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Flock Around and Find Out

1h 13m 49s

Flock Around and Find Out

The episode explores a mix of tech innovation, privacy concerns, and political commentary. Built introduces a housing payment rewards program that gives users points redeemable for travel, dining, and lifestyle perks, powered by an AI concierge that handles daily tasks. Meanwhile, major tech firms like Meta and Flock face scrutiny over surveillance practices: Meta’s settlement includes strict limits on teen usage to combat addiction, while Flock’s network of over 120,000 cameras across 49 states raises alarms about facial recognition and misuse, leading to wrongful arrests and public distrust. Critics warn that surveillance technologies are not only invasive but also socially destructive, radicalizing youth through algorithms and fostering a culture of constant monitoring. The show also highlights how platforms like Apple are embedding cameras into consumer products, further eroding privacy. Beyond technology, the discussion touches on political extremism, youth disillusionment, and the normalization of surveillance in everyday life. The segment concludes with a call to individual action—resisting surveillance by opting for privacy, asserting personal boundaries, and rejecting the culture of constant data harvesting. These themes converge to question the balance between safety and freedom in a world increasingly governed by private tech firms.

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14539 Words, 77310 Characters

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Love It or Leave It is brought to you by Built. Here's a question. Are you getting rewarded for paying your rent or mortgage right now? Did you even know that that was an option? If the answer is no, you need to check out Built. Becoming a Built member means earning points on every housing payment no matter where you live. Built points can be redeemed for flights, hotels, Lyft rides. Amazon.com purchases future housing payments and more. The point perks that really call to me are fitness classes and restaurants and Amazon.com. There are dozens of ways to redeem. Members get access to an AI neighborhood concierge right in the Built app. It doesn't just give local recommendations. It takes action. From paying rent and reserving dinner tables to booking fitness classes and ordering Lyfts, it handles tasks seamlessly while applying your member benefits across 50,000 plus partner merchants. First, you download the Built app. Second, you link any credit or debit card to the app so purchases at your local spots become even more rewarding. And third, you can ask the neighborhood concierge in the app pretty much anything. Download the Built app and join the membership for where you live at joinbuilt.com slash loveit. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash loveit. Use our link. So they know we sent you. Crooked Con is coming up right after the election, and we have just added a bunch more great names to the lineup. We got Governor J.B. Pritzker coming, Senator Chris Murphy, and then over from the House side, Ilhan Omar, Robert Garcia, Sarah Jacobs, Jamie Raskin, Sarah McBride. We also have Carlos Eduardo Espina, Simone Sanders, Townsend, Eugene Daniels, David Pakman, Jessica Tarloff, Heather McGee, and then all the other people that we've announced on the website, plus more to come. Great list. Check out the full lineup and get tickets right now at CrookedCon.com. We'd love to see you there. That's CrookedCon.com. Welcome to Love It or Leave It, I'm John Lovett. And we cut the original joke that went here because it bombed. And we're going to do it again. We're going to do it again. We've got a great show for you tonight, but first, let's get into it. What a week. Turning Point USA just announced a nationwide university tour, and I can't help but notice the name they've chosen for it, America, Love It or Leave It. So if anyone in here is confused and came to see Charlie Kirk, I have some bad news and then some much worse news, but welcome. Meta on Wednesday agreed to pay $17. billion and imposed new safety rules as part of a settlement over claims that its social media platforms were addictive and harmful to children and teens. Now a little alert will pop up when your child gets an eating disorder. Meta also agreed to other restrictions, including a daily two-hour time limit and a default ban on access to the apps late at night. And if a teen wants to use Instagram to bully someone, they'll have to first complete a captcha to prove that they're actually cool. The settlement is now in place. The settlement also requires Meta to block notifications during school hours, because we want to make sure nothing disturbs kids in the classroom between active shooters. Remember earlier when I said Meta also that some of them might be dark? That was one of the dark jokes we were talking about. And then there's Flock, a tech company that has built a network of over 120,000 cameras conducting 20 billion vehicle scans a month. Across 49 states. If you do the math, that's every state but one. But is there a downside to this vast network of cameras and sensors in the hands of a private corporation? No. Yes. Traffic cameras have exposed the ways in which a subset of dangerous drivers pose a risk to the entire community. But Flock's cameras aren't limited to tracking plates. The company's AI technology could potentially identify individuals. It's based on facial features, clothing, and wireless devices. Over 50 police officers have been accused or charged with misusing the technology, including accessing camera data to stalk their exes. And the craziest part? It worked. They got back together. She didn't realize how much he cared. Federal immigration officials have used state and city police networks as part of an enforcement operation in violation of state and local laws. One sheriff in Texas searched across 83,000 cameras for, quote, a female who had an abortion. Fortunately, the woman had taken the now-obligatory precaution of stocking up on abortion wigs. You're right about that one. Flock CEO Garrett Langley went on Fox News this week to try and win over his critics, but did not exactly make a compelling case. I value my privacy. My family values their privacy. My employees value their privacy. But what we're talking about is safety as well. And so I think when people talk about just one of these. Privacy or safety, they're prioritizing the wrong thing. And what we have to prioritize as a country is compromise. This is a classic argument. The idea that we must balance these two opposing needs, privacy and security. It's the same one we heard from the Bush administration after 9-11. But much like the official explanation for Tower 7's collapse, I'm not buying it. The Constitution's protections against violations of privacy, including unreasonable search, are not contingent on the government's justification for that violation because one crime does not recommend another. And even if you accept Flock's logic, Flock's cameras are not being installed in response to a massive crime wave. Crime is historically low, and Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Not saying any crime is good, but that a new technology might allow additional crimes to be solved at the expense of individual rights is not balancing safety and privacy. It's arguing that we collectively choose to give up our privacy on the promise of safety. And you don't have to take my word for it. Flock's actual statement of its mission on its website reads, and I quote, "Our own mission is to eliminate crime, full stop." It's like, did no one learn the lessons of Minority Report? Even those freaky-deaky tub people made mistakes. And sure enough, Flock has led to a number of wrongful arrests and even jail time as a result of false identifications. In Toledo, a man was held at gunpoint and attacked by police dogs after Flock confused the numbers two and seven. That is so stupid. Why would anyone's license plate be back seven to the future? Fuck it, I fucked it up. Pretend you didn't hear it, Flock. That is so, that is so stupid. Why would anyone's license plate be back seven the future? Fuck. Dozens of cities, including Los Angeles, have ended contracts with Flock. The most recent was Tempe, Arizona, where the mayor said in a statement Wednesday, "We have to be able to provide public safety in a way that maintains the trust of our community. For Tempe, that means taking these cameras down." Responded Flock's CEO, "That's disappointing from the mayor. I expected more from someone with such a normal penis." Can we show a picture of the mayor of Tempe, Arizona? Personally, I wouldn't mess with a guy that looks like he could make your head explode by thinking about it real hard. This guy's got a cool head. Bernie Sanders posted, "Going to the doctor? Flock knows. Dropping your kids off at school? Flock is tracking you." Added Bernie, "Lied about going to the doctor while actually meeting up with your ex and yes, having sex, but even worse, exchanging the kind of warm, loving chit-chat and inside jokes you never share with your wife anymore, who you haven't felt close to since before the kids were born? Flock knows that too. And on some level, so does your wife." And Libertarian Senator Rand Paul responded to Langley's suggestion of compromise by tweeting, quote, "Our founding fathers are rolling in. In their graves at this suggestion." "No, they're not," replied Flock CEO Garrett Langley as he watched a live feed of James Madison's corpse. Of course, Flock isn't the only surveillance technology that's part of this wonderful panopticon we're building. Earlier this month, news leaked that Apple's next-generation AirPods will be equipped with tiny cameras feeding data into Apple's AI. "Why am I pointed inside the ear? And why did you program me to feel disgust?" Said Siri. We can even see the cameras in action in a clip reportedly included by accident in a developer version of a Mac software update. "With visual intelligence, your world becomes saveable. See something you like? Just ask me to save it for later." "Ah yes, it's for taking pictures of books. Big, beautiful, bouncing books on the subway. I can't wait for the next Apple launch event where they're announcing these bad boys. For years, we've heard one request again and again about the AirPods: that if you drop your AirPods, they don't fire out of the case and across the room like tiny fucking RPGs. Bad news! We didn't deal with that at all. But good news! If you forget your keys or what the inside of a public restroom looked like, Siri will be able to keep track of that for you. These new AirPods follow Meta's lead, which, despite privacy concerns, claim to have sold over seven million pairs of smart glasses. "Well, now I know what I'm getting my coworker for Christmas," said a man who's been secretly recording his female coworker since last Christmas. As critics pointed out, Meta's new pervert glasses are the best. They allow the wearer to film other people without their knowledge. We often say that progress isn't linear, but that's not true for perverts. Perverts live in a world where things are constantly getting better. The pervert looks toward the future with heart and fly open. Earlier this year, an investigation by Swedish journalists found that contract workers for Meta, who were hired to help Meta's AI identify objects in videos, complained about having to review footage taken with Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses that included people having sex and using the bathroom. said one weeping employee, and in some cases, cases both at the same time. Meta responded, actually, by ending that contract. Whether it's algorithmic feeds that lift up rage and paranoia or the destruction of the business model of journalism or a culture in which we are filming each other all the time, the people who profit from the technology are the most insulated from its harms. Meta denies wrongdoing in that big $17 billion settlement, but no one on earth is more careful about keeping their kids away from social media than the wealthiest parents in Silicon Valley. Flock executives aren't worried about being tracked by border control or jealous exes because they're American citizens and their relationships don't generate that level of passion. And Mark Zuckerberg isn't afraid of a customer filming him because he was having a bad day and was a little rude about remaking a latte. Mark's on his private compound in Hawaii, practicing a conversation he'll