Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out Share & Litigate & Tell with Katie Nolan and Michael Cruz Kayne About this episode Influencers are finally suing each other for making seemingly identical content. Should we be laughing or crying (hint: we’re doing both)? Ben Affleck thinks that AI will never replace movies. Is he hot and wrong, or just hot? And how is everybody not depressed? Also: if Ray Romano and Dan Le Batard became one person, cryptic births, Clean Girls, Ding Dong Primple Pants, and Michael’s finest career credit.
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Transcript 11,042 words · 7 speakers
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0:00 Pablo Torre? This episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by McDonald's. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Medium Fries and a Drink is now $8. And look, I've chased down a lot of strange stories, but nothing quite like what's inside a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. It is 100% fresh beef, cooked right when you order it, with no artificial flavors, colors, fillers, or preservatives in the beef. The onions are hand-topped by someone who knows the perfect amount by memory, two slices of cheese and a star, and two pickles, side by side. So every bite gets both. And every time one's ordered, a cowbell sound rings in the kitchen. That's the grill master's cue to put a fresh patty on the grill. My move?
0:42 Pablo Torre? QPC, fries and a drink after a long day of recording. That is my happy place. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Fries and a Drink, now $8 for a limited time only, only at McDonald's. For a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California. And for delivery, fresh beef not available in Alaska and Hawaii. Offer not valid for delivery.
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1:54 Pablo Torre? This episode is brought to you by Apollo.io. A lot of the stories on this show start the same way. Something that looks pretty simple turns out to be a mess once you look under the hood. Well, it's no different in the sales world. Your team has a tool for finding prospects, a different tool for reaching out to them, and a third for keeping track of it all. On paper, that's a system. In practice, it's a salesperson spending the better part of the day copying names from one tab into another, and not much of it actually selling. Apollo.io is a platform that helps sales teams find the right buyers and reach out to them. It brings prospecting, outreach and follow-up into one place instead of several separate tools. It's used by sales teams of all sizes, from small businesses to larger
2:39 Pablo Torre? organizations, and it's built for teams who want less manual busywork and more time with buyers. If your marketing and sales teams are trying to work from the same view of the customer, it's worth a look. Sign up for free at Apollo.io. That's Apollo.io. Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is. Is Ben Affleck the boy who cried Dick Wolf? Right after this ad.
3:09 Speaker 02 You're listening to Giraffe Kings Network.
3:25 Speaker 03 Eric Ridehome, Eric Roadhome, told me that he loves when we're on together because it seems like the three of us, there's nowhere else we'd rather be.
3:32 Pablo Torre? Hmm.
3:33 Speaker 03 And that we're really enjoying ourselves.
3:34 Pablo Torre? Who said this?
3:35 Speaker 03 Eric Ridehome, creator of such television greatness as PTI, Pardon the Interruption, Around the Horn.
3:42 Pablo Torre? Yep.
3:43 Speaker 03 There's gotta be another.
3:44 Speaker 04 I love those shows.
3:45 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. Highly questionable. Oh, can I show you a picture of somebody that was on? Oh, and this?
3:50 Pablo Torre? Isamiro.
3:50 Speaker 03 Oh, that's right.
3:51 Pablo Torre? Hi Noon.
3:52 Speaker 03 I was watching Dateline last night and I saw a guy on there and I was like.
3:55 Pablo Torre? That's just a thing you do?
3:56 Speaker 03 That, yeah. I mean, I'm a woman and.
3:59 Pablo Torre? What crime will I be sucked into in real life? Let's find out.
4:02 Speaker 03 And I said, this is the halfway point on a spectrum where the polls are Ray Romano and Dan Lebatard.
4:11 Pablo Torre? Whoa.
4:13 Pablo Torre? That, okay, let's just show.
4:14 Speaker 03 Exactly right.
4:16 Speaker 04 Wow.
4:17 Speaker 03 It looks like the disguise that they used in Argo.
4:22 Speaker 04 It looks fake.
4:23 Speaker 03 It does. But I was like, that is, that is Dan Le Romano.
4:28 Pablo Torre? That's right.
4:29 Speaker 04 Yeah, it looks like prosthetics circa 2002.
4:32 Pablo Torre? Mm-hmm. Who is this gentleman?
4:34 Speaker 03 No idea. I barely, I was falling asleep.
4:36 Pablo Torre? Le Romano?
4:36 Speaker 03 We put this on to go to bed and I was like, hold on, I gotta take a picture of that to show Pablo. Because I told Dan exactly what I just said to you.
4:43 Pablo Torre? Soder.
4:44 Speaker 03 It might, yeah, who I was in bed with, yes, not Le Batard.
4:46 Pablo Torre? Well.
4:47 Speaker 03 And he didn't react in the way I wanted. I really wanted a like, wow, that's exactly right. So I said, I'm gonna take a picture and show it to Pablo tomorrow.
4:55 Pablo Torre? I am here to validate that that is exactly right.
4:57 Speaker 03 Thank you.
4:58 Pablo Torre? What was that guy?
5:00 Speaker 03 I have no idea. I think he was.
5:01 Pablo Torre? In the Dateline episode?
5:02 Speaker 03 I think he was either, I think he was probably like a prosecutor. I have no idea.
5:07 Pablo Torre? Hmm, a safe guess.
5:08 Speaker 03 I truly didn't listen.
5:09 Speaker 04 That feels like one of the stock characters. That's someone who's gonna be on a Dateline episode.
5:13 Speaker 03 That's right.
5:13 Pablo Torre? Right.
5:14 Speaker 03 Prosecutor and investigator. Usually somebody who's just repeating exactly what the interviewer just said to them.
5:20 Pablo Torre? Dateline is incredibly popular, still.
5:23 Speaker 03 Much better than 2020 if we're taking sides.
5:25 Pablo Torre? Are we ranking the true, the original true crime podcasts?
5:29 Speaker 03 I mean, that's Dateline. So Dateline has a recurring cast of characters like Keith Morrison. They'll host an episode. So it'll be like Keith Morrison's episode where he'll do the VO and then he'll do like the interstitial shots of him walking through the crime scene and then he'll do the sit-down interviews. 2020 has that recurring cast and they just sit and do the exposition throughout the episode as if they're being interviewed. And that blurs a line for me that I'm like, you're just a reporter. Why don't you just report it instead of making it look like you're being interviewed?
6:04 Speaker 04 That's like a producer's choice.
6:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, and I think it's a dumb choice. So that's why I'm team Dateline.
6:09 Pablo Torre? You know Keith Morrison's face?
6:11 Speaker 03 The best. You know who he's, who's uncle?
6:14 Speaker 04 He's beautiful.
6:15 Pablo Torre? He looks like a guy who is also wearing like a Keith Morrison mask at this point, which is a compliment.
6:21 Speaker 04 He looks like Glenn Close.
6:23 Speaker 03 Sure.
6:24 Speaker 04 Winged victory of Samothrace.
6:27 Speaker 03 What's that, the second one?
6:29 Pablo Torre? It did autocomplete in my Google search.
6:32 Speaker 04 It's a headless piece of art.
6:34 Pablo Torre? Oh, yeah.
6:34 Speaker 04 It's Nike, it's the goddess Nike.
6:36 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah, I knew, I know art.
6:38 Speaker 04 I know art.
6:39 Speaker 03 I know all art.
6:40 Speaker 04 But would you show, just because I do feel like Glenn Close.
6:43 Pablo Torre? Oh, the Glenn Close call.
6:45 Speaker 03 Yeah, Glenn Close is right, that's right, absolutely.
6:47 Pablo Torre? A true Close call.
6:48 Speaker 03 Right.
6:49 Pablo Torre? Winged victory of Samothrace, famous hell in a stick marble statue of the Greek goddess of victory, Nike.
