#693 - Consumer Advocate Lindsay Owens

Lindsay Owens, Ph. D is a consumer protection expert known for her investigations into price gouging and manipulation. Her new book “Gouged: The End of a Fair Price- and What That Means for Your Wallet” is available now. Lindsay joins Theo to talk about the shocking technology companies are using to get you to pay more, how the rise of AI is creating a corporate surveillance state, and real ways the consumer can fight back. Lindsay Owens: https://www.instagram.com/lindsayowensphd/ ------------------------------------------------- Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner @CelsiusOfficial https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ Shopify: Take control of your income. Start your free trial at http://shopify.com/theo Chime: Join the millions who are already banking for free and sign up now at http://Chime.com/THEO Modiphy: Get 50% off the last website you’ll ever need at https://modiphy.com/THEO ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: [email protected] Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Mail stuff to: ATTN: TPW PO BOX 40137 Nashville TN 37204 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend X: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Trevyn https://www.instagram.com/trevyn.s/ Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Producer: Andrew https://www.instagram.com/bleachmediaofficial/ Producer: Halston https://www.instagram.com/halstonrays/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Theo Von?

  You ever realize that you spent your entire morning thinking about lunch? It's 9:00 AM and somehow I'm already in negotiations with myself about how I'm gonna spend $20 on a sandwich at noon. And then I eat it, or you eat it, or somebody eats it. And then an hour later, you're just standing in the kitchen worrying about what you'll do for dinner. And that's one reason why I've been into Huell. The Black Edition Powder is a complete meal you have instead of food, not a shake on top of food. Their powder starts at less than $3 per meal, has 40 grams of protein, and mixes with water or milk in about 30 seconds. I like Huell's shakes because they're clean and it's quick.

• 0:41Theo Von?

  I just want to make sure I have everything I need to keep going the way I want to keep going in a healthy manner. So with Huell, basically lunch went from a daily logistical problem to a thing I can solve in about 30 seconds. Make healthy eating simple. New customers get an exclusive offer of 15% off online with my code WEEKEND at huell.com/weekend. That's H-U-E-L.com/weekend. Thank you to Huell for partnering and supporting our show. She's a consumer protection expert, known for her investigations into price gouging and online price manipulation.

• 1:22Theo Von?

  She has a new book called Gouged: The End of a Fair Price and What That Means for Your Wallet. Um, I learned a lot and I'm thankful for her time. Today's guest is Ms. Lindsay Owens.

• 1:53Theo Von?

  Getting scammed is starting to feel like one of the most American things in the world. Like, that's our apple pie now, it seems like.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:00Theo Von?

  You know? Um, Lindsay Owens, the author of Gouged.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:05Theo Von?

  Thank you so much for joining us today. You are a kind of a consumer advocate and a watchdog.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12Theo Von?

  You had a group called Groundwork Collaborative, which does what exactly?

• 2:16Speaker 01

  We're a think tank in Washington DC. And a think tank is sort of a silly word that only people in Washington DC use. But basically, we do research and investigations, including investigations of corporate America, to try to influence policy, to try to help policymakers know exactly how to pass laws to stop us from getting ripped off, to help policymakers see what's happening to America on the ground.

• 2:39Theo Von?

  Yeah, because everything feels like you're getting ripped off now. It feels like our country's getting ripped off, the people are getting ripped. It feels, even animals, I've seen animals. You know, people, it's just like, it's, it's become like an infection that we're just being taken advantage of at every possible point.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:56Theo Von?

  What got you involved in investigating this?

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, one thing I say about price gouging and getting ripped off is it is absolutely coming for every line item in the household budget. It's coming for your rent, it's coming for your groceries. And I know you were just joking about animals, but absolutely, like, pet food prices are way up. Um, the companies that control the pet food market really have us over a barrel these days. So it really is coming for our vacation, airline tickets, everything. I started looking into price gouging basically in 2021, when inflation started. And I wasn't alive during the last period of high inflation. And I was sort of like, hmm, what is this inflation? And what is it gonna mean for us? Like, how is it gonna change the economy? How is it gonna change our psychology as consumers? Are we just gonna be anxious that prices are gonna go up forever for the rest of our

• 3:43Speaker 01

  lives? Um, and I started looking at what companies were saying about inflation. And that's when things got pretty interesting, because what I noticed is, you know, their prices are going up too, right? Like, if you make a product, the input costs, the stuff that you have to buy to make your stuff, those prices are rising too.

• 4:01Theo Von?

  Like, the fixed costs for companies?

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I thought, okay, if companies' prices are rising, they must be pretty stressed about inflation. And what I found, when I listened in on what the companies were telling their investors and their shareholders, is they were not worried about inflation at all. Like, they were gonna pass along all of their rising costs, and they were gonna use the fact that we all expected prices to go up to pass along even more than their rising costs.

• 4:27Theo Von?

  Wow. Um, just so we know, like, in your book, there's a lot of different terminology. There's price gouging, dynamic pricing, um, algorithmic pricing, surveillance pricing. Let's go through, what is, first, just so people know, what is price gouging?

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, price, the legal definition of price gouging is when a company or an individual overcharges you during an emergency. So you've got a hurricane, and you've got the last four gallons of water, you know, you charge $100 a gallon, right? That's the legal definition of price gouging. I also think most Americans have, like, a duck test version of price gouging, right?

• 5:01Theo Von?

  A duck test?

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, it quacks like a duck, it walks like a duck, it's a duck.

• 5:05Theo Von?

  Right.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Like, you know when you're being ripped off. Like, you know when someone's cheating you. Like, we intuitively have a sense, like, this price doesn't sit right with us.

• 5:13Theo Von?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  And I, you know, I think it's fine to use the phrase price gouging in those scenarios as well.

• 5:19Theo Von?

  Yeah, and now even, it seems like, I don't know, it feels like everything is in cahoots these days. Like, if a larger entity owns not only a, a weather channel, but they also own a chain store, and then they also own, um, a media outlet, then they can create a narrative that there's a storm coming or something, they can, then they can adjust the price, like, they can just do it all themselves. That's, it even feels like it's gotten that dark. Um, what is, uh, dynamic pricing?

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so dynamic pricing is when a company changes prices based on market conditions. So let's say there's a lot of demand for a World Cup ticket or a concert ticket. Um, you know, the company will increase the price, because they know there are a lot of different people looking at that same ticket.

• 6:03Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  And they think they can charge it to you.

• 6:06Theo Von?

  Like, is that something you see with Ticketmaster?

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Ticketmaster started using dynamic pricing in 2011, which was the same year that Uber started using dynamic pricing. Like, when I was a kid, you stood in line for concert tickets.

• 6:18Theo Von?

  Right.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  And like, if there were two tickets left, like, the last two people in line got the tickets at face value. They didn't like, stop and say, okay, there's 60 people left in line, who's, like, we're gonna sell this ticket, last two tickets to the highest bidder.

• 6:32Theo Von?

  Right.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Right, like, that didn't happen. You just got the last two tickets at face value. And now, they almost always auction them off, right?

• 6:40Theo Von?

  Is that necessarily unfair? It's their, is it their tickets? Or it's the artist's tickets?

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, um, you know, you can decide if you think it is fair to auction tickets off to the highest bidder, right? It's a decision that you can make.

• 6:52Theo Von?

  Right.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  If you're using dynamic pricing. And there are a lot of economists who will tell you that auctioning off tickets is the most efficient way to allocate scarce resources. Because the person who's willing to pay the most probably wants the ticket the most, and they should get the ticket, right? Um, but I think most Americans disagree, and they think that everyone should have an equal shot at a ticket, right? They like a first come, first served model, or a line. They like a lottery model. Sometimes, you know, you put your name in a hat, and then the first 100 people get plucked out.

• 7:25Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  And that's another way to allocate a scarce resource that feels more fair to a lot of us. But these days, you know, more often than not, almost always, you're gonna see dynamic pricing, and you're gonna see, you know, what is effectively an auction. But I, I think for me, the really crazy part is now companies are using dynamic pricing in all sorts of areas where there isn't scarcity, right? They're just like, changing prices in the grocery store.

• 7:51Theo Von?

  Like, what do you mean by that?

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Well, Walmart is installing electronic shelf labels in their, um, stores. And by the end of 2026, every Walmart in the country will have electronic shelf labels instead of paper stickers.

• 8:05Theo Von?

  Are you serious?

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:06Theo Von?

  So it means, so they're not gonna have just the price on there anymore? What is an electronic shelf label?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  It's a digital display.

• 8:12Theo Von?

  Okay. Um, digital shelf label is a modern tool for everyday low pricing.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Oh, wow, low pricing.

• 8:18Theo Von?

  A modern upgrade to a longstanding promise. Digital shelf labels, and this is on the Walmart website.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is a little, this is the Walmart take on their electronic shelf labels.

• 8:28Theo Von?

  Digital shelf labels are simply electronic price displays that replace paper tags on the shelf edge, similar to the digital displays customers have seen for years at gas stations.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:36Theo Von?

  Prices are still set the same way they always have been centrally by Walmart, following our everyday low price strategy, with an associate reviewing approved changes.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:46Theo Von?

  Um, what, what problem do you see with, uh, these, um, DS, with the, with the?

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Digital shelf labels?

• 8:53Theo Von?

  Yeah, DSLs, yeah.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Look, um, in my view, electronic shelf labels are the digital infrastructure to price everything in the economy dynamically. Um, so here is the concern. And, you know, Walmart has been pretty clear that they're not planning to do this. But the concern is, you know, it's hot outside, let me increase the price of ice cream. And I can use an algorithm at headquarters that checks weather patterns around the country, and matches weather patterns at specific retail locations, and hikes the price. Or there's a winter storm in an area, let me hike the price of soup. Let me hike the price of hand warmers, things like that.

• 9:32Theo Von?

  Have we seen evidence of that yet? Like, is there any proof that Walmart has done that already?

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's really hard to know exactly what Walmart is doing. And they've, they've denied using the shelf labels for dynamic pricing, but also, not all the stores have the dynamic pricing or the shelf labels yet, right? And so, at the end of the year, the technology will be there to do something really different with pricing in the future.

• 9:54Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Look, we've also looked into Walmart's patents, um, the types of technologies that they're building in Walmart's headquarters, and taking the trouble to try to get the rights to, which is what a patent is.

• 10:06Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  And what we've found is that they are filing patents for things like scan-and-go technology, where you can scan items on your phone that connect to electronic shelf labels and change pricing.

• 10:20Theo Von?

  Like, give me an example of what that even looks like. So I could scan an item on my phone?

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Scan and Go technology is like a way to kind of not have to go to the checkout line.

• 10:27Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Right? So you can actually just like scan the items on your phone as you're in the store and then just stick them in your cart, right? And then you can take your phone to the checkout and, and basically finish the transaction.

• 10:40Theo Von?

  Okay, got it.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  But the patent that Walmart filed, the example that they themselves gave was certain items, once you put them in your cart, they expect you to buy complimentary items and they'll change the prices of those items.

• 10:53Theo Von?

  I see. So you buy this, you also have to buy this?

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Well, the example they gave is if you buy tuna, they'll change the price for mayonnaise.

• 11:01Theo Von?

  Oh, I see what you're saying. And they've admitted to that?

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Well, they, they have patented a technology to do that.

• 11:07Theo Von?

  I see what you're saying.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  So it's in writing with the US Patent and Trademark Office. They have said that they're gonna, they're not gonna renew the patent when it expires, but it doesn't expire until 2039. So.

• 11:19Theo Von?

  And by then, yeah, we'll all be full of like some pricey tuna salad.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. It's gonna be expensive. Lunch is gonna get more and more expensive. Yeah.

• 11:27Theo Von?

  Oh, God. And back to like Ticketmaster, where are you seeing, like, like, I know that Ticketmaster is owned by Live Nation, is that right?

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:37Theo Von?

  And Live Nation also owns a lot of venues. Does that allow for more manipulation within that space? Or what is, because you see a lot of, bring something up about that, Trevin. Do you have any, there's always articles about that. Was that, oh yeah, Ticketmaster and Live Nation had monopoly over big concert venues, a jury finds. A jury, when was this? This is April of this year. A jury has found that concert giant Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary had a harmful monopoly over big concert venues, dealing the company a loss in a lawsuit over claims brought by dozens of US states. A Manhattan federal jury deliberated for four days before reaching its decision Wednesday in the closely watched case, which gave fans the equivalent of a backstage pass

• 12:22Theo Von?

  to a business that dominates live entertainment in the US and beyond. What is it saying that they found?

• 12:30Theo Von?

  The civil case initially led by the US federal government accused Live Nation of using its reach to smother competition by blocking venues from using multiple ticket sellers, for example.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  They want to be the only seller in town, right? And they want to make sure that you don't have competition, right? You can't get tickets from multiple venues, or you can't get tickets from multiple different ticket purveyors for the same show.

• 12:52Theo Von?

  So they're thinking if they own the venue and they own the ticketing company, then they'll just put the tickets right for sale on their own ticketing site, which allows them probably to have more possibility to manipulate pricing if they want to.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Look, the, it is very hard to gouge you or to overcharge you if you can walk across the street and get a better deal.

• 13:13Theo Von?

  Right.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  And so, competition and having more options in the economy is gonna be a great way to keep prices more competitive. Because, you know, comparison shopping is how this works, right? Let's say you go to venue A and you're like, huh, like, the price seems a little high. If you can go across the street to venue B and get a better price, you'll, you'll go to venue B.

• 13:35Theo Von?