never have in the most expensive mirror you've ever seen. And we should be furious and demanding laws that protect privacy and allow us to control our data. And it's use. But the problem is about more than what we've allowed these companies to do to us, but what we've used their products to do to each other. I saw a video recently of a woman describing a bad experience she had at a restaurant in LA after a server chastised her when her kids were making noise. The kind of post you see all the time. And of course, she named and shamed the restaurant. And of course, in the comment, there was a lively debate. I'm so sorry that happened to you. I'm sorry you can't control your kids. And so maybe the server was rude or maybe that person is always rude or maybe just before her shift, her mother texted the family group chat a picture of her younger brother's new baby and a passive aggressive comment about how happy he is that he moved back to their hometown, unlike our little dreamer in Los Angeles. We are skeptical when a private company claims that cameras can eliminate all crime. We should be just as skeptical of a culture in which we use our cameras to address the minor indignities and frustrations that come with sharing a planet with other messy, self-involved, busy, emotional human beings. Don't be the flock you don't want to see in the world. Just do what I do. Fan out $10,000. $10,000 bills on the table and say to your waiter, this is your tip. I'll take away $1 every time I don't feel like I'm the center of your universe. And finally, beloved actor Tim Curry, star of Clue, Home Alone 2 and the Rocky Horror Picture Show, passed away at the age of 80. Whoops, wrong 80-year-old from Home Alone 2, said God. My bad. According to his family, Tim Curry died peacefully after Mrs. Peacock bludgeoned him with a lead pipe in the billiard room. A great show for you tonight, and we'll be right back with Adam Mockler. We'll be right back. You're ready to frost and all the rest, so it's just very convenient but also better for your dogs. Make the switch to Sundays. Go right now to SundaysForDogs.com slash loveit and get 50% off your first order. Or you can use code loveit at checkout. That's 50% off your first order at SundaysForDogs.com slash loveit. 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There are 67 days until the midterm, so please sign up now and help us defeat these 12 at VoteSaveAmerica.com. If you haven't signed up yet for Vote Save America, it is a problem. Vote Save America is a platform where we have a whole team that does all the work to figure out where your dollars go the best, go the furthest distance, where your time is the most needed. And so we're focusing on these races because if we can flip these 12 seats for Congress, it means we will have basically put ourselves in a position of winning the House. We also have a Senate fund where you can donate to the most winnable Senate races where the money will go the furthest. It's a combination of where we can win, but also the places that need the dollars. There's also another thing called the anxiety. Relief Fund, which is, again, our team does the research to figure out where there are organizations that are doing really good long-term work on the ground. And so when you're getting a million texts and you don't know what to do, Vote Save America is a great resource to figure out how to volunteer and how to donate. This message has been paid for by Vote Save America. Learn more at VoteSaveAmerica.com. It is not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. All right. Please welcome to the stage. He's a Gen Z pundit ripping conservatives a new A. It's Adam Hochler. Hey, how are you? Good to see you. How are you doing? Thanks for having me on. Yeah. Are you not allowed to cuss? What's ripping them a new A? Oh, we can say all the words. Okay. And often do. There's a couple we have said and then have been told to stop saying. Like what? You know, there's a couple. I can think of a few. You can think of a few. Yeah. Think of a few and just know it's probably. Oh, is it the word where it's like. Yep. Okay. Yeah, I got it. So Donald Trump declared mission accomplished in Iran this week with a beautiful post. And as you reflect on the ups and downs of the war, how proud are you of Trump for finally getting it done? He's gotten it done like 30 times thus far. We're day 180 into this 180 days into this war that was supposed to be four to six weeks long. And we've gotten zero of our objectives achieved. We were supposed to denuclearize them. That didn't happen. We were supposed to regime change them. That didn't happen. They said we were going to destroy their missiles. That didn't happen. Trump is still hiding in carts in Turkey because his life is in danger. And then finally, they said we would. Stop their ability to fund proxies in the region. That didn't work either. So the war is failing. It's absolutely awful. And it's costing us a lot of money. Yeah, I don't. I don't care for the war either. War is bad. I think it was a huge mistake. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran an op ed that called J.D. Vance the GOP's Obama. So I'm obviously getting a quite a response from the crowd. I'm trying to think of all the ways in which. That's true. Are there any in particular that jump out to you that make the comparison so apt? It's hard to pick because it's so apt in so many ways in which they are alike. Well, Obama has charisma. J.D. Vance has none. He has none. Zero res, as my generation says. I think Obama is a liberal and he believes in liberal values. J.D. Vance seems to be the antithesis of that. Obama has nothing to do with Peter Thiel. I don't know. I don't see it. What's the comparison? I look. They both so they both drew on their their family background, which was, you know, they they both experienced sort of difficult parts of their childhood and from that built an idea of what they believed they should be doing in public life. Obama's was about knitting a nation together based on a shared set of values that recognize that people of different faiths and politics. can ultimately find common ground rooted in a shared set of ideas ideas about what America is, and that to love America is to understand it is always changing, and our job is to figure out the best way to be part of that change. J.D. Vance, opposite. He experienced a lot of hardship when he was a kid, and then developed a theory of what caused all of that, wrote it down, then said, actually, no, forget that. We're going to do the Trump thing for a while, and the tech thing. I mean, like, it's just, he just is a, I don't know, there's no real way to tell a story. Like, J.D. Vance does not have a coherent story he tells from what led from his youth to where he is now, in part because what he says now is completely different than what he would have said seven or eight years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I think that Obama doesn't have that type of massive change in ideology over a small period of time, so I don't know, I don't get the comparison. Yeah, the, it's interesting, about charisma, because it's a hard thing to define, but we know it when we see it. I've always thought that there's a curve, which is, basically, there's a line, right? People have a certain amount of personality, and they have a certain amount of charisma, and if you have more personality than charisma, you're boorish and deeply annoying. That's fair. If you have kind of less personality than charisma, you're cool and aloof, and like, kind of people want, it's like, you have real charm, and people kind of want to, like, kind of get to know you, because you seem kind of cool, right? And then, but, but I don't really know what happens when you go into negative charisma, right? Like, what, like, actually, it's, like, mathematically undefined. It's sort of like the Riemann hypothesis. It's like, we don't know what happens, like, it's like, you have to, like, get to the other side of the chart, and it leads to a lot of strange implications, you know? He's like a black hole of charisma, and you know what I like about it, to keep your science analogies going, I like how hard he tries when he's on stage. Yeah. He'll go to Ohio, he'll go to his own home state, and try to tell a joke, and the audience will just sit there and not listen. Yeah. Laugh. Kind of like the first joke that you tried at the very, very beginning. And, and several others throughout the fucking monologue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But at least you picked it up. This guy, this guy is consistently bombing, on stage, with the same jokes over and over. So, first of all, you, you started a YouTube channel when you were nine years old, is that right? Yeah. And it was devoted to Minecraft? And Call of Duty, Minecraft Call of Duty. Minecraft Call of Duty. Was it a subtle, slow transition to politics, where it slowly crept in? Or was there one day where it was Minecraft, and the next day. You know, it was, it was slow and subtle. It was over the course of a decade. I used to get home from school and make these Minecraft videos, and I got really solid at editing in the process. I remember in high school, I privated all of those videos, 'cause I wanted to get girls. I didn't want to be like the Minecraft guy. This is the guy that's always playing Minecraft. Oh, yeah. And then I graduated, and, you know, I realized there were Trump rallies happening one state over, two states over. I was in Indiana. There were caucuses happening in Iowa. So I started to travel to these Trump rallies, and have respect for them. I started to have respectful conversations with them, just talking to them about politics. And I realized there's a lot of mileage that can happen if you just have conversation with the other side, and don't act overtly condescending. So that kind of built my style, and built my flow to where I am. So to answer your question, gradual. Well, it's sort of, we have two different, sort of, yours is a kind of non-condescending disagreement. I go for condescending agreement. Okay. That's sort of my approach, generally, to this show. You also, though, are, like. A lot of what people would see of you is not, sort of, whatever, conversations in which, you know, if you're on CNN, you're kind of in the rough and tumble. It's not about hearing from the, it's a fight. Like, there was a famous moment where Scott Jennings got quite upset with you for, "Get your finger out of my," didn't he say, what did he say, "Get out of my fucking face?" "Get your finger out of my fucking face." That's what he said. Right. And I watched the video. Sorry, I had to get that out with my heart. Your finger wasn't that close to his face, was it? He was quite mad at you. You want to know the real story? Yeah. It's that, you know what, be careful who you pretend to be, because he was pretending to be somebody who could keep up with this war, keep defending this war, and it turned out he cracked under the pressure. I was debating him week after week after week since the war began. You know, he was defending it 10 days in, the Iran war. He was defending it 30 days in. He was defending it 40, 50 days in. And, you know, Trump said there was going to be a four to six week timeline. So about 90 days in, we've been on a bunch of panels, and he just can't answer any questions about the war anymore. What concessions have we gotten? He doesn't know. Are we any closer to the nuclear material being removed? He doesn't know. So there's this dynamic on some of these panels where he kind of plays the rule. He plays the time of the segments. He'll sit there condescendingly, he'll smirk, he'll cut other people off, and then he'll lie and just hope that everyone moves on due to the time limitations of the segment. And I said, fuck that. If you're not going to play by the rules, I'm not either. I'm going to sit there and try to get a direct answer from you. So I asked him multiple times, name one concession we've gotten from this war. Maybe I was gesticulating a bit much, but he absolutely felt cornered. And he said, get your fucking hand out of my face. I thought he was going to strike me. I thought he was going to cry in that moment. And you know, in the commercial break right there, I tweeted out like, what did I say? I was like, I literally think he's about to cry sitting next to me. And it got like two million views. So maybe there's a little condescension right there. I don't know if that's sort of just sort of bitchy. A little bitchy. Well, okay, there's another one. Brendan Carr responded to the clip as it was going viral and said, actually, you can say fuck on TV, so I don't care about this. The FCC chair. And I was like, well, can you show a pussy on TV? Because I think CNN just did that. And that's good. Got him. Got him. Got him. They still invite me back on. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, of course they invite you back on. Yeah. Hey, hey, should we have the guy from that viral altercation that everyone's talking about? No, no, no, we don't want that. No more viewers here at CNN. We're all set on viewers. Too many viewers this week, we said. Let's not gild the lily. So I want to talk about like sort of what it meant to be part of, you know, Gen Z growing up on YouTube. And now, and that is sort of the water you swim in. It's a lot of talk about the ways in which this generation is in some cases, you know, some parts of it are, you know, further to the left. There's also a lot of disaffected people that have gone in the direction of sort of the Andrew Tate's. First of all, does the fact that some of these manosphere figures are like kind of being exposed? Does that do anything? I mean, I think it's interesting. Does it do anything to kind of change kind of the role, these sort of, I don't know what you'd call them, like these influencers who act like kind of gurus, the place they have or are people shaken loose from this? I think they are, but due to a lot of factors beyond the fact that the Tate brothers have been arrested. If you want to know the Tate brothers are sitting in a Florida prison right now about to be extradited to the United Kingdom. Yeah. Clap thankfully for human trafficking, sex trafficking, rape charges, child sexual abuse, material charges, like disgusting stuff. In the court filings, their lawyer is now exposing them and saying that they were renting a lot of their vehicles, their Bugattis, their Aston Martins. I made a video about this and I confused Bugatti with Aston Martin and I got emails for days. Don't do that. It's funny. It's like, it's sort of like if, if you're saying that you want gun control, but you accidentally mischaracterize a certain kind of weapon and then you'll be kind of vilified by like, by gun people. But it's that for the people that care about the difference between a Bugatti and an Aston Martin. I was like, I've never written in either. I don't know. So the point is, Andrew Tate is being exposed brutally by his own team because they're desperately trying to prevent extradition. Trump actually helped him get out of Romania, out of the investigation and come back to the United States in February of 2025 because Paul Ingrassia, Baron Trump, and a lot of people around him were lobbying for this. There are many reports about this in the New York Times. So I do think a lot of the Tate's loyal fan base is beginning to shake. But when it comes to young men and anti-socialization, do you want me to jump in or do you have- Yeah, no, do it. I think it speaks to a broader problem of a few things combining. Right now, algorithms are uniquely radicalizing young people. You have Elon Musk who owns X and X is like Nazi Germany right now. Like Elon Musk himself will be tweeting fake crime statistics about black Americans, about trans Americans, about immigrants. So he's radicalizing people on mass. We have foreign actors, think like Russia, Iran, China. They want to weaken social cohesion by radicalizing young people. You combine that with the anti-socialization of many young people. So you're not smoking, drinking, having sex as much. I am. I'm doing all this. Yeah, no, you're cool. Everyone knows you're cool. Okay, cool. And I get it. I see it. I feel it. I know it. Okay. Thanks. Thanks. I'm pretending to be. Be careful to be something you're not. Okay. So the reality is, COVID fucked with a lot of young people's brains. I was rather anti-social during COVID. I put a bubble up around myself and wasn't speaking to many people. And I do intentionally tear that bubble down after and start dating again, start hanging out with friends. Many young people didn't do that. They got deeper into their bubble. They got deeper into these algorithms. They're online all of the time with a lack of socialization. And you could even point to Tyler Robinson, someone like that, the guy who killed Charlie Kirk. He was deep in these algorithms. He was deeply radicalized and anti-social. And it kind of is a bad combination. So I think there's this reductive analysis by Republicans where they're like, all young people are studying Karl Marx now. No, no, it's not really that. People just want change. People feel disillusioned with the current systems and they're looking for something else. They're looking for something different. And it shouldn't be Andrew Tate. Yeah. No, and I do think too, there is this effort in the wake of some kind of mass violence or acts of sort of directed violence, whether it's a mass shooting or an assassination or assassination attempt. There's this immediate effort to go comb through the record to figure out, well, what was their claim to the justification? Why did they do that? Why are they saying they did this? And everyone is looking and hoping that it doesn't redound to a criticism of their side, that they're not on their team, right? And I get the impulse, right? Right. But really, like people I think would be uncomfortable to link Tyler Robinson with Luigi Mangione. They would. There's a lot of people that would hear this and people that I think would be view that as some like whatever, like sort of unfair. But what links people that do mass shootings or targeted assassinations is a desire is, first of all, being radicalized online most of the time now and desiring to go out into some kind of blaze of glory. Right. And that and if you see it as that pathway in the end, yes, of course, it matters if the president is stoking violence. Of course, it matters if as a society we are not rejecting a politics in which we can justify or defend cruel, violent behavior. But what and it matters who's doing it. But if you look beneath that, right, like that pathway is the danger. Right. It's what it's what it's what the tech and the platforms allow people to become. And you even see it in less radical ways, like less. It's not always just murder. Mike Collins has a staffer in Georgia who literally posted a swastika made up out of the word twink. Right. You guys were talking about that. And I mean, that is a very, very good example of a young dude, a young staffer who's radicalized. Paul Ingrassia, who works for the Trump administration, has leaked texts where he says he has a Nazi streak in him. So there's all these examples beyond just Tyler Robinson and Luigi Mangione. There was somebody who shot up a Colorado school the same day Charlie Kirk was murdered. He killed multiple people. He was a young dude who was radicalized on forums, on 4chan. And it's a very real problem. And we have insidious actors in power right now. People like Elon Musk, who worse than this. I do think Trump in a top down way just makes everything more volatile. But there is something to be said about young people just feeling broadly disillusioned. And you know what the worst part is? Some of the bad faith actors who take advantage of that are like Andrew Interest and Tate. They're like, you know what we can do? We can act like we have Bugattis. That's how they say it, Bugattis. We can act like we have those. And then we can trick young men into buying our course and then just sell hatred for women. So it's pretty insidious, right? Yeah, it's not good. And look, I just want to say, as someone who has a Bugatti, it makes you happy. It's so fun. I love my Bugatti. I'm going to put a flock camera right outside it and just watch your breath. That's fine. I'm not doing anything wrong. Flock and God can watch everything I do in my Bugatti, which I have. Inspired by your thoughtful consideration of the male loneliness epidemic, we want to close out our convo in a completely thoughtless lightning round. We're calling, Is This Man Lonely? I will name a man. You tell me. Gut reaction. Lonely? Here we go. First up, Pete Hegseth. No, no. He's got a bottle of whiskey with him all the time. I feel like you can never be lonely with a bottle of whiskey. He's got the captain. He's got Jack Daniels. Are you just going to put a photo of me on screen? Oh, yeah. Adam Mockler. Lonely? No, no, no, no. My girlfriend's back there. She's somewhere back there. Yeah, yeah. You're definitely pointing at a person for sure. You're not just pointing at sort of a diffuse area of the studio. No, no. There's a real woman back there who is your girlfriend. I believe you. You're good. We're good. She goes to a different school. Yeah, she goes to. Not lonely. J.D. Vance. You know, despite being surrounded by staffers and like-minded people all the time, there's got to be something pretty isolating to selling out your soul and becoming a skin suit for MAGA. So lonely. I think so, too. You know that thing if you're like at a loud restaurant or party or bar and you go into the bathroom and there's a buzzing quiet? I imagine that's around J.D. Vance a lot of the time. Yeah, yeah. You know that buzzing super quiet? Yeah, lonely. There's this Mac Miller quote. He's like, I've got problems. I've got problems as big as my house. And it's basically talking about the more successful he got, the more lonely he got. That's a lot of these people right there. God, I don't want to. I was feeling that in my Bugatti the other day. I was like, is this what it's all for? Yeah, it's awesome. I love this Bugatti and how fast it goes and how low to the ground I am. I don't know. You definitely you definitely know Bugatti. Chuck Schumer. Oh, man. I think he's more lonely in politics. Than in life. Yes, actually, where I was going with it. Yeah, he's kind of on an island right now. Him and Jeffries are kind of just going through it. I think Jeffries has a self-inflicted sort of wound right now in the form of the Kushner meeting. Schumer, I think he would have been a great operator in like 2010 or maybe like 1810 or something like that. Yeah, somewhere. I think right now in 2026, he's not meeting the moment. Yeah. So you you sort of agree with the kind of, I don't know, online left, broad left view that it was wrong for Hakeem Jeffries to meet. Listen, it's nuanced. I can understand meeting with the other side about affordability issues and trying to talk to the other side and sit down. Like, I can understand how this is something that happens in politics. However, Jeffries is already pissed off a lot of Democratic voters. He's already seen as weak by the base, like time and time again. He has been seen as too soft on this type of stuff. So while I do understand that meetings can happen with the other side, you can't just recklessly go out there and be like, yep, I met with Kushner. It's Kushner. Is Kushner even a part of the, is even like an official part of the administration? He is not an official part of the administration. It feels a little bit odd. So I understand why someone could meet, but this just isn't, no. Yeah, I think, I think the problem is not that he met with Jared Kushner. It's that he, that he is not the politician that has done the, that has, that has become for people that are meant to be his supporters, someone who could meet with Kushner. And they'd be like, cool, you give him, you give him a what for, you know, he hasn't done that part of it. That's the problem. Mamdani met with Trump in the Oval Office, even off the record for a bit. And nobody really had a problem. Because we knew that Mamdani was assertive. He was likely on message. With Jeffries, he hasn't proven that we should be confident in his ability to do that. Yeah. Let's see. Let's do RFK Jr. No, no, he's not lonely. He's surrounded by an array of animals at any moment that he's going to slice open or put in the trunk of his car. Next up, Brian Johnson, the longevity guy. Oh, you know what? No, I hope this guy's not lonely. Something about his relationship with his girlfriend is really funny. His wife, he's always tweeting about her. My girlfriend and I always quote this because there was this one tweet. He's like, it's been five days without her. She needs a shower to wash off the dirty world around her. I miss her so much. And I swear I'm not making this up. He also is always talking about the vaginal microbiome of her. That's the guy, right? Yeah. We're saying not lonely. He's got all the bacteria to hang out with. He's got the right flora, the right fauna, all of it. Well, RFK Jr. has the right fauna and this guy's got the right flora. All right. And finally, Ray. Ray from Girls. Bro, who slipped this guy in here? I don't know. Hallie really wanted us to talk about whether or not Ray from Girls is lonely. No, he reminds me a little bit of myself in this photo, so I'd like to think no. Okay, we're going to say no. We're going to say not lonely. Good for Ray. What's his character type? I would say that he's definitely ornery. I would say needy, kind of obstinate. I think at times lonely. So it depends on the season. Depends on the season of HBO's Girls. Thank you, Adam Mockler. Check out the Adam Mockler Debate Show. We can even talk about all your debates on YouTube and at Adam Mockler on socials. And we'll be right back with Sona Movsesian. Movsesian. Movsesian. Movses. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. Love It or Leave It is brought to you by Zazzle. Gift giving can be really tough. There's nothing worse than showing up with something generic that you're not even sure your giftee will like. That's where Zazzle comes in to save the day. Zazzle is a custom marketplace where you can take basically any product, a mug, a tote bag, a card, a phone case, and personalize it for yourself or someone you love. Browse millions of designs or create your own from scratch and customize the product to your taste. Either way, you're the designer. Everything is made to order, so you never have to worry about it being out of stock. Pick it. Customize it. Done. Over 30 million customers have trusted Zazzle with their most important gifs, and yours is next. With Zazzle, you can create a thoughtful, classy gif for any occasion, or you can create a really fun and silly gif that's more your style. That goofy pic of you and your best friend that you have saved in your gif. Print it on a beach towel, or a pickleball paddle, or a jigsaw puzzle. That's fun. Puzzles are great. The possibilities are endless. Zazzle makes it so simple to create a truly unique gif. Right now, save 25% on your first order at Zazzle.com. That's 25% savings on your first order at Zazzle.com. Go make something z'amazing at Zazzle.com. We're in the final stretch of the midterms, and the political map has only gotten more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential flips. So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground. I'm Erin Haines, journalist and expert on all things Southern politics. And I'm Jennifer Palmieri, former White House communications director. Tune in on Mondays to Long Play series on YouTube. Or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back! My next guest was Conan O'Brien's assistant. Now she is his podcast co-host and his greatest nemesis. Please welcome to the stage, Sonam Obsessian. Hi. Welcome. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. This is fun. It's so fun. First, can I tell you that I had to learn a little trick? To make sure that I get, I struggle with name pronunciations just because I do it phonetically. And does it work to say like, ah, Sona, I'm obsessed? Oh, yeah. Has anyone given that to you before? I actually think that when you do the subtitles, it says obsession. yeah it's an obsession that's cool so it's it's uh it's a good way to remember it but i was actually saying back there when i heard you pronounce it you did a really good job pronouncing the name hell yeah well done nice i could tell you live in la now because it's an armenian name yeah and you have to learn how to pronounce those yeah there's a lot of us there's a lot of armenians here in los angeles and that's good you know what some people say it's bad i think it's good oh who says it's bad no you know people oh i know you know what glendale has the highest insurance out of the entire country did you know that no yeah yeah your first book the world's worst assistant came out in 2022 your follow-up the world's worst mom hits bookstores on september 1st it seems like you're not good at things you're supposed you're doing would you say your strengths are vibes based i'm a big vibes person i know my weaknesses and i know my strengths and being an assistant i'm not that good at even though i did it for 12 years um and then being a mom i feel like i'm failing every day and i've done that for five years so i like to stick to it at least i feel like what we should think about is who would be beside you on the mount rushmore of personality hires you know personality hires yeah oh yeah i think because like if you were a bad assistant for 12 years yeah but but but you've sort of stuck it out that's like a that's impressive i mean it's almost like it's certainly more impressive than being a good assistant because i'm sure a good assistant is going to last but a bad assistant that's amazing yeah well i think that what i'm good at is i'm definitely a ride or die you know like i'm i'm not like i mean i'm glad this is a political podcast i'm not like a natalie harp like i'm not about to write love notes to conan yeah but i i think that i i'm i'm loyal like i you know i'm i feel like i will defend him i yell at a lot of people um you know like on the phone if someone messes something up i do that i do that really well and sometimes you have to do that a lot and so that i have strengths i do what's your style of as a as a as when someone's fucking up or you need to yell on behalf of of the boss like what is your style for doing that well i start off really sweet and if they can't help me then i keep talking and then it gets to a point where i'm not like yelling but i'm assertive and i think it makes a huge difference to be assertive as opposed to just screaming at people so when i said yelling i meant i'm just assertive and i i think that's i can tend to like i can scare people if i need to like i i have a mission and i just like go for it that's cool is it yeah okay because i can feel there's an there's an intensity and and a kind of a way in which you're not breaking eye contact yeah is that weird no it's it's powerful you know we hear because you know what else was like that like last week was jimmy simpson remember jimmy simpson and he wouldn't break eye contact with me and it was cool one of the oboils from yeah one of the oboils from it's always sunny yeah he locks in oh he does he locks in yeah it's very oboyal-esque yeah well it's sort of you see why he sort of gets to play these sort of intense and kind of sometimes freaky dudes you're saying i'm intense i think you're intense i didn't yeah i think you're intense you do i think there's an intensity okay i'm getting it you are yeah i i didn't know that about myself but i i like that i'm intense i think well i think you i think it makes sense because i think you to to to to be able to hold your own with conan requires being very intense because he right i mean wouldn't that must be part of it i don't think well holding my own with conan is more am i laughing at the things he's saying i feel like that's been my job security yeah but 17 years but see in the same way in the same way that in the same way that conan plays down aspects of the way he's hyper intense smoke smart and focus yeah while being goofy right you're laughing at a lot of jokes but you're holding your own and like not he's not you're still he's not in charge in the conversation you're both in charge of those interactions i mean i guess so i think so you're right first of all i came into the game 16 years in for him so he had this massive following and it's really i do think that there's a lot of things that play against me sometimes i'm not a comedian i don't do improv so i'm just this person who worked for him that he puts in front of the camera sometimes and now puts me on a podcast and that's i think that that could sometimes be weird for some people but i think that also takes the pressure off of me in a way does that make sense yeah because i don't have to try to be funny or interesting well but there's but right but so but yeah but i think like what i'm just thinking it's like sure but there's a lot of people who are don't have to be funny or interesting but who would be terrible so but i'm saying but like there's clearly like you're coming into us even when you start even what you just described like there are many people who might have a great laugh right who would absolutely wilt and panic being just having that role with conan but you didn't there's some kind of assuredness that you brought to it that made it feel special and that has to do that is not just that's not you as passive that's like you doing something i i think that not having anything to lose in a way is actually really liberating because if i don't let's say he so this podcast that we're on that you know it's conan o'brien needs a friend it's a big podcast if all of a sudden everyone's like we don't like sona anymore you should take her off i'll just be like okay cool i'm just gonna hang out here then you know i'll watch in the green room from now on like i i think that if if it's very liberating when you get to a point where you're like very fine with whatever happens and i think that that's probably what i give off wait so your husband tack grew up in in soviet armenia well you grew up in greater los angeles i did i actually grew up in montebello who i don't know if you've heard about that but i grew up in the i'm sorry i know you said that off who was are you from east la yes like i went to garfield oh you did my dad graduated from montebello high school uh east la where they caught the night stalker right yeah they beat the shit out of him they got him yeah they did yeah they saw him and they're like that's the guy and they beat the shit out of him that's the that's a very la thing to do oh yeah yeah but yeah no we so we're different we're very well the other the other thing that's very la is to get killed by the night stalker yeah yeah or just or just a serial killer yeah generally it's like what are we doing i like well we get killed by the night stalker we beat up the night stalker i did not you know this is gonna be so dark yeah this is so dark i brought a weird energy today i know and you're sitting like that and i sat like this because this is how i like to sit well because you're like folded okay me too yeah wow we have so much in common we do i like it oh but yeah he grew up in soviet armenia wow yeah i know it's very different is does it affect your so a little bit you know he's he's so my my husband doesn't like staying in line for stuff like food and i i think it's because he grew up in the soviet union he says it's it's not so i used to go to trendy restaurants before and now like we'll go to panera bread and he'll think that that's like oh we're having a nice we're going to a nice bakery i'm like all the nice bakeries have lines in front of them but you won't let us go there so we go to places like panera bread and then you know he'll show the kids some like soviet cartoons sometimes and they're just like weird versions of what we grew up with so there's vinnie pooh which is the soviet winnie the pooh and you know the one here is like a really like affable little bear and the one there is like he's voiced by a guy who just smoked a lot of cigarettes and he's just like like he's speaking this weird russian and i'm like we can't show this to our kids everything in the soviet style is just slightly off like the tom and jerry is isn't a cat and a mouse it's a wolf and a bunny and i'm like this is weird the soviet version of all this stuff is just weird and i think that's why soviet people in general are just off a little yeah no i think it's the combination of the weird cartoons and the sort of shadow of communism oh that could be it too no no that's a good point that could be the cartoons or the that's a good point deprivation that's a good point that yeah he wasn't allowed to have a vcr i'm sorry i don't know why i'm laughing it's awful like people had it people people people had to like sneak in a vcr to people's houses because they weren't allowed to have them and i was like you can't even have a vcr we had a vcr but all the movies were just taped from television which means we never had the first 30 seconds of any movie what did you learn from your years as conan's assistant um i learned in tv you know when you're talking about a personality hire it does go a long way when you're able to like be a good people person it does go a long way so there's a lot of things you know i got done just because people liked working with me um and then with conan conan has this very intense work ethic he's very you know