6:54 Speaker 03 He was like a new color.
6:56 Speaker 04 I'm actually colorblind, it's blue, I think.
6:58 Speaker 03 You're colorblind for real?
6:59 Speaker 04 Yeah.
6:59 Speaker 03 How do you get dressed?
7:01 Speaker 04 I mean, I'm not like crushing it.
7:03 Speaker 03 No. No, but how do you do it?
7:06 Speaker 04 Uh, mostly like jeans, I'm, okay, so colorblind.
7:09 Pablo Torre? How colorblind are we?
7:10 Speaker 03 Here we go.
7:11 Speaker 04 So, I can see, I can see a lot of colors, thousands and thousands of colors. But you can see like millions of colors.
7:16 Speaker 03 I can?
7:16 Speaker 04 Yeah. Regular people can see millions, I can only see thousands.
7:19 Speaker 03 Doesn't sound as complimentary as I can see thousands of colors.
7:22 Speaker 04 You muggles. But I could, I can see fewer colors, so I can see a lot of, not most colors, but enough colors.
7:28 Speaker 03 What do you struggle with, greens?
7:29 Speaker 04 All kinds of [BLEEP].
7:30 Speaker 03 Okay.
7:30 Speaker 04 Okay, so like the, there's red back there, the circles?
7:33 Speaker 03 Yep.
7:33 Speaker 04 Okay, but the other, whatever the other thing is next to circles?
7:35 Speaker 03 Blue, and then that's yellow green.
7:36 Speaker 04 If you told me that was blue or purple, I wouldn't know, and yellow green, I wouldn't know.
7:40 Speaker 03 You wouldn't know, what does it look like to you, the yellow green?
7:42 Speaker 04 I would just, I would say either yellow or green, being unsure.
7:45 Speaker 03 It's both, so you'd be right.
7:47 Speaker 04 Well, great, never mind.
7:48 Speaker 03 So you seem colored fine to me.
7:50 Pablo Torre? Where does this become a problem for you?
7:52 Speaker 03 Do you play video games?
7:53 Speaker 04 It becomes a pro, I mean, the only place it's actually a problem is when you go to museums and they have those colorblind things and they're like, "Look here, do you see the number?", and I'm like, "There's no number there", and my kid's like, "It's an eight", you know, moron.
8:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, you should stop going to museums.
8:06 Speaker 04 My kids are mean also, that's, those are the two problems.
8:08 Pablo Torre? Then when would you encounter the winged victory of Samothrace?
8:11 Speaker 04 Well, you'd have to be, I think, at the Louvre.
8:13 Pablo Torre? At the Louvre. Yeah.
8:15 Speaker 04 I feel like it does.
8:16 Speaker 03 There's no head on it.
8:16 Speaker 04 Yeah, but I feel like.
8:17 Speaker 03 It's a headless.
8:18 Speaker 04 I feel like if you took Glenn Close and the texture of that part of the blouse or whatever.
8:23 Speaker 03 So you're just saying he's wrinkly and old.
8:24 Speaker 04 Yeah, kind of.
8:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
8:25 Speaker 04 But like, but like chiseled wrinkles.
8:26 Speaker 03 He does have interesting wrinkles.
8:28 Pablo Torre? There's John Kerry in this.
8:29 Speaker 04 Yes, for sure.
8:30 Speaker 03 A little, yes, for sure.
8:30 Pablo Torre? Mm-hmm. John Kerry and Glenn Close.
8:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, I like that.
8:33 Pablo Torre? He is the John Kerry and Glenn Close of Ray Romano and Dan Lebatard.
8:38 Speaker 03 Yes.
8:38 Speaker 04 Indeed.
8:56 Pablo Torre? I think we're gonna start with my topic.
8:59 Speaker 03 Yes, I think we should.
9:00 Speaker 04 That sounds great.
9:01 Speaker 03 It's a lot.
9:02 Pablo Torre? It's a great topic, it's a great story. I'm pretty sure neither of you read the whole thing.
9:06 Speaker 03 Who could have?
9:07 Speaker 04 I read most of the headline.
9:11 Speaker 03 A very long story about a beige influencer. And I don't know what to, I couldn't get any further than...
9:17 Speaker 04 I started scrolling and you know the little thing on the side that tells you how far you've gone? It hardly moved when I was going and I was like, I'm never gonna make it.
9:23 Speaker 03 Once I saw how small it was, I was like, this is something Pablo can tell me.
9:26 Pablo Torre? Yeah, the headline aforementioned is "Bad Influence." It is on theverge.com. Subhead, "One Amazon influencer makes a living posting content from her beige home." But after she, this is sounding like a 2020 sort of setup now. But after she noticed another account, "Hawking the same minimal aesthetic, a rivalry spiraled into a first-of-its-kind lawsuit. Can the legal system protect the vibe of a creator? And what if that vibe is basic?" So it's a landmark case. It's a great setup. I love this story. It's about, yeah, a landmark case seemingly in the world of influencer, intellectual property, plagiarism. These are two Amazon influencers.
10:04 Speaker 03 And to define what that is? That's just people who order off of Amazon? And then tell you, "This is good, this is bad?"
10:13 Pablo Torre? So they, yes, but also they have the ability to create a storefront. This is scare quotes.
10:18 Speaker 03 Amazon storefront, I think we all know what that is.
10:20 Speaker 04 I don't know, but I can, I feel like I'm in my bones, I figure it out.
10:23 Speaker 03 If I say the link's in my Amazon storefront, you can go click on like Katie Nolan's Amazon storefront and it'll be like, "Here's the jeans she's talking about, here's the can opener she's talking about."
10:32 Pablo Torre? If everybody could be Oprah with her favorite things.
10:34 Speaker 03 Right, but only on Amazon.
10:36 Pablo Torre? On Amazon, that you get a share of, profit-wise.
10:40 Speaker 03 Oh yeah, that's right.
10:41 Pablo Torre? If in fact people click on your storefront to buy it from your store.
10:45 Speaker 04 Gotcha, okay.
10:47 Pablo Torre? So this storefront operator, her name is Sydney Nicole Gifford. She's 24 years old, live in Minneapolis. She sued Alyssa Sheal, who is 21 years old in Austin, Texas. What the aforementioned Sydney Nicole Gifford did was hire an attorney, send cease and desist orders to Alyssa Sheal because she claimed that Sheal had participated in, quote, "willful, intentional, and purposeful infringement of her copyright." Dozens of posts across platforms like TikTok and Instagram, posts, in the case of Sydney Nicole Gifford, that looked like this.
11:21 Speaker 05 My vanity was needing some organization help, so I partnered with Target to share these bathroom and storage products that work so perfectly for makeup and countertop organization. This is the prettiest trash bin, so I had to grab that. Then I found this spinning turntable, which I thought would be so perfect for some of my skincare and fragrances. Sticking with all the gold tones, I also had to get this candle. For the other side, I got a vanity organizer and countertop mirror. I love how all these pieces match each other and really go with the glam room aesthetic, and everything's on my Target storefront.
11:52 Pablo Torre? And so the plaintiff is claiming, Gifford...
11:54 Speaker 04 That's Gifford.
11:56 Pablo Torre? That is Gifford. There's a pattern...
11:58 Speaker 03 You couldn't tell? She's got that aesthetic that we all know.
12:00 Pablo Torre? There's a pattern of copying. Basically, days or weeks, the allegation goes, after she would share photos or videos promoting an Amazon product, Sheal, the defendant, would share her own content doing the same thing, and this is what Sheal's content would look like as an example.
12:14 Speaker 04 Oh my God, can't wait.
12:16 Speaker 05 Amazon Black Friday home finds that are actually worth the money. Starting off with my personal favorite, my makeup vanity is on major deal right now. This is hands down one of my favorite items in my entire home. It has so much storage, and it is absolutely stunning. It would look great in any space. Nothing makes me happier than opening this drawer and seeing how organized it is. These organizers are truly game-changing. Having a towel warmer has truly changed my life. It is truly an 11 out of 10. Next are these curtains. We have them in every single room of our house. I think they look so luxe. I just can't get over how much these make our house...
12:44 Pablo Torre? You're familiar with this genre, though, this type of person?
12:47 Speaker 03 Yes, but it's just... I don't mean to sidetrack. That depresses me so much because the language of it, the happiest I've ever felt. Is when I opened this drawer. This is the greatest thing that's ever been in my life. I have three children. This is the happiest day of my life is when this partizion was delivered.
13:08 Pablo Torre? You're saying it's a bit of a hard sell.
13:09 Speaker 03 It's crazy. The fact that that works on anybody makes me feel uncomfortable. To just always go, this is, oh my God, you guys, this changed my life. This is a glasses case where I put in my glasses and inside this, it cleans, is a clot that cleans my glasses. Truly, I'm a different person having found these two together. You have to get this. It says, nice to see you inside.
13:35 Speaker 04 I am gonna buy that now.
13:36 Speaker 03 You can decide why.
13:37 Speaker 04 I do, I understand what you're saying, though, that sense of like, you too can have access to the great stream of happiness. You can dip your fingers in if only you buy these locked curtains.
13:48 Pablo Torre? So, so it comes inside of this archetype, which I was not familiar with in this specific way until this story, which is the clean girl.
13:57 Speaker 03 You've never heard of the aesthetic of the clean girl?
13:59 Pablo Torre? You're familiar.
13:59 Speaker 03 Yes. I spend a lot of time online, Pablo. It's why my mentals are the way that they are.
14:04 Pablo Torre? Can you explain what a clean girl is?
14:07 Speaker 03 Image wise, to me, the first thing I picture is a slicked back bun or ponytail with very groomed brows and dewy looking skin and everything is very clean lines. I guess for your home, it would be like, all the picture frames on your house like are the same size with the same matting and they all match.
14:30 Pablo Torre? Very few colors, exactly.
14:31 Speaker 03 A lot of beige, a lot of neutrals.
14:33 Speaker 04 Minimalist.
14:34 Speaker 03 Yeah. It's a current, like, feel like micro trend on, on the internet.
14:39 Pablo Torre? Yes, it promotes quote unquote self-care, comfort and looking put together.
14:43 Speaker 03 Yes.
14:44 Pablo Torre? The most famous clean girl, if you were wondering, is perhaps Hailey Bieber. And there are many such people in the Hailey Bieber coaching tree, it turns out.
14:51 Speaker 03 I would've said Alex Cooper.
14:53 Pablo Torre? Well, okay, yes, yes, a current practitioner, a master of the form perhaps. Gifford is claiming though in this lawsuit that in the course of 70 pages of side by side screenshots, you can clearly see that she posts stuff and then she... Sheel, the defendant, is copying her. We can see a couple of just side by side still frames here. Again, it's the gallery wall, black and white photo with a black frame. They both have this, yeah, this sort of look. As we cycle through, we see yet another example. Oh, this is my favorite part.
15:23 Speaker 03 What? It's a tattoo.
15:25 Pablo Torre? So at a certain point in the story, you realize, as there's this back and forth about, "No, no, no, how can I possibly be held accountable for embodying an aesthetic that is not simply Gifford's to claim?" You learn that Sheel has gotten a flower tattoo that is disturbingly akin to Gifford's flower tattoo, same spot on their arm.
15:45 Speaker 03 Lower.
15:47 Speaker 04 I guess what's weird about this to me, just from this, from, at this point in the story, what I'm thinking is, Gifford's first, right?
15:53 Pablo Torre? Yes.
15:53 Speaker 04 So Gifford's like, "I got this tattoo."
15:55 Speaker 03 First in what sense?
15:56 Speaker 04 I mean, first of the two of them, relatively first.
15:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.
15:59 Speaker 04 She is like, "Buy all this stuff." And so this gal goes, "Okay."
16:04 Speaker 03 "Buy all this stuff."
16:05 Speaker 04 And she does it. And then she's like, "Hey, this stuff I bought? Y'all should buy the stuff I bought." Gifford, this is a success. You did, you, you did it.
16:15 Speaker 03 You influenced.
16:15 Speaker 04 The thing you wanted to do, you did.
16:17 Speaker 03 Right.
16:17 Speaker 04 It's weird to me to be like, "Well, hang on, someone bought my, bought the stuff that I said to buy? And then told other people to buy it? That doesn't seem right."
16:23 Pablo Torre? So at the core of it is the question of, "How can you possibly claim that you are the originator of a style that you yourself have derived?"
16:32 Speaker 03 Right.
16:32 Pablo Torre? "From this larger recurring conceit of we're all trying to be Hailey Bieber, or it turns out, in this very particular archetype, Kim Kardashian, who turns out, in a bit of a twist of the story, to be established as the actual originator of a lot of this."
16:50 Speaker 03 Oh, because her house is boring as [BLEEP].
16:52 Pablo Torre? Right.
16:52 Speaker 03 Have you seen Kim Kardashian's house? I know you've been.
16:54 Speaker 04 I'm sure I have at some point.
16:56 Speaker 03 I know you've been to her house.
16:57 Speaker 04 Yeah, I've seen it when I'm there.
16:58 Speaker 03 But it's just like, it's just very sad and cold looking.
17:02 Pablo Torre? Neutral is the, is the, is the term that they like to embrace.
17:06 Speaker 03 Boring. It's the, it's the absence of, um...
17:10 Speaker 04 Like warmth.
17:11 Speaker 03 It's the absence of anything in, of anything kind of focally interesting.
17:15 Pablo Torre? It's the absence of-
17:17 Speaker 03 Of taste.
17:18 Pablo Torre? Of a personal.
17:19 Speaker 03 Of a personality. It's an absence of like my, of injecting myself into my home decor. Like, listen, you're talking to a lady who's got a blank wall because she's overwhelmed by the idea of hanging anything on it. Not because I think it's like a nice, cleanest, that like, I know I'm no expert on this stuff. But like, it's hard to say like, that's, she stole that from me when what that is, is like a blank wall.
17:43 Pablo Torre? Right, right. So what's happening legally.
17:45 Speaker 03 Or a gallery wall. It's a very common thing.
17:49 Pablo Torre? Right.
17:49 Speaker 04 We also in our house have four pictures on a wall.
17:52 Speaker 03 Watch out.
17:52 Speaker 04 Did I?
17:53 Speaker 03 So watch out now. You better have a lawyer.
17:55 Pablo Torre? But, but even if we were to grant, though, that they're both very, very similar to each other. The legal precedent here is interesting. Um, it references a lawsuit that was actually a case in which Nike, so the, the famous, this is sports, we're a sports show.
18:09 Speaker 03 Yes.
18:09 Pablo Torre? The famous, uh, Jumpman logo that Nike made popular of Michael Jordan extending his arm out, legs splayed. It turns out that that was originally photographed in 1984 by this guy, and this is a strange name, but it's Co, C O, uh, Rentmeester.
18:24 Speaker 03 Great.
18:24 Pablo Torre? Co Rentmeester.
18:25 Speaker 04 I love it.
18:26 Speaker 03 I love that.
18:26 Pablo Torre? Definitely not the name a child invents for himself when he's asked at a movie theater. Sir.
18:31 Speaker 03 I'm Co.
18:31 Pablo Torre? What's your name? Um, Co Rentmeester says, uh, that he photographed Michael Jordan, uh, in that pose and that Nike then reshoot it with Michael Jordan and did that pose in their own advertising. This is the original Co Rentmeester's.
18:46 Speaker 03 The leg is bent a little more than it is in the.
18:47 Pablo Torre? You see the right leg being bent a tad more and Nike, of course, looks like this.
18:51 Speaker 03 Yes. Well, yes, the leg a little straighter, the arm a little straighter.
18:55 Pablo Torre? Perfected in that way, optimized in that way, you might even say. Um, the judge did rule that Nike, uh, had no liability for this.
19:02 Speaker 03 Because you can't.
19:04 Pablo Torre? What Nike, uh, won on the basis of was this court finding that the images were not substantially similar because the photographer didn't own the pose. Like, how can you possibly copyright this pose? Um, and that only creative choices like Anglo photograph and camera shutter speed could be protected, which is interesting. But the point is, a judge gets to be an art critic and in this. Case, what we're waiting on is the judge to determine is the thing that these people are making a creative decision that can be protected as, as, uh, as precedent suggests. And all of it speaks to what the [bleep] people are being incentivized to do.
19:43 Speaker 03 Hmm.
19:44 Pablo Torre? Like, the thing about all of this is that, and this is a recurring theme, I think, on this show. Um, the internet and its economy promised a great multiplying of sensibilities and tastes and different ideas. And instead, it incentivized homogeneity.
20:02 Speaker 03 Hmm.
20:02 Pablo Torre? And so here are people just doing what this new economy is instructing them to do. And simultaneously now claiming what I am doing though, because I am doing it, I care about this, this is me, um, they are claiming that this is worthy of legal protection. And this will be a landmark case if in fact it is ruled in favor of Gifford against Shield.
20:24 Speaker 03 Now, I'm no copyright lawyer, but I don't think they'll possibly rule in favor of whatever the first lady's name was, and I don't even remember.
20:33 Speaker 04 I just can't see how you would.
20:35 Speaker 03 Oh, do we have more? Because I do want, I need more.
20:38 Pablo Torre? If you're in, if you're in the jury pool for this, um, you may be lucky enough to just go to trial to, to see.
20:44 Speaker 03 Now, see captions are, I guess, to me, a number one indicator of if you're copying. I've seen a lot of, not to get distracted, but I've seen a lot of this on the internet over the last year or two of someone alleging that someone stole someone else's content. And a lot of the times, the nail in the coffin for me is I'll look and be like, oh, same exact caption. They took the same exact caption of the post and posted it on there. And they're not usually, um, in a legal battle. It's just someone going like, hey, this girl's copying everything I do. But this, um, the captions, I can't read them, even with my glasses on.
21:18 Speaker 04 The captions aren't the same.
21:19 Speaker 03 But they clearly aren't the same.
21:20 Speaker 04 They're wearing the same sweater. It looks like.
21:22 Speaker 03 But it's a sweater from Amazon. Aren't we all wearing, aren't we all wearing the same sweater?
21:28 Pablo Torre? But it's also like phone covering the face in the same way.
21:31 Speaker 03 We all do that when we take a picture of ourselves in the mirror.
21:33 Pablo Torre? Right leg angled.
21:35 Speaker 03 We all do that when we're taking a picture of ourselves in the mirror.
21:37 Speaker 04 I guess the way I feel is if you go onto Instagram right now, you will find a billion people doing this exact thing. I think at least the first hurdle you have to clear, and I don't think this is sufficient to win this lawsuit, but the first hurdle I would imagine you have to clear is, if I didn't exist, no one else would be doing this. But in fact, if both these women were vaporized at this exact moment.
22:01 Speaker 03 Wow, he just murdered two ladies.
22:03 Speaker 04 You could find two new of this.
22:04 Speaker 03 Ladies that are doing this. You're absolutely right. They're also not even selling the same products. This one's selling, I think, the mirror, her most used object in her house, and that sweater. They're selling the same sweater.
22:15 Pablo Torre? So this is also, just to be clear about how this all works, is you see a photo of somebody, and on these storefronts, the products are basically tagged so that you can shop the look.
22:25 Speaker 03 Oh, I want that sweater.
22:26 Pablo Torre? I want that mirror. I want this Chris Evans in Knives Out sweater kind of deal.
22:31 Speaker 03 Cable net, I think, is the more commonly.
22:33 Pablo Torre? It is worth pointing out here that the model in the product shot does look also like she is that.
22:40 Speaker 03 Is she stealing it? Is she stealing it?
22:43 Pablo Torre? So part of this is about an alleged loss of income, right? So Gifford is claiming that she would post this thing. She very often would replicate it, and she would be able to see in a data-driven way the money taken out of her pocket because somebody else was allegedly doing the same thing and competing for the same exact customer.
23:04 Speaker 04 That just feels like the world. You know what I mean? I sell oranges. Wait, now you're selling oranges? What the [__] dude? I sell oranges. But if there's enough oranges, the other guy's gonna start selling them too.
23:12 Pablo Torre? Can sheer naked consumerism be an artistic, creative choice to be protected legally? In a world in which everybody who's a creator and influencer is also a storefront operator, in which they're selling products as their actual main goal? That is the legal scholarship that we're watching develop, which people have been, by the way, people have been waiting for. Because this is, of course, these complaints are rampant. It's not just these two people. People are the first to have this complaint. It's just that Gifford actually took the step of copyrighting her stuff.
23:43 Speaker 03 And how? What do you mean by that?
23:46 Pablo Torre? Yeah, so here is.
23:47 Speaker 04 What do you mean?
23:49 Pablo Torre? What do you mean by this? She registered her social media post with the US Copyright Office. An unusual step, according to the story, not taken by most influencers.
23:57 Speaker 03 You can just copyright anything you want?
23:59 Pablo Torre? Uh.
24:00 Speaker 03 How much does it cost?
24:02 Speaker 04 This post that you posted has you in it. So if you're not in the one that I made.
24:07 Speaker 03 Then it's different.
24:07 Speaker 04 Isn't mine different?
24:09 Pablo Torre? This is her claiming that her hair was dyed from black to brown.
24:12 Speaker 03 Oh, my God.
24:13 Pablo Torre? On September 27th, 2023. And that the defendant.
24:17 Speaker 03 Months later.
24:18 Pablo Torre? On December 2nd, 2023.
24:20 Speaker 03 Also in her car.
24:21 Pablo Torre? Did the same thing.
24:22 Speaker 03 Also in her car. I mean, listen, that's what a trend is. Like, I'm seeing a lot of blondes currently go brunette. And be very dramatic about it, side note. They're very, they're being very like, oh, my God, my hair is so dark. Which is like, yeah, all right, that's what brunette is. But it's a trend. You know, a couple of months ago, there was a trend of, I think it was called cowboy copper. Same thing with like nails. There's like nail trends. But it doesn't mean that you're copying as much as it means you're following what you're being literally influenced to do. So I just have a hard time with all of this in general. Copyright law in general is very confusing to me.
25:07 Speaker 04 I sympathize somewhat with the defendant because it's a human being. But the thing that I brought in to talk about today, which we'll get to later, is AI. And the idea of, like, I don't, so I guess what I'm trying to think through in my own mind is where I draw the line. But I don't draw it here.
25:21 Speaker 03 Does she claim like, I was making hundreds of thousands of dollars, now I'm making?
25:24 Speaker 04 Right, because she was making like 600 bucks a week. I'm gonna be mad that we're talking about this.
25:27 Pablo Torre? So the proxy answer I will give is that they were both able to buy new homes as a result of their Amazon storefronts.
25:32 Speaker 03 What's up with money? What's going on with money?
25:33 Speaker 04 How does money work?
25:34 Speaker 03 That does not make anything to me.
25:35 Speaker 04 Cancel this. Let's talk about that.