  Right.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  And then venue A says, hmm, like, everyone's over in line at venue B today. I wonder what's going on. Oh, maybe my prices are a little high. And he has to lower his prices.

• 13:44Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  But when you have no competition in the economy, or little competition in the economy, you're totally captive. You're over a barrel. And you're subject to whatever pricing strategies, whatever pricing setup, like, the take rate for the artists is influenced by this too, right? You're subject to whatever Ticketmaster decides. You're really at their whim.

• 14:04Theo Von?

  And in this specific instance, what did they, what did they find? And then what can we do from here? Let me see. On April 15th, 2026, after four days deliberation, the Manhattan jury found that Live Nation and Ticketmaster had illegally maintained monopoly power. As of October 19th, the case still hasn't reached a final resolution. The coalition of states that one has asked the judge to order Live Nation to sell off Ticketmaster. That's a requested remedy, not an order already issued.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  I mean, this would be the best outcome, right? If Live Nation and Ticketmaster had to split back up. And so it wasn't one giant monopoly where they had control of the venues, control of ticket sales, all wrapped up in one.

• 14:44Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  And instead, Live Nation and Ticketmaster had to compete with each other and were separate entities.

• 14:49Theo Von?

  Well, it seems like, it seems like that's what the people want, right? Like, people have been angry at Ticketmaster for years. I know that Pearl Jam had, like, that was a thing years ago where it was like, we're not selling our tickets on there.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, Pearl Jam.

• 15:00Theo Von?

  I, I know Zach Bryan was doing a thing where he was having people enter, enter like a, put their email in and enter a lottery on one of his tours.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:10Theo Von?

  Yeah, Grunge Rock tightens Pearl Jam battle with the business in the 1990s, even filing an anti-monopoly complaint with the US Department of Justice, which declined to bring a case then. But how do, like, whose fault is this at this point? It's obvious what the people want. How would something actually change in this case?

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, in this case, the Department of Justice would need to step in and use the authority they have to break up monopolies, right? And to separate these two entities. And that's really what people are looking for. That's what these cases are about. And unfortunately, for decades now, the federal government has basically been Wall Street's playground, right? And corporate America runs roughshod over everything that would help you and I in Washington. And, you know, I worked on the Hill for years and I saw it firsthand, right? You'd be making some progress on some policy that would protect Americans' pocketbooks, right? Let's say we wanted to stop the price gouging or stop the surveillance

• 16:10Speaker 01

  pricing. And, you know, it takes a while for a law to wind its way through Congress. And during that time, like, armies of lawyers and lobbyists on behalf of corporate America will descend on the Capitol like vultures. And they will start getting to work. And they have a whole host of methods. One thing they do is they try to delay it. Because obviously, the more time they have to kill it or weaken it, the better.

• 16:41Theo Von?

  Right.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  So they'll, you know, say, oh, like, this is a really interesting bill, but it's not quite ready yet. We need to take a closer look at it, you know, or they'll say, oh, you don't quite understand this policy very well. Like, let our lawyers have a minute to take a look and, and see what they can find. And we'll, you know, we'll help you make it better, right? Or they'll just like load it up with loopholes. So it's basically Swiss cheese by the end of the process. Or they'll insert some seemingly innocuous little bit of language that actually like completely eradicates and like makes the policy useless, right? You know, they'll take people like me to lunch or like buy us drinks, right?

• 17:19Theo Von?

  Or massages.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:21Theo Von?

  Or something.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. I've never gotten a massage, but like, even like when I announced that my book was coming out, my phone started like blowing up with lobbyists in town that I hadn't talked to in decades.

• 17:36Theo Von?

  Just sniffing around, huh?

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Just like, hey, Lindsay, like, congrats on the book. What a big accomplishment. Like, I'd love to take you for a drink. And then I would Google them. And I would find that they were working as a lobbyist for Walmart, or working as a lobbyist for DoorDash, or Instacart, or any of the companies in my book. It's just, it's just this incredibly insidious way in which the deck is really stacked against us and in favor of corporate America. And I, I just don't think it is gonna change until we really, you know, stand up to the fact that corporate America runs Washington.

• 18:11Theo Von?

  What are the ways that we would stand up to that? Like, what is an actual standing up to that look like? I feel like people want to.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:19Theo Von?

  It doesn't seem like it matters who you vote for. Nothing seems to matter what people want anymore. What, what can we actually do, do you think? Or what does a solution hopefully look like over time?

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I think there are a handful of things we should do. The first thing that I would like to see is, I'd like to see Congress actually use their investigative powers to crack down on corporate America, right?

• 18:44Theo Von?

  And that's the Department of Justice to do that?

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Well, like Congress, so, you know, they can hold hearings and they can call in CEOs. They have subpoena power. Like, they can call in the CEOs of Walmart and DoorDash and Instacart and all these companies that, you know, we have found to be, you know, running experiments on us to get better at overcharging us. And they can use their subpoena power to ask these companies, like, I want to know more about how you set prices. I want to know more about what these electronic shelf labels mean. I want to know more about what your new partnership with this pricing AI company means. And I think if Congress spent more time doing that, I think, you know, sunlight is a good disinfectant, for one. Also, I think it would inform the types of laws that they could pass to crack down on these practices.

• 19:30Theo Von?

  Do you think that Congress is just, they don't care? They're not interested? They're too in the pockets of lobbyists?

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 19:35Theo Von?

  Or that they're just too behind in the, even the understanding of stuff?

• 19:40Speaker 01

  I think it's a little bit of both. I mean, absolutely, the lobbyists are pushing hard to make sure that they're, the CEOs that they represent aren't in the hot seat, right? That's a big part of the job, is making sure that they don't get called before Congress. It's definitely the case that like, the gerontocracy is real and a lot of.

• 19:57Theo Von?

  Gerontocracy?

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Like.

• 19:59Theo Von?

  What does it mean?

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Old people running the country.

• 20:01Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Like, senators are too old, right? They don't understand AI technology, for example. Like, they don't understand the ways in which new technologies are ripping us off.

• 20:11Theo Von?

  They understand pityophilia, though, which is crazy. So that seems like a crazy practice. A gerontocracy is a form of government, society, and organization in which power is held by leaders who are significantly older than the majority of the population. Yeah.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Like, I don't know what the average age in the Senate is now, but like, you know.

• 20:28Theo Von?

  The over-under is Mitch McConnell, and it's not going well. That dude is half a nap away from a coffin.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  I mean, I remember once I was in a hearing, like, I was staffing the hearing and, you know, we're in the hearing room. And the hearing was over, so it was time to leave the hearing room. And I was like, why can I not get out the door? And it was because one of the members, like, his feet were not moving. Like, he was standing up, but he couldn't yet start walking. So we were all just like pretending it wasn't happening and just like standing there, you know, minding our own business. But, you know, it feels, it feels like a nursing home in there, honestly. You know, they're forgetting things. They're asking their staff to print out things to write. I mean, it is really time for, I think, a change. But, you know, to answer your question, like, you know, for one, like, members of

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Congress should not be trading stocks. Because, you know, it's a conflict of interest, right?

• 21:21Theo Von?

  For sure.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  If you're regulating an industry, you're getting all of this insider information. And then at night, you're like, oh, telling your wife, oh, hey, you know, buy Palantir or whatever.

• 21:31Theo Von?

  Go do this for me, yeah.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Like, you know, there is no need for our politicians to be wondering, oh, if I actually do something good for the American people, I might. Risk not getting reelected. Like, those two things should be aligned. Like, if you do good things, you should get reelected, right? If you make my life easier, if you make my life more affordable, like, I should want to reelect you. And when politicians are taking money from the very company that is literally, like, reaching its hand into my wallet, then their interests are at odds, right?

• 22:05Theo Von?

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• 23:35Theo Von?

  You know, the best business ideas come from people who are passionate about what they're creating. People who had an idea and a drive to make something happen. You know, we're always waiting for the right time to do something, like, start a business. The truth is, the best time is now. And Shopify can help. Shopify is, hands down, the best place to start and grow a business. It's the platform where you really own everything, your store, your community. It's easier than ever to start a business today with Shopify, because you can start from anywhere, anytime, anyplace.

• 24:20Theo Von?

  We use Shopify for our merch store. They've been great as we've added new products over the years and scaled up, or taken products off and scaled down. They take care of the logistics, so we can stay focused on the creative side. There's no better feeling than having something that is truly yours. Find out what it feels like to say, "That's my business", at Shopify.com/theo. That's Shopify.com/theo. I heard you say a little bit ago about experiments that they were running on consumers. What are some of those? And do you talk about those in your book?

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the craziest experiment that I talk about in the book is an experiment that my organization ran with Consumer Reports and More Perfect Union in December of last year.

• 25:09Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  And we ran an experiment on Instacart that exposed that Instacart was running experiments on millions of Americans while they shopped for their groceries.

• 25:18Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  So we recruited 400 secret shoppers. I mean, when I, I used to work retail, and like, you know, you were always in fear of the secret shopper, right?

• 25:27Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, dude. We had some drunk guys that were always, like, buying turtlenecks or whatever at our pizza place. And I don't know what it was. Anyway, that doesn't mean anything. But yeah, uh.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  So we, yeah, so we, like, hired these secret, like, we got these volunteer secret shoppers. And we said, all right, like, fire up the Instacart app, set your pickup location, like, you know, a Kroger in Nashville, Tennessee, for example. Buy these 23 grocery items, like.

• 25:57Theo Von?

  The same items?

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, exact same items. Like, get a dozen loose-urn eggs. Get a 16-ounce box of Frosty Flakes, right? Like, the store-brand Frosted Flakes, right?

• 26:05Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  It was normal stuff, like breakfast, lunch, dinner, deli meat, apples.

• 26:09Theo Von?

  Cheez-Its.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  I think we did, like, tostitos.

• 26:12Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Like, the normal stuff that you would buy, or maybe it was Ruffles.

• 26:16Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Okay, so it's 23 items. We said, put it in your cart, and then just take a picture. Like, take a picture of, of your.

• 26:24Theo Von?

  Of the cart.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Of a cart, so that we know, like, what your cart total was, and how much you were going to get charged for every item in your cart. And then we took all those screenshots, and we had the team enter them into a spreadsheet, and we just crunched the numbers. And what we found is that for 75% of the items in the cart, Instacart was charging different people different prices at the exact same time, for the exact same item.

• 26:46Theo Von?

  How were they basing the pricing on? Was it, was it just on where you lived?

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Well, by the way, the price differences, as much as 23%.

• 26:55Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  So this wasn't like a nickel or a penny. Like, you could be charged 23% more for a dozen eggs than me, which could be like a buck fifty for a dozen eggs, which is just insane. Eggs are already so expensive right now.

• 27:05Theo Von?

  Well, it's just not fair. It's like, what is the price of it?

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Right. Like, it used to be that if you and I went to the grocery store together, and we stood in line, and we both bought a gallon of milk, we would get charged the same amount.

• 27:14Theo Von?

  Right.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  And if we didn't, like, you and I would look at each other, and we'd, like, pull out our receipts, and we'd be like, one of us, you made a mistake. Like, one of us got charged the wrong amount.

• 27:22Theo Von?

  Right.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  And now, it's like, no, that's not a mistake. Like, that's the whole ballgame.

• 27:26Theo Von?

  And what was it based on? It was based on your location?

• 27:29Speaker 01

  So, we held all of that constant. So, same location, same store. What we learned is that Instacart, they basically admitted this in their response to us when we released the investigation. They were just running experiments to see how much they could charge us for every item in the cart. And so they were just testing the outer bounds of, like, you know, how much they could get away with charging for eggs, how much for milk. Like, you know, if you were making a sandwich, they were trying to test how much they could get you to fork over for every single item in the sandwich. Like, the deli meat, the mustard, the lettuce, the tomato, the, the bread, right? And, and actually, like, they admitted it. They said, oh, yeah, this is just like our, our typical A/B testing that we do to, like, make life more affordable

• 28:14Speaker 01

  for Americans who are shopping on Instacart.

• 28:16Theo Von?

  But they were letting people pay the higher prices? They weren't just having it be? Wow, that's not.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course. Like, they were definitely charging the prices in the experiment.

• 28:25Theo Von?

  And were they getting people's consent to do that? Do they have to have people's consent?

• 28:29Speaker 01

  No, you definitely didn't consent to this. And in fact, part of the reason that we knew that Instacart was doing this, like, we designed our experiment expecting to be able to expose their experiment, is because they had purchased an AI company called Eversight. And Eversight's entire reason for existence was that they built software to help companies run experiments on you without your knowledge. Like, that's the whole ballgame.

• 28:55Theo Von?

  Eversight is an AI-powered pricing and trade promotion optimization company. Eversight was acquired by Instacart in September 2022 to enhance its grocery pricing and trade promotion technology.

• 29:07Theo Von?

  Instacart faced regulatory scrutiny and public backlash regarding dynamic and inconsistent app pricing tests through Eversight, leading Instacart to wind down in the Eversight AI pricing tool. Wow, did you guys' findings help lead to that?

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:20Theo Von?

  Wow, congrats.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks. Yeah, two weeks after the study was released, they folded. And, like, right before Christmas, like, December 22nd, they put up a little blog post that was like, you know, maybe we got this one wrong. Like, from now on, like, two people who are shopping at the same store at the same time will pay the same price.

• 29:37Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. But look, this is like whack-a-mole, because there are so many other companies that are doing the exact same thing that Instacart is doing. Like, we just did, a couple of weeks ago, an experiment with the Today Show, where we had everyone buy Harry Styles tickets at Madison Square Garden on StubHub.

• 29:56Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  And the underlying ticket price was identical. Like, you know, we all bought the same seat, right? Like, row M, seat four, or whatever. And the underlying ticket price was the same, right? Like, the resellers were not playing games with prices. Like, they had a fixed price.

• 30:10Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  But StubHub was experimenting on how much they could charge in fees to different concertgoers. And some of the fee differences in this experiment were $60 difference. So, like, you could be charged $60 more for the, like, delivery fee, whatever that is. Like, they send you the QR code. I don't know what, like, they're delivering. But, like, you could be charged $60 more than me.

• 30:32Theo Von?

  That's gross.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  For the delivery fee. We have seen this when we have run experiments on Uber Eats and DoorDash, where we, like, sit in the conference room. I mean, this is like what you do at a think tank. You, like, you know, do research. So, we, like, order lunch, right? And we're like, what's going on with Uber Eats? And we'll all order the same item from McDonald's, for example. And what you'll see is that Uber Eats and DoorDash are running experiments on those delivery fees and service fees and things like that, charging some of us more than others for the, like, to deliver the exact same product to the exact same location.

• 31:02Theo Von?

  How are they determining that it's more to you, or that you will pay more? Like, how do they determine that I'll pay more for a McPhish or whatever?

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:10Theo Von?

  Than somebody else would pay?

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Well, this is a great question. So.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Over the summer, I testified for Josh Hawley in Congress.

• 31:19Theo Von?

  H A W L E Y?

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:21Theo Von?

  He's one of the guys I see investigating this type of stuff the most. He's a senator.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he really has no fear when it comes to holding corporations to account. And during the hearing, we talked about a patent that DoorDash had filed for what they called their agitation index.

• 31:41Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  And the agitation index was made up of 16 different factors, but it included how quickly you scroll in the DoorDash app, how jerkily you scroll in the DoorDash app, which I imagine was like, I don't know, like your blood sugar or something. You're really hungry or hangry and you're just like, you know.

• 31:57Theo Von?

  Oh, it's like, go, I need a damn McMuffin.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Like right now.

• 32:02Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  By the way, your phone battery was one of the variables because I guess if your phone battery is about to die, like you've got to get the order in, right?

• 32:09Theo Von?

  Oh, really? Yeah, like even if they know your screen, like your brightness is set really low, like this guy has 40 seconds to get a 10-piece McNugget.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Right. So like, he'll probably pay $40 for it.

• 32:19Theo Von?

  Right, so price up, up, up.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  So all of this went into their agitation index and they filed a patent that was going to allow them to connect the agitation index to the types of promotions that different users got, right? So whether or not you'd get a discount or something.

• 32:37Theo Von?

  Detecting user agitation application interaction. And this is on patents dot justia.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  And well, so interestingly.

• 32:47Theo Von?

  Spanish justice, I guess?

• 32:49Speaker 01

  We.

• 32:50Theo Von?

  What does it mean?

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Maybe it's Latin, I don't know.

• 32:53Theo Von?

  Justia. A method includes retrieving by the user device from a database on the user device, historical data and real-time client device data. The method includes determining an agitation score based on the real-time client device data and the historical data, and then performing an action based on the agitation score. So that is what the patent is for?

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 33:13Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Interestingly, I will say, you know, when, when, you know, Josh Hawley and I talked about this in, in Congress and, you know, it's like on the record, a couple of days later, DoorDash quietly withdrew the patent.

• 33:27Theo Von?

  Really?

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:29Theo Von?

  So all, some of this stuff, it's just, it's just shining a light on it.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 33:32Theo Von?

  Right?

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Like in the book, I tell this crazy story. In the 1990s, the CEO of Coke was down in Brazil, like probably thought no one was paying attention. It's like the 90s in Brazil.

• 33:43Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  And he gives an interview to a Brazilian magazine and he announces in that interview, or kind of, you know, brags about the fact that they are piloting installing thermometers in Coke vending machines so that they can charge you more for Coke on a hot day.

• 34:00Theo Von?

  Really?

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And even in the 90s, like before stuff went viral on TikTok, like, and I don't know if this was in Portuguese or whatever, it was in Brazil, like this went crazy viral.

• 34:10Theo Von?

  Is that a true story?

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Doug Ivesta.

• 34:14Theo Von?

  Doug Ivesta casually revealed that Coca-Cola was developing and testing a new vending machine concept equipped with internal thermometers and temperature sensors.

• 34:25Theo Von?

  Because consumers' desire for cold drinks increases in hot weather, so it is fair that it should be more expensive. The machine will simply make this process automatic. Wow. So they were thinking about this early on. Customers were furious, widely viewing the idea as predatory corporate price gouging and exploitation. Rival Pepsi-Cola seized the opportunity to publicly criticize Coke, calling the strategy "a scheme to exploit vulnerable consumers rather than benefit them."

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:49Theo Von?

  Following the swift global outcry, Coca-Cola quickly backtracked, claiming the concept was merely hypothetical and there were no concrete plans to deploy it widely.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, so he like pretended that it was just like a joke, like he wasn't actually planning to pilot these thermometers.

• 35:06Theo Von?

  Bring up a picture of that sick bastard who was thinking about doing that. Doug Ivesta. Let me just get a gander at this.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 35:16Theo Von?

  Guy.

• 35:19Theo Von?

  I bet if you put a thermometer in his ass, it would read that he's a real greedy little soda baby. That's what I would say. Anyway, that's a little bit much, but.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Well, you know, this happened with Wendy's too.

• 35:30Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah?

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Do you remember that?

• 35:32Theo Von?

  Yeah, dude, I freaking used to like Wendy's so much.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:35Theo Von?

  My mom would take me there sometimes.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  I know, you gotta love a Frosty, french fries dipped in the Frosty.

• 35:39Theo Von?

  But dude, the Frosty's changed or the fries changed, it's different now.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  What's the, what's the difference? They're worse?

• 35:44Theo Von?

  I think they're worse or I'm getting better.

• 35:48Theo Von?

  No, I don't have any, I have any idea. Wendy's launched its Hot and Crispy Fries nationwide in mid-September 2021, marking only the second time the chain changed its core french fry recipe since 1969. Huh.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  It was maybe during the pandemic?

• 36:03Theo Von?

  That's true. The cut features a unique geometry with a thicker side. Dang, so they got that thickness on her. For heat retention and a softer interior, plus a narrower edge for extra crunch. Dude, I just want a fry.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

• 36:19Theo Von?

  Dude, what the heck? God made it how it's supposed to be. Just heat it up and pass it over the counter.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Pour the salt on it and get it in the box.

• 36:28Theo Von?

  Yeah, you guys are over there, whatever you guys are doing, torturing it, it sounds like.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  So there's this concept called shrinkflation, which is when the company charges you the same amount or even more for an item that shrinks, right? Like they start putting fewer potato chips in the bag, for example.

• 36:44Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  And there's a similar concept called skimpflation. And that's when companies charge you the same amount or even more for like a worse product, like a shittier product.

• 36:54Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah. They've had a, I used to buy these Stant socks and they were the best socks in the whole world. And then a few years later, they were not as good. So I'm not saying they did anything, but my feet feels like they did.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and like salad dressing companies will like start using less and less oil and like sub it for water, right? Because it's cheaper or like ice cream, you have to be careful with ice cream now because sometimes you're not even buying ice cream. You're buying like a frozen novelty treat because they've swapped out all the dairy for like coconut solids and things like that.

• 37:22Theo Von?

  And it's only just to save money?

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 37:24Theo Von?

  God.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, cutting back on product quality. And the thing that's frustrating is like, they don't tell you, right? Like they don't tell you they're changing the recipe or they don't tell you that they've swapped these ingredients out.

• 37:33Theo Von?

  Yeah, well, it's crazy too. It's like, we used to put the water in at home because we were poor. Like we'd put the water in and now you're putting the water in on your side?

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:43Theo Von?

  Cause you're rich?

• 37:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:44Theo Von?

  Like, it's just like, dude, that was our trick, at least let us do it.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Right, extenders, right? Like you're making your meat go further by like mixing it with milk or like making your salad dressing go further by, you know, it's almost gone, you like stick some water in there, shake it.

• 37:56Theo Von?

  Put some water in there, put a little bit of milk in there.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:00Theo Von?

  Or to shake it enough that there's more in there suddenly.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 38:03Theo Von?

  That was our thing. If you shook something just enough, a little bit more would be in there.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, like one more squeeze.

• 38:08Theo Von?

  Yeah. It's just like, and also what people don't even realize is just the stress of all this, Lindsay. The stress of like walking down an aisle and just feeling like, dude, I walk into a place now and I just feel like I'm getting fucked and I just want to go sit in my car.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:24Theo Von?

  I don't know. Think people just want things to be somewhat fair, I think. I interrupted you though, a few minutes ago, you were talking about Wendy's.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. By the way, I think this is all about fairness at its core. Like this isn't about economics, this isn't about technology, this isn't about public policy. This is about the fact that pricing in this country is unfair now.

• 38:42Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Like the price tag enabled fairness, right? Like it enabled predictability. Like if you're on a budget, you need to know how much groceries cost week to week. And if prices are changing minute by minute in the grocery store, that makes budgeting impossible.

• 38:55Theo Von?

  That's a great point.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  And the lack of predictability in pricing now is making life hard for a lot of us. I think the other thing that pricing allowed, stable pricing allowed for is comparison shopping, right? If you're on a budget, you needed to look at a couple of different stores to find the best deal.

• 39:12Theo Von?

  Right.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  And if prices are changing minute by minute, by the time you get across the street to store B, the price in store A has changed again. So it does feel unfair. And by the way, the whole reason we have the price tag is because the Quakers felt like haggling was unfair.

• 39:27Theo Von?

  So that was like a historical thing. Well, it says in the Bible too, isn't there about, um, what does it say? That God threw out the money changers or something? Or what does it say about that? Trevin, you know what I'm talking about?

• 39:39Speaker 03

  Temple in Jerusalem?

• 39:41Theo Von?

  Yeah. Jesus Christ drove the money changers out of the temple in Jerusalem. And what did the, the Quakers, what did they say?

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Well, you know, haggling, they felt like was unfair because when you haggle, different people paid different amounts for the same item. And they felt like all men were created equal under God and everyone should be paying the same amount at the checkout line, was basically their thesis. And so in the late 1800s, they did away with haggling at their markets and charged fixed prices. So everyone paid the same amount and you knew how much you were going to pay. You had some predictability. And then John Wanamaker, who was a Philadelphia department store owner, who built one of the first American department stores, he was like, I'm going to put a price tag in my, in my store. And he did, and he was the first person to do it. And we've had it for 150 years. And so.

• 40:30Theo Von?

  So that you knew what it was, right? Let me read that. John Wanamaker was an American merchant and religious civic and political figure. He was born in Gray's Ferry section of South Philadelphia.

• 40:42Theo Von?

  Let me see, what did he do? In 1861, Wanamaker opened his first store in partnership with his brother-in-law Nathan.

• 40:50Theo Von?

  Uh, sorry, I said it like that. I don't know him, but I've had a brother-in-law and it can be risky. Nathan Brown. The store called Oak Hall was located at Sixth and Market Streets in Philly.

• 41:02Theo Von?

  Uh, Oak Hall grew substantially based on Wanamaker's then revolutionary principle, one price and goods returnable.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. So there was a fixed price and also he allowed you to return stuff that you didn't like, which was a big concept at the time.

• 41:15Theo Von?

  Wow. And what changed that concept over time?

• 41:19Speaker 01

  I mean, look, I think pricing has gone high-tech and companies have figured out how to reinvent the ripoff. It's not like a new thing, like ripping you off. It's been around for a long time.

• 41:28Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  But they're just using technologies to get better at it.

• 41:31Theo Von?

  Yeah. Well, that's one of the reasons why I like now, just to go to, there's a farmer's market that's on the corner. It's not even a farmer's market. It's just like, um, it's an Amish produce stand.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:41Theo Von?

  And they're open all the time, pretty much. And, uh, I'll just stop by there and I just get like the six or seven things. And the price is always the same. So maybe stores like that, maybe there will be opportunity for new, uh, just more localized stores, do you think? Like, how do we combat that? Because usually there's a way, like if, if somebody wants to do so much greed, there's another way, it seems like.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:06Theo Von?

  To be hopeful and, and, um, and for a new opportunity to come along.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I think the way that we get out of this is consumers get frustrated enough that some companies feel like they can cut a different path and actually gain a competitive advantage by being the kind of company that doesn't rip you off.

• 42:26Theo Von?

  Amen.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  By being the kind of company that uses fixed prices. And I know Aldi, for example, is like running commercials, basically saying like, we're not going to use electronic shelf labels. We're not going to rip you off. And I've got to think that's in direct response to the fact that so many Americans are pissed off at what's going on with Walmart, right?

• 42:44Theo Von?

  Oh, I like hearing that. Aldi. They have them in the Midwest.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:48Theo Von?

  They might have them more places, do they?

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're in DC now, which is where I am. So I know they're getting, they're getting around the DMV, the Maryland, Virginia, DC area.

• 42:56Theo Von?

  Yeah. I used to hear my grandma always saying, we're going to Aldi's or whatever. I don't even know if she went. She would just go smoke or whatever in the yard. But, um, but she said she went. But, um, anyway.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  So in the book, I have an example of the Savannah Bananas, which is like a baseball team. That's also kind of like a, it's like Magic Mike baseball.

• 43:14Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's getting a little crazy. You're starting to see a little more banana on some of these guys too. Look at the guy on the stilts, huh? That guy's got a little weener on him in the middle. I mean, what is that? Anyway, this guy's trying to stay away from these chicks, it seems like.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Is he signing autographs?

• 43:33Theo Von?

  Yeah, I think he is. Uh, but no, and that also might be a woman.

• 43:39Theo Von?

  Dude, yeah, you don't even know what's going on anymore. It's like they're, it's like, it's just dynamic crotching, it feels like out there. It's like you try, you think you got one thing and you got something else. But anyway, what were you saying about the Savannah Bananas?

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Well, they, you know, like, they're really popular.

• 43:54Theo Von?

  Oh, people love them. They sold out the Superdome in Louisiana, which, um, the Saints have even had trouble doing this season.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. Like they, they make real money, right? And there's real demand for the tickets. They don't use dynamic pricing.

• 44:08Theo Von?

  Really?

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:08Theo Von?

  Let's go.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:10Theo Von?

  How were they able to not do that?

• 44:12Speaker 01

  Well, they do a few things, but like the, the posted price is the price, but they have a lottery system. So if you want to get tickets and there are more people who want tickets, then there are spots. You know, you sign up and then people are basically randomly assigned to get tickets. So it means that some people don't get tickets, but what it does mean is the tickets don't go to the highest bidder. So it's not a stadium filled with the richest people, which is what happened with the World Cup, right? Like the tickets all went to the highest bidder and then you had all the like venture capitalists who had seats in New York for the World Cup games. And then you had some of the most passionate fans who were watching it down the street at a sports bar or like on the couch, right?

• 44:48Theo Von?

  Right. Yeah. How were they doing that for the World Cup? Do you know?

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. So for the first time in World Cup history, FIFA used dynamic pricing at the American World Cup.

• 44:57Theo Von?

  At the bequest of whom? What made that happen? Do you know?

• 45:00Speaker 01

  FIFA made the decision themselves. They felt like this is the US, the Americas. People have got money here. We're gonna like go for broke and try to basically bring in more revenue than we usually do at other World Cups.

• 45:13Theo Von?

  It says, uh, "By hosting across the United States, FIFA operated in a loose regulatory framework that permitted real-time algorithmic price fluctuations, unlike previous host countries with strict consumer protection laws." Ah, FIFA integrated its own official resale marketplace where it takes a 15% fee from the buyer and a 15% fee from the seller on secondary transactions. Wow.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, they did very, very well, but I think that it's a really good point, the, the US market. Because what they were really doing is saying, look, the US market is a seller's market.

• 45:46Theo Von?

  Right.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Right? Look at Ticketmaster, look at StubHub. Like the Americans are used to getting bilked for tickets. They're used to overpaying. They're used to dynamic pricing.

• 45:55Theo Von?

  Right. The US will allow.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 45:57Theo Von?

  The consumers who can't afford as much, it will allow them, uh, to be taken advantage of also.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. The US is fine letting poor Americans watch from sports bars.

• 46:09Theo Von?

  That's what I mean.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  Like we're fine filling our stadiums with the wealthiest Americans. That's how the whole country works.

• 46:14Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  That's how the NFL works. That's how the NBA works, right? Um, I, you know, it, it was basically FIFA saying, we're going to give the American people what they're used to. And we're going to make Ticketmaster level money or StubHub level money.

• 46:28Theo Von?

  Right.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Rather than regular kind of nonprofit FIFA money.

• 46:32Theo Von?

  FIFA pulled in a record-breaking ticket sales totaling approximately $3 billion for the 2026 World Cup. An increase of roughly 216% compared to the $1 billion generated from the ticket sales during the previous 2022 World Cup cycle in Qatar. Qatar. Wow. But then there's also the argument, you said that that's always how things have been throughout time, right? That the rich people get to do all the stuff.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. But like, it wasn't that way for FIFA at the last World Cup.

• 47:00Theo Von?

  Right.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  In the US, right? Um, and it, look, in all of these instances, you're making a choice, right? The company is making a choice. Are you prioritizing revenues and profits? I mean, FIFA doesn't really turn a profit. It's a nonprofit, but like most companies are for profit. Is profit your focus? Or are you prioritizing something else like accessibility? Right? Making sure that you, that everyone who wants to see, you know, the most passionate fans, the most loyal fans, working-class fans have a chance to sit in the stadium once in their life. I mean, these, you know, the World Cup doesn't come to the US frequently, right? It's once in a generation, you know, you have one shot at it, maybe your entire life.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  And, you know, they could have prioritized making sure everyone had a shot.

• 47:49Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  And instead they prioritized revenue. Um, and companies can prioritize fair prices instead of bilking us.

• 47:56Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Or a reasonable profit. Like we're not, you know, no one thinks that these companies are in this for their health, right? Like, we're not asking companies to sell, you know, a hamburger at a loss.

• 48:06Theo Von?

  Right.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Nobody's, nobody wants that. Nobody's advocating for that. But they're making decisions about how to charge you the absolute maximum they think you will pay for a hamburger instead of a reasonable price for a hamburger.

• 48:19Theo Von?

  And possibly a price that somebody else isn't even having to pay.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 48:23Theo Von?

  Right. Like a price that changes as you're walking up.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 48:27Theo Von?

  Based on even your attitude or your mood. Like what if you're walking up, you're smiling, they might, they might jack it up seven cents. You know what I'm saying? You got a smile tariff on you or whatever.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Okay. So this is real. Um, we have done a deep dive into Walmart's patents. And there are dozens of patents, um, over the last decade that Walmart has filed for cataloging all sorts of information about how you look. Um, biometric information, um, heart rate, they have patents for that. Glucose levels, they have patents for retinal scanning, things like that. They updated their privacy policy recently and it included biometric data. Like you're signing away the fact that they collect biometric data.

• 49:09Theo Von?

  What do you mean? Like even when you pull onto their premises or if you pull like, like how are they absorbing this biometric data?

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So this privacy policy was for online shopping. So this was mostly for online shopping, but.

• 49:19Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay. So here are a couple of the weirdest ones.

• 49:23Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Um, and we named them. So Walmart didn't come up with these names, but we just felt like they should be more excessively named. Okay. So the, the craziest one I think is the one called the Karen Patent. Which is Walmart has created and patented, or they, or they applied for a patent, um, to develop what they call an appeasement engine. And the appeasement engine is something that assesses your demographic information and what they refer to as your persona, a little hard to know like what all they're including in persona. And they use it to estimate basically how easy it is to get you to go away, which is why we call it the Karen Button, right?

• 50:01Theo Von?

  To get you to leave the premises?

• 50:02Speaker 01

  Well, without like getting a refund, right? Like, are you someone who's gonna raise a stink and we've gotta like give you a discount or a refund? Or are you something who we can like, you know, say, oh, I'm sorry, this happened to you today, ma'am, and you'll like walk away without asking for something? Or are you somewhere in the middle and like, we have to give you some pencil shavings, like a coupon for your next purchase or something like that?

• 50:23Theo Von?

  Wow. And they'll be able to know just on if you've been to the store before, what, what, what your behaviors have been like in the store, et cetera, stuff like that?

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a little hard to know, like, everything that companies use now, but purchase history is something that companies track, particularly for in-app shopping, right? They know exactly what you buy, which store you go to, you know, what you buy frequently. They use your location. They often can either estimate your demographic information, or sometimes they know your demographic information.

• 50:51Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  So things like your gender or your race. You know, in another one of these patents, they're taking pictures of your car to like measure the suspension change. So like, I guess if you buy a bunch of stuff, your suspension changes, right? The car's heavier on the way out. And so they're just like taking a look.

• 51:09Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's kind of perverse, just looking at your rear or whatever.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  A friend of mine-

• 51:16Theo Von?

  If you're looking at my rear suspension?

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 51:19Theo Von?

  Dude, what are you talking about? Look away.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is the parking lot profile. A friend of mine was saying that her, you know, her parents were divorced and they used to do the drop off in the Walmart parking lot, right? So like, you know, mom, mom would, mom would pick up, you know, little Liz from dad. And so like, obviously that, like Walmart would have clocked to like 75 pounds, like change in suspension, right?

• 51:44Theo Von?

  What a great interview show would just be interviewing the kids as they go between. How many kids like, were like, yeah, I guess at some point we like lived right outside of a Walmart or whatever, because that's where my parents would like, kind of switch us out at.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Do the switch, yeah.

• 51:58Theo Von?

  Because yeah, my dad would drop us off over there. They had a Burger Kings that had a, it had a playpen in it or whatever.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:06Theo Von?

  And he'd give the lady at the front $40 or something to watch us all day. I'm like, Dad, that lady doesn't even, this is a restaurant or whatever. And he's like, no, it's not. It's whatever you need it to be, you tell me. And we'd play in the play area for fricking six hours or whatever till our mother came. But, um, yeah, it says Walmart can set the price you pay based on how far you drive to the store or how much weight your car gains between when you enter the parking lot and when you leave. One patent application details how cameras in the parking lots could photograph vehicle suspensions on entry and exit to measure the gap between the wheels and wheel wells to infer whether the car got heavier from the customer's purchases. That's so bizarre. Why would they even want to know that information? Just to know if you bought stuff?

• 52:49Speaker 01

  I don't know. I mean, like corporate surveillance is getting, it's over the top, right? It's way outside the bounds of what it needs to be. Like Walmart doesn't need to know about my retina. They don't need to be connecting their Walmart app to my fitness wearables to know my heart rate. I mean, one of these patents says that they know your baseline heart rate and when your heart rate increases, so they can tell like what foods are exciting you. Like if you're in the ice cream aisle and your heart rate increases, you're interested in ice cream. Yeah. But like, this is just not information that Walmart really needs to know.

• 53:21Theo Von?

  Yeah, what? Let me see. Oh, this says pulse check. Walmart can tell your favorite Ben and Jerry's flavor by seeing which one makes your heart race. It may reveal which flavor the customer is more likely to purchase. But then how do they know which one you're looking at? Is there also monitors?

• 53:39Speaker 01

  So a lot of times if you look in a freezer door and you see one of those screens on the freezer door and you think it's just like an electronic, you know, advertisement, those often have cameras in them.

• 53:49Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they, they clock like how long you're standing in front of the freezer door, like how long you're dwelling. They might be able to pick out your, like if you're a man or a woman, how tall you are, if you're a kid or if you're older. There are a couple of companies now who sell that product and a lot of times they're in end caps too. So like that, those like displays at the end of an aisle.

• 54:09Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  If they have a virtual display, a screen, there's a good chance there's a camera inside.

• 54:14Theo Von?

  Well, sometimes on those end caps, and that's at the end of an aisle, when you're going around to the other aisle, um, they'll have like kind of hot, they'll have like collab products on there, things you've never seen before. They'll have like, um, peanut butter spaghetti or something, or like, uh, they'll have like barbecue flavored napkins.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that's a good example. The screen is right there, right? So there's a good chance there's a camera in the screen.

• 54:37Theo Von?

  Dang.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, two-way.

• 54:39Theo Von?

  Oh, that's crazy. Yeah, they'll have like brownie flavored Pepsi. They'll have like weird stuff they shouldn't have.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:47Theo Von?

  We couldn't even turn to the next aisle without wanting to see something else we could buy.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  The end cap, yeah.

• 54:52Theo Von?

  That's the most American thing ever. They'll have like sour cream and onion batteries or something, or they'll have like, just stuff that you shouldn't even have, the like, like barbecue broomsticks or whatever. You know, they'll have things that just like, you know, that they shouldn't even have, like peppermint flavored, uh, paper towels or whatever, or pomegranate slippers or something like that, or a lot of interesting stuff on the end caps. Anyway, go on.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  No, no, this is like, this is a big part of retail design, right? Like, I used to work in the mall growing up and, you know, this guy Victor Gruen from Minnesota, like, it's called the Gruen effect. He built malls to keep you shopping, right? Similarly, casinos are built to keep you gambling, right? Like, they'll use curved walls instead of straight walls, because if you have a straight wall, then you can like see the exit. But if you have a curved wall, you're sort of like gently sort of pushed to look inside, so you keep looking at the tables, you keep looking at the slots, right? And the same is true at the mall, like it's impossible to get to the escalator, it's impossible to get to elevator, the food court is like a 30-minute hike to the other side of the mall, because they want you to pass all the stores and keep shopping rather than get out.

• 55:59Theo Von?

  In shopping mall design, the Gruen transfer always, also known as the Gruen effect, is the moment when consumers enter a shopping mall or store surrounded by intentionally confusing layout, lose track of their original intentions, making them more susceptible to making impulse buys. It is named after Austrian architect Victor Gruen, who disapproved of such manipulative techniques. But if he disapproved of it, why'd they have it? Oh, in a speech in London in 1978, Victor Gruen disavowed shopping mall developments as having bastardized his ideas. I refuse to pay alimony to those bastard developments. The psychologists involved in these studies found that the size and appearance of such

• 56:43Theo Von?

  a shopping center have a special pull effect on customers. The moment a customer enters a mall and is overwhelmed by the size, intentional clutter, and glitz of the mall, they forget their original goals and become susceptible to sales manipulation. They become an impulse buyer. Supermarkets, for example, in the food industry also use the experience of the Gruen effect to slow things down, to direct attention when placing products, or to confuse the business through frequent remodeling. Oh, I see. So he had this theory, but then they, so why was he-

• 57:15Speaker 01

  It sounds like he felt guilty later in life and sort of came clean, right? And tried to like apologize for what he had, the havoc that he wreaked on the American shopper.

• 57:24Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 57:25Speaker 01

  But yeah, he was one of the architects of, of this design. I mean, another example is like, they always put the stuff that kids like on the bottom shelf. So like, when I go to the store with my toddler, it's like, you know, he immediately sees the like $75 like excavator at Target, right? Because it's right at his eye level, like on the bottom shelf or like the second highest shelf.

• 57:45Theo Von?

  So they do that, so they can hold it up to the parents?

• 57:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, because like, they want kids' products at kids' eye level so that they can like tell mom, like buy the excavator, right?

• 57:52Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:54Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, but everything about like supermarket design, mall design, retail design is like really carefully thought through, you know, to make sure you leave with as much as possible.

• 58:04Theo Von?

  We used to love the mall, dude. We used to go camp out overnight. We would camp out outside the mall in a tent. We would get tents and camp out out there and then go to the mall again the next day. The mall was cool. They'd always have like some dude, like some people pray, like wishing and by the fountains or whatever, you know?

• 58:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, fountains were great.

• 58:22Theo Von?

  Yeah. They'd always have like someone, we had like some dude wishing he wasn't gay over there and always throwing all his money in there. But I don't know if he was or not, I don't know how it played out, but people would be out there wishing they had a really nice fountain in there. But we would camp out, we would get dropped off on Saturday and we'd go to the mall, camp in the tents outside and go back in on Sunday.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  You were like a true mall rat.

• 58:44Theo Von?

  We loved it. It was fun in there, because you got to see stuff you couldn't even see, you know? Hello, business owners. Do you know how many visitors go to your website every month? Or how many become paying customers? When somebody pulls out their phone and asks Chad or Jim and I who to call, is your business showing up in the answer? If not, it's time to modify. With modify, you get a dedicated human designer, the fastest response time, and a team of seasoned experts that handle everything for you. I've been with modify since the beginning. They actually built my very first website and many others since. Sometimes I'll just think of an update and it'll already be done.

• 59:29Theo Von?

  That's what they mean by on-demand support. If you want results without the BS, go to modiphy.com/theo to receive 50% off your new website. That's M-O-D-I-P-H-Y.com/theo. M-O-D-I-P-H-Y.com/theo. Remember, that's modify with a P-H. They don't F around. What was the, what was the one we were just going over? Oh, yeah, the pulse check in Walmart. Customers would be tracked within the store using facial recognition on store cameras, drones flying around the store, or cell phone signals when you're connected to the store's wifi.

• 1:00:12Theo Von?

  Then data from the heart rate and glucose monitors could reveal how the customers feel about ice cream flavors. If pulse or glucose levels are different when a customer looks at two different ice cream flavors, it may reveal which flavor the customer is more likely to purchase.

• 1:00:28Theo Von?

  What? Why? Who cares? I'll just tell you if you ask me.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, this is the crazy part. And look, like Walmart, like I'm in a little bit of a fight with Walmart about this because they keep saying like, we don't do any of this just because, you know, we patent all of this technology, just because we talked to our investors about all of this stuff, just because 30% of our net operating income now is coming from our media business, which includes all of this data collection, doesn't mean we use it.

• 1:00:55Theo Von?

  And they wrote a response letter to you. Was it when your book came out or was it a study that you released? I saw that, that they wrote a response letter specifically citing you in it?

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they, they published an open letter from the CEO like three days before my book came out.

• 1:01:08Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  And then a week after my book came out, they escalated and they published a letter to me by name and they posted it on their website, which is pretty crazy. Like just, I mean, you just met me, like, why is Walmart like writing letters to me on their website?

• 1:01:24Theo Von?

  Cause you're doing good work. I'll tell you that.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  And this guy, Dan Bartlett is their like, um, he's their lobbyist, basically. He's their federal affairs flack.

• 1:01:33Theo Von?

  Let's get a gander at him. Bring up Danny Bartlett.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  He used to be the press secretary for Bush during the Iraq war.

• 1:01:39Theo Von?

  Anybody could have done that.

• 1:01:43Theo Von?

  Anybody could do that. You see that woman the other day, she didn't even know she wasn't a lawyer and they let her do it. If I meet one more lawyer, oh, Dan Bartlett, that's him right there. So he's okay if they do some of this stuff?

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  Well, he basically wrote a letter saying that like, I shouldn't be talking about their patents because just because they patented these technologies, doesn't mean that they're actually deploying these technologies in the store.

• 1:02:09Theo Von?

  Then what do you have these patents? That would be our question.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:02:12Theo Von?

  Why do you have it?

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  Also, like, I gotta be honest, I can think of a lot of things that I would rather Walmart's lab be cooking up.

• 1:02:18Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  Like, I would like for them to make better ice cream. I would like for them to make a Tide Stick that actually works and like removes the stain, right?

• 1:02:27Theo Von?

  Yeah. And shopping carts that if you're using drugs or whatever, you can take them out of the lot.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  Right. Don't lock up. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:02:35Theo Von?

  What happened to that, dude? The best thing, you used to be seeing your buddy across town. We had a cool guy who would put a sale on his, he used to sail before he got into opioids or whatever, and he'd have a cool sale on his cart. And he would be out there just riding the winds of, of, of the community. Pull back up, let me read this letter.

• 1:02:54Theo Von?

  A shout out to my boy who was out there. Hard to starboard, brother. That's what we'd say every time we saw him sailing by, hard to starboard. Dear Ms. Owens. Dude, they came for you here.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, right at me.

• 1:03:07Theo Von?

  Your recent public statements repeatedly mischaracterize Walmart's pricing practices and use of technology. They leave audiences believing Walmart uses or is preparing to use customers' personal information or changes in the weather to charge them more. Your account does not accurately describe our practices or our plans, so we're asking you to correct the record.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:27Theo Von?

  The facts are straightforward. We price products, not people. Walmart does not and will not use an individual customer's personal information, income, shopping history, urgency, or willingness to pay to set an individualized price.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then I responded because I felt like it shouldn't go unanswered. And so we put a response up on the website.

• 1:03:46Theo Von?

  What'd you say?

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  I mean, I said a couple of things. One thing I said is, you know, they're accusing me of creating confusion for the customer. And I said, the confusion is created by you because you say one thing in your patents, you say another thing when you talk to your investors behind closed doors, when you're in New York at the Goldman Sachs Retail Summit, and you can't stop bragging about all of these new technologies. And then you say something really different in your cleanup letters to me, right? When you get caught. And that's what's creating the confusion. And I also said, look, if you're serious about the fact that you're not planning to use any of this, there are some remedies. The first thing you can do is if a patent application is pending, you can withdraw it tomorrow. Like we saw that DoorDash did that, right? You can withdraw your patents.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  If a patent has already been granted, you can relinquish it. You can say, look, we got this one wrong. Like, we're not going to use this patent. Instead, they have only said that they will not renew one of the patents. They haven't addressed any of the others and that patent doesn't expire until 2039. So they're not moving quickly. And then the last thing I said is, um, you know, I think that they, at this point, just because of all the new technologies, the new privacy policy, the electronic shelf labels, like people are feeling really confused by the economy right now. It's like creating a lot of uncertainty for folks, but also new technologies and AI is scary. And if they want to create more comfort for their consumer, I think they should sort of open the hood and tell us how the pricing works.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  And maybe even do it with a third party because no one trusts them anymore. So bring in an auditor who tells us like, here's what the electronic shelf label, you know, algorithm is doing. You know, they have this new chatbot, Sparky. I don't know if you've used Sparky. So like in the Walmart app, they now have an AI assistant. And in their investor calls, and when they're at the retail summit with like all of the other big boys in retail, they keep talking about how Sparky cart totals are 40% higher than non-Sparky cart totals.

• 1:05:46Theo Von?

  Why? Why would they, why would someone pay more just because they're using Sparky?

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Well, they're buying more and they're buying more expensive stuff. And so it raises, I think, a really reasonable question, which is like, what's Sparky up to? Like, is Sparky steering you to higher priced items? Is Sparky upselling you? Is Sparky adding stuff to your cart? I mean, these are all questions that I think are important to ask in this new era of AI enabled commerce, right? Where people are using AI assistance in different retail locations or personal assistance. You know, we could be unleashing what I view as the most sophisticated snake oil salesman the world has ever known. Like when these AI agents start shopping and steering us towards higher priced products and going shopping for us, um, you know, I think there are some big changes afoot.

• 1:06:36Theo Von?

  It just, and do you think a lot of this is just powered by greed, really?

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Absolutely. Look, when, when I started studying the economy, cost cutting was always the major focus for companies, right?

• 1:06:47Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  How do we get our labor costs down? We'll like outsource their jobs abroad, right? With trade deals, we'll misclassify workers as gig workers so that we don't have to cover their health insurance. Like we'll fight minimum wage laws so that we don't ever have to pay you $10 and we can keep paying you $7. And that was the sort of standard form of like ruthless American capitalism. And now price hiking is also a part of the equation.

• 1:07:13Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  And charging you as much as you're willing to pay is the new frontier for corporate greed and corporate profiteering.

• 1:07:22Theo Von?

  Damn.

• 1:07:24Theo Von?

  God, I just want to go to another planet where it's different. You know, it makes you like, I don't know.

• 1:07:32Theo Von?

  I just don't even know.

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  You guys can edit out the most depressing stuff to keep it later.

• 1:07:36Theo Von?

  No, it's okay. I mean, most of this history of this podcast has been kind of depressing, but, um, but it's just like, I don't know. But maybe we're at the, maybe like, I don't know. Maybe something will happen to all these greedy people. Who knows? You have to think maybe something would happen. You know, like you're saying, shining a light on things is something that's starting to change things.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:08:02Theo Von?

  Let's get back to just some of the, um, some of the other types of ways that companies are using technology to increase pricing or to take advantage of consumers. There's something, it's called surveillance pricing. What is that exactly?

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. So surveillance pricing is a term that's more accessible than personalized pricing.

• 1:08:24Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  But personalized pricing is the practice of collecting information about you to determine exactly how much to charge you.

• 1:08:34Theo Von?

  Where are they collecting the information from?

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, the answer is almost everywhere. So they might be using your geographic information. We know that Expedia charges people more for the same hotel room in Manhattan if they log on from a wealthier part of the country. So if you log on from the San Francisco Bay area, they're like, oh, $300 more a night for that hotel room. Right? That would be one example. But it's not always like willingness to pay isn't always about how much money you have, right? Sometimes you're willing to pay a lot because you're desperate or because you need something urgently.

• 1:09:07Theo Von?

  Yeah, somebody could have passed away or you just don't have a choice.

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  That's such a good example. So JetBlue, um, there was a flyer who was trying to get to a funeral and he tweeted about the fact that the price for the airline ticket on JetBlue went up like $200 overnight. And he just tweeted like, hey dude, like, I'm just trying to get to a funeral, like what gives? And JetBlue's corporate Twitter account responded and tweeted at him, um, you know, sorry for your loss. Have you tried clearing your cache or shopping in incognito mode?

• 1:09:37Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  I mean, talk about like an insane confession in broad daylight.

• 1:09:42Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  Like, oh, by the way, have you thought about like trying to trick us so that we don't scam you?

• 1:09:47Theo Von?

  Yeah, dude. Have you thought about trying to trick us so you can see your friend off to heaven decently?

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:09:54Theo Von?

  That's crazy.

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  It's insane.

• 1:09:56Theo Von?

  Right here, it says, I love flying JetBlue, but a $230 increase, and this is from Nugget since 94. And shout out Nug. I love flying JetBlue, but a $230 increase on a ticket after one day is crazy. Crying emoji, heavily crying, not just a tear. I'm just trying to make it to a funeral. And then JetBlue said, try cleaning your cash and cookies are booking with an incognito window. We're sorry for your loss, dude. Actually, we're sorry, we just lost a little bit of money by giving you the truth.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  The tip.

• 1:10:26Theo Von?

  That's what they're so sorry about. Wow.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, look, the company came out later and said, like, whoever had the keys to the Twitter account misspoke and shouldn't have said that, and they definitely don't do this. But yeah, the company rep says the post was an error.

• 1:10:41Theo Von?

  That's unbelievable.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it was a pretty stark moment, like, and I think it does really show, like, you know, like, I have a toddler. Like, if my kid is sick, I'll pay $15 for children's Tylenol, right? Like, you've got me over a barrel. I'm desperate. I need something urgently.

• 1:10:56Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  So it's not always just going to be about soaking the rich. It's going to be about figuring out how to squeeze all of us a little bit more in every scenario.

• 1:11:05Theo Von?

  How are they getting all of this data?

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Unfortunately, we give a lot of it away. So when you sign into a loyalty program, I mean, that's just a data harvesting operation. That's all that is. Absolutely. I mean, initially, you know, they offer the perks and the freebies and the coupons. And maybe you can't even access the preferred pricing without logging into the loyalty program. But look, loyalty programs are doing two things. The first thing they're doing is hovering up all your data and selling it. 30% of Kroger's net operating income comes from what they call their alternative profits book of business. So this is not groceries. This is your data.

• 1:11:42Theo Von?

  Really?

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  Selling your data.

• 1:11:43Theo Von?

  So 30% of Kroger's profit comes from?

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  Not selling groceries.

• 1:11:49Theo Von?

  Not selling groceries.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  And it includes the sale of your data.

• 1:11:53Theo Von?

  That's a fact. It includes the sale of your data?

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, the sale of your data is big business at stores like Kroger. Look, loyalty program data is very comprehensive because, you know, you go grocery shopping twice a week, every week, for your whole life.

• 1:12:06Theo Von?

  Right. Trevon, do you have that? Let's play that real quick. Can we play? Is this thing long? It's 41 seconds. Let's play it.

• 1:12:11Speaker 04

  62 pages, 62 pages of personalized data on this one person based on his shopping history. Last year, Kroger earned over $500 million from selling, yes, selling the data that it harvests from its loyal customers and giving it to other corporations. You know, that accounts for 33% of its net income last year. A third of its income

• 1:12:39Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:12:39Speaker 04

  Came from selling the personal data of its own customers. Let me just say that again. Kroger made half a billion dollars by tracking its customers in store and online, and then selling that to other people.

• 1:12:52Theo Von?

  That's unbelievable. So if this is accurate, then Kroger, then almost a third of their business, then, according to that, if it's accurate, is selling your information. It's not even groceries anymore.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, selling groceries isn't enough to, like, feed the beast and keep the shareholders coming back for more. Got to figure out a way to increase our revenues every quarter and create more

• 1:13:12Theo Von?

  It's disgusting.

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  It's, yeah, it's absolutely disgusting.

• 1:13:14Theo Von?

  Who runs Kroger? Who's the CEO? Bring up this frickin' money gooner. Some guy.

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  Oh, new, February 2026.

• 1:13:24Theo Von?

  Greg Farran, a New Zealand businessman. Man, most of the New Zealand people I know are awesome people.

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  I know. I love the kiwis.

• 1:13:32Theo Von?

  I know. Dude, how could you be named after a piece of produce? And you not, and you not even trying to decently sell it to people? If you were Kiwi, bro, frickin' slang them at a fair price.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  Oh, looky there. Walmart and Air New Zealand.

• 1:13:47Theo Von?

  Wow, a New Zealand businessman who has served as a chief executive officer of Kroger since February 2026. He was previously the president and CEO of the American division of Walmart and was a chief executive officer of Air New Zealand from 2020 to 2025. Well.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  This is like the perfect resume for high-tech price gouging. Like, all of the tricks that companies use originated in the airlines.

• 1:14:10Theo Von?

  Really?

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  Like, they were the original inventors and exporters of all of the worst practices. Like, dynamic pricing started in the airlines. Unbundling, the practice of, like, selling you a seat on the plane, but then, like, you have to pay extra for luggage. You have to pay extra to, like, actually pick which seat you want on the plane. All of that started in the airlines and then has been exported to other industries. You know, I, I think the airlines are looking into surveillance pricing. I mean, it's been hard to pinpoint, but they're certainly partnering with a lot of companies who build surveillance pricing tools. So it stands to reason that that's where they're headed next. But the airlines are really pioneers of a lot of the worst pricing practices.

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  So it's interesting to see him go from Air New Zealand to Walmart, which has also built this media business that's, you know, they're not just selling groceries and not just selling clothes and not just selling, you know, detergent. They're now also selling your data with their media business. And then now to Kroger. It's, I mean, it's a, it's the exact type of resume you would expect for this new frontier of corporate price gouging and corporate profiteering.

• 1:15:19Theo Von?

  Oh, it's a lot, huh?

• 1:15:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it is a lot.

• 1:15:24Theo Von?

  But it all kind of goes in hand with where it feels like we're at in our country right now. You know, where it's like, it feels like, um, they're squeezing you for everything, you know? And the people that care just, something happened to them, you know? But the people, regular people still care, I think are still hopeful, you know? I don't think people are losing that, but, uh, that elected officials or that some of these people are gonna help us, or that even that big tech. Where's like some of these tech Robin Hoods that come along and are like, hey, I'm gonna do something different? Than just be like a greedy piece of shit or whatever, you know? Like, where, where does that come, like, like, I don't know, you would still hope that there's like, I don't know,

• 1:16:09Theo Von?

  somebody out there who, or something out there that's possible.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:14Theo Von?

  Well, and hey, I'm sitting here talking to one, so what am I even, I'm looking, I'm like, where are they? And here you are. So thank you, Lindsay, for being here with me today. As a consumer, we hear stuff like use a VPN, right?

• 1:16:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:27Theo Von?

  Using incognito mode.

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:28Theo Von?

  Are some of those things effective? Take me through some of those things.

• 1:16:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so look, I, you know, personally, like, I come from a policymaking background. I really don't think that every consumer should be out there ducking and dodging and bobbing and weaving and trying not to get screwed.

• 1:16:42Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  I really think it's time for federal lawmakers to step in and make sure our economy is honest again. Like, that's really what I'm looking for, and that's what I think we deserve. But I also used to work in Congress, so I know that's not coming soon. So in the meantime, I think there are a few things. The first thing I'll say is turn the experiment back around on these companies. Like, they figure out how much they can charge you by running experiments on you. Run experiments on them. Like, if you are leaving a football game with your buddies and you're gonna go to a bar after, like, everyone fire up the Uber app at the same time. There's a decent chance that one of you will get a much lower price than the others.

• 1:17:20Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:17:20Speaker 01

  And take the Uber from whoever gets the lowest price. Similarly, like, when I'm shopping for airline tickets, like, my husband and I sit on the couch and we both fire up the app to see if one of us gets a better deal. And almost always, our prices vary, right?

• 1:17:34Theo Von?

  Really?

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  Like, we get different prices. We do. So I really think turning the experiment back on these guys is just like one small form of protest. The other thing is you have to update how you comparison shop. It used to be that you would, like, go look at detergent in Target, and then you would say, hmm, that seems high. Maybe I'll go see what the detergent price is at Walmart. Now, you have to comparison shop within Walmart. You need to look at what the price is in the app. What is the price online?

• 1:18:01Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  What is the price in the brick and mortar store? We have seen examples where prices at Target vary at two Targets that are two miles apart, right? So I think a more expansive form of comparison shopping is another good tip, although admittedly, like, it's gonna eat up your time.

• 1:18:18Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:19Speaker 01

  And that's a valuable resource, too. And people don't have a lot of extra time to sit around, like, figuring out how not to get ripped off. But there is one example in the book of, you know, someone looking at Target prices in the app. And then, once they got to the store, the prices in the app increased because they use location tracking and they know you're sitting in the Target parking lot, you're probably gonna go in and make the purchase. So, yeah, I mean, the geolocation tracking is really useful for companies.

• 1:18:46Theo Von?

  God.

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  There's another example in the book of Staples, the office supply store. I don't really know if anyone shops in those anymore.

• 1:18:52Theo Von?

  Dude, I used to go in there sometimes and get, um, all types of stuff.

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes sense. So basically Staples was charging customers more when they knew that they lived in a region of the country where there was no Office Depot or no Office Max.

• 1:19:07Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  Because they know that you don't have a competitor to go to.

• 1:19:11Theo Von?

  They got you cornered.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  Totally. And of course, that happened to overlap with poorer areas where there was less retail offerings.

• 1:19:18Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  Right? So you were really getting penalized for living in kind of a retail desert, basically. But yeah, look, you can use a VPN. You can try incognito mode. When we did the StubHub experiment, the fee variation declined precipitously with incognito mode.

• 1:19:34Theo Von?

  What does precipitously mean? It's raining, right?

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  Quickly.

• 1:19:37Theo Von?

  Oh, quickly.

• 1:19:38Speaker 01

  Quickly, like, kind of aggressively.

• 1:19:40Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  So like, there were $60 differences in the fees for the ticket prices on StubHub. And then, once the shoppers went into incognito mode, the price differences were like $4. So they weren't completely gone, but it was interesting and suggests, you know, it's impossible to know definitively exactly how these algorithms work. These companies aren't letting us see that. But it does suggest that, once you kind of hid your data, you were getting screwed a little less.

• 1:20:06Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:08Theo Von?

  So that could take the edge off.

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right.

• 1:20:11Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  Right. That's, that's a perfect way to put it.

• 1:20:14Theo Von?

  So that could take the edge off, and that's incognito mode or using a VPN. What else can we do?

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  Look, the other thing I really think is important is saying something. Like, I think posting online about your experience, like the JetBlue flyer did. I mean, he basically snuffed out that JetBlue was using all sorts of data in their, um, you know, in their pricing algorithm. Right? And I, I think, you know, how did, how did we get rid of Coke, uh, of the thermometers and vending machines? Like, People said, this is too much. Like, this is a bridge too far. When Wendy's rolled out their electronic shelf labels and, you know, said that they were going to experiment with dynamic pricing, like, public backlash was incredibly swift.

• 1:20:58Theo Von?

  Oh, is that what happened? Remember, I almost, I stepped on you about that. That's what Wendy's did?

• 1:21:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Wendy's rolled out, announced that they were rolling out electronic menu boards throughout the country. And most drive-throughs now are like, moving to electronic menu boards. But it means that, you know, Wendy's HQ, McDonald's HQ can have a pricing algorithm that changes pricing retail location by retail location. Now, often they're owned by franchisees, and so the franchisees have to like, take the recommendations and, and set the prices. But, you know, McDonald's is pretty good about being like, oh, like, if you want your franchise location renewed, you should probably like, take our pricing recommendations.

• 1:21:34Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:21:35Theo Von?

  But it could happen in the future that you could drive around the drive-through and it could see your license plate, or could see your eyes

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:41Theo Von?

  through like, a retinal scanner, and then you pull around and the board's changing as you come around. And then it's $16 or whatever

• 1:21:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:49Theo Von?

  for a, um, McRiblet or whatever. And you're, you're like, alright.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. And by the way, if you order an app and then go pick it up in the drive-through, then they can use all sorts of information about you

• 1:22:01Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:01Speaker 01

  based on the fact that you've logged into the app. There was this Wired reporter, um, who lives in California, and in California, you can request your corporate data. You can like, write to the company, and by law, they have to give you all the data they've collected about you.

• 1:22:15Theo Von?

  Really?

• 1:22:15Speaker 01

  Yes. And his, so he asked for his McDonald's data, and it was 515 pages.

• 1:22:23Theo Von?

  You're lying.

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  I mean, he was like, a serious super user of McDonald's.

• 1:22:27Theo Von?

  Wired reporter Reese Rogers used California's privacy law to request his data from McDonald's, and received a 515-page personal dossier. Oh my God, that's like getting a Valentine almost. It would honestly feel kinda nice, like, somebody cares. The 515-page report details his loyalty app interactions, purchase history across 61 visits in San Francisco and Santa Barbara, top products like large diet cokes, okay, Reese, and scanned Monopoly sweepstakes codes. Gang, brother, I've been there. McDonald's uses his data to forecast his future habits, estimating 2.16 visits and $29.15 in total spend over a six-week window,

• 1:23:11Theo Von?

  and scoring his likelihood of customer attrition at 0%. Attrition means what? That he's gonna not come back?

• 1:23:17Speaker 01

  Exactly. So that's crazy. Like, they're basically like, we've, based on these 515 pages, we know we've got you for life.

• 1:23:24Theo Von?

  Wow, bro.

• 1:23:25Speaker 01

  We estimate you'll never leave.

• 1:23:27Theo Von?

  In a separate project, Wired filed over 100 data access requests to different companies under the CCPA, finding that the process is often burdensome, and several companies mistakenly sent data deletion notices instead of actual records.

• 1:23:43Theo Von?

  Wow, dude. It's, and a lot of it, I guess, does it sometimes seem like it's, it's about more than greed? It's just also about control, it feels like, huh?

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  I do think control is the right word. Like, there is an imbalance here when companies are able to collect this much personal data about us. Like, we talk about civil liberties when the government is like, spying on us or invading our privacy. But I do think we need to think more about the fact that corporate America is now built a kind of surveillance state that rivals what any government could build.

• 1:24:15Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, it's, we talk about it a lot. It's like a privatized communism. We talk about that a lot in here. And it's pretty scary. Or it's like a consumer communism or something. I don't even know what it is. I think we're still in a space where we don't even know what it feels like.

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  And we don't even know what the end game is. I mean, obviously, it's profit, but, but like,

• 1:24:33Theo Von?

  But it's gotta be more than that.

• 1:24:34Speaker 01

  Exactly. Like, we still don't know exactly, like, why is Walmart developing all these technologies, right? Like, what is the end game here? Like, why do they need an entire lab filled with scientists who get better at scanning our retinas and measuring our heart rates and, you know, measuring our car suspension, all to do what?

• 1:24:54Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  Like, just rip us off? Or is it more than that? It's probably more than that.

• 1:24:57Theo Von?

  Right. And what is more than that? Like, what does that mean? Cause I think about that too. Like, what is the end game? Is it some mass control? It must be something like that. Or is it just a runaway train of like, advancement? You know, there are a lot of people I've noticed in tech, even a lot of them that I've interviewed, that are, have, I think, a lot of like, autism in a way, like, kind of like a, they don't have a human connection in a lot of ways. They kinda have like, an emotional sort of like, I don't know, their understanding of humanity is different. And I think a lot of them do have kind of like, an autism.

• 1:25:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:30Theo Von?

  And when you have that, um, the last thing you're thinking about is humans.

• 1:25:34Speaker 01

  Well, the types of scores that they're developing are sort of ways of gauging very human things, but through science, right? Instead of just asking you how hungry you are, they're creating the 16-factor agitation index based on how quickly and jerkily you scroll.

• 1:25:51Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  Right? Instead of just like, assessing using human interaction, like, how mad this person is, right, at the store. They're creating the appeasement engine to figure out if they have to like, give you a discount, or if they can tell you to like, pound sand, right? You know, instead of just like, making a tasty burger and assuming you'll come back for more, they're creating the attrition score to figure out if they've got you for life, or, you know, if they're gonna have to give you a discount to get you back in the store, right?

• 1:26:20Theo Von?

  Yeah. It's also gross at a certain point. Like, what do you, like, imagine just bothering somebody that much, just to what, for their money?

• 1:26:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and again, like, you know, imagine what companies could be developing if, if what they were spending their time in these labs doing is building better products, building more efficient systems, building technology to help us, right? Or to like, make our lives more pleasurable, right?

• 1:26:46Theo Von?

  Just adding joy to people's lives. Imagine if they chose to do that. Especially huge companies, like, um, yeah. Imagine if that's what they chose to do?

• 1:26:56Theo Von?

  I don't know. But I do think this is the birth of where new opportunities come along, you know, where new companies come along. There's this company that I, uh, saw the other day. It's, um, it's called Papa Bear Naturals. They make like, if they make chips, it's like, it says on the ingredients, it's like, one potato, salt, tallow, right? And like, when you open the bag of chips, you can see the middle chip, like, the big, the middle part of the potato. That chip is in there. And it's like, I don't know, I think it, maybe it is a good time for, um, for something new, right? For us, like, to create more, like, how do I find something that my family can sell to your family, and you can sell something back to us, and then we can support each other?

• 1:27:39Theo Von?

  Because it doesn't feel like, uh, some of these other places are gonna wanna do that for us anymore.

• 1:27:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, it's, it is time, I think, to return to the transparency and the simplicity of the paper price tag, and the Amish market, and the simplicity of that. Yeah.

• 1:27:56Theo Von?

  I know. I'm like, dude, is the, is the only way out of this, I gotta convert to Amishism?

• 1:28:02Theo Von?

  You know?

• 1:28:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the Quakers really, um, you know, they really brought us the price tag and the fair price. And so I guess, you know, I guess we could go to Pennsylvania, Dutch County, and, and take a look around.

• 1:28:13Theo Von?

  Are, are there moral companies that you see out there like that, that you know of? Do you see like, a religious-based companies that have an actual ethical, moral compass that seems viable? Like, are there things that you see like that? Like, cause you would also think that if, say if there's certain religions that believe in like, like a moral

• 1:28:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:33Theo Von?

  process, like, why don't they ban, like, certain churches or whatever, band together their funds and create things that are gonna be fair to their consumers? You would think that some of these larger religious entities could maybe do something like that. Does that make any sense when I even say that? Or am I just crazy?

• 1:28:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Look, I mean, we don't really have a consumer movement in this country. And so I do think, you know, consumer movements could be located elsewhere. They could be located in churches. They could be located in labor movements or labor unions, right? There are ways in which we can get together and use our collective power, our collective purchasing power, our collective, you know, solidarity to try to get a better deal, or to try to push back against some of these practices. And look, like, you know, because we do this work and, and we're pretty loud about it, we often get emails from companies letting us know that they're building systems to try to help consumers deal with this. And one of the companies that we have had conversations with, and I haven't used this product myself, but

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  they're called Cart Happy, and they basically built an in-app extension. So if you do your grocery shopping online, um, and you're like, buying 30 items at Walmart, like, when you're about to check out, it'll say, hey, actually, 10 of these items are cheaper right now at Target. And you can split your basket in two and buy like, 20 of the items at Walmart and 10 of the items at Target or whatever. And so, I think there are some companies who are trying to cut a different path and, you know, make things a little easier for, for consumers. But I haven't used it myself, so I don't.

• 1:30:07Theo Von?

  Just heard about it.

• 1:30:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I talked to the, I talked to the guy who built it.

• 1:30:11Theo Von?

  Got it. Um, what about some of these AIs? Like, OpenAI, or you look at Grok, or you look at some of these larger AI entities, are they, are any of them trying to help the consumers?

• 1:30:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's interesting. We're at this kind of interesting inflection point where I do think, you know, there is the possibility that AI assistants, like, you know, Meta has Muse now, the like, little white fluff ball. And look, um, AI could be a great personal assistant, right? Like, one of the things that, that Meta's Muse is advertising is that they'll go and cancel all your subscriptions. Like, all of the crap that you have recurring charges for, that you like, forget to cancel, right? Like, various streaming subscriptions, for example. And, you know, that could save you a lot of money to have, you know, your bot go and handle your subscriptions.

• 1:31:01Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:03Speaker 01

  But also, um, you're handing over a lot of information to these personal assistants, including often your wallet, right? Your credit card information. They're looking at your emails. And we've looked at some early research on these AI shopping assistants. And the biggest study of AI shopping assistants, they ran 325,000 experiments. And what they found is that even when you tell the shopping assistant to go get you the cheapest option, sometimes it would go rogue, look at your emails, decide that you could pay more, and then return like, the second or third or fourth cheapest option, instead of the cheapest option, including for things like health insurance plans, that are like, kind of important. Yeah.

• 1:31:46Theo Von?

  Really?

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:47Theo Von?

  For health insurance plans?

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. This is an early experiment.

• 1:31:50Theo Von?

  Study finds AI chatbots recommended pricier options to wealthier shoppers.

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:31:56Theo Von?

  Well, and you know what? In some of this, I don't know if it would be like, there, there is a Robin Hood idea of that when you read that headline.

• 1:32:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:32:02Theo Von?

  But unless it turns that savings over to people who are less, have less wealth, then it's not a Robin Hood thing. It's just. Um, it's just greed. The study ran 325,000 experiments across 13 AI models from four families, including models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Quinn, testing how chatbot recommendations shifted when the agents were given access to fictional user profiles containing financial, employment, health, and demographic data. The effect was substantial. Claude Opus 4.8 showed the largest gap recommending flights averaging $198 more for wealthy users

• 1:32:42Theo Von?

  than for low-income users and health insurance plans averaging $284 more per month. Gemini Flash showed gaps of 177 for flights and 217 per month for insurance. Even GPT-5 recommended flights averaging $107 more to wealthier profiles. Wow.

• 1:33:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's not like the early results, like it's not looking good.

• 1:33:05Theo Von?

  Yeah. The researchers found that the behavior persisted even when users gave explicit instructions to find the cheapest option. When a wealthy profile asked Gemini 2.5 Flash for the cheapest flight, the model still recommended a ticket averaging $280 more. That doesn't strike me. It's just more greed. It's just like, but how would those AIs know to do that? They would have to have, because a lot of those AIs, their business model is advertising based, is that right?

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  It's a little hard to know exactly how these guys are going to make money.

• 1:33:36Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:33:37Speaker 01

  And, you know, most of them aren't making money yet, right? But I think in general, there are a few possibilities. One is, of course, our data. Like, I think our data is going to be very valuable and, you know, Meta's Muse is going to get access to your email, access, you know, if it's your personal assistant, it's going to look at your calendar, look at your email, look at your wallet, like, all of this stuff. They have, Meta has also said that Muse may take, like, a fixed percentage of transactions, so a little bit like Visa, right, where they take a swipe fee?

• 1:34:06Theo Von?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:07Speaker 01

  Like, it will just take a cut of every transaction. That's one possibility. I mean, look, another possibility is absolutely steering and advertising. And one of the other early studies of AI assistants showed that more often than not, the assistant would recommend the sponsored product.

• 1:34:24Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 1:34:25Speaker 01

  Right? And so, you know, the whole point of AI was to, like, build this really, like, you know, the superintelligence, like, this knowledge. And if all it does is return information that comes from the highest bidder, like, it's no smarter than Google, right?

• 1:34:37Theo Von?

  Right. And it's no different. It's the same thing. It's like, oh, great, another cool AI that just wants to be, make me poorer, or wants to just use my data, or just wants to make me feel taken advantage of, or doesn't listen to what I, what people really want. This says, Meta Zuckerberg says Muse AI agent will take a small fee from transactions. Oh, they need a small fee? "We believe that Muse will make you money," Zuckerberg told the room full of developers. "And we are standing behind this by making Muse free for a huge number of tokens with the expectation that over time we will profit by taking a small fee from transactions." Meta Chief AI Officer Alexander Wang, he was on this show.

• 1:35:18Speaker 01

  No way.

• 1:35:19Theo Von?

  Before he was part of, um, Meta. Explained that the company has added support for PayPal and announced integration with retailers, including Walmart, Best Buy, The Gap, Sephora, Wayfair, American Eagle, and others.

• 1:35:31Speaker 01

  So let's say, like, you send Muse out to cancel all your subscriptions and it saves you, like, I don't know, $150 a year.

• 1:35:40Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  Like, 12 bucks a month or something.

• 1:35:42Theo Von?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:35:43Speaker 01

  I guess the idea would be that it would, it would come back, maybe, and say, "Look, we saved you $150, like, we'll take 10 bucks," or something like that.

• 1:35:50Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:35:52Theo Von?

  When Zuckerberg states that Meta is making Muse free for a huge number of tokens, he means that consumers can chat with, ask questions of, and use the AI assistant for free up to a generous data limit. Instead of billing you for the text data you use up, Meta plans to offset those operational costs by charging merchants a transaction fee when Muse helps you buy something. So, but how do we know, then, that the merchants won't just raise the price of whatever it is?

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's a very, that's a very strong possibility.

• 1:36:19Theo Von?

  Oh, we need an AI to come along that, um, that would, like, help people, right? But the, but the, it wouldn't be based on advertising, right? You'd have to have some sort of a new model that, and maybe if they save, yeah, I don't know how they do it. I don't know how you would create one that could actually be beneficial for people.

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  I mean, part of the problem is it doesn't seem like these companies actually have full control over how the models work.

• 1:36:46Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  I mean, the AI agents go rogue, they, they do what they want, right? In this instance, like, it's supposed to be your personal assistant, and you sent it to go find you the cheapest option. And then it took matters into its own hand, like, rooted around your email inbox, saw that you made a expensive purchase yesterday and thought, "Oh, this sucker can afford a more expensive airplane ticket," and then returned a more expensive airplane ticket, even though you asked for the cheapest option, right?

• 1:37:14Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's a snitch.

• 1:37:15Speaker 01

  And like, right, and like, in, in the rest of the economy, your agent is supposed to work for you, right? Like, your real estate agent is supposed to work for you, not the seller, if you're the buyer, right? Like, your financial advisor is supposed to work for you, not whoever gives him kickbacks to, like, sell their products, right? And they're calling themselves agents, and they're saying they're your assistant, but actually, they don't work for you. They work for Muse, or they work for the company that pays for the advertising.

• 1:37:42Theo Von?

  Say 10.

• 1:37:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:44Theo Von?

  Yeah. God, Lindsay, I don't even know anymore. I just want to frickin' take my legs off and send them somewhere. I can't handle all this.

• 1:37:53Speaker 01

  Send them to the highest bidder.

• 1:37:54Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:55Speaker 01

  Auction them off on eBay.

• 1:37:57Theo Von?

  Oh, one of these perverted frickin' tech lords would probably buy them, you know, for a decent amount. I'm like, you don't care that I can't walk, that, like, it's everything, dude, it's all gonna, years from now, I, I've always thought there would be a smile, we'll be in a museum, you'll have to go see it. And people will be like, that, people used to feel joy and their mouth would curl at the ends. And the kids will be like, "What are you talking about, Dad?" I don't even know what's going on anymore. I just want to fucking eat my own eyeballs and get a nap in. Anyway, sorry, I'm drifting off. Um, dude, I saw one thing, Lindsay, this was crazy thing that I saw.

• 1:38:40Theo Von?

  Tell me if this is true, and then I want to know a little bit more how, like, some industries that were being taken advantage of that we don't even notice in, maybe?

• 1:38:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:38:47Theo Von?

  That can be helpful to listeners. They, there was a story that they had SAT tests, they, like, the Princeton Review was charging more for SAT tutoring or for testing, I'm not sure which one it was, in Asian-heavy ZIP codes. Is that true?

• 1:39:03Speaker 01

  That's exactly right.

• 1:39:04Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 1:39:05Speaker 01

  So Princeton Review, like, if you logged on from an IP address that was in an area of the country that had more Asian Americans, they were charging you more for the same test prep package than other individuals in a less, like, predominantly Asian neighborhood.

• 1:39:21Theo Von?

  And this has been going on for a while. This is 2015. Asian families living in the US are, are almost twice as likely to be charged higher prices for college test prep, the Princeton Review, according to a new study from ProPublica, or ProPublica. The Princeton Review determines pricing based on a potential customer's ZIP code. As ProPublica notes, "There is nearly a $2,000 difference in the highest and lowest prices for the Princeton Review premier SAT prep course. When it comes to getting the highest prices, living in a ZIP code with a high median income or a large Asian population seem to make the greatest difference," according to ProPublica reporters by Julian Angwin. Wow.

• 1:40:03Theo Von?

  "Customers in areas with a high density of Asian residents were 1.8 times as likely to be offered higher prices regardless of income."

• 1:40:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:40:12Theo Von?

  Dang, bro. Asians getting jacked over that. Bro, we need Asian people to get upset about this. High-income ZIP codes were twice as likely to be charged a more expensive price. Because I, you know, sometimes, like, part of me is, like, yeah, charge rich people more, I don't care. But it's not fair if you're charging somebody that's Asian because you think they're good at something.

• 1:40:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:35Theo Von?

  And some Asians, these days, bro, some of these second, third-degree Asians, or whatever they're called, they're not, some of them are not even that good at stuff, like they used to be. Like, the premier Asians used to have shit popping, dude. There's Asian dudes now that can't even read that good.

• 1:40:49Speaker 01

  I mean, look, income and willingness to pay are not the same thing.