like for him he doesn't want to put anything out there until it's exactly the way he wants it to be and i am the absolute opposite in a way i'm a but this is good enough um i didn't learn any of his work ethic i don't even know why i brought that up like i didn't i i not i got none and none of that rubbed off on me um but i just i think that i really learned here's what i learned and this is actually serious you can be in a position where people uh respect you in your field and love you and you're a beloved figure and you could still be a very decent person and that's what conan's showed me is that you know anytime i hear someone treat their staff or as an awful person i i look at conan i'm very lucky And I, you know, I always joke that I'm going to be working for him until he dies. And, you know, which could be any minute because he's like, you know, he's kind of fragile. And he's tall and like big dogs, you know, they don't last as long. He can just tip over and he's done. And he's Irish. And he's Irish. I mean, he lives in L.A. I mean, that's a really rough combination. So I do think that it does have a lot to do with just being a decent person and treating your staff very, very nicely. And what if you don't do that? What if you don't do that? Like, what are the other ways you're like, what if you're just like, what if it's like you lead with fear, you know, and setting people against each other? Oh, I don't know. I mean, like a Bill O'Reilly, like, oh, fuck it, we'll do it live. Like that kind of thing. That's sort of my model. I don't know. I don't know if that works. That's your model. Well, let's talk about it. You've committed to a lifestyle. You've committed to a life sentence of having Conan O'Brien for a boss. Yeah. Which makes you the perfect judge for our next segment. Welcome to Boss Court. Boss Court. Boss Court. Here's how it works. The producers of the show have assembled evidence against me, but also evidence for my defense because they're sick like that. I will read each exhibit. Sona, you're going to tell us, based on the evidence, if I'm a good or a bad boss. Oh, I like this. And this is like my dream of being a judge on one of those judge shows without having to do all the work to get there. I kindly invited us to take nice, unused furniture from his basement, but never confirmed an actual time and date for pickup. And by the time we cycled back to claim the furniture, it had been eaten by rats. Is that true? So I'll tell you something, what happened, which is. Oh, my God. So what happened was, I'll tell you what happened. I live in a home that used to belong to an actor, and she gets these PR boxes, okay? PR boxes were just thrown over the. The door, into the yard, and I would just collect these PR boxes. And when I first moved to the house, I would text, it's Vanessa Hudgens, I would text, I talked about it, I would text Vanessa Hudgens' assistant and be like, can you please come pick up, there's another round of boxes. I mean, endless, at leisure, and books, and new kinds of, all, sunscreens, all these PR companies are just sending big, famous people all the stuff. It's a window, you would, I never knew. Yeah, the richer you are, the more free stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But eventually, it's like. It's been over a year, and like, we just, at some point, it's like, the assistant stops coming, the stuff piles up. When my sister and mom would come to town, they would call it going to the mall, and then go look at some of this free shit, and be like, ooh, look, there's like a cool bathing suit, whatever. But unbeknownst to me, one of the boxes was a company, there was just a box in the basement, and it had protein powder for some upstart protein company. And a couple of rats got in the basement, ate the protein powder. It came super strong, rats. And it was a concentrated box with so many calories, that they, like, it was like, within a few weeks, like, unbeknownst, you just, rats, and they just ate the chairs. Oh, my God. And then, you know what we did? We killed all those fucking rats. So, at that point, you were like, hey, staffers, come get free. No, no, no, no, no, no. Long before. When did you find out? Long before. Long before. It was literally like, oh, we've got to find a time, you've got to come grab, because my partner moved in, and there was a bunch of over, so I just had extra stuff. Yeah. And so, they were going to come by and check out the furniture, but we never really set a time, mostly on me, but partially on them. And then the rats got it. But how long between you sending that, like, hey, come pick up the furniture? Months. Months? Months. You're a shitty boss. Yep. Yeah, no, that's on you. Bad boss. Yeah. Oh, your whole staff is clapping. That says a lot about you, Ellen. No, oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, shit. She's never coming back on her podcast. She never was anyway. Isn't she in, she's in the Cotswolds. No, she's not. Yeah, I think the Cotswolds. Okay. I think the Cotswolds, for sure. Yeah. I got five 32-ounce Diet Cokes from McDonald's, but it was just because they were having a deal, and by the time we got them, they were mostly flat. According to Producer Bill, this is what Producer Bill said. He made me join him on an elevator ride. Large delivery order with, like, five sodas, and then for the entire ride, explained his complex scheme. For why it's more advantageous to order the five large sodas, because it's a better deal. Also, the number of people in the room just outnumbered the Diet Cokes, which was like a sick mind game. Why'd you get it from McDonald's? Because they're the best Diet Cokes. No, the fountain ones are the best. That's what it was. It was fountain Diet Coke from McDonald's. Oh, okay, because you had pictures of the bottles on there, so. Well, that was just an image. That's, yeah, that's. No, it was fountain Diet Cokes. Okay. And because it was, there was a discount. Once you got past four, so I got five. You are such a magnet for those kinds of scams, it sounds like. Oh, yeah. People are like, oh, you get two for the price of one. They're each $64. Well, no, that's not what I'm trying to say. Hold on. No, one is $64. If you pay $5 more, you get the second one that's, like, a little bigger. And you're like, yeah, I'll do that. And you end up buying things you don't really need. Yeah. That took so long for me to say. No, but I do. Yeah. But I do get the thing. But, yeah, but so you got, you just went to, so you went to McDonald's to get four. You got five. And you were like, I'm going to be nice and give this out to people. You had Bill come and take it from you. Well, because I couldn't hold five. Okay. Because it's hard. Once you get to five. You know what? I'm just going to say you're a bad boss. Yeah. Fair enough. I just, you're, you're just awful. It's flat. Nothing's worse than flat Diet Coke from McDonald's. Because you're right. The McDonald's Diet Cokes are the best. It was flat by the time we got it. Yeah. So, did you? Did you call that McDonald's? Can you call McDonald's? Yeah, you can. Or I, I would have driven back and I would have been like. See, that's, that's cool. This is what I do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's cool. Yeah. I would have gotten a refund for, what is that like? It was, it was like, well, it was like, I can't remember. It was like 17 bucks once I got to the fifth. Yeah, I would have gotten a refund for $17. It's not even about the money. It's the principle of the thing. Let's do one more. Pulled us aside one day to explain that he was dating one of our colleagues. No. While defensively explaining how they went to HR and signed some sort of document about it, but did invite us to roast him at their eventual wedding. And we really went for the comedic jugular. Oh, wow. You dated, you dated, you dated someone who worked here? Uh-huh. A subordinate? Well, everyone's a subordinate. It's my company. That's true. That's true. Yeah, it was, it was, but I was. But you signed his document. I was so worried about the, the, the ethics of it. Yeah. That I was like, I like, I, I. I was so careful about making sure that the person who I love and is now married to me. Oh, I was going to say. Are you guys still together? Yeah, we're married. We got married. Okay, that's good. Yeah, they love my life. Oh, that's sweet. I realized at some point that they were the love of my life and we're going to have to figure, I was going to have to figure out how to, how, how to, we would have to figure out how to do this. Oh, that's sweet. And so it was a little bit complicated, but we did sign the paperwork. But. It was called a love contract. Did invite us to roast him at their, it was what? It's called a love contract. It is? It actually exists? Yes, because you have to say you won't keep dating if you don't love each other because you, you, you have to prove, you have to say to the company, hey, if you're not interested in each other, you can't stay together just because you happen to work together. So you have to agree that if you're not in love, you're undate. Oh. Isn't that an interesting document? That's very weird though. Yeah. Like what, what if you're not there yet? Yeah. I don't know. Okay. And you, you guys were there. We were there. Oh, that's really sweet. No. I like. I like, you know what? I like love. I'm like a 14 year old girl when I get to like rom-com stuff and this feels very rom-com. So I'm like, I think you're a great boss here. Yeah. I know. I knew I said I was going to be bad boss the whole time, but you got me. Thank you, Sona. Pre-order The World's Worst Mom now or check it out in stores on September 1st. We'll be right back with The Rant Wheel. Love It or Leave It is brought to you by Simply Say. Here's the thing about other home security systems. They're all designed for after. After the window breaks, after someone's inside, after you get the notification, after the police come. Simply Say is the first system designed for before stopping a break-in before it even begins. Unlike traditional security systems that only alert you after a break-in is underway, Simply Say is designed to help stop intruders before they get inside. Smart AI-powered outdoor cameras detect suspicious activity at the perimeter and alert live US-based agents to step in. Simply Say's agents assess the threat, intervene through the outdoor camera to scare off trespassers, and call 911 dispatch. Our CEO at Simply Say in her home, all the components were installed and up and running in no time. It's worked smoothly since day one, and not only does she love the peace of mind that our home is protected, she's also enjoying the convenience of being able to see who's dropping by or unlocking doors for visitors if she's not at home. Simply Say has been protecting your world for 20 years. Celebrate their anniversary and save 60% on your new Simply Say system at simplysay.com slash loveit. That's 60% off at simplysay.com slash loveit. Plus, when you order, write in our show name in the How Did You Hear About Us survey to let them know we sent you. Don't forget. Don't forget. There's no safe like Simply Say. Long play, our docuseries exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back. Newsflash, the South is the new political epicenter of the country. Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South, too. Tune in on Mondays to Long Play series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. and we're back let's welcome adam back to the stage adam mockler returns sit here with us welcome back uh there's nothing like a short spin after a long week because it's time for the rant wheel oh no here's how it works we spin the wheel wherever it lands that person rants why do we have a wheel to land on the three people on stage when all three of us are going to get to rant we don't know we all get to rant yeah it's just it's a it's we've never cracked it let's spin the wheel it has landed on adam what would you like to rant about for 60 seconds um uh oh now okay i'm really really sick of men who refuse to change and then complain that women don't actually like them women have been forced to change for men for all of human history and now you're going to have to change for men for all of human history and now you're going to have to change for all of human history and now you're going to have to change for all of human history and now you're going to have to change for all of human history and now you're going to have to confused and mad that they have to go outside, put in effort, take a shower, put down the controller, stop watching Andrew Tate and actually put in some effort to go get a girl. I mean, my girlfriend has changed me for the better. I now have more than three shirts to choose from. I was like a cartoon character, the same few shirts, these pants he chose. I have ambient lighting in my place. I used to just have hospital lights. Like everything was incredibly bright. I'm on my phone less, it's overall a net positive. And I think that a lot of men can change themselves for the better, can be changed and helped in a relationship. And I think that, uh, yeah, put down the Andrew Tate, go put on deodorant, go outside, go better yourself and go try to find someone you love. That's nice. Thanks guys. Yeah. Wait four seconds, three seconds. And also, um, yeah, grow up. Yeah, no, for sure. I like that. Yeah. I think it's funny, the effort thing. Cause it's like i feel like there's a there's a way in which especially when you're young you're like oh i don't want to pretend to be someone i'm not because then they'll eventually see who the real me is so i'm not going to put on a big effort to try to make myself look or act or like kind of put on a show and that's not who i am it's like no no you misunderstand the effort you put in going into a date is not about the person you're pretending to be at the end of that effort the effort itself is proving you're the kind of person who makes an effort and people should want to be with someone who makes an effort and if you're not willing to make an effort that is revealing that is the person that people don't want to date not the person that you're showing up as as the real you it's the person that didn't make the effort you know what i'm saying yeah that's yeah that was another good rant that was perfect you know like i think there's a self-fulfilling prophecy where people think that i'm not even going to try i'm not worth it i think that women won't like me and then because of that it weakens their confidence interval and stops them from actually trying so try yeah and it's okay to get rejected i think that people did you say yeah did you say who said yeah okay um somebody really agreed with me on that who clearly gets rejected no i'm kidding i'm totally kidding i'm never speaking again i know poor guy i think that there's a there's a very risk averse kind of quality that's coming out for a lot of people and they're very terrified of rejection and i you know uh before i met my husband i got to a point where i just started hitting on anything and everything that i wanted to hit on and i got rejected and sometimes i didn't and i would leave my number for waiters sometimes if i thought they were cute so i uh it's you'll be fine you'll survive rejection i do think that that's something that is important for young men especially to know i just want to finish this off by saying rejection is like removed from our society with young men because if i want to go apply for a job i do it online via linkedin if i want to find a date i would like go on hinge before if i want to get food. I don't even have to go out in public. I can just door dash it. So we've removed a lot of that social friction and that rejection. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Let's spin it again. Oh my God. So what would you like to rant about? I'm going to be honest. I didn't fully know what I was going to rant about. And then when Adam started talking, I was like, yeah, you know what? Men don't go out and like get to know women a lot. And so on that point, I would like to talk about perimenopause, and here's why. We learn about when it starts, when our whole female puberty starts. Nobody tells us what happens to us when it's ending, and I wish someone had told me what happens when it's ending, and as a woman in her 40s, I'm deep in it. I'm angry that no one talked about it before. I feel like you two can just chime in at any minute if you want to, you know, roll with me on this, but it is definitely something that really lacks from female education it's just it's just shows how little people talk about what's actually happening with women's bodies in general which is really frustrating and i think that uh i would really love if older generations had warned me about it and nobody ever did and now i'm deep in it and i'm a little resentful towards my mom especially what's hey what would you like to Yeah, perimenopause, let's do it. What do you wish you were warned about? What happens? You learn about menopause, right? You learn about what happens when it ends, but no one tells you about this period of time, which is the buildup to it, which is when your body is like going fucking crazy. Like things are happening, you know, everything's changing. You're itching a lot. Like your body is just weird. Things are happening and you don't know why it's happening. and then you you talk to your friends and someone did the research and then you start really going down the deep dive of this this this hole that is perimenopause and it's I really wish it's I think it's endemic of a lot of other things about how there's very little research when it comes to what happens to women's bodies in general how the information is not there for a lot of people and things happen to us we have no idea why it's happening to us it takes forever for us to get diagnosed with certain things sometimes so yeah i'm i'm pissed i'm ranting it's really weird i have a family member who a month ago was talking about the same thing she's in her 40s going through the same exact thing and said there's not enough research she has to resort to like reddit threads and personal experiences because a lot of stuff surrounding pregnancy and like you said changes in women's bodies is very very under researched and it's a big big problem right now yeah yep disagree disagree i think we've looked at it enough we got a lot of good information and we got to focus on more important things affecting men there's a lot of things going on in male male bodies that we don't fully understand oh yeah yeah like oh tons of stuff okay yeah okay let's spin it again uh it has landed on me uh so erwan this very fancy grocery store in los angeles just opened up another location they're getting closer and closer to the magic number which is 20 because at 20 i think they're at 17 or maybe 18 depending on how you count uh at 20 erwan will have to start posting calories and i think that is going to be awesome because because that is going to be when people find out what is going on inside of these fucking smoothies these 16 dollar healthy smoothies and they discover that they've been basically having a fucking Dairy Queen blizzard for years. It is going to be so thrilling. The streets will run fucking red. You think some of the shit that's going to go down in this city at that fucking Valley Erewhon, it's going to look like a rack. It's going to be crazy. The battles that are going to be fought on the street. Yeah, you know what that reminds me of is that scene in Mean Girls when Regina George finds out that she's been eating protein bars that are just designed to make her fat and she loses her mind and then just releases the burn book. That's like on a citywide scale. And you know what, they're never going to get there. Or if they do, they're going to change the name. Yes. So this is the thing. So like the reason that there's Hillstone and Houston is that they're separate that's what i was thinking of yes i was like i know houston's did that well so they did it and they changed we were talking about this that like they had to not just change the name i assume their lawyers also made them adjust the menu so that the hillstone menu and the houston's menu is defensively different so they don't have to put the calories on because if people found out what was going on with those fucking burgers again we'd still go of course yeah spinach dip yeah how many calories i don't care i never care more calories please yeah calories for my money. Wow. What a deal. There's so many calories. Yeah. Hey, I'm sorry. Can I get some calories on the side to dip? All right. We'll be right back. And we're back. Sometimes it's best to double down. Other times you got to double back. Either way, it's time for second thoughts. Adam and Sona, I have a, I've had a dynamite time with both of you tonight, but my producers have give us on a list of moments from this evening's show that they think went bad and that I should regret. If you have any moments of regret from tonight, please think about them. You're free to share them. Let's see. From the monologue, I very quickly brought up children with eating disorders and mass shootings. But what the audience doesn't know is that there was also a joke about suicide that we cut. And I brought the energy down and I had to fight basically for for the next hour to get you back, and that's on us. That's on us, and we talked about it beforehand, and we should think about that as a lesson going forward. Yep, I did not have enough good will built up Shooter joke. You guys hated the apartment. abortion wigs joke and then i riffed on it which you also hated you're really you doubled down on that of course i did triple down and i was like wait does that mean one person has wigs like she has multiple wigs because she has multiple abortions she's just abortioning all over the place what's interesting is you thought you thought one wig per abortion i thought multiple wigs for one abortion because she's moving through different jurisdictions but that's the beauty of a joke like that it's art it's up to you to interpret it how you feel you thought it was a woman having one wig for abortion why do you need a new wig for your next abortion is this back seven the future back seven in the future i flubbed back seven the future the one joke that didn't make everyone mad at me and then once people got it you beat it to death yeah beat it to absolute fucking death and it would have been so good if you didn't flub it i leaned into that riff pretty hard about having a bugatti but i liked it yeah uh adam you have you ever seen the show girls no yep okay you gotta pan you gotta know the audience yeah that was a mistake there i said to sona immediately hey there are a lot of armenians there are armenians in la then took the world's longest boss and said which is good i remember that what was that about and there were so many things running through my mind like oh no does he hate us why is he pausing i'm glad you clarified you think it's good because i didn't know if what you didn't know wasn't clear uh i compared i compared conan o'brien to a big dog who doesn't live very long i like this segment a lot and that's our show thank you so much adam mockler and sonoma possessing there are 67 days until the midterms we'll be back next week with lauren lapkus brian posain and trina have a great weekend love it or leave it is a crooked media production our show is produced by kendra james bill mcgrath kelsey gante and me john lovin our production team includes hallie keeper sarah lazarus raman borsellino peter miller david tolls claudia shang j banks gavin purcell and matt de groot and our staff is proudly unionized with the writers guild of america east long play our docu-series exploring the people and forces shaping the south is back newsflash the south is the new political epicenter of the country democrats are way on their heels in this region but republicans are going through their own reckoning in the south too we're in the final stretch of the midterms and the political map has only gotten more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential flips so we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground i'm erin haynes journalist and expert on all things southern politics and i'm jennifer palmeri former white house communications director tune in on mondays to long for the future play series on youtube or wherever you get your podcasts this is martha stewart have you ever started a new tradition here's a hint do it with lennox lennox has always meant timeless holiday beauty and the lennox space village is the perfect holiday gift imagine ginger from a georgian townhouse or pepper from your favorite swiss chalet lennox has brought timeless beauty and quality to tables and homes for generations baking together sharing recipes decorating suddenly simple pleasures become part of your holiday story forever when you give a gift that lasts beyond the holidays it's an amazing feeling when you give lennox you just might start a new tradition discover the full collection at lennox.com slash spice village