25:36 Pablo Torre? Bought new beige homes.
25:38 Speaker 03 Where? In the markets that they're from?
25:40 Pablo Torre? In, in, outside of Minneapolis and Austin, Texas.
25:43 Speaker 04 Both lovely, lovely cities.
25:45 Speaker 03 Well, Austin's sort of.
25:47 Speaker 04 It's changing.
25:47 Speaker 03 It's different.
25:48 Speaker 04 But it's lovely.
25:49 Speaker 03 Very different now. I don't think it's weird anymore.
25:52 Speaker 04 I don't, um. Yeah, I just, I can't, maybe I don't understand it. I'd love to have Sydney on the pod. Sydney, if you're there, pop off in the, pop off in the comments.
26:00 Speaker 03 I'd love to have a house, actually.
26:02 Speaker 04 But I, I'm having trouble sympathizing with her, only because it seems like what she does is ver- is both easy to replicate, no offense, and the goal of her channel, or whatever you call it, is to get people to buy the stuff. So.
26:20 Speaker 03 There's also a sense of like, um, you know, entrepreneurship, right? That people like to embody when they're influencers. It's like, I did it myself. I took my life into my own hands. And then sort of slamming the door behind you to be like, and don't you do it?
26:35 Speaker 04 I used to be one of the hosts of, I don't even know if it was a show.
26:39 Pablo Torre? 2020?
26:39 Speaker 04 On amazon.com. If you went to amazon.com, the website.
26:42 Speaker 03 Yes.
26:43 Speaker 04 There'd be like a little, a little video popping in the corner with a fella who'd be like, you like spatulas? Guess what, jerk?
26:47 Speaker 03 You did that?
26:48 Speaker 04 I got a spatula you're gonna freaking love.
26:50 Pablo Torre? That was you?
26:51 Speaker 04 I did that for, I did that for a while. I don't know how long I did it for.
26:53 Speaker 03 Good money?
26:53 Speaker 04 It paid pretty well.
26:54 Speaker 03 Or did you make money off of how many products were bought during your?
26:56 Speaker 04 I don't think anyone ever, I don't think I sold a single item. I couldn't believe that they didn't fire me. Because I would, they would give me, um.
27:02 Pablo Torre? Wait, you'd be like the Microsoft paperclip, but for amazon.com.
27:05 Speaker 03 Where did you film it?
27:06 Speaker 04 There's like a studio in, like, 34th Street.
27:08 Speaker 03 Yeah.
27:09 Speaker 04 Uh, during COVID, then they, you would film them in your house. But before that, it was a studio on 34th Street. And they would send me like a packet with, you know, all of like, this is, this is what, these are the products. This is like, the points about them that you should be making, and they'd also have stuff loaded in the prompter. And I would be like, I'm not gonna read this, and I'm not gonna say that. And I guess they loved it, but I would be like, you know, buy this 20, they'd like a 20 CD changer. And I'd be like, no one is gonna buy this. So I'm on the thing saying that. Like, don't, don't buy this. Don't buy this. I don't know why you would buy this. This technology won't exist in five minutes. And they loved it. I was ba- I was there all the time.
27:46 Speaker 03 This is a fascinating chapter of your story.
27:47 Speaker 04 I really, I really liked the people who worked there.
27:49 Speaker 03 Yeah.
27:49 Speaker 04 They were nice people. The end.
27:51 Speaker 03 The end.
27:52 Pablo Torre? Why did it end?
27:54 Speaker 04 I got a different job and I left.
27:55 Speaker 03 You said, "Baby, I outgrew you."
27:57 Speaker 04 But I was very fun. Because they did not care what I said, which didn't make sense to me.
28:02 Speaker 03 Right.
28:02 Speaker 04 But they just let me say whatever. It was very fun. And all the other people were like professional hosts. Like, they were on the money. They knew the product.
28:09 Speaker 03 How'd you get the in?
28:10 Speaker 04 They could tell you the voltage of the
28:11 Speaker 03 Oh, boy.
28:12 Speaker 04 thing. I think at some point, someone over there said they wanted somebody funny.
28:15 Speaker 03 Yeah.
28:16 Speaker 04 So then I went and I gave a presentation on some product.
28:19 Speaker 03 Sick.
28:19 Speaker 04 And then they hired me, and then there I was.
28:21 Speaker 03 Fascinating.
28:22 Speaker 04 I was professionally bad at it. Like, extremely bad at selling your product.
28:27 Speaker 03 I'm gonna find the old footage.
28:28 Pablo Torre? Yeah, we gotta find this. Is this available?
28:30 Speaker 03 Was it live?
28:31 Speaker 04 I think it's all...
28:32 Speaker 03 It was all live.
28:32 Speaker 04 It doesn't like go to YouTube or something, you know what I mean?
28:35 Speaker 03 Maybe you had a big fan who just saved everything you did.
28:38 Speaker 04 I have a superfan who clipped it all.
28:39 Speaker 03 That's what I've found. Anytime I need something from my archive, I have a big fan who has it saved somewhere.
28:44 Speaker 04 He's got it.
28:45 Speaker 03 I also think that if this lady does end up winning this lawsuit.
28:49 Pablo Torre? Right.
28:49 Speaker 03 I don't think that's good for the internet. I mean, the internet has always kind of existed in this weird space where you sort of are taking and recreating, or taking and spinning forward, or taking and elaborating, or parodying. It's all kind of in this... And it's always been a weird place with copyright law, if I'm remembering correctly, where it's like, kind of the Wild West.
29:11 Pablo Torre? Yes.
29:12 Speaker 03 The law has had to evolve to keep up with how it works.
29:15 Pablo Torre? Yes, like, even just like copying tweets.
29:17 Speaker 03 Right. I don't think the world is better if only one lady can advertise being basic.
29:24 Pablo Torre? Good news is that Alyssa Sheel, who is the defendant.
29:27 Speaker 03 Right.
29:27 Pablo Torre? Whose name perhaps you were searching for. She has decided to pivot to a new aesthetic.
29:32 Speaker 03 Well, that's usually an indication of guilt, I feel.
29:34 Speaker 04 She's hosting a podcast called Alyssa Sheel Finds Out?
29:37 Speaker 03 Oh, no.
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33:26 Pablo Torre? Michael?
33:26 Speaker 04 Yes?
33:27 Pablo Torre? It's your turn on the main stage.
33:28 Speaker 03 Ooh, Michael, it's your turn on the main stage.
33:31 Speaker 04 I don't have like an article behind this. This is just like a video that I saw.
33:34 Speaker 03 Right.
33:34 Speaker 04 But anyway, I saw on the internet Ben Affleck articulating what the future of AI will hold for like filmmakers, et cetera. And it sparked a lot of thoughts among me and my fellow artistes. Uh, roll the clip. Can I do that? No, I don't have the power. I thought I had it.
33:53 Speaker 03 You might. No, here it comes. Look at that.
33:55 Speaker 06 How do you see it? I mean, is it a benefit or is it a real threat? Is it possible that a Netflix could say, you know, we're gonna do our own, excuse me, James Bond thing out there with a bunch of actors that are completely recreated for this market or that market? A, that's not possible now. B, will it be possible in the future? Highly unlikely. C, movies will be one of the last things, if everything gets replaced, to be replaced by AI. AI can write you excellent imitative verse that sounds a little beefy, and it cannot write you Shakespeare. The function of having two actors, or three or four actors in a room, and the taste to discern and construct that is something that currently entirely eludes AI's capability and I think will for a meaningful period of time.
