of this scandal, you can't just rely on the he said, she said of this, as Whoopi Goldberg alluded to.

• 14:12Pablo Torre?

  As in fact, one of the millions of Kelly Clarkson fans from earlier demanded, we kind of need some way to see what actually happened in the store, to see how pretty woman this entire thing actually was.

• 14:25Speaker 03

  Do we have the tapes? You don't have the tapes. Come on, come on.

• 14:31Pablo Torre?

  I mean, what we're here to show you and Wyatt and the internet is the tapes.

• 14:37Speaker 03

  This is what you were doing yesterday, instead of paying attention to Terry Gross's lifetime achievement award.

• 14:43Pablo Torre?

  Terry Gross is a legend, but it's time for another kind of fresh air after the break.

• 15:06Pablo Torre?

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• 17:07Pablo Torre?

  So before we proceed here, guys, I just need to disclose to any of our new viewers out there, including any potential celebrities, that's what her army is.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  No.

• 17:16Speaker 04

  Her army is called the celebrities?

• 17:18Pablo Torre?

  They're celebrities.

• 17:19Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  Tell me now.

• 17:21Pablo Torre?

  We are, how dare you, Pablo Torre Finds Out is on the record as being a pro Kelly Clarkson podcast insofar as we did an episode in 2024 that was kind of devoted in part to how pretty much any song she has covered on her television show, which is now over, was better than the real version that the original artist sang. If you're talking about American Idol, Mount Rushmore, Kelly Clarkson is obviously the George Washington. I think it's four Kelly Clarksons, to be honest. It's kind of a boring mountain, but you're like, actually worth it? And if you don't know the ballad.

• 17:54Speaker 03

  Rubin's stutter just raised from history. Sorry, 2004 was a hit, okay?

• 17:59Speaker 04

  Also, you earlier referred to her as a former American Idol, but is being an American Idol a bit like a Marine in which you are always an American Idol?

• 18:08Speaker 03

  Or a Nick. Once a Nick, always a Nick.

• 18:10Pablo Torre?

  That is why Amin is here to compare Kelly Clarkson to Othello Harrington.

• 18:16Pablo Torre?

  But if you do not know the ballad, as Amin put it, of Kelly Clarkson herself, she is basically a rags-to-riches story. Growing up in Texas, where Wyatt Snack also grew up.

• 18:27Speaker 04

  Sure, yeah. And that's how she got to where she is now.

• 18:30Speaker 06

  I've always had like three or four jobs. If I wanted something like a car, I had to buy it. After I went idol, people were like, oh, she's a millionaire. No, I wasn't. It's still a hustle, like every bit of it. At 42, it's still a hustle.

• 18:42Pablo Torre?

  Did you say Etsy? Oh my God, I like all of my money goes there.

• 18:48Pablo Torre?

  But the place Kelly Clarkson was trying to spend her money on the afternoon of Saturday, October 10th, 2026, was Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, not far from the BQE. In this screenshot, we are looking at the security footage we have exclusively obtained from inside Art of Play, the magic shop at the center of this viral controversy. I'd like you to tell me, where is Kelly Clarkson?

• 19:11Speaker 03

  I'm looking around and I maybe one of these people towards the back? I, I, I don't, I can't see her. Yeah, I'm gonna say no, she's not in this picture.

• 19:25Pablo Torre?

  Wyatt, one of the first things I noticed from this footage in this shop is that everyone here is kinda abiding by a similar dress code. Uh, if you can help us describe what you see here as a long time Brooklyn resident yourself.

• 19:40Speaker 04

  Sure, it's, it's a lot of sweatshirts. We got, we got a lot of folks in sweatshirts. Uh, we got a lot of folks in, in hats and it's all very kind of J Crew casual with a little bit of that Zoomies store vibe. A lot of skate jeans that are just a little too baggy where I'm like, how do you ride a skateboard like that? Cause that's just, that's so much wind draft that you're dealing with right there. You need a speed suit if you're gonna do some tricks.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  I can't even.

• 20:14Pablo Torre?

  The fit is very relaxed, even baggy in this store.

• 20:18Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 20:19Pablo Torre?

  And what you eventually see when you play through the actual tape, I'd like to roll here.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  Okay, oh, is that her? That's her with the oversized blazer and the satchel.

• 20:30Speaker 04

  And the hair in the bun.

