Season 9, Episode 6 August 11, 2024

SPEAKER_01 0:03

This is the Listening Tube.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hello. Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube. I'm your host, Bob Woodley. I do not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination for President of the United States of America. On this episode, we'll hear about post-war unemployment, a woman who found a window of opportunity for freedom, and I'll have a chat with a journalist who listened her way to writing a novel.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

But first, not the headlines.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

As you may or may not know by now, one of the reasons I began producing the listening tube was because of the horrid conditions in which I found our legacy media headed, if not already there. There was a time when people were willing to wait until after dinner to turn on the evening news to see what else was going on in the world other than the mostly mundane routines most Americans have. God knows I love the 24-hour news cycle, but the pressure to release a story before anyone else is sometimes overwhelming. It's certainly been a feather in my cap a few times to break a story before anyone else, especially when it eventually goes worldwide. But there have to be rules if journalists are to be trusted. One of those rules is what is commonly known in the business as an embargo. It usually involves the federal government or perhaps a large company making an announcement that will affect company stocks. What happens is the people with the news will tell the reporters only if they promise to wait until a specific time to release the story. That way, everyone has ample time to write the story and get the facts straight without a lot of the confusion that might otherwise result. Until then, it has to be kept a secret. Now, you might be thinking, but Bob, what about the freedom of the press? Well, freedom of the press also includes the freedom to keep a secret. And sometimes we do out of professional courtesy and to build trust with our sources. You have probably heard about the historic prisoner swap that recently took place between Russia and a number of other countries. Certainly a diplomatic exercise that will be studied for generations to come. But this is not the headlines, so I won't rehash what you no doubt have already heard about the swap. I will only say that I think prisoner swaps are a bad idea unless it's one for one who have similar charges. While I feel bad for the victims of such state-sponsored kidnapping, the whole thing is just a vicious cycle. What you may not have heard is that this prisoner swap story was one such embargoed story, and one of the news outlets broke the embargo. The pressure to break a story was so strong that it won over the discipline to wait until the authorized release time. But this wasn't a business story that might lead to some insider trading that we won't notice for months or years. This was a story about complex diplomatic maneuvers involving multiple countries, all with their own demands and expectations. America wasn't the only country that made agreements and concessions and probably sacrifices to get a deal done. Russia released sixteen in all, with three of them going back to the United States. The U.S. didn't get everyone out either. But it was an American news outlet that released the story before the swap was a done deal, putting the whole operation in jeopardy. In fact, they put it out so far ahead of the release time that they had time to release a correction an hour later that said they had not yet, in fact, been released. The timestamps indicate those released by Russia were still in transit from Russia to Turkey. That plane could have easily been ordered to turn around and go back, even if it was already out of Russian airspace. This was a journalistic blunder of epic proportions. I don't get any satisfaction by saying the name of the organization that made the blunder, but anybody else will tell you it was Bloomberg. So I'll just get it out of the way. I'm not one of Bloomberg's sources, so it doesn't affect me personally. But it did affect the woman whose name was on the story. Not the only name on the story, mind you, but she's the senior White House reporter for Bloomberg. Or was. Like the kind that are embargoed. Now, if I'm sitting in a coffee shop in Washington, D.C. and overhear a conversation wait, let me start over. If I'm sitting in a bar in Washington, D.C. and overhear a conversation about a huge prisoner swap that's about to take place, I'm free to yell it from the rooftops or put it on my podcast, because I wasn't aware of the embargo. But in the case of Bloomberg News, this reporter probably didn't have the authority or even access to release the story on her own. There's no evidence that she did. But she got fired because she was the lead author of the story. The Wall Street Journal reported that others were disciplined as well, but none lost their jobs. Just Jennifer. The scapegoat. The sacrificial lamb, not the desk editor, nor the regional editor, nor the managing editor. None of the people who could have and should have been able to stop the premature release were fired. The person who actually released the story wasn't fired. Only the lead writer of the story, the journalist. Now there is a possibility that she made some type of procedural mistake or misled someone about the status of the story. But that doesn't excuse the rest of the chain of command for their responsibility as a news organization to not jeopardize national security or people's lives. Here's the thing: during a time when public confidence in the media is at historic lows, Bloomberg didn't do anybody any favors by firing a journalist for serious mistakes made by management. By management, I mean an editor or a publisher. Certainly not a writer. The whole reason this was an embargoed story in the first place was to give the reporters time to get a head start on writing the story. Otherwise, the government would just issue a press release and let everybody find out at the same time after the fact, then spend countless hours answering questions from the press about how it all happened. As a reporter, it's a blessing because it gives you an opportunity to actually do some creative writing instead of hurrying to get the facts out. For example, I worked for a CBS radio affiliate in Las Vegas, and I was sent to cover a Mike Tyson fight. His opponent was a British gentleman. Knowing that, and the likelihood that Mike Tyson would do what he almost always did, which was win, I was able to write an opening line for my report that compared the bout to the Revolutionary War. It was beautiful. As luck would have it, Mike won, and my report was the top story on CBS radio news that hour. Around the world. I was still in the parking garage of the MGM Grand when it came on, and I heard it in the car. But I still had to wait until the fight was over to make my report, which to me was much like an embargo. I just had to use what actually happened to fill in the blanks on what I had already wrote. And that's what should have happened with the prisoner swap story, but the blanks were already filled in and reported before the last punch was thrown, so to speak. Then it was released. The good thing is the pre-release of the story didn't prevent the swap from happening. If Jennifer deserved to get fired, so be it, but certainly she shouldn't be the only one. And perhaps the government embargoing this type of story is a bad idea. Maybe we should let the press find out on their own. Maybe they'd get better at their jobs. Embargoes may work with certain types of stories, but maybe this wasn't one of them.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

And here's some unfinished business.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

You may recall a raid on a small weekly newspaper in Kansas last year. I spoke about it at length in episode four of season six of The Listening Tube. The ninety-eight-year-old publisher died the day after her home was raided by police in a made-up investigation. The newspaper offices were also raided. Well, a year later, special prosecutors in Topeka said they're going to press charges against the former police chief who was in charge when the raid was conducted. Their investigation, according to the Associated Press, resulted in a 128-page report that concluded that no crimes were committed by the staff of the Marion County Record, and that the search warrants were not legally justified. The former chief is being charged with obstruction of justice for his actions after the raid. He could be charged with a misdemeanor or a felony. The man whose mom died after the raid now runs the paper. He says he's glad the police vindicated his staff, but wondered why it took a year. He says the former chief is just a fall guy, and others should also be held legally responsible for the false premise of the raid itself. As I recall, there was certainly a lot of drama going on behind the scenes involving arrest records and drunk driving charges that led to the chief being persuaded to pursue the warrant for the raid. Without a doubt, there are others who deserve to be charged for what led to an illegal show of force and unjustified actions that not only infringed on the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, but also personal and property rights, not to mention the death of the publisher. I once lived in Kansas. Leavenworth, to be exact. No, not the prison, just the city. I ran the printing press at the Leavenworth Times. There was still a lot of small town mentality even back then, strange laws and local customs, and it was hard for outsiders to fit in. This police chief came from a big city and took a pay cut to do so. He was desperate to fit in, and someone found his insecurity to be useful. The police chief is a fall guy, but that doesn't make him innocent.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Let's go back through the listening tube for this week in history.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

This week in 1945, a week after dropping two nuclear bombs on Japan, thousands of Americans are suddenly out of work when war contracts end with the conclusion of World War II. 100,000 people in New York would lose their jobs. Manufacturing companies all over the country were now free to go back to building what they were building before the U.S. entered the war. Many manufacturing facilities were retooled to help in the war effort, abandoning their primary business objectives in order to make war materials. A month later, Ford Motor Company would halt all production, blaming irresponsible labor groups for strikes and letting go of 50,000 employees in Detroit. Two days later, the big three automakers, Ford GM, and Chrysler, all reject a 30% pay raise demand by the Union. This week in 1947, a middle-aged Russian school teacher jumps from a fourth floor window at the Russian consulate in New York. This was when New York City still had an above ground wiring system, and that's what saved her life. Her fall was broken by some wires she bounced through on her way to the ground. Because she survived, she got to tell investigators why she did it. As it turns out, she claimed she was being held there against her will. I couldn't find a story that said why she might have been being held there, but she clearly was. And we knew it. A writ of habeas corpus had been issued to produce the teacher to a New York court, but the consulate refused, citing diplomatic immunity. The teacher was in Russian custody for about a week when she decided it was worth the risk to jump to freedom. It happened when she and her captors were enjoying lunch, listening to the radio. A story about her came on, and when she heard it, she abruptly got up from the table and found an open window. She was severely injured internally, including a dislocated spine and broken pelvis, plus compound leg fractures. Officials from the Russian consulate got to her first and carried her back into the building. Steps were taken to keep local law enforcement away, leading police to run through an adjoining building and getting over a six foot fence with spikes to get access to the woman. It was the elevator operator who saw her jump and alerted authorities. Otherwise, we don't know what might have happened to this woman. She later told investigators that she jumped to avoid getting sent back to Russia. She had recently been quote unquote rescued by the consulate from an organization called White Russians, which the Russian government probably considered to be what today would be called a terrorist organization. Here's the ironic part. The woman refused to see anybody from the Russian government while she was in the hospital. That prompted the Russians to lodge a diplomatic protest of the United States kidnapping of the woman. Yeah, Russia accused the U.S. of holding the woman against her will while she was in the hospital recovering from the injury she suffered leaping out of their consulate building. An original story from the Sydney Daily Mirror notes that four other people appeared to be victims of the Russian government in recent months, mostly in the former Czechoslovakia. The Cold War had just begun. It would last until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The US and the Soviet Union never fought a war against each other directly, but each supported governments and regimes in other countries while they fought. Perhaps our school teacher was smart enough to see the future of Soviet communism. She proclaimed she was not a part of the Communist Party and did not share their values. She was right. Russia is now a dictatorship, much as it was under the old Soviet leaders. Russia had an opportunity to change its ways in the 1990s and was well on its way, relatively speaking, until the tyrant Putin came along. Yet still today there are those who think socialism is the answer to all of society's ills. Unfortunately, some of them are running for elected positions in the United States government.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

The listening tube will return at the speed of sound. Contact the listening tube by calling 570-601-1101 or email thelistening tube at Outlook.com.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

This week I had the pleasure of speaking to an Atlanta-based journalist who discovered a story that began before she was born. What she didn't know was how much of her own history she would learn and how much we could be missing. Her journey began with taking possession of cassette tapes recorded by her grandfather, describing his life as best he could recall shortly before he passed away. The story goes all the way back to after the Great War, or what we now call World War I, and this journalist found herself filling in the blanks of the memories to create a novel called Hands of Gold. Her name is Ronnie Robbins, and we talked about the book and also about journalism in today's environment. But I first wanted to know about the premise of the book. What was so interesting about her grandfather that she felt his story deserved to be told?

SPEAKER_04 20:56

So my grandfather was told he was terminal at 27, but he lived till 87. He had tuberculosis, which is still in the news today. And he uh was in and out of hospitals, and my grandmother was the breadwinner at a time that women were not breadwinners. They they were they were on welfare of the time. He accidentally killed somebody and he saved people in a workplace shooting spree. And they had a love story that is, you know, you hear sickness and health, but this was sickness and health, richer or poorer. They've had they had that. So that it was really the undercurrent of it is this love story between the two of them and what they endured together and losing their entire families in in Europe during the Holocaust. What was it like to hear about your whole entire family dying and you know, being, you know, wiped out and you knowing you what did you do? Couldn't you have done more? Um, should you be with them? Should you have been there? You made it out. How come they didn't? And just that frustration of it all. So the the idea of persistence beyond any kind of obstacles that are in your way, whether it's health or uh trauma or uh financial, is really the power of the of this story that that I I've brought to life.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

It's interesting that they that people feel that way. Uh a lot of times soldiers returning from war have that same feeling, like, well, why did I get to come home and my buddies did not? It's a it's a heavy burden to bear for the rest of your life.

SPEAKER_04 22:36

Yes, yes. And and so it should resonate in some way with immigrants and um and those that also went through this uh at that time. And and um, you know, it's not a survivor story per se, but he was a survivor in his own way. A survivor of, you know, that he didn't, it would have been him if he had stayed, because the most of the rest of the family uh perished in the Holocaust or was killed in the Holocaust. So, and again, we still have anti-Semitism today. So these issues are uh cyclical, and we still have to deal with some of this. We're dealing with it now in in the world on college campuses, in in what's going on in Israel. People are still out to kill people that are not like them and still don't treat people with the respect that they deserve. You know, African Americans are still struggling, I would say, and also women to get the same rights. And these things are never ending. We're still battling some of the same battles that we battled back then. Uh TB has is now still in the news, and you know, we've got the pandemic that's that seems to not want to go away either.

SPEAKER_00 23:55

Yeah, I understand it's uh making a little bit of a comeback in California, which I I found surprising.