34:38 Speaker 06 What AI is gonna do is gonna disintermediate the more laborious, less creative, and you know, more costly aspects of filmmaking that will allow costs to be brought down, that will be lower the barrier to entry, that will allow more voices to be heard, that will make it easier for the people who wanna make Good Will Hunting to go out and make it. Look, AI is a craftsman at best. Craftsman can learn to, you know, make stickly furniture by sitting down next to somebody and seeing what their technique is and imitating. That's how large video models, large language models, basically work. A library of vectors of meaning and transformers that interpret in context, right? But they're just cross-pollinating things that exist. Nothing new is created. Not yet, not yet.
35:23 Speaker 06 Yeah, not yet, and really, in order to do that, look, craftsman is knowing how to work, art is knowing when to stop. And I think knowing when to stop is going to be a very difficult thing for AI to learn because it's taste. And also, lack of consistency, lack of controls, lack of quality. AI for this world of generative video is gonna do key things more. I wouldn't like to be in the visual effects business. They're in trouble because what costs a lot of money is now gonna cost a lot less. And it's gonna hammer that space, and it already is. Eventually, my hope for AI is that it's an additional revenue stream that can replace DVD, which took 15 to 20% out of the economy of filmmaking,
36:06 Speaker 06 which is, and there should be negotiated, right? Right. And visual rights say, if you wanna, what if people wanna make five-minute, 30-second TikTok videos where they look like the Avengers? Well, great. You can, you know, just like you used to be able to buy your Iron Man costume at the store, you're gonna buy your Iron Man pack and you and your buddies are gonna look like Iron Man and Hawkeye, like, you know, on Twitch. That's what's gonna really happen.
36:29 Speaker 04 Most of the comments, like, once you see the video once on Twitter or whatever, then it starts feeding you quote tweets of the same thing. Uniformly, pretty much, the comments are, Ben Affleck is brilliant. And this is like, you know, he's really articulated what's gonna happen. I feel so much better about AI. But I don't feel, when I watch this, I'm like, dude, what are you? I love Ben Affleck. Let me just, at the base of this, I love Ben Affleck. I think he's handsome. I think he's talented. I think he's smart. I think he's so wrong about this.
36:58 Pablo Torre? Yeah, a lot of the responses when I first saw this, Ben Affleck, shockingly smart. A prophet of the way media is gonna go, and you are actually saying, um, [BLEEP] all that [BLEEP].
37:10 Speaker 04 First of all, Ben Affleck knows more about the movie industry and films than I will ever know. But he, the thing he says AI can't have is taste. And I think that also, most people don't have taste.
37:23 Speaker 03 Yes.
37:24 Speaker 04 Most people don't know the difference between a good joke and a great joke.
37:31 Speaker 03 Yes.
37:32 Speaker 04 Most people don't, I'm in comedy, so I know those things. I can't tell the difference between, you know, a house that's been painted well and a house that's been painted exceptionally well, because I don't know [BLEEP] about that. When people watch TV shows, you can lower the bar quite far, and they'll still go, "This show is awesome. This is my favorite show." And AI, I believe, can get to there.
37:58 Speaker 03 That level. I agree with you.
38:00 Pablo Torre? What you're saying is that, in a world where a standard of success is just popularity, that what he is saying will not happen, has already happened, and it will happen more because the guardrail on popularity is not quality.
38:16 Speaker 04 Yes, exactly. And I'm not even, not in a ser- popularity, but only important in so much as that correlates with where the money goes.
38:24 Pablo Torre? Exactly.
38:25 Speaker 04 You know what I mean? Like, in order to make a living in this industry, I fear that AI will make that incredibly hard to do in the near future because people who pay money to have things made are very incentivized to make that happen. If I could press a button, or with a prompt, write a movie, that's gonna save me $200 million. I'll spend $199 million trying to make that. That's what worries me.
38:52 Pablo Torre? The thing that's happening now, though, is that whenever I see AI, and it seems like it's discernible and obvious that this was AI-generated, it feels like an indictment of AI.
39:03 Speaker 04 Yes, totally, totally true.
39:04 Pablo Torre? So, right now, it feels like to be AI is to indicate that you are getting, like, subprime-
39:12 Pablo Torre? Like poorly made uh work. It feels like uh my hope is that AI becomes stigmatized to the point where it comes associated with bad things. And what you are indicating, which I find very hard to disagree with, is that our ability to discern bad from good is actually less relevant to whether something will succeed as a commodity.
39:37 Speaker 04 I worry that that's that that's the case. I think that idea that like all AI does is imitate what you know, it can't create anything brand new. The whole what we've been talking about with Burfany and the other one is that really everything is imitated. Almost everything you do for your entire life is an imitation of something you already saw. And a computer will be able to imitate more and will integrate and imitate more things.
40:03 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
40:04 Speaker 04 I don't hold myself like so special that a computer couldn't eventually do what I don't think a computer would come up with Burfany, but I think other than that, I'm replicable.
40:15 Speaker 03 I also think that like um we the shortening of the attention span is discounted in the way that Ben speaks about Mr. Affleck speaks about it.
40:26 Pablo Torre? Thank you.
40:27 Speaker 03 In that like he is thinking about it from an actor's point of view and when he watches a movie or Shakespeare and two actors creating this, I think like a lot of media being consumed now is almost like a second screen consumption. And I don't think that people are paying as much like discerning attention to what they're consuming. And that's obviously not the ideal. In an ideal situation, you're putting your phone down, you're watching a movie. I think younger generations were seeing less and less willing or capable of doing that. And so I think like AI slop can slip in under the radar a lot more easily. I also will say when people say Ben Affleck sounds smart, we've had Ben Affleck sound smart a lot of times.
41:12 Speaker 03 Remember when he was on Bill Maher and everybody was like, whoa.
41:14 Pablo Torre? Right, right, right.
41:15 Speaker 04 You're not listening to what we are saying. You guys are saying if you want to be liberals, believe in liberal principles like freedom of speech, like um you know, we are endowed. Our forefathers, the name of the last strike, all men are created equal. No.
41:26 Speaker 06 Ben, we have to be able to criticize bad ideas.
41:28 Speaker 04 Of course we do. No liberal doesn't want to criticize bad ideas.
41:30 Speaker 06 But is, at this moment, is the motherload of bad ideas.
41:33 Speaker 04 Jeez.
41:34 Speaker 06 So we have, we have ideas like glass in me.
41:37 Speaker 04 It's not, it's not, it's an ugly.
41:38 Speaker 06 Apostasy.
41:39 Speaker 04 Or how about more than a billion people who aren't fanatical, who don't punch women, who just want to go to school. Wait a second. Say, just break five times a day. Wait, don't do any of the things, but you're saying all mugs. Wait a second.
41:50 Speaker 06 I'm not saying all mugs.
41:52 Speaker 04 Wait a second. And you're painting the whole group religion with that. No, no.
41:56 Speaker 03 Ben Affleck, when he's doing well, is a great mind and a great talent, and I wish that he would get his [BLEEP] together.
42:04 Pablo Torre? Right.
42:04 Speaker 03 I wish he would figure out what's going on with him.
42:06 Pablo Torre? Ben Affleck.
42:07 Speaker 03 And he would, you know, better himself.
42:08 Speaker 04 I don't know, I don't know about that. I don't know what you're talking about, and I don't want to know.
42:11 Pablo Torre? An eagle back tattoo in the sheets.
42:13 Speaker 03 Oh, God, I always forget about the tattoo.
42:14 Pablo Torre? And a philosopher in the streets.
42:16 Speaker 03 Yes, exactly.
42:17 Speaker 04 Do you guys remember when he made the movie The Town? You know, have you seen the movie The Town?
42:20 Speaker 03 Yes.
42:20 Speaker 04 Have I talked about this on this podcast before? I'm having deja vu.
42:23 Pablo Torre? Uh, I don't think so.
42:24 Speaker 04 Okay, well, The Town's so [BLEEP] good.
42:26 Speaker 03 Yeah.
42:27 Speaker 04 When I saw The Town, this is my first thought. My first thought after The Town, I turned to my wife and I said?
42:32 Speaker 03 Let's rob Fenway Park.
42:35 Speaker 04 I said, Ben Affleck's gonna be president of the United States.
42:38 Speaker 03 He's very smart, very smart.
42:41 Speaker 04 That's how I felt. I really do love him. I just, I think he's wrong. I think he's, uh, maybe insulated from these fears because of his stature in the industry.
42:48 Pablo Torre? Right. As a guy who worked inside of a pop-up window on Amazon.com, what you're saying?
42:53 Speaker 03 I value his perspective. I found his perspective interesting. I just think he's so, he seemed very sure of the fact that AI was coming for everyone around him's job, but couldn't do what he does. And I think that's always a tough perspective to sell anybody. Because to me, I'm like, if it's going to be able to do everybody, like, he said it's coming for the CGI people.
43:16 Pablo Torre? Yes.
43:17 Speaker 03 But it cannot do.
43:17 Pablo Torre? We've conceded that the CGI people are definitely screwed.
43:19 Speaker 03 Right. And I just think, um, I just think that attitude has never historically panned out. Where you're like, yeah, it's coming for everybody else. It will not come for me. It can't do what I do. I think, like, I think he's right in the sense of, like, the art of acting at its highest form. But I also think, to what you were saying, is that, like, The average person cannot tell the difference between incredible acting and fine acting, or like decent acting, or like barely. You can tell when it's bad acting most of the time.
43:54 Pablo Torre? Well, I
43:54 Speaker 03 I don't think most people are like, wow.
43:57 Pablo Torre? Like, so I was thinking about this the other day, actually. As somebody who tries to make things that are good, first and foremost, is my main standard of success. Is this good? Yeah. If you're wondering, do I think this podcast right now is good? It's real, it's real, it's a real concern of mine. But what I'm saying is that I, this is where I'm like, where are the guardrails?
44:15 Speaker 03 Yeah.
44:16 Pablo Torre? If it's an open field in which it's just sheer popularity and the money follows the Amazon storefront, you know, revenues. What I'm hoping for is like, truly, I thought this. I'm so glad the Academy Awards exist. I'm so glad that there are things, institutions that signal in a very obvious way, reward this, it's good, there's a critical appraisal behind this. Which leads me into this incredibly unpopular position of awards shows being the thing that'll save us. The elites who reward movies that I very seldom think are the best, are the only hope we have for signaling in a market, in a market way. This is worthy of your eyeballs.
45:00 Pablo Torre? Because everything else is just left for, again, an open, boundless focus group in which people are like clicking on stuff.
45:07 Speaker 04 Yeah, but I, I, I, I hope that you're right about that. But I think the enemy to that is, you know, some studio making a film with AI and then paying Alana, whatever the first woman's name is, to make a, to make a video saying how, how good that movie is. Do you know what I mean? So once you've got, once Kim Kardashian and Gwyneth Paltrow and some third person say this movie's good because they've been paid X dollars to say it, Joe Blow is not going to care what, you know, the Hollywood
45:42 Speaker 04 Elite that haven't been paid have to say against it. Do you understand what I'm saying?
45:46 Pablo Torre? Well, the question is like, can AI plausibly write an episode of like Law and Order? Can it write an episode of Chicago Fire?
45:52 Speaker 03 Yes.
45:52 Speaker 04 I feel like for sure.
45:53 Speaker 03 Easily, yes.
45:54 Speaker 04 I would be surprised if right now it can't. Truly.
45:57 Speaker 03 I'd be surprised if right now it isn't.
45:59 Speaker 04 Which isn't to say it's gonna write good episodes of it. But I don't think most people who watch those shows, because those are procedural, so it's like it's pretty much the same kind.
46:10 Pablo Torre? Right?
46:10 Speaker 03 They're a little formulaic.
46:11 Speaker 04 A literal formula. So, you know, we change the name, we change the job.
46:14 Speaker 03 But you're interviewing the guy, the guy that saw the suspect the night before, the guy that saw the victim, then you're moving to the, that part of it, the investigation. Then you move to the interrogation part, then you're moving to the court part, and then it's over.
46:25 Speaker 04 And again, is it gonna write episodes as good as the professional writers who are writing those episodes right now are writing them? No. But will the net gain of profit to the company making those be enhanced by scrapping all those people and making a slightly worse show?
46:43 Pablo Torre? Is Ben Affleck the boy who cried Dick Wolf?
46:47 Speaker 03 My goodness.
46:47 Speaker 04 Holy moly.
46:48 Speaker 03 My goodness, I hated that, can I be honest? I hated that.
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49:13 Pablo Torre? That's instanthydration.com/ptfo, promo code PTFO. Cozy makes furniture for the part of life that nobody warns you about. Getting the couch into the room, making the room feel like you, then actually living on it, spills and all. With Cozy, your home can grow with you by adapting to new spaces, new styles, and every era of your life. It's modular furniture, so you can actively adjust your furniture to fit any space. It's all built around making the entire home comfortable and easy, so that your stuff works with your life, not around it. The covers are washable and interchangeable, so a refresh is only one wash away, and the spill goes from panic to shrug. And it all ships to your door in easy-to-move boxes.
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50:21 Speaker 03 How is anyone not depressed? Every day I sort of come to this conclusion where I'm like...
50:31 Pablo Torre? Is this your topic?
50:32 Speaker 03 I think so. Again, I know this is a symptom of my depression. But most days I come to the conclusion that my depression is correct. That the way that I feel is the natural way that one should feel. Living in the current world that we live in, maybe given what I'm trying to do with my life. Maybe that's what is influencing it. But the more I look at like, oh, so the website that I used to go to to hear people's opinions that I value is now mostly bots and other content machines trying to get eyeballs on the most offensive
51:15 Speaker 03 or polarizing topics. Misinformation and people being paid to do things but not disclosing that they're being paid to do things. All of that has kind of like muddied the waters in a way that's very difficult for me to just go like, oh, that everything's fine. This is fine and good. This is fine and good and we're going in a, in a direction I feel is a good one.
51:41 Pablo Torre? Have you considered buying the mirror in Burfany's Amazon storefront?
51:45 Speaker 03 It's in my cart currently.
51:48 Pablo Torre? It's in your cart?
51:48 Speaker 03 She said it changed her life.
51:50 Pablo Torre? It's on your storefront.
51:51 Speaker 03 And I'm hoping, and you can buy that from me. I'll take a picture in it and post that and you can buy it.
51:56 Pablo Torre? As long as you don't show your face.
51:57 Speaker 03 Not trying to make an ad for depression. I just don't feel like, how does everybody not also have it?
52:02 Pablo Torre? So the reason I know you're not alone is because there is a topic in our portfolio of topics that we could have selected on today's show that does fit entirely with this idea.
52:09 Speaker 03 Which is it? Because that's the one I picked.
52:11 Pablo Torre? Yep. I picked that one.
52:12 Speaker 03 I picked that one.
52:12 Pablo Torre? It's that the Oxford English Dictionary has selected its word of the year. It's word of the year. This is a thing that all dictionaries do because dictionaries are brands too. And the Oxford English Dictionary's word of the year is brain rot. And of course, in the-
52:27 Speaker 03 Two words, famously.
52:29 Speaker 04 Yeah.
52:29 Speaker 03 Phrase of the year, I guess.
52:30 Pablo Torre? Are you challenging?
52:31 Speaker 04 How dare you?
52:32 Pablo Torre? Literal dictionary-
52:33 Speaker 03 Is it hyphenated?
52:33 Speaker 04 Challenge Jeff Oxford.
