The Listening Tube with Bob Woodley--A conversation with Stan Berteloot about AI, Media and American values

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This is the listening tube.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hello, and thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I'm your host, Bob Woodley. If I sound a little different, it's because I'm recovering from the flu. On this episode, we'll hear about the Shah of Iran, an old American bomber, and a man on recorded music. Plus, I'll have a chat with a man who knows a lot about artificial intelligence. I know he's not a robot because he has a French accent. And I'm pretty sure they don't make those yet.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

But first, not the headlines.

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American values are subjective. America has laws and an outline of the form of government we want. American government is a living organism that changes day by day, with the Constitution as its foundation. But like the American government, American values are a constantly evolving species of itself. Much like the beaks of Darwin's birds, American values vary over time in order to adapt to an ever-changing environment. You can either adapt, like the birds did, or you could take the advice of the late pastor Sam Kinison, who encouraged the impoverished to move to where the food is. You see this? It's sand. You know what it's going to be a thousand years from now? Sand! Move to where the food is. Luckily, American values seem to have gone the Darwinian route and conformed to the environment instead of abandoning the area. Unfortunately, American values have become less definable as the beaks of the birds changed their shapes. The food sources became more defined while common nutrients became less important. Special interests became focal points, and many of us developed beaks that could only feed on a specific source. While it's possible to survive that way, you kind of lock yourself into a specific part of the food chain, don't you? Well, when it comes to politics, relying on a single source of fulfillment could easily result in your extinction. If your cause falls out of favor, so could your source of nourishment. So it might be a good idea to define what American values are as broadly as we can. Sure, we have to follow the Constitution, but those are the values to which we're being held. Maybe it's time all Americans agree on not just what we're required to do, but what we want to do. And not just what we want to do, but what we can do to make our country a better place. A good place to start that process would be to agree on what Americans value most. Let's define American values. We know how Republicans feel, we know how Democrats feel, we know how libertarians feel, and maybe we can figure out how independents feel if we just ask ourselves what American values are. We can gather all of our opinions and feed it into an artificial intelligence machine and figure out who's hallucinating. Us or the artificial intelligence. Or maybe then we could lock the American government into a specific part of the food chain while allowing citizens the opportunity to share more common forms of fulfillment. The American government should be a reflection of its citizens, citizens with varying differences, opinions, and thoughts, as well as agreements. And I realize the Declaration of Independence says life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But those things mean different things to different people. We all agree on the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, but maybe we could more clearly define what American values are beyond the foundation. Just as laws have adapted to the evils of society, so too should the definition of American values. Happy St. Patrick's Day. This week in 1939, the marriage of Princess Fauzia of Egypt to Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran. They say politics makes strange bedfellows, and there's the proof. The main reason for the marriage was to solidify the cooperation of Iran and Egypt, and bring legitimacy to both families. The marriage didn't last long, though. It ended in divorce in 1945. Love couldn't outweigh cultural and political differences. Today, his son, who also holds the title of Crown Prince, is metaphorically standing outside the front door of Tehran waiting for a chance to bring his family back to a leadership role in what many are hoping will be a regime change in Iran. The first, since young Reza left Iran with his father in 1979. There are, to say the least, mixed feelings among the people of Iran when it comes to another monarchy there. The younger Reza may be able to play a role in the changeover of governments, assuming there is a change of government in Iran at all. This week in 1947, the first flight of the B-45 tornado strategic bomber. This was before the United States Air Force was even a separate service. So technically, it was an army bomber. It was the first jet capable of carrying a nuclear bomb. So, no, the B-29 that dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not a jet. It was also the first jet to be refueled while in flight. Alas, it's mostly forgotten, pushed aside by other models, primarily the B-52. Miraculously, the B-52, which began service in 1955, is still in use today, recently performing bombing runs inside Iran, along with its younger sibling, the B-2. The B-52 has no defense since the tailgunner was removed in 1991. So its use is carefully planned. This week in 1948, with a musicians union ban lifted, the first telecasts of classical music in the United States under Eugene Ormandi and Arturo Toscanini are given on CBS and NBC. But why was there a ban in the first place? I'm going to look that up.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

He's gonna look it up. He's really gonna do it. I want the truth!