SPEAKER_04 24:03

I think everywhere, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Yeah. And it's very gracious of you to say these things are cyclical because the way I see it, especially for the for the Jewish population, it just seems to never end.

SPEAKER_04 24:18

It never ends. It never ends and and yeah, it just doesn't. Um, it's always something that you have to deal with. Now I'm not a person of color per se. So I don't have to, you don't maybe see it in me, you know, and no right away. But, you know, it's this people seem to figure it out and then, you know, and there's definite fear where there shouldn't be fear of just being able to live our lives and not have to worry about it. And it shows up to each and every one of us in different ways, whether it's security at our synagogues, or it is why can't we be able to go and study what we want to study without being persecuted or or having to feel bad or having to fight for our lives if it's discovered who we are.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Now, the title of your book, Hands of Gold, where did that come from?

SPEAKER_04 25:13

I don't know if you can see it, but and your your your listeners won't be able to, but I'm wearing a hand of gold in essence. It's a it's called a hamsa. It looks like a hand. So it comes from that. It comes, there's so many hidden meanings in it. Our hands are so important to our lives. They show who we are. They've got a little roadmap. Are you young? Are you old? What have you been through? They they're our livelihood for me, for many people, you know, whether it's writing or typing, being on the computer or holding our loved ones uh with our hands, hands are very important. Gold is both golden years, it's uh financial, it's you know, heart of gold. It there's so many things that you can talk about gold in itself. There are a lot of meanings to the hands of gold, but uh those aren't the meanings that are that is I leave little secrets in the book. As I've learned from the great writers, you know, you you you don't want to be too transparent. Uh you you have to all of a sudden you'll be reading the book and you'll say, Oh, that's where the name comes from. I wasn't sure. Okay, maybe that's it. So, but I don't want to give it away. So you'll have to read the book to find out what the real re reason for the name is.

SPEAKER_00 26:36

I think they call those Easter eggs now, those little trinkets you find uh where you may not expect them.

SPEAKER_04 26:43

It keeps people guessing, and that's really what I was doing when I revised and revised and look for where's where I can put in some secrets and some drama and suspense.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Now, as a journalist, we tend to thrive on facts. Either it happened or it didn't. Like mathematics, one plus two equals three. There's no disputing it. Cut and dried. Did you have some innate aversion to building fiction around the truth? Did your conscience bother you because you were making stuff up and you're you're a journalist at heart?

SPEAKER_04 27:28

Okay, so I could have written nonfiction and just based it right on the cassette tapes, and that would have been a little dry, and but that would have been factual and just drew out some of the facts that I did by the research, but I used that as an interview. You know, the the the cassette tapes, transcribing the cassette tapes was the basic interview. And then yeah, I did worry about making things up, and it was a huge challenge to make things up. You know, you the the we hear about fake media or making things up, you know, there's been cases where journalists have made whole whole stories, but good good journalists don't tend to, you know, make up stories. We we stick to the facts. Okay, you could argue whatever you want about, you know, who's not telling the truth, who's telling the truth, whatever, but and or calling themselves media and but uh my thought and my background, I went with the facts first and then filled in the blanks with my imagination. And I think that it definitely literary license, and it was a huge challenge to make up dialogue where where there wasn't any to fill in the gaps. But it was a challenge that I wanted to try, and I hope I was successful in making it readable and and that relatable and and uh that it kept the story moving and seemed realistic. But yeah, it definitely is fiction because I also wanted to protect the innocent as we do sometimes. We use first names in stories to protect people's identity. I wanted to preserve privacy, which is something we do in journalism. We don't like to, we shouldn't do, but sometimes it's the only way to get the story.

SPEAKER_00 29:24

Absolutely. Right? We need our confidential sources, don't we?

SPEAKER_04 29:29

Yeah, so you'll just have to you have to disclose that this this is not his real name, or we're not revealing his real name to protect privacy. So I chose to use that and change all the names in my book and make up stuff.

SPEAKER_00 29:44

Now, did you have to go back and learn more about this era in order to fill in those blanks? What were some of those challenges?