• 20:31Pablo Torre?

  Well, no, what you see is that at 2:49 PM, a woman wearing a grayish baseball cap and sunglasses and a yellow T-shirt and those baggy jeans and sneakers with a fall raven backpack walks into the shop.

• 20:45Speaker 03

  She's tiny!

• 20:46Pablo Torre?

  What is she doing as we're watching this footage?

• 20:49Speaker 04

  She appears to be browsing. She's now at a shelf, she's picked something up, which that is something that the shop, they say on all the, on all the shelves. It's, they, they say, pick it up, play with it, except for the bird. Everything else, pick it up, check it out. She's looking at stuff.

• 21:07Speaker 03

  Kaleidoscope or what is, what is she?

• 21:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, it looks like she's looking through a kaleidoscope.

• 21:11Pablo Torre?

  I mean, this is what Kelly Clarkson, by the way, had said in her tweet to more than 45 million people. Quote, "Just drove all the way to Brooklyn."

• 21:18Speaker 03

  All the way.

• 21:19Pablo Torre?

  "To check out this store I thought looked really rad and had a few things in mind to buy." "And literally was looked at as if I couldn't afford it and was told he could find something comparable for me." "Wow dude, you're an idiot and just lost a huge sale," end quote.

• 21:30Speaker 03

  She's really going to town on this kaleidoscope, man.

• 21:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:34Pablo Torre?

  We're gonna try our best to not edit anything out here.

• 21:37Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 21:38Pablo Torre?

  But as the shop gets busier and busier over time, what I do wanna do is switch security cameras here.

• 21:47Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:47Pablo Torre?

  Because there's another angle in store that we have exclusively obtained.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  So the first angle was as people are walking in through the door, you're seeing their backs. This one is the reverse angle, so this is from the back of the store, looking at the entrance directly.

• 22:04Pablo Torre?

  And at 2:52 PM, this is just three minutes after she entered the store, Kelly Clarkson finds herself standing in front of what Wyatt?

• 22:14Speaker 04

  Molly the bird, Molly the automaton bird.

• 22:18Pablo Torre?

  And I wanna show you the previous angle for a second, just because at the top of your screen, you can see right behind the number four in the timestamp.

• 22:28Speaker 03

  Uh-huh. Oh, there it is, yeah, there she is.

• 22:31Pablo Torre?

  Just to clarify, she's peeking over the leaf from a fig tree.

• 22:34Speaker 04

  A very, a very healthy fiddle leaf fern.

• 22:37Pablo Torre?

  I mean, just very, uh, well lit, well fed.

• 22:41Speaker 04

  I tried to, I tried to take care of one of those, killed it in two weeks.

• 22:45Speaker 03

  Huh.

• 22:46Pablo Torre?

  What I wanna do now though is get to the split screen that I think will help see both angles at the same time. Because what you see in front of Molly the bird is that she gets the attention of the aforementioned shopkeeper in question. This is the dude that she referenced, called an idiot, said that he was treating her like Julia Roberts' character in Pretty Woman. And I just wanna note that his appearance also, Amin, seems very of a piece with everyone else here.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  Yes, very Brooklyn chic. He's got a T-shirt and some khakis or brown pants of some sorts. He's got the dad hat, he's got the, I have either an astigmatism or just a great personality type glasses. And what kinda shoes are those? It looks like.

• 23:38Pablo Torre?

  Sneakers of some kind.

• 23:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, but like, they're like skateboarder sneakers. I wanna say like some, some dunks maybe, who knows?

• 23:44Speaker 04

  I wouldn't have necessarily clocked him as the shopkeeper because he is dressed pretty casual. He looks like he could be a shopper as much as he could be the shopkeeper.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  I, I gotta say, I've watched Pretty Woman a lot. Watched it recently, great movie, great movie. Love Julia Roberts, love Richard Gere. But in that scene, Julia Roberts walks in, in the original scene where she walks in and gets rejected service, she's dressed as for her profession, right? It's, I think it's like cutoff jeans, shorts, and then like the thigh high boots that are, uh, PVC or whatever, that, that material, right? Patent leather and kinda like, you know, her shirt's tied up and so.

• 24:28Pablo Torre?

  Mean gross, increasingly specific as if he doesn't remember this.

• 24:32Speaker 03

  But, but the idea is that she looks out of place from the typical clientele of this store establishment. Here, Kelly Clarkson looks exactly like everyone else who's in the store.

• 24:49Speaker 04

  Including the shopkeeper.

• 24:51Speaker 03

  Including them.

• 24:51Speaker 04

  She's talking to.

• 24:52Speaker 03

  So in order for this kind of like classist kind of, uh, profiling to occur, she would have to appear to not be like everyone else and that's clearly not the case here.

• 25:04Pablo Torre?

  So this shopkeeper is wearing the grayish hat, talking to Kelly Clarkson, also wearing this grayish hat. We cannot hear what they're saying, of course, these cameras do not have audio. But you see Kelly Clarkson pointing.

• 25:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, she's pointing at Molly as she looks at the shopkeeper and the shopkeeper is kind of nodding and, and it's like he's telling her something and she's looking at it and looking back at him and is, I guess, trying to confirm something, it looks like.

• 25:33Speaker 04

  And he just pointed to something like, uh, he makes a point at something, not Molly itself. Maybe it's how Molly works, maybe it's.

• 25:46Pablo Torre?

  That, that sign that says, "Do not touch."

• 25:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, maybe it's a sign that says, "Don't touch." But he seems to be pointing to indicate something which is, yeah, part of this, this conversation.

• 25:57Speaker 03

  I'm, I'm sorry, I gotta reset something because a, a central part of this controversy that was a follow-up to that original tweet is that it was for sale and here's the price tag, $15,000. But you two have been to the store and seen Molly up close and personal. Can we confirm that there is or is not a price tag next to that particular automaton?

• 26:19Pablo Torre?

  Well, I do now, to Amin's point, wanna have Wyatt read Kelly Clarkson's follow-up tweet on Sunday.

• 26:27Speaker 04

  Cool, cool, sure, it wasn't for sale. That's the narrative art of play is gonna go with thumbs up emoji. So the whole conversation we had when I asked you if it was for sale, whilst pointing to the price tag hanging on the wall with the title, "Singing Bird," didn't happen? As you elevator eyed me, saying in a condescending tone, quote, "Yes, it's for sale, but it costs $15,000. So if you'd like me to find something comparable for you, I can," end quote. That all never happened and now it's not for sale. Okay, cool.

• 27:12Speaker 04

  So you're not only rude, you're also a liar. Got it, checkmark emoji.

• 27:19Speaker 03

  I love the addition of the emojis, like I don't think it lands quite as well if I say, just say, "Got it." Oh, I'll do a checkmark right here.

• 27:26Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, now!

• 27:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, in, in my furious typing, I'm gonna go to the part in my phone where I have to switch over to emoji and then go and scroll through because the checkmark is not the first one.

• 27:40Speaker 03

  No.

• 27:40Speaker 04

  The first one is.

• 27:42Speaker 03

  Is it in a frequently used pile?

• 27:44Speaker 04

  Oh, that's also very true.

• 27:44Speaker 03

  Maybe she does this a lot.

• 27:46Pablo Torre?

  This is the sort of journalistic question.

• 27:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:49Pablo Torre?

  That we need to be asking ourselves.

• 27:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, you need to find that out.

• 27:52Pablo Torre?

  Well, this is what I have found out about the price tag in question. Because in response, the store has since clarified that the $15,000 price tag, which was hanging on the wall, as she says, refers to the only other version of Molly, the automaton bird in existence. Remember, we had the video from before in which Adam Rubin is saying there are only two of these things. And this only other version of Molly, the automaton bird, is in the possession of the Seattle-based artists that they work with, who created her by hand. The aforementioned.

• 28:25Speaker 03

  Bliss Kolbe.

• 28:26Pablo Torre?

  And therefore, the other Molly is not in the shop to take home. Because again, this Molly is drilled into the wall and is the opening act of all of their close-up magic shows that they do. And you can go and see Molly perform before each of them. But right now, over there, they have a comparable other singing bird automaton, engineered by those German clockmakers, that they do have in store, which costs $2,000 instead of $15,000. None of this is exactly cheap.

• 28:57Speaker 04

  No.

• 28:58Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 28:58Speaker 04

  Do we have a picture of that $2,000 automaton?

• 29:03Pablo Torre?

  Well, what I wanna do first, Wyatt, is show you that in this interaction, Kelly Clarkson and this shopkeeper, they, they part ways before.

• 29:17Pablo Torre?

  Kelly Clarkson can even see the bird that Wyatt just asked about. Before she learns that it costs $2,000. You can now see it, right? The whole interaction lasts seconds. And she goes off into the corner. The shopkeeper goes in the other direction and what happens?

• 29:37Speaker 04

  He's pointing, but her back is turned. He seems to be looking in her direction and pointing as though, if you're interested in getting a bird, there's this one here. But yeah, she's now looking at the back where there are a bunch of different playing cards that they designed that are for sale.

• 29:59Pablo Torre?

  Now, I mean, what happens right after that?

• 30:01Speaker 03

  Now, she turns around and he's now talking to another customer. A guy in a tan shirt and a white hat.

• 30:08Pablo Torre?

  Yet another guy wearing a grayish baseball cap and t-shirt and jeans. And sneakers, incidentally. Now, Kelly Clarkson.

• 30:17Speaker 03

  She passes Molly, goes back to the shelf with the kaleidoscope that she can't get enough of.

• 30:21Speaker 04

  And put it back.

• 30:22Speaker 03

  Puts it back on the shelf.

• 30:23Pablo Torre?

  Now, we'll pause it here because I just got to point out that now that the shopkeeper is engaged with this other customer, who is wearing a gray hat and a t-shirt as well.

• 30:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:34Pablo Torre?

  And is now standing next to another guy wearing a gray hat and a t-shirt as well.

• 30:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:39Pablo Torre?

  It's gray hats all the way down.

• 30:41Speaker 04

  It really is.

• 30:42Pablo Torre?

  So I want to point out here as well that that time that the shopkeeper pointed off to the corner to the automaton fit for a sex worker is the last time that he will even look at Kelly Clarkson in the seconds that remain in this video. Because he gets pulled out to talk to the other customer and then his customer's friend. They're now standing by the counter. And Kelly Clarkson, meanwhile, who has put the kaleidoscope and the other stuff she was holding back on the shelves, is headed to the exit. And right now, I just want to timestamp this. We are.

• 31:19Speaker 03

  2:54.

• 31:19Pablo Torre?

  2:54 PM and 6 seconds. This is, again, she entered the store minutes earlier. And what happens next with Ms. Clarkson at the door?

• 31:32Speaker 04

  She's clasping her hands. She heads to the exit. She turns around and seems to be saying something to the person behind the cash register. There's a lot of gesticulating and she's walked out and he's, seems to be gesturing to the bird.

• 31:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:51Speaker 04

  She doesn't seem to want to hear whatever he has to say.

• 31:55Pablo Torre?

  I mean, this guy has not interacted with her at all before. This is a different guy from the shopkeeper. There are two customers at the front of the desk. There's a dude with the Afro next to a woman and they're like at the counter.

• 32:06Speaker 04

  The woman you thought was Kelly Clarkson.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:09Pablo Torre?

  Kelly Clarkson is now standing behind the woman I mean, thought was Kelly Clarkson and is giving the guy behind the counter who works at the store a piece of her mind. And again, we can't hear what they're saying, but you can see what the energy seems to be.

• 32:23Speaker 04

  I mean, it's a lot of gesturing where it seems as though she's upset. I'm not a lip reader. This is where we need, like, you could kind of do some lip reading there, but there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of gesturing, a lot of gesticulating, a lot of like throwing the shoulders forward and back in a way that would suggest this person is upset and wants to let you know.

• 32:47Speaker 03

  She does the, the two-handed, kind of the Trump thing where when he talks, he does the two-handed, kind of flat hands, pointing in the direction, then points at herself two hands, right? And then there's a hands up, almost thriller dance style. And she's like, whoop, like, kind of like, oh, I can't touch it or I don't know.

• 33:06Speaker 04

  With a sassy shoulder shrug. There's a little sass.

• 33:09Pablo Torre?

  It's almost a LeBron silencer, but she stopped short of tilting her palms down.

• 33:14Pablo Torre?

  The body language of the customers at the counter, as well as the guy behind the counter. Everyone seems kind of baffled in terms of how their bodies are moving.

• 33:27Speaker 03

  All right, so then.

• 33:28Speaker 04

  The black guy kind of clocks it, but clocks it in a way where it's like, yeah, glad it's not me.

• 33:35Speaker 03

  So, so, yes, he does. The woman, after Kelly Clarkson has walked out, sharply turns her head around like, what did she just say?

• 33:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:45Speaker 03

  That's her body language. The brother definitely did the, okay, this is white people on white people. So I just.

• 33:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's like, oh, good. Okay, yeah, yeah. This is, this is an equal opportunity Karen moment and I'm, I'm, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna be here and not move so that the bear doesn't see me.

• 34:02Speaker 03

  My name's Bennett and I ain't in it.

• 34:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:05Pablo Torre?

  What I want to do the math on here is how long Kelly Clarkson was in this store. Because as explosive as the tweets were and the saga has become and the morality play became, she was in the store for a grand total of 4 minutes and 50 seconds. And the blow up that has become the subject of a national discourse is the boats passing in the night kind of dynamic that you just saw. It seems, where the people in the store, by the way, if you continue to watch the video after that, they don't even really huddle up to talk about any of this.

• 34:38Speaker 03

  No.

• 34:39Pablo Torre?

  They, they, if you play it on fast forward, and we will, they just go about the rest of their jobs. And what you're left thinking about, I suppose, is just the anatomy of like, how the [bleep] did we go from this footage to this misunderstanding or miscommunication? That's what we're all debating.

• 35:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:02Pablo Torre?

  We have reached out to a rep for Kelly Clarkson requesting comment about the security footage and what we saw. We have not heard back, not immediately. We will post a response if we do get one.

• 35:11Speaker 04

  I've reached out to Justin Guarini.

• 35:13Speaker 03

  From Justin to Kelly.

• 35:15Pablo Torre?

  But what I can't imagine here is that something, which is not in question, is that she felt offended, right? Like, that, that part is very clear.

• 35:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 35:25Pablo Torre?

  She felt disrespected, perhaps. She is, again, as we heard earlier, this woman who grew up poor, working three jobs at a time, long before she won eight daytime Emmys. And so I am left thinking about the store employees in the aftermath, who just seem to have no idea what had happened, let alone who it happened to. And you mentioned what happens when she leaves the store. Well, there is, I mean, one more security camera angle that I want to show you. This is the Orville Nix film to our super producer tape.

• 35:59Speaker 03

  Yes. Okay. Wow. The phone comes out immediately. Wait, do we have a timestamp on the tweet?

• 36:06Pablo Torre?

  We do. The tweet was sent at 3:09 PM Eastern.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 36:12Pablo Torre?

  So.

• 36:13Speaker 03

  15 minutes later?

• 36:14Pablo Torre?

  15 minutes later.

• 36:16Speaker 04

  On the drive back from Brooklyn, perhaps.

• 36:19Speaker 03

  You know what this is? This is a lot of editing. I was like, oh no, what's the right emoji I can throw in here to bring this all home?

• 36:35Speaker 01

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• 37:16Speaker 01

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• 37:55Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithgemini. The youth mental health crisis is growing and social media is a major driver. Kids are spending up to nine hours a day on screens, often unsupervised, and studies

• 38:38Speaker 01

  show a direct link to anxiety, depression, and even suicidal thoughts. That's where Gab comes in. Gab offers safer phones and watches for kids with no social media, tailored to every age.

• 38:50Pablo Torre?

  The right tech at the right time, or tech in steps. From GPS tracking-enabled watches for younger kids to phones with parent-enabled apps for teens, each device allows kids to more safely grow their independence. Visit gab.com/getgab and use code GETGAB for an exclusive offer. That's G A B B dot com forward slash get gab. Gab, tech in steps. Independence for them, peace of mind for parents.

• 39:27Pablo Torre?

  In terms of what happened when Kelly Clarkson walked off with her phone in hand and sent what she sent to now, you know, 45 million people who saw it. I can report what it's been like a bit to be this local magic shop, right? So she sends that at 3:09 PM Eastern last Saturday, within minutes of the post. Of course, as you might imagine, Amin, as a person on the internet, there was a flood of accusations, of threats. People started calling the shop. Their previously pristine Google rating was temporarily overrun. And not only were the employees' personal social media accounts attacked, their family members', their accounts got swarmed as well. And in fact, the store's neighbor, an art school for kids,

• 40:11Pablo Torre?

  got doxxed in large part because influencers like this almost immediately showed up.