SPEAKER_02 8:04

You can't handle the truth.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Actually, there were two. One in 1942, which ended in 1944, then another in 1948. The first prohibited union musicians from making recordings onto records unless they were going to be sent overseas to entertain service members there. But the 1948 ban was different. The 1948 ban was all about radio. The union chief, a man named Joe Petrio, was an advocate for his union members and did everything he could to keep the money flowing to its members. You could say he was the Gene Simmons of his day, targeting radio as an industry writing the coattails of professional musicians. There was a time, not too long ago, that radio stations hired their own musicians and orchestras to play the popular hits of the day and entertain their listeners. With improvements in recording technology and sound quality, radio stations realized they could play a recording instead of hiring musicians. Besides, nobody wanted to hear some other guy singing a Bing Crosby tune. They wanted to hear Bing himself. Records provided that, and the musicians' union boss didn't like it. The ban meant no new recordings would be made at all, leading to the union boss becoming one of the most hated and most powerful men in the country, according to spontaneouslunacy.com. Although the first broadcasts after the ban were of classical music on television, the ban itself had more of an impact on other types of music. The big band era morphed into the crooners like Crosby and Sinatra, while the new music of rock and roll would have to wait a few more years to gain national interest, as it was just beginning to emerge in local markets at the start of the strike. Speaking of rock and roll music, it was this week in 1976 that British Prime Minister Harold Wilson resigned, citing personal reasons. Mr. Wilson is one of the two people mentioned in the Beatles song Tax Man.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

The listening tube will return at the speed of sound. Send email to thelising tube at outlook.com.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

My guest today is Stan Bertelou. Stan's the chief innovation officer at Nitro Marketing and has been studying artificial intelligence. He's also a trained journalist. Stan spoke with me about both of those subjects and more from where he lives in Princeton, New Jersey. Stan, you are an expert on artificial intelligence. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_03 11:10

Well, expert is a big word. I'm not sure any one of us can claim to be an expert. This is a field which is moving extremely quickly. But yeah, I spend a lot of time reading, listening, and working with AI.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

And when did your interest in AI begin?

SPEAKER_03 11:28

So before uh joining Nitro Marketing, which is the marketing agency for which I work, I was marketing director for a startup working in the field of life science and AI. So that's really, and that was pre-Chat GPT. So one of the founders was Princeton Professor of AI. And that's really that was my introduction to artificial intelligence.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

So you learned directly from one of the masters.

SPEAKER_03 11:59

Exactly. Yeah. I'm not a coder, I'm not a developer, but I understood, you know, the big principle of AI. I found it fascinating. I could see the impact it could have on the life of patient. And yeah, it was it was uh a revelation.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

Well, other than having that wonderful opportunity to learn directly from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Are there any other materials or references that you would recommend to people if they want to learn more about artificial intelligence?

SPEAKER_03 12:30

You have so much out there. There is a very entertaining and yet interesting podcast that I would recommend. It's called The Hard Fork. It's published weekly on Friday by the uh New York Times. And I think it's a very easy introduction in you know what's going on in the world of AI and how it impacts everybody's life.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

What fascinates you most about it?

SPEAKER_03 12:58

You know, I've been I've been working in marketing and software for the last 20 years. And uh, as a marketer, anytime I had an idea and I wanted to see something evolving in our software, I had to speak to developers and product managers and make a case for it. And quite often it was like, oh my god, this is going to take months, it's too hard to do, etc. About a year ago, a bit less than a year ago, I started vibe coding. And what is vibe coding? Vecoding is just talking to an app, an AI app, asking it to code for you, to develop a software. And that was just a come to Jesus moment, right? I was here, I am a marketer, I'm a journalist by training. I don't know how to code a single line of code, and all of a sudden, just by chatting with an app, I was able to build an application, and that that was something incredible. Um, so that's on the software side. On the marketing side, I use AI to do research to help me write, to brainstorm, to just have the AI challenge me. And that is also quite interesting. And the more you use it, the more you see how to use it.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Now, I too work in marketing, and I've seen in many of our digital advertising products how AI is used to find potential customers and find other people who look like your already your current customers. And so, but that I'm sure that's just really scratching the surface. Uh what are what are other some of the other ways that AI is being used for marketing? And are our phones listening to us?

SPEAKER_03 14:58

Yes. Well, yeah, and uh, I mean, it's funny you say that, right? Because we've been saying that for years, but I I think I read something, you know, uh recently about yeah, actually it is truly listening to you. I'm not sure where to start. Uh, and every day AI is just coming into our life in in ways which are more or less you know ethical. So it you know, on on the good side, AI can really increase what you do, make of you make, you know, uh make you a superhuman, uh a marketer can be better at what I mean, maybe more productive, not not uh yeah, I I don't want to say better because I'm convinced that if you don't have a domain expertise, AI will not make you a good marketer or a good anything, right? If you take a physician, someone looking at like an X-ray, AI might be able to point to a tumor, you know, to a maling uh cancer cell, but you still have to know what you're looking at, right? You still need to be a good physician in order to be able to use AI properly. Same thing for a marketer. You can you can brainstorm about a campaign idea, you can try to find the ideal customer profile, you could look for pain cluster in your ideal customer profile, but you already you you need to know what it is you want to be doing, right? Like you cannot optimize a process which you cannot understand. So, what is it you want to achieve? And then AI can help you do that.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

A lot of people are frightened by AI. I think we probably don't realize how much artificial intelligence is already a part of our lives, uh, below the surface, and we just, you know, we're it's not it's not front and center, so we don't see it. We assume that it's not there, but it probably is. Now, you you made uh a good point. You know, if AI is not going to make you a physician. So is it just another tool like the internet was or like the printing press was? No, definitely not.

SPEAKER_03 17:28

What I'm saying is that in order to use it properly, you need to start by understanding what it is you want to do, and you need to be uh good at what you do. Now it's not one of those other tools because increasingly AI is uh independently thinking. It's you know, we talk about agents, agents are autonomous, they can take action on your behalf. So it is it is quite different from what we've seen before. And I understand that people are scared. I am my myself quite you know scared at times when I see what AI can do. So AI will continue to evolve. We are talking about general artificial intelligence and and what it is, it is exactly what I said. It's it's AI being able to think by itself, take action on its own, and increasingly becoming better at what it does by learning on its own, by looking at the world and making you know uh decision based on that. So as long as we've got alignment between human and AI, like an agreement of you know what AI could do based on what the human wants to do, we are fine. But how long is this alignment going to last is the question. And we can see already, you know, in new models being released by uh the big AI firm that sometimes alignment is is really hard to uh uh to keep within guidelines. And the other issue that um is being discussed is that we in the US might have an agreement for what alignment looks like and what we want to do with AI, but it doesn't speak to what the Chinese or the Russian uh want to do with it too. So, what happens once you start to have general artificial intelligence? People are talking about it being you know with us within two years, ten years, it will be there, that's for sure, unless we blow the planet up before then. But uh so so what happened when this kind of intelligence is there and when when you have autonomous misalign intelligence you know released in the ether? That's uh you know, that's a philosophical question, but we should consider it.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

Personally, I've been trying to avoid artificial intelligence whenever I can, but it seems to be very intrusive. I mean, any search you do on Google begins with an AI-generated summary. My Yahoo emails now have a summary of the email at the beginning of the email. At first, I didn't know what it was, so I read it. Then I ended up reading the actual email, wondering why I just read the same email twice. I don't need AI to interpret an email for me. So is there a way to remove AI from where you don't want it or need it? Or even better, will AI at some point recognize when it's not needed and not wanted and stay out of the way?

SPEAKER_03 20:46

Oh my god, I'm not sure I can answer this question. Um I suppose you could probably go into you know the deep, uh the depth of the setting in your Google or Yahoo account. Uh but I'm not sure companies want you to remove AI, right? Because AI will inform them of your preferences and then they will be able to target ads properly. So I think it's going to be very hard to avoid AI. And I'm with you when it comes to trying to avoid AI. I love to write, I've been trained as a journalist, as I was saying, and I write less and less, or I write together with AI, and I miss it. I I you know, I miss just the thought process of owning what you produce and being proud of it for the reason that you really put some thought into that beautiful sentence, right? Yes, and and and and that is something that you don't have when you work with AI constantly. It's more like you know, in the old days, people would dictate a letter to their assistant. Well, this is sort of how we work with AI. We've got a super smart assistant that That will work alongside you. But sometimes you really want to be writing that letter yourself. You just, you know, dictating is not enough. So and at the same time, I think in our profession, if we do not use AI, we are going to be taken over by other people using it. Right? I see my client, they expect me to use AI. And they know that when I use AI properly, what I produce is of a better quality than when I'm not. There is more research, there is more expertise. And unfortunately, this is you know, this is raising the bar for everybody. You know, presentations are better, the data is more research. Uh you can fit it an entire Excel sheet and it will produce an analysis of a depth that you couldn't achieve before. So, you know, uh do you do you want to remain an artisan or do you want to be at the same level? And I think there is room for everything. Take an artist, for example. You can say AI is going to produce beautiful art of all kinds, and artists are dead. And I don't believe that. You know, I believe that AI will produce art just like IKEA produces furniture, which will be convenient, which will be nice enough, will be which will be cheap enough if you just want to have a couple of uh pieces of art for your lobby, you know, why not? But if you are really looking at art, which is valuable, which has been produced by a human, you are going to go to that human being that produced beautiful art. So there is room for people still producing stuff. You know, books, authors are going to produce books, and that's not going to die. So you are going to see the two kinds of products living aside of each other. Now, what I hope is that we don't become lazy and branded and forget that human produce stuff that AI cannot produce. And and that is, you know, it's a reflection. We we can think about that.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

So then you you don't believe that AI will ever get smart enough to know when it's not wanted.

SPEAKER_03 24:30

It will probably, but in order to do that, it will still need to be there.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Okay. You see what I mean? Yeah. It's a catch-22, isn't it? Now, uh uh Stan, other than AI, you have an interest in American culture, and you even have a podcast uh that talks about American culture, values, and identity. Are you originally from America? Are you kidding me?

SPEAKER_03 25:00

Yes, I'm from uh Texas, as you can see from as you can hear from my accent. Well, no, as you probably guessed, um uh I'm from France. And although I've been living here a long time, I still have this very thick French accent. I am a French American uh citizen. I recently became a citizen. I studied so my story in a nutshell, I came to America uh during the high school year. I did a a year of high school in Iowa and loved it. Decided to come back. I did all my studies in the US. I studied journalism at the University of Maryland, and then because of the military services, at the time we still had military service in France, I had to go back to France, I got married, and 25 years later, thanks to my wife, uh, we moved. My wife and my three kids moved to the US. And I found a country which was obviously not the same than the one I left. Right? I left the US in uh in the late 90s, and I came back in 2016. You had 9-11, you had uh the the economic crisis of 2008, the pay the country is way more divided than at the time. You have like a physical border between Canada and the uh and the US. And I wonder what what happened to this country, right? What is America? And I myself was now there to stay. And I'm like, okay, let's let's try to revisit this country. Um I'm not a tourist, I'm living here, but yet I'm not an American. Uh uh at the time I was not an American, um, I was a French citizen living in the US. And uh and that gave birth to Back in America, which is me interviewing people and trying to understand you know who they are, what is their life story? Most of the people are I mean, everybody is an immigrant, right? Whether it's third, second, or first generation, you know, unless, and I did interview some uh, you know, Native American, but if you're not talking Native American, we're all immigrants. So, what is your life story? Why, how did you end up in the US? What is America to you? Talk to me about politics, talk to me about the culture, you know, the firearms is a big topic, the constitution, the divide. Those are issues that I address in my podcast.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

So you're also able to provide an outside perspective of those things like values and culture and identity when it comes to American uniqueness.

SPEAKER_03 27:59

People welcome the opportunity to talk about the country they love. And most everyone I interview, I would say everyone in the US loves the US. Some people don't share, you know, you have Democrats, you have Republicans, they don't align on everything, but there is one thing that everybody aligns on is this country has an amazing potential. And me coming from Europe, see how different it is, right? I I told you I became an American, and nobody questioned the fact that I'm an American, at least on the East Coast, right? People are like, all right, you've got a funny accent, but what do I know? As far as they know, I I am an American and I live here, and I've got people from the entire planet. I've got Chinese neighbors, I've got Indians neighbor. I mean, I'm not questioning their nationality. That would be very different in Europe, right? You are Spaniard, you are an Italian, you are a French person, and and becoming French is very different. You cannot become French. You will always be that you know American who became French. But in this country, it's different because of how this country was built. This country was built from by immigrants, and and I believe that everybody can become an American in a way that you cannot do in Europe.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Well, thank you for uh displaying your allegiance to our country. I do appreciate that on a personal level. Now, what do you see as American values?

SPEAKER_03 29:46

So uh meritocracy is one, right? The fact that if you work hard enough, you can make it, despite your social origin. Uh again, in Europe, your social class is uh very real, you know, the way you speak, the accent you've got. Look at in England, it is uh extremely true, but also in French, if you have a people will say from which kind of background you come from based on your accent, and that will that could be a showstopper in your professional career. Uh so the social class exists in the US, but at a much lesser level than in Europe. Meritocracy, as I said. Independent people are more independent. You want to be independent. In the US, you know, private property is a real thing. The fact that you need to be self-sustainable, the fact that you don't you don't want to depend on the government, for example. And and I think this is something which is less true in Europe. In Europe, people expect a lot from the government, in the US, much less. And you can see that, you know, with states and federal government, that's something we we don't know, we don't understand in France, for example.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Now, of course, um people in Europe pay a much higher taxes to their governments as well. Uh, I think probably that expecting more from their government might be justified. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_03 31:24

I'm not sure it's entirely correct. First of all, it depends on which country, but I remember seeing comparison of taxed when you put everything together from you know local states and federal tax. And uh and I believe we end up paying a little bit less tax than uh me living in Princeton, New Jersey, where the tax are super high. So that's not always the case now.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

Okay, interesting. Thank you for sharing that with us. Now, is there anything about American culture that surprises you or disappoints you, perhaps, or or you're thrilled to see it? Wow.

SPEAKER_03 32:06

Um, I mean it's it's yeah, the culture of firearms, it's a big topