All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file. Mutual Aid & the LA Fires CES 2025: AI Toys Are Coming For Your Kids From Anti-Satanic Crusaders to Congresswoman: Tracing an Anti-Trans Harassment Campaign CES 2025: The Best And Worst Tech Products Coming Soon The Years of Lead Paint (Or Why There Will Be More Tesla Car Bombs) You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So, open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “Cooler Zone Media” and subscribe today! http://apple.co/coolerzone See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What are the impacts of mutual aid on communities during disasters?
That was very interesting, because the surprise about that, because it is this kind of... I'm sure most of these people were born to wealth and privilege, and the first thing that people do with money, the primary reason to have money, is to reduce friction. The fact that that's surprising to anyone, like, no, like... Friction's necessary, otherwise you're not a person.
I mean, it's like the ghoul we saw the other night, right? Like, you know, they're just not really people, you know?
One thing she kind of closed on in this section is talking about how Gen Z does not trust AI to understand the nuance of their lives. especially in this age of like tech optimization, like that misses a part of what it means to like, you know, feel proud of yourself and the work that you've done. Yeah.
Something she talked about at the very end of the panel was like how they hadn't factored in like, like Gen Z, you know, and people in general, right. Well, we'll feel proud about, you know, making a piece of art. Yeah. And they don't have that same sense of pride for an AI generated image. No. Whether it's like a screenplay, whether it's whatever.
Someone gave an example of like, you know, I have a kid who does creative stuff. They edit videos, right? And there is AI tools that make editing videos like easier. But if the AI does all the work, they don't feel happy about that. Like they don't feel proud. They don't feel like they've actually achieved something. And you have to feel proud about the work that you've done.
So like there's actually a sense of like ownership over like the art that we create. An exact quote was, quote, you can't eliminate life formative aspects, unquote, which is like, yes, like all life. Yeah. You don't ever do anything. I'm happy someone at CES is saying this. The fact that it needs to be said at all.
Very bleak. Very sad.
It's really bleak.
Yeah. Dating people, making friends, being social, doing whatever it is you do for a living as yourself is what life is. Yeah.
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Chapter 2: How is AI technology affecting children's toys?
So I told her, let's ask it to pretend to be a baby, and it obliged and said okay. So we asked it to cry. Granted, they don't have an amazing advanced voice mode like OpenAI, so it did its best, but it sounded weird, which made her laugh really hard. It was basically making crying sounds like talking. And also, there are still technical issues.
The voice is sometimes choppy, so it could be that it's still uncanny for her. I'm honestly fascinated about why the AI aspect of this didn't connect with my six-year-old. Because it's creepy. Because it's, people, they don't like it. Nobody wants this. Yeah. Ick. Yeah, ick.
I know this is a sample size of one kid here, and I'm sure many, many things will change as she'll grow and learn to interact with more AIs in different forms. But the first toy contact was interestingly almost a complete failure. That is interesting. Yeah, I find that fucking fascinating.
Yeah, no one wants this. Even six-year-olds are like, eh, I would prefer just a regular toy I can play with.
I would prefer, I'll pretend it's a robot, but I don't want it to be a robot that talks to me.
So Poe the AI Bear is $50 on Amazon.
Oh, that's not bad, actually. No. That's good. Okay, good. All right, well, maybe.
We can even maybe order one and see what we can get out of it. Yeah. All right, we're going to go on another break and return to talk once again about AI products for your children.
Okay, we're back. So we went and saw something else today. While you were at a different chunk of the event talking to yet another flying car company that promises to revolutionize the East, with which we can all do 911s. Super excited for that future, by the way. I stumbled upon the booth for a company called TCL. A pretty big company.
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Chapter 3: What is the history of anti-trans campaigns in politics?
We make it this big pie-in-the-sky thing, and then of course we're all frustrated because no one knows how to get there.
Struggling with tough emotions? We have a how-to guide. Worried that you're not enough? We got you. Self-obsessed and want to get over yourself? There's a guide for that, too.
The ability to approach somebody and make them experience desire for you in minutes or even hours is a rare and rather unnecessary skill, historically speaking.
The Happiness Lab's How-To Season starts January 1st. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The more you listen to your kids, the closer you'll be. Find resources to help you support your kids and their emotional well-being at SoundItOutTogether.org. That's SoundItOutTogether.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and Pivotal.
Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about it, the consumer electronics show, happening here to everyone. And, of course, it is, in fact, happening to everyone because over the course of the day, all of our subjects here, all of our experts here have watched different kinds of dudes explain the different kinds of jobs they want to replace with a chatbot that was trained on Reddit.
So I'm going to go around a circle and introduce our guests today. First off, we've got the great Ed Ongueso Jr. Ed, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me on. We've got Garrison Davis, who's also great, but I'm not going to say it at the same time because I don't want Ed's compliment to feel like less. But you're contractually obligated to not mind.
Yes, thank you, boss. Thank you.
Great to be here, as always. Very natural, very natural. Zai? Hi, hi, hello. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you. This is your first CES as well. That's right. Your first time being a journalist. Also true. How do you feel doing the job that Alex Garland has just reminded us in the movie Civil War is a fundamentally noble, perfect endeavor only practiced by heroes?
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Chapter 4: How are mutual aid efforts organizing in LA?
What a dog would think about Proust. Just a dog sitting at a table smoking a cigarette. Yeah. The future. Garrison, you're up.
Best of CES, I think, was definitely the VLC media booth at Caritha Park, where they had big traffic cones on their head, wearing them like wizard hats with huge cloaks.
They were dressed as wizards. They were dressed as wizards, and we walked up to them, and they said— Let's start. VLC, folks, if you don't know this, this was especially relevant to those of us who pirated a lot. It's a media app that allows you to basically play any kind of— Any video file. Video file, yes.
Or audio file, and now it will automatically give you subtitles too, using local AI that's not like reaching to the cloud or anything to do it.
Because putting subtitles on pirated media can sometimes be really hard. So they said, we have something that analyzes the audio that's being spoken in whatever media you're watching, and we will put subtitles up for you. We walked off. And we're like, so what do you have here? Like, we are not selling anything. We have nothing to sell you. And it's beautiful.
They're French. So it was in this like.
Yeah. Wonderful accent.
I'm not going to fake it. The degree of like, I don't give a fuck about anything else in this stupid goddamn show that they gave off. They exuded it.
And they're by far the coolest because of something, Robert, you said to them.
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Chapter 5: What strategies are being employed against anti-trans harassment?
I've never been to CES.
Oh, really?
This is your first one? No, I'm a fucking sports writer, man. Oh, man. I'm out here because Ed got me a folding bed.
You have like the dead-eyed veteran look to your face.
Oh, yeah. Well, I'm very tired. Yeah. This is the thing with like, I think as far as I can tell, it seems like it's a loop where you more or less like you start out, it's too much. You get big eye right away and then you just sort of feel zombified. But then we have talked to people over the last few days that are like, you know, I remember like 14 CES is ago. That was pretty good.
Like, and they're also tired and also deranged by this point.
The first time someone showed me a tablet computer, I was like, Oh man, science has given me everything I want.
Like, and I guess it's, I don't know. Do you remember like when the last one was that you felt like even sort of that stirring?
Yeah. Uh, 2011 or 12, I got to see inductive charging of a car for the first time. And it was so big. The Las Vegas Convention Center is the size of a city. And seeing the lights in that whole convention center dim as they were doing this, it was very inefficient.
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Chapter 7: What are the challenges faced by unhoused individuals during disasters?
Chapter 8: What is the significance of community responses to climate change?
They were dressed as wizards. They were dressed as wizards, and we walked up to them, and they said— Let's start. VLC, folks, if you don't know this, this was especially relevant to those of us who pirated a lot. It's a media app that allows you to basically play any kind of— Any video file. Video file, yes.
Or audio file, and now it will automatically give you subtitles too, using local AI that's not like reaching to the cloud or anything to do it.
Because putting subtitles on pirated media can sometimes be really hard. So they said, we have something that analyzes the audio that's being spoken in whatever media you're watching, and we will put subtitles up for you. We walked off. And we're like, so what do you have here? Like, we are not selling anything. We have nothing to sell you. And it's beautiful.
They're French. So it was in this like.
Yeah. Wonderful accent.
I'm not going to fake it. The degree of like, I don't give a fuck about anything else in this stupid goddamn show that they gave off. They exuded it.
And they're by far the coolest because of something, Robert, you said to them.
I walked up and I was like. VLC is a very popular app. They just crossed 6 billion downloads. I've been using them for almost as long as you've been alive. And I walked up and I was like, I've been using your product for 15 years in order to pirate media. And they said very nonchalantly, keep going. Keep going. Keep going.
Keep doing that. Keep doing that.
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