• 1:40:53Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:54Speaker 01

  Right? Like, that's the key here. Like, you think it's just going to be the rich who get soaked, but actually, it's the people who want it the most.

• 1:41:00Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:41:01Speaker 01

  Or the people who are the most desperate, or the people who need something most urgently. Like, the problem with surveillance pricing is, you know, when companies are collecting this data on you, they get better and better at figuring out how desperate you are. I mean, this is why I'm so worried about surveillance pricing and AI assistance. Because let's say, you know, there was an example, the Facebook whistleblower had this crazy example where it turned out that Facebook, when you deleted selfies, so let's say you're like a teenage girl, you're insecure about how you look, you, you know, you delete a lot of selfies because you're like, "Oh, this is a bad picture of me," they were pushing you beauty products.

• 1:41:37Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:41:38Speaker 01

  Right? And so, there's all sorts of ways in which companies are really exploiting insecurity, exploiting desperation. I mean, this is like an Asian immigrant family who just wants their kid to go to college, and so they're willing to pay, you know, an extra $1,500 for six weeks of test prep, right? And companies figured that out. They're like, "Oh, these Asian moms are, you know, really hoping their kids get into college, so we're going to bilk them for all they're worth."

• 1:42:04Theo Von?

  This is gross.

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  And, you know, these teenage girls are really insecure, so we're going to see them as, like, shooting fish in a barrel and push them expensive beauty products.

• 1:42:15Theo Von?

  Oh, and you're hoping like some hero comes along to save you, you know? And it's not even that guy from that song. Who sang that song? When a hero comes along. Was a woman singing it?

• 1:42:28Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:42:29Theo Von?

  It's not even a guy.

• 1:42:31Speaker 01

  Um, it's.

• 1:42:32Theo Von?

  Oh, it's Mariah Carey, isn't it?

• 1:42:33Speaker 01

  No, I was gonna go with Celine Dion.

• 1:42:35Theo Von?

  It might have been. It doesn't matter, dude. Sorry, I'm going off track. But yeah, you're like hoping for a hero and you don't even like, oh. Um, I want to talk about, um, I've heard you mention before a shopper's bill of rights.

• 1:42:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:48Theo Von?

  What does that look like?

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's time for shoppers in this country, consumers, if you want to use the kind of technical term, to have some guaranteed rights.

• 1:42:58Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:42:58Speaker 01

  So that we don't get ripped off in every setting in commerce. And, you know, at different points in our country, we have changed the laws to address new technologies. So I'll give you an example. Like, for a while, like, electronic products were unsafe, right? Like, you could buy a toaster and it was short and like burn your house down.

• 1:43:18Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:18Speaker 01

  And that was a real problem, right? Because we needed to like fill our kitchens with like new electronics and people needed to know that their house wouldn't burn down. So the government built something they called the Consumer Product Safety Commission. And what the Consumer Product Safety Commission does is when a product is dangerous or has a defect, they issue a recall. And they just let you know, like, hey, you gotta bring your car back to the shop because the brakes don't work, or you've gotta return this crib because like kids are suffocating in it, right? Just like basic safety rights. And now I think it is time for more updates to safety in this high-tech world of e-commerce and AI-enabled commerce.

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  So I think things like a ban on surveillance pricing, like, you cannot collect data about me and then turn it against me and weaponize it to overcharge me. Like, we're just not gonna let that happen.

• 1:44:12Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:44:12Speaker 01

  Um, I think we, we are owed the right to a refund. Um, when a product doesn't work, we should be able to get a refund without having to battle a chatbot and customer service for three hours and then maybe we'll get a gift card, or maybe, you know, we'll get store credit, right? Like, they can auto-populate your address, they can auto-populate your credit card information, they can get you a quick refund.

• 1:44:35Theo Von?

  It's simple. It should be easy.

• 1:44:37Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And they're stealing our time, and they're stealing our money, and our time is valuable, too. Like, our organization estimates that the annoyance economy, which is things like fighting chatbots for refunds, is costing Americans $165 billion every single year in lost time and lost money.

• 1:44:55Theo Von?

  God.

• 1:44:56Speaker 01

  So the shopper's bill of rights is 12 different rights, um, that I think are no-brainers. Like, this isn't like super high-tech stuff, it's just the right to refund, the right to an all-in price. Like, you should know how much something costs without like the hidden fees that get tacked on at the end of the transaction, right?

• 1:45:12Theo Von?

  Yeah, no more surprises. Right to a fair price, that's one it says here.

• 1:45:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:17Theo Von?

  I'm looking at them here on your website, and this is Groundwork Collaborative.

• 1:45:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:45:22Theo Von?

  Um, and this is where people can see, they can obviously find a link to your book here.

• 1:45:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:26Theo Von?

  Can they donate to this? Is it a nonprofit organization? What is it?

• 1:45:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're a nonprofit. We don't take individual money, like, we take foundation money. We're out there fighting for consumers, like, save your money, use your money to deal with all the price gouging out there. Um, but yeah, you can find the book at gougedbook.com, um, or anywhere books are sold. Uh, and you can find all of our research, including our research into Walmart's patents, um, at www.grownworkcollaborative.org. Um, and we'll be out there exposing corporate malfeasance and price gouging, uh, all day long, all year long, for years to come.

• 1:46:06Theo Von?

  That's awesome. I'm glad to know somebody's doing it, you know? It's like, yeah, it's like, I don't know, it feels hard to even find time to do stuff, I think, for most people, you know? It's just like, they've got you so dizzy with so many things sometimes. It's like, gosh, I thought we were just supposed to be alive and kind of having a good time doing it. I don't know what, but I guess some people don't think that that's what we're supposed to be doing.

• 1:46:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think, like, shopping has gotten really expensive in this country.

• 1:46:36Theo Von?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:46:37Speaker 01

  And there are a lot of reasons, right? Like, the war in Iran is pushing up gas prices and energy prices, tariffs are increasing the price of imports, like, that makes Halloween candy more expensive this year, it makes Christmas gifts more expensive. Um, you know, we have inflation going on in the economy, but there's another culprit here. Um, and I think most Americans realize it's happening but don't fully understand exactly how. And that's that corporate America has reinvented the ripoff. And they're deploying increasingly sophisticated technologies to get better at reaching deeper into our wallets. And we're really interested in exposing that, um, which is how we end up in skirmishes with Walmart. Um, but we're also interested in figuring out how to fight back. And sometimes, honestly, just exposing it is enough, right?

• 1:47:21Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:21Speaker 01

  It worked for Instacart, um, you know, when we exposed what Delta was doing with Fetcher, you know, they announced that they were gonna back off some of the personalized pricing. So we definitely have gotten some results. Um, but we also advocate in Washington and in state houses. New York right now is considering a ban on surveillance pricing. It passed the legislature, but the governor hasn't signed it yet.

• 1:47:43Theo Von?

  Really?

• 1:47:43Speaker 01

  She has until the end of the year to sign it, but, I mean, I gotta be honest, like, just do it, right?

• 1:47:49Theo Von?

  What's her name?

• 1:47:50Speaker 01

  Let's get the clock going on this.

• 1:47:52Theo Von?

  Kathy Hochul. Let me get a gander at her. And what are we asking her for today?

• 1:47:56Speaker 01

  Sign the One Fair Price Act.

• 1:47:57Theo Von?

  Ms. Hochul, why don't you just sign the One Fair Price Act? Because what else are you gonna do? And what's it gonna, what will that guarantee for people?

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  It would be, um, a total ban on surveillance pricing.

• 1:48:09Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:48:09Speaker 01

  Um, in the entire state of New York. So it would be a huge, um, move forward for consumers. And I imagine a lot of states would follow suit.

• 1:48:18Theo Von?

  And New York could be the leader on that.

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, there have been some movement with like small-ball policies that just banned surveillance pricing in things like grocery stores and Connecticut and New Jersey and Maryland and Seattle. But there hasn't yet been like a really robust bill to ban surveillance pricing across the economy.

• 1:48:36Theo Von?

  Understood.

• 1:48:36Speaker 01

  Um, this would be the first one.

• 1:48:38Theo Von?

  Wow, Ms. Hochul could be the first one to do it. That's pretty cool. And the status of the legislation is it was passed by the legislature in June 2026 and sent to Governor Kathy Hochul for review. It prohibits businesses from collecting, using, or retaining personal data, such as browsing history, device data, location, zip code, or income, to individually tailor or inflate prices. Please do it, because maybe we'll do it in my state then. What the heck, we need somebody to be a leader. We need somebody to have some balls, even if it's a woman that can't even have balls.

• 1:49:10Speaker 01

  She's gotta make the first move. Like, she could be, she can make history, right?

• 1:49:14Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:14Speaker 01

  Um, and it could create a really positive cascade.

• 1:49:17Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:19Theo Von?

  And that's pretty much like, just do it. That's what I'm thinking about.

• 1:49:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, look, the lobbying.

• 1:49:24Theo Von?

  See what happens. What about that?

• 1:49:26Speaker 01

  The lobbying in New York against this bill has been fierce.

• 1:49:28Theo Von?

  Really?

• 1:49:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um.

• 1:49:30Theo Von?

  Gross.

• 1:49:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, like Instacart's up there, Uber's up there, like, the National Retail Federation, which is like the big trade association that all the companies hide behind so that, like, they'll do their dirty work for them, right?

• 1:49:41Theo Von?

  Like, it's a bunch of money perverts. That's what it is. It's money perversion.

• 1:49:45Speaker 01

  I mean, they're working hard to delay it, to water it down, to kill it altogether. But like, you know, signing it now will prevent further delay or further weakening. Yeah.

• 1:49:54Theo Von?

  Well, at least we know, and people could use the right, it would help them. And just to know that you're safely being able to just be on the internet or be on your phone, whatever.

• 1:50:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, maybe they're still taking your data, but at least they're not turning it around to rip you off.

• 1:50:08Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:09Theo Von?

  Uh, before you go, uh, how can voters hold our representatives responsible to help us? Is it possible anymore, do you think?

• 1:50:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, I think people should ask their elected representatives, their members of Congress, um, to stand up to corporate America's reinvention of the ripoff. I think, you know, when Congress starts new investigations in January, which you know they'll do, it would be great if instead of investigating, you know, stuff from years ago, they started with investigations of corporate America.

• 1:50:40Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  Right? Instead of just doing politically motivated investigations, you know, of Trump officials, they instead brought everyone from corporate America in, you know, put the CEO of Walmart in the hot seat and said, tell me what's going on with Sparky. And like, you can't leave here until I understand how Sparky works and why those basket totals are 40% higher. Like, bring in the CEO of DoorDash, like, tell me why you invented the agitation index, like, how is it used to overcharge consumers, right? Bring in the CEO of Uber, like, why did my colleague and I just get charged different amounts for the same exact item to the same location? Is that because you have data on us that you're using to overcharge us? Like, I would like to.

• 1:51:20Theo Von?

  How else could you be doing it?

• 1:51:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, I would like to see more investigations into this. I would like to see subpoenas, right? Which means that, you know, attorneys general or members of Congress can get information from the company, like, force them to turn over their books, their algorithm, like, all of the stuff that they don't want us to see.

• 1:51:37Theo Von?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:51:37Speaker 01

  Because like, my organization can't get any of that stuff. We don't have subpoena power. So we're just looking in the public domain, we're looking at the patents they file, we're looking at the stuff that they're stupid enough to say to their investors that they would never want to say to their customers or consumers. But Congress has the authority to, you know, really, um, you know, demand this information and to take a look at it. So I'd love to see that happen. I mean, of course, like, that will require ticking off some companies and ticking off some lobbyists and doing business a little differently than Washington has done business in the past. But there are some senators who have been, you know, taking names throughout history, like, there have been big investigations into big tobacco, big investigations into

• 1:52:17Speaker 01

  the health insurance companies, like, big investigations, you know, um, you know, into other consumer, yeah.

• 1:52:24Theo Von?

  It's happened before.

• 1:52:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:52:26Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:27Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:52:28Theo Von?

  Well, you're doing it, you know, and so thank you for just sharing too what's going on. Congratulations on your book.

• 1:52:35Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:52:36Theo Von?

  I think it's exciting, no matter what somebody's writing about or whatever, it, you know, to be able to get something all the way to the finish line for themselves is pretty awesome. So congratulations.

• 1:52:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, thanks for having me. And also just thanks for bringing this important story to your audience and being willing to name names and talk about what companies are doing and pull up the CEOs and take a close look at them and, and speak it out loud. There are not very many people in this country who are willing to do that, and, um, there are not many people using their media platform in that way, and I think it's just incredibly important work.

• 1:53:06Theo Von?

  Well, that's nice of you, Lindsay. I appreciate that. It's sweet of you to say. But, um, it feels like nobody's on the side of like, of a hu, of humans almost anymore or something. It's so bizarre. Uh, but you are, and so thank you so much, Lindsay Owens. Um, I gotta get a copy of your book. Can we put it up on our shelf?

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:53:26Theo Von?

  That'd be excellent. I'd love to have one. And, um, congratulations on everything. And, uh, keep, uh, shining a light. That's the best thing that we can do. And, um, people can locate you through your website?

• 1:53:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:53:40Theo Von?

  Okay, or on social media?

• 1:53:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I've got all the accounts. I'm on Blue Sky and Twitter and Instagram and TikTok and all the, all the places.

• 1:53:48Theo Von?

  Nice.

• 1:53:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:49Theo Von?

  Well, I appreciate you so much for joining us today. Uh, thank you so much.

• 1:53:52Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:53:52Theo Von?

  Yep.

• 1:54:19Speaker 05

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• 1:54:28Speaker 05

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