• 40:17Speaker 04

  We're here in Brooklyn and the [BLEEP] boy arts in play, which yesterday they disrespecting racial profile Kelly Clarkson, the famous Kelly Clarkson. So I'm gonna see what they gotta say, what this [BLEEP] is about, bro.

• 40:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, we need some answers. This is facts news. For what happened yesterday to Kelly Clarkson at this shop.

• 40:38Speaker 05

  Yeah. How you, what you guys got to say about that? We're not commenting at this time, but we'll be releasing a statement shortly. I mean, I need some answers. This is all the facts.

• 40:49Speaker 05

  She said she was racial profiling at the shop. Oh, you good?

• 40:54Speaker 05

  Oh, you call 911?

• 40:57Speaker 04

  I'm telling you, we in that neighborhood. Why you calling 911? I'm right here.

• 41:02Speaker 04

  I look dangerous to you? She said I look dangerous. We're definitely in that neighborhood right now. They locking their doors.

• 41:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, they definitely racial profiled her. [BLEEP] arts in play. This shop is not for the people.

• 41:19Speaker 03

  Even though everything about this [BLEEP] annoy me, there's something just so damn endearing about someone who [BLEEP] up every name. Kelly Clarkson. He said arts in play.

• 41:29Speaker 04

  When that video started, that is not what I would have. He is not who I would have profiled as a Kelly Clarkson fan. And to that, I owe that person an apology. I racially profiled you

• 41:44Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 41:44Speaker 04

  as not being a Kelly Clarkson fan, where I will take some umbrage is that she was racially profiled in what was a store full of white people.

• 41:57Pablo Torre?

  These are the incentives of the internet. And that video, by the way, at last count, watched approximately 400,000 times on Instagram, 10,000 likes, more than 1,500 comments. But that is a guy who's gaming the algorithm.

• 42:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 42:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:11Pablo Torre?

  And so, look, after all the research we've done here, all the footage we've reviewed, what this episode is about, to me at least, is a celebrity seemingly unprompted activating an army of fans, sicking them on a store that, as you saw in the video, does not have any security, other than the security camera, I guess, the footage that we have obtained, and is on any given day, including the day Kelly Clarkson was there, and including in the video that the influencer posted, just like hosting kids from the neighborhood also. I mean, that's, in part, I would imagine, why they locked the doors on this guy with a camera who like stormed in and why they apparently feel genuinely afraid about all of this. And again, we await comment

• 42:55Pablo Torre?

  from Kelly Clarkson and her camp about this footage. But, I mean, Wyatt, she's been famous for almost 25 years.

• 43:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  More than half her life.

• 43:04Pablo Torre?

  She knows how to monetize and galvanize her audience.

• 43:08Speaker 04

  Well, and this is the part of it that troubles me is you had a bad experience at that store.

• 43:16Pablo Torre?

  Leave a review.

• 43:17Speaker 04

  But the moment you mobilize your social media audience and the moment you engage that, that is a power. And I feel like, like if I were ever to do subway takes, like this is, this feels like one of those things where if you are a celebrity, if you get some level of audience, there should be a DMV where you have to learn how, you've got to go to driving school because that is a power and you know what you're doing. You know, the minute you say, this person hurt me, this place, I didn't like how I was treated here, and then you name it? You know that you are mobilizing all these people.

• 44:02Pablo Torre?

  Whether you're Beyonce or Taylor Swift or BTS or any, or Donald Trump.

• 44:08Speaker 04

  Or Donald Trump, any of those people.

• 44:09Pablo Torre?

  Anyone with an army. By the way, an army of 8.8 million followers on Twitter that she posted to twice, right?

• 44:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 44:16Pablo Torre?

  And then also on Instagram, 8 million people, because she put in her stories as well.

• 44:21Speaker 03

  See, there's another layer to this, right? Because what the followers, what they subscribe to in a situation like this specifically is the cloak of relatability. Meaning, oh, Kelly Clarkson did what any of us would do. I have a friend named Megan who's in our group chat, who's very pro Kelly Clarkson. And she says, one time Southwest did me dirty and I complained and I ended up getting a voucher for it, right? And so, in my friend Megan's mind, Kelly Clarkson, just like me. Where, yeah, you're upset by the service and so you complain about it on Twitter. And as a result, the customer service comes back and makes you whole in some sort of way. The difference is, number one, Megan, I love you. You're not Kelly Clarkson. You don't have 8 million followers.