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Built offers a membership that rewards users with points on every housing payment, redeemable for flights, hotels, fitness classes, and Amazon purchases.
  2. The Built app features an AI neighborhood concierge that can handle tasks like booking rides, reserving tables, and paying rent using member benefits.
  3. Meta agreed to a $17 billion settlement over claims of addictive and harmful content, introducing time limits and restrictions on teen app access.
  4. Flock, a surveillance tech company, operates a vast network of cameras across 49 states with AI that may identify individuals by facial features, leading to privacy concerns and wrongful arrests.
  5. Critics argue that companies like Flock and Apple are prioritizing surveillance and data collection over privacy, enabling a culture of constant monitoring and misuse.
  6. A growing concern is that social media and technology platforms are radicalizing youth through algorithms, contributing to anti-socialization and real-world violence.
  7. The show highlights how political figures and influencers exploit personal privacy and data, raising alarms about surveillance as a tool of power and control.
  8. The segment concludes with a call to action

Summary:

The episode explores a mix of tech innovation, privacy concerns, and political commentary. Built introduces a housing payment rewards program that gives users points redeemable for travel, dining, and lifestyle perks, powered by an AI concierge that handles daily tasks. Meanwhile, major tech firms like Meta and Flock face scrutiny over surveillance practices: Meta’s settlement includes strict limits on teen usage to combat addiction, while Flock’s network of over 120,000 cameras across 49 states raises alarms about facial recognition and misuse, leading to wrongful arrests and public distrust.

Critics warn that surveillance technologies are not only invasive but also socially destructive, radicalizing youth through algorithms and fostering a culture of constant monitoring. The show also highlights how platforms like Apple are embedding cameras into consumer products, further eroding privacy. Beyond technology, the discussion touches on political extremism, youth disillusionment, and the normalization of surveillance in everyday life.

The segment concludes with a call to individual action—resisting surveillance by opting for privacy, asserting personal boundaries, and rejecting the culture of constant data harvesting. These themes converge to question the balance between safety and freedom in a world increasingly governed by private tech firms.

FAQs

Built is a membership service that rewards users with points on every rent or mortgage payment, regardless of location. These points can be redeemed for flights, hotels, Lyft rides, Amazon purchases, and more.

The Built app features an AI neighborhood concierge that helps users reserve dinner tables, book fitness classes, order rides, and manage daily tasks using member benefits across 50,000+ partner merchants.

You can join Built by downloading the app, linking a credit or debit card, and signing up for membership through joinbuilt.com/slash/loveit.

Flock's network of over 120,000 cameras uses AI to identify individuals based on facial features and clothing, raising concerns about misuse, false identifications, wrongful arrests, and violations of privacy rights.

Yes, dozens of cities including Los Angeles and Tempe, Arizona, have ended contracts with Flock, citing the need to maintain public trust in community safety.

Apple’s new AirPods are reported to have tiny cameras that feed data to AI, raising privacy concerns about unauthorized recording, surveillance, and potential misuse of personal data.

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