SPEAKER_04 29:56

Well, a journalist, as you know, does research and makes sure that what you put out there is accurate. And for me, that meant accurate to the time period. So I did not want any reader to say, you know what, that didn't happen then. So I made sure all those uh voices in your head that are saying, nope, nope, check that. You're not sure, you're not sure that happened to the point of, you know, what did they call women at that time? Was it dame? Was it broad? You know, you know, what were some endearing type of titles that they called each other? What were they wearing? What was going on around them at that time? So you've got, you know, the golden age of of radio, you've got um the de Great Depression was going on during my book, you've got unionizing going on during, you know, the start of unions and and different, you know, civil rights challenges going on during my book. But I I needed to know what have what would their environment have looked like, what would they have been going through, what kind of struggles? So, yes, I tried to keep it historically accurate as much as I could by research, research, research.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Well, I'd have to say that makes you the bee's knees.

SPEAKER_04 31:16

There you go. Would that have been said net then at that time in my context? I actually did look that up.

unknown 31:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 31:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

Now, was there ever a news story about the cassette tapes of your grandfather?

SPEAKER_04 31:33

Yes. I wrote yes and no. Yes, because I wrote a story be in 1990, in the late 90s, 1990s for the Atlanta Jewish Times about listening to the cassette tapes and um leaving my grandfather left his uh a legacy behind to his progeny, was I think what it was called. Um, you know, and uh that other people should should record their family histories. Uh I thought that was something important that we should all know where we came from so we can, you know, better understand ourselves, and um, and also that it's something easy to do. You just sit there and talk to your family about what their lives were like, and you can learn so much.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

It seems to me like, you know, just the existence of these cassette tapes would probably be uh an interesting human interest story. Now, they they you say they were made around 1990. When did you begin reviewing them?

SPEAKER_04 32:32

Late 90s. I don't think I got the cassette tapes right away after they passed away. One pass my grandmother passed away January 31st, 1991, and my grandfather exactly to the date, which I used in the story too, for the romantic aspect, a year later, um, which in in Jewish religion is you know that's significant is the year anniversary of the death. So, you know, we mark that pretty significantly. And so I played on all of that, all of the they were religious, so I played on on that, that spiritual side of it. But a romance that you die, it happens, a romance where one goes first and then the other follows exactly a year to the date. Seemed that was what the initial spark to me was like, wow, wow, that touched me. So that was the initial part of it that I thought was worth. And then other things, you know, fell in line. I didn't start transcribing and making this into a book until 2000 when I was staying home to raise my children. It took me that long to realize, hmm, maybe you want to do this now.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

You say you're in the Atlanta area, you're a freelance writer. The media landscape has been changing dramatically recently. There are uh consolidations, there's artificial intelligence now, there's all the uh cord cutters, the I mean they're a print journalist. No, I I've worked for newspapers uh over my career, and my hometown paper isn't even printed in my hometown anymore. And actually print tens of thousands fewer than they did before. Is there a market for a freelance writer in today's journalist landscape?

SPEAKER_04 34:31

And I will tell you, yes. Obviously, I want to be employed. Um, I was I was actually downsized, which you know happens to everyone in journalism at one point or another, or probably does. It's very common, especially now. So I was downsized for financial reasons, uh, you know, several cuts in my former, I was an editor, global uh publication. Um, my biggest job that I've ever worked on, but my position got cut. So I this is my second time freelancing. I freelanced while I was raising my children in uh 2000, you know, between 2000 and say 2008. I work for some major publications, uh Huffington Post, Forbes, New York Daily News, and WebMD, where I eventually worked full-time uh uh Medscape, WebMD. Uh, but I think that they're that uh newspapers, any publications, it's all digital now anyway, are willing to pay where for freelancers, so I so I hope, versus full-time employees. Um, and I think there's a lot of us uh vying for the same jobs, basically, because you know, there's a lot of people that have been downsized from the major publications, as you know. And so I'm not alone in this, but it took me six months to to and and my freelancing is local, um, so I'm not really doing more of the uh big media through you know that's located elsewhere, say in New York. But um, I'm finding work. I mean, I've it's been pretty consistent now. I don't know how long it, you know, the other shoe will drop. Uh I don't know. But I think that they don't have to pay me for health insurance, they don't have to pay me for, you know, 401k. So um I'm I pay that all my own and I get not that much money either. Uh, I might add, but um, it keeps me writing and it keeps me my you know name out there, and I get to have a little byline that includes uh a pitch of my book. So I'm happy right now with that. And I starting on my second book, so it gives me that kind of freedom too.

SPEAKER_00 36:55

We hear a lot about the media today, and and you had touched on it a little bit earlier, but I'm wondering if you, as a journalist, what kind of sense you have about how the general public looks at us today.