• 45:04Speaker 04

  You don't have the pipes.

• 45:05Speaker 03

  Right, so, exactly. And you don't have the pipes. And then the second thing, and this is perhaps more important, that's not Southwest Airlines.

• 45:13Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 45:13Speaker 03

  That's not American Airlines. It's not Target. That's not Costco. That's not a massive, multi-billion dollar conglomerate. It is a small, locally-owned shop that sells curios for crying out loud.

• 45:26Pablo Torre?

  And so what we're really saying is that I think it seems quite logical, reasonable, for Kelly Clarkson to consider the consequences of her voice, of those pipes, right? And this interaction at the store that she was in for 4 minutes and 50 seconds, the store that wanted to sell her some $2,000 automaton instead of a $15,000 one. The follow-up question is, does it feel, based on what we know, does it feel like they deserve all of this [BLEEP]?

• 45:57Speaker 03

  In reality, this is a class warfare kind of thing. But it's the opposite. You aren't the underdog. You are the ruling oppressive class, in essence. By, you know, treating these people, again, they're not on your level financially in any sort of fashion, to behave in that way is the entitlement of the rich. And we talk about this a lot with the Kawhi Leonard, Steve Ballmer thing. The idea, obviously, we're talking about billionaires in that story, but the idea that, hey, you know these rules that y'all have set in play for society? Yeah, a bunch of broke people made those rules. I have money, those rules don't apply to me.

• 46:35Pablo Torre?

  I think what we're grappling with is, yes, who is allowed to get what they want? And what do they have as a means of getting it that other people don't? Other people who are left to deal with all of the consequences.

• 46:51Speaker 04

  But I think that's why I'm asking, what is the intention here? Because again, for your friend Megan, it is, if I do this, I can presumably get my money back.

• 47:00Speaker 03

  Right.

• 47:01Speaker 04

  If you're walking out of a shop with 8 million social media followers and you're saying, I'm gonna go to them, like, that to me is the question that I'm like, do you just wanna, do you just want them to destroy this business?

• 47:19Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 47:20Speaker 04

  Is that, is that the thing?

• 47:21Pablo Torre?

  You want revenge, it would seem.

• 47:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:23Pablo Torre?

  That is what this whole thing feels like to the store. And it's dark, right? When you get to this part of the story, it's kind of dark. This is how the internet behaves. This is how celebrities are aware that it behaves. This is what they do anyway.

• 47:39Speaker 04

  And this is why they need a DMV for this [BLEEP].

• 47:42Pablo Torre?

  Well, as I try to drive us home here, I am glad to report that there is silver lining to this scandal. Because something I found out, guys, after investigating this whole celebrity versus store clerk throwdown that wasn't, on footage at least, is that in fact, there was one bird device still available, right?

• 48:06Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 48:06Pablo Torre?

  Wyatt asked about it. And while it is true that Kelly Clarkson didn't even get to see her quote-unquote comparable $2,000 consolation prize, this automaton for a sex worker, pretty woman style, the good news is that you guys do.

• 48:26Pablo Torre?

  Because here with us-

• 48:28Speaker 03

  No!

• 48:28Speaker 04

  Whoa!

• 48:31Speaker 03

  You don't have it. It's heavy.

• 48:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, wow, that's got some weight to it.

• 48:35Pablo Torre?

  I am now happy to introduce to both of you guys PTFO's new shop, Birds.

• 48:43Speaker 03

  Whoa!

• 48:45Pablo Torre?

  Designed by German clockmakers.

• 48:47Speaker 03

  Ah.

• 48:48Pablo Torre?

  Meet the $2,000 automaton that Kelly Clarkson did not want at all. So, for the price of a MacBook Pro-

• 48:57Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 48:58Pablo Torre?

  You do get not one bird, Ms. Clarkson. You get two. Can you please describe what you guys see?

• 49:05Speaker 03

  It's designed to look like a birdcage, I believe, because the shape of the glass-

• 49:10Speaker 04

  The cloche.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  Yes, the containing device there.

• 49:14Speaker 04

  The cloche.

• 49:14Speaker 03

  You have, is that what it's called?

• 49:16Speaker 04

  I learned that word and now I have to use it whenever I see it, yeah. It's under a glass cloche.

• 49:22Speaker 03

  There are two birds. One is red, one is yellow. They look exactly the same, but they're just different colors with black beaks and little black tops and then some black tips on the ends of the tails. And they're on a little plastic plant of some sort with a red flower. Underneath where the birds are, there is a very complicated looking, almost like a, what's a Rube-

• 49:44Pablo Torre?

  A Rube Goldberg device?

• 49:45Speaker 03

  Rube Goldberg device, yeah.

• 49:46Speaker 04

  Gears, yeah, a lot of brass gears and other things.

• 49:51Pablo Torre?

  So we decided to name these two birds Julia and Robert.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 49:57Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 49:57Speaker 03

  I thought you were gonna go Kelly and Clarkson. Or Clarkson.

• 50:00Speaker 04

  I thought it was gonna be Justin and Kelly.

• 50:02Speaker 03

  Oh, that's, I like that one.

• 50:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, from Justin to Kelly.

• 50:05Pablo Torre?

  Look, I love this $2,000 automaton.

• 50:11Speaker 03

  We got, is it, does it work?

• 50:12Pablo Torre?

  Well, the thing I gotta say first, though, is that we are going to do something that will also hopefully bring a smile to the people in our audience. Because we are going to auction off Julia and Robert and this German clockmaker automaton that is beautiful to our audience. We're going to even allow all the celebrities out there

• 50:35Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:36Pablo Torre?

  to bid on it. And it's gonna be auctioned in honor, I mean, of the Kira Fund.

• 50:41Speaker 03

  Oh, that's terrific. That's terrific.

• 50:43Pablo Torre?

  Which is named, of course, for our good friend David Sampson's late daughter,

• 50:46Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:46Pablo Torre?

  Kira Sampson, who died from glioblastoma at age 28 in June of this year. We're gonna try and find a cure for this horrible brain disease. And the link's gonna be in the bio, in the show notes. And, yeah, I hope it finds a good home.

• 51:01Speaker 03

  You know, if this were like a nice tidy little Disney movie, Kelly Clarkson would buy it. Would be the highest bidder and just, hey, look, everyone has a bad day.

• 51:13Pablo Torre?

  I do wanna make a sales pitch to Ms. Clarkson, to anybody else who's interested, even vaguely. Because, I mean, you asked how this thing works, and thanks to the German clockmaker engineering here, you see the bellows, the black part, which fill with air. You see the gears which spin. And the whole thing is so meticulously made with care. It is all analog. It is not digital in the least.

• 51:43Speaker 04

  No batteries.

• 51:43Pablo Torre?

  No batteries, no wires. In this age of the internet and technology making all of us insane,

• 51:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:50Pablo Torre?

  this feels like a bit of, you know, an old-school antidote.

• 51:54Speaker 03

  Buddy, you're saying a lot of words. I just wanna know, do the birds sing or not?

• 51:58Speaker 04

  My bird automaton also, no batteries.

• 52:02Pablo Torre?

  I mean, in fact, much like the celebrity who didn't want to even consider purchasing

• 52:09Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:10Pablo Torre?

  this automaton, it can get a little wound up.

• 52:13Speaker 03

  Oh, on the bottom.

• 52:17Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. It's like a little key. He's turning it. It's on the bottom of this device. And now he places it down gently.

• 52:25Pablo Torre?

  They do have some amazing pipes.

• 52:39Speaker 04

  That's the positive tweet storm.

• 52:50Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.

• 53:17Speaker 04

  The youth mental health crisis is growing, and social media is a major driver. Kids are spending up to nine hours a day on screens, often unsupervised. And studies show a direct link to anxiety, depression, and even suicidal thoughts. That's where Gab comes in. Gab offers safer phones and watches for kids with no social media, tailored to every age, offering the right tech at the right time, or tech in steps. From GPS-tracking-enabled watches for younger kids to phones with parent-enabled apps for teens, each device allows kids to more safely grow their independence. Visit gab.com/getgab and use code GETGAB for an exclusive offer.

• 53:58Speaker 04

  That's G-A-B-B dot com forward slash get gab. Gab, tech in steps. Independence for them, peace of mind for parents. Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work, around the work, and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. With a Discover Cash Back Card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases.

• 54:53Speaker 02

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