The Last Show with David Cooper
FULL EPISODE: Have You Considered Dating a Robot? - March 26, 2026
27 Mar 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Unfiltered discussions.
Chapter 2: What did the US government ban regarding consumer routers?
Unexpected guests. No topic is off-limits. From sex and relationships to the human condition. Personal anxieties and so much more. The only talk show of its kind in the world. World This Is.
Hi, welcome in. We've got an incredibly diverse set of topics tonight, some interesting stuff, and you'll learn a lot. Here is some of what we'll cover.
Chapter 3: Why did OpenAI shut down its Sora video generator?
Do you find yourself perpetually single? What if the secret to getting better at dating is first dating a robot? Halfway through the hour, we'll explore AI romance simulators where lonely hearts can practice flirting, vulnerability, and getting politely rejected by a large language model. Seriously. This tool can help you learn how to date if you're lonely.
At least that's what scientific research says. Then after that, the blockbuster Project Hail Mary. It's a sci-fi hit. I'd recommend you see it. But in it, there's a microbe, an organism that feasts on starlight.
Chapter 4: How are teens using AI to create slander videos of teachers?
And in the film, it threatens to dim out our sun. It sounds far-fetched. But how far fetched is it really? Well, we'll have somebody that simulates what alien life could look like out there in the cosmos to answer whether sun eating life is plausible. They might be what we find out there in space if we do find life. That later in the hour. Those are some of the topics we'll hit on the show.
There will be more. You will learn more. But for now, let's dive in.
Chapter 5: What insights does Ghayda Hassan provide about AI dating simulators?
Want to be part of the last show with David Cooper? Call us and join the conversation. 1-888-505-6644.
Here's something that I think more people should be talking about. In your house, I can almost guarantee right now, your internet is running through a router, an appliance, a device that makes it so you can share your internet with everyone in the house. Great. Nothing to worry about there. But the U.S. government has just announced a ban on all routers made outside the U.S.
Chapter 6: Could the 'astrophage' bacteria from Project Hail Mary actually exist?
Why are they doing this? Is it to protect you? Well, I'm here with Carmi Levy, tech analyst on It's Time for Technology Time to talk about how these devices are a single point of huge vulnerability in everybody's home that no one talks about. Carmi, welcome to the program. Good to be with you, David. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I mean, no question. No one pays attention to routers until they fail.
And then, of course, they just bring it back to their service provider and ask for another one. No, no, no.
Chapter 7: What unique perspective does elevator enthusiast Andrew Reams offer?
they unplug it and plug it back in. That's what they do. But it's easily the most important piece of technology that you have in your house because literally all traffic gets routed through it. And everything you do depends on this. When you think of a series of computers that you connect to to go from your house to Google, that router is the first computer you connect to.
It is not just like an appliance. It's not a toaster. Even though it looks like a little device, an embedded device, it's a full computer in there that runs an operating system with software. And someone's got to create that software. And all your internet traffic is running through it.
Chapter 8: Can plants count and track events without a brain?
What happens if a bad foreign actor writes software that, I don't know, sends a copy of everything you do to them or tries to steal your banking information? It's kind of a worry. Oh, it is. It's a nightmare scenario.
And this is the stuff that keeps me up at night because your router is quite literally the choke point for all traffic that goes in and out of your home and all of the devices that connect to your home network. And so imagine the power of a bad actor who would be able to literally stand on your router and watch all of that traffic flow back and forth. Those are the keys to the kingdom.
We talk about mass surveillance, Orwellian visions of mass surveillance in the digital connected age. This is what it looks like. And if you were going to target one device to see inside people's digital lives, it would be the router. And now the Federal Communications Commission in the U.S., has banned any router that isn't made in the US from being sold in the US.
So your current router is fine. If the router that you want to buy has already been approved, you can still buy it. But going forward, as foreign manufacturers introduce new routers to the market, the FCC will not allow them to be sold in the US because they're saying it is a national security concern. They don't want
companies that are based in China to be able to surveil traffic that is flowing in and out of not only our homes, but our businesses and all of our networks. They did the same thing with drones a few months ago. So the FCC is just taking the drone ban and applying it to routers. But I would argue that the router piece is a lot more impactful than the drone one. You can choose to not buy a drone.
Most of us don't have a choice. We have to have a router. And some internet communication is encrypted. So yes, like even if a copy of it gets sent to some foreign country or some hacker group, they may not be able to peek what's inside. But imagine this, a bank outfits its offices with a router. Yes, the communications are encrypted.
So if there's any bad software on those routers, they can't necessarily read it. But what if there's just like a kill switch? What if every bank, you know, office had these wireless routers and these hardwired routers in them? And then all of a sudden some foreign countries like, well, we could maybe profit if we took that bank offline for an hour. You know, like it's little things like that.
It's kind of scary that like these devices are so, I mean, in some ways I'm fear mongering. Why would we expect these manufacturers to do anything bad? But on the other hand, it's such a vulnerable piece of infrastructure everywhere. I totally get the ban. I got to say, I'm usually against these blanket bans, but for this one, I see why they're doing it.
I'm still worried though, because for all this, and I remember, because the national security concern is trotted out all the time when governments want to impose a change. They used it with the TikTok ban and look how that ended up. It was never about national security at all. And so now, you know, the US government, again, it's all about trust.
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