52:35 Pablo Torre? It is not hyphenated.
52:36 Speaker 03 So, two words.
52:37 Pablo Torre? It is brain rot, though. And if you're wondering, the other words of the year that, of course, have been selected-
52:44 Speaker 03 Gaslighting, I believe, was last year or two years before.
52:47 Pablo Torre? There's always a thematic summary of sorts.
52:51 Speaker 03 You guys see that?
52:52 Speaker 04 See what I did?
52:52 Speaker 03 You guys see that?
52:53 Pablo Torre? I'm sad. Not good enough at hosting.
52:56 Speaker 03 No, you were busy. You were Googling.
52:58 Pablo Torre? I was trying to scan a QR code to access the full version of the Washington Post story, which is owned by the company that Michael Cruz Kayne used to host a show inside of a pop-up window for.
53:07 Speaker 04 That's right. I think I- Go, you go.
53:09 Speaker 03 No, it's-
53:10 Speaker 04 No, you-
53:11 Speaker 03 Did you guys know the aliens were supposed to come today? Did anyone see that?
53:14 Speaker 04 I'm so glad I didn't keep going.
53:16 Speaker 03 I know. Dan said December 3rd, they said the aliens were coming.
53:19 Speaker 04 Who's "they"?
53:19 Pablo Torre? Who is "they"?
53:20 Speaker 03 No clue. And it's coming from Dan, too, which is like, ah, that could have been for anyone.
53:23 Pablo Torre? The guy who thought that vase and vase were two separate sorts of pottery.
53:26 Speaker 03 Guy who sent me an Instagram video, clearly AI, of a cabin with snow falling and cartoons and was like, "We should go here." And I was like, "Dan, that's not real."
53:35 Speaker 04 It's not a place.
53:36 Speaker 03 Not a real place. That's very fake.
53:39 Pablo Torre? Yep, yep, yep.
53:40 Speaker 03 But anyway, he said that "they" are saying the aliens are supposed to come today. So I said, "I'll be on the roof with the sign that says, 'Take me.'"
53:47 Pablo Torre? Oh, yeah, yeah. Got an ID4. Hold on.
53:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, we were doing something.
53:51 Pablo Torre? Are the aliens-
53:52 Speaker 03 No, no, stick to the other thing you were Googling.
53:54 Speaker 04 It's here. You've Googled yourself into a pretzel.
54:00 Pablo Torre? The Oxford English Dictionary chose "brain rot," a term that describes the overconsumption of material or content to the point that it deteriorates one's mental state. Katie Nolan is the picture, it turns out, next to the word "brain rot" in the OED.
54:15 Speaker 03 Thanks.
54:16 Pablo Torre? First used in 1854.
54:19 Speaker 04 Walden.
54:20 Pablo Torre? Nailed it.
54:22 Pablo Torre? You knew that?
54:22 Speaker 04 I knew that.
54:22 Pablo Torre? Just from life.
54:23 Speaker 04 I've read about this already.
54:24 Speaker 03 Oh, I was like, "Wait, really?"
54:25 Pablo Torre? How dare you prep for something?
54:26 Speaker 03 My God, I was so impressed.
54:27 Pablo Torre? How dare you prepare for this show?
54:30 Speaker 03 It's my article, and I was still impressed that you knew it.
54:32 Pablo Torre? Yeah, so there are these, like, I love that every dictionary, a dictionary organization, what it's called, in the Washington Post. I love that they all have these councils, like a Hall of Fame, like, voting committee that decides what's the word of the year. And Casper Graffwall-
54:48 Speaker 04 Hell, yeah. Is that one of the influencers? That's one of the women?
54:53 Pablo Torre? Casper Graffwall, also in his homeowner era, president of the Oxford Languages, said that brain rot speaks to one of the perceived dangers of virtual life and how we are using our free time like a rightful next chapter in the cultural conversation about humanity and technology. Contrary to Casper Graffwall, Collins Dictionary named, as its word of the year, brat.
55:16 Speaker 04 That feels right. That Oxford and Casper Graffwall would say brain rot and Collins, which is a dictionary that sounds kind of lo-fi, would be like, "Our word's boobs, y'all."
55:40 Pablo Torre? At the end of every episode of Palatory Finds Out, a show about finding stuff out.
55:42 Speaker 04 We're already at the end. It's only been six hours.
55:44 Speaker 03 I didn't even do my article.
55:45 Pablo Torre? That Katie hates, which is we say what we found out. So, Michael, let's start with you to give Katie a little bit of time.
55:52 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah, because I've got something at the ready. I would say I found out that the fella who runs the Oxford English Dictionary is named, and I believe I'm getting this right, Ding Dong Primpelpants.
56:07 Speaker 03 Primpelpants?
56:08 Speaker 04 Something like that?
56:10 Speaker 03 Is this all right?
56:10 Speaker 04 And I was surprised by that.
56:12 Speaker 03 Yeah.
56:13 Pablo Torre? Yep, yep, yep, yep.
56:14 Speaker 03 It's misinformation. You're actively participating in the misinformation that's making me feel like I'm dying. Actively participating in it.
56:20 Pablo Torre? How dare you slander a dictionary?
56:21 Speaker 03 How dare you?
56:22 Speaker 04 Well, can you say his real name again?
56:23 Pablo Torre? His name is Casper.
56:25 Speaker 03 Oh, sorry. Different name.
56:27 Pablo Torre? Graffwall. We've had some all-time names on the show today.
56:30 Speaker 03 A lot of all-time names here today.
56:31 Pablo Torre? Casper Graffwall.
56:32 Speaker 04 Well, that's what I learned today. Casper Graffwall.
56:34 Pablo Torre? Yep.
56:35 Speaker 04 I'm not going to forget it now. I would have forgotten it before, but now I'm not going to forget it.
56:38 Pablo Torre? Yeah, he's up there with Burfany and the names we'll never forget. Katie Nolan.
56:43 Speaker 03 What did I learn? The, uh, Wellbutrin's not doing it.
56:48 Speaker 03 That maybe I need more MGs, you know? That's, I think, what I learned today.
56:52 Pablo Torre? If Katie's doctor is in the comments.
56:54 Speaker 03 Yeah, sound off.
56:55 Pablo Torre? Sound off.
56:56 Speaker 04 Pop off in the comments.
56:57 Speaker 03 Safely.
56:58 Speaker 04 If you're a doctor.
56:59 Pablo Torre? What I found out is that, uh, on this show, we can actually validate Michael Cruz Kayne's finest career credit.
57:10 Speaker 04 Okay, let's see, squeezing. Yes! It's taking my blood pressure. Yes! It's got a bunch of numbers on there that I personally don't know the meaning of. 98, that's a number. You guys have heard of that one. 111, also 117. I'm supposed to be selling this. So far, this checks out. These are all real numbers. And now here's everything you could possibly want to know about my blood pressure. Uh, let's see, hypertension, stage one and stage two. So if you don't see me when we come back, it's because I'm at the hospital or on the internet Googling what those things mean. I'm hopeful that putting this on my wrist is why it gave me that reading, but honestly, I might have a real problem live on camera for you, America and the world to watch.
57:46 Speaker 03 Is it not supposed to go on the wrist?
57:48 Speaker 04 I don't, I have, I have no idea.
57:49 Speaker 03 No clue.
57:50 Pablo Torre? You don't know how to use the Amran Evolve without a second D Bluetooth blood pressure monitor.
57:55 Speaker 03 Can you put that in your storefront so I can find it later?
57:57 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I also just placed a bet and it sounds like, Michael, uh, yeah, take the under, I guess.
58:12 Pablo Torre? This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.
58:18 Pablo Torre? And I'll talk to you next time.
58:38 Pablo Torre? At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet. Like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone. And including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.
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