SPEAKER_04 37:14

I hear such negativity, and I it gets me annoyed as a journalist every time they there's a mention of the media as if we're one big group that goes together and everyone believes the same thing. We're not really all of the same mindset. I think different papers have and different publications have different political leanings. I would hope that every that uh that journalists remain unbiased, and that would be the ultimate. That's what we were trained to be, unbiased. I try to be unbiased. I don't, I can't answer for anyone else. I can't answer for other media, you know, if we're gonna be, we are not all the same. And um, it just it annoys me when you know, when somebody says the media and I have to correct them and then they'll go, oh, mainstream media. And I'm like, okay, what what is exactly who's that? You know, which may who is that? Is that my publication? Is that not my oh, you're a healthcare reporter, it doesn't matter. You know, I mean, well, I'm a healthcare reporter now, but I worked for major dailies, well, dailies in Birmingham and Florida, and I've worked for business publications, I've worked for Jewish publications, so I'm very eclectic. You know, I represent a lot of different specialties, I should say, you know, in terms of media. So I've been around the block. I don't like being lumped together in one group, and I try to be accurate and I can't answer for everyone else, but I do not like being termed the term the media, as if we're all or traditional media, because I don't really know what that is either. So if there are people with biases, if there are journalists and certain publications, or it's just the perspective of the person who's sees it, whether that publication is biased or not, in my opinion. Now, Israel is a different story, but I I have my personal opinions about that as a Jewish person. What and you'll find differences of opinion even among the Jews, uh, of uh of support for Israel or so you know, support for the the Palestinians or peace or you know what has to happen now, you know. So there's a lot of differences and divisions, you know, it within our own religion and faith.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

I've noticed recently, and if you look at the news uh digitally on your phone or on your computer, however the case may be, uh unless you go to a specific news site, say like the Associated Press, that has a variety of different stories on there. What I've discovered is if you rely on algorithms to deliver the news to you, they assume that you're looking for a specific kind of story, and they only feed you those kinds of stories. What I've discovered is it's it seems to be harder today to find those other stories, those things that we wouldn't normally hear about that you would run across in your daily newspaper, but we don't we don't do that anymore. Are we are we missing out on some fabulous journalism simply because we're only being given the stories that an algorithm believes we'll be interested in?

SPEAKER_04 40:48

No, no offense, but the Google is really good at finding whatever you want.

SPEAKER_00 40:54

Um, you know, if you if I don't know what I'm looking for, okay, the paper would bring me those things. Now I don't know where to get them. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 41:05

So there are a few publications that have weathered the storms and and survived, by the way. I've been part of both those that haven't, um, or moved per se, or downsized, made, you know, made a smaller staff or focused their whatever they're doing and keep trying to be better and find this the way to get more readers, uh, you know, digitally made that transition and digital. So let's just say that because I still belong, I still write for a publication that's local. But um some may find that that that's biased and they're looking for something else. It's all available. But yes, the algorithms, the the AI is actually annoying to tell me what I want to read because I've searched for something and now I'm inundated with dog videos to no end. And it seems too on, it's it's just crazy. And sometimes it's really scary because like I look up Billy Joel um or I type Billy Joel in a text to somebody about something, and then I get a Billy Joel song on my uh on my radio. Now, how does iHeartRadio know that uh they should play a Billy Joel song? How? How do they know? But somehow they know. And I thought that was a little freaky. That Billy Joel doesn't usually pop up. I mean, he's very popular, I love him, but he's not programmed into my radio per se. It's whatever is on the radio. I'm just old-fashioned that way. But I was like, what? But it's freaky, but I think everyone's using it, and you either get on board or it's like the computers. You can you decide what you want to do. Do you want to be part of the wave or do you want to not be part of the wave and do your own thing and see how that works? But everyone is using my daughter, my kids are using it to create different things. I've used it when it's not for an article, but it it you can't help it. It's coming up, it's trying to tell you what you if you search for something, it'll tell you on the side of your computer, on my computer anyway. Bing comes up and tells me something else that I they think that I want to know.

SPEAKER_00 43:12

So, Siri or Alexa, look up Hands of Gold by Ronnie Robbins. What you'll find is a fascinating novel based on the true story of a man with a story to tell. Written by a journalist who knows the difference between fact and fiction. Thank you, Ronnie, for spending time in the listening tube. Copyright 2024. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. Subscribe today, or text me from the home page. I'm your host, Bob Woodley, for the I'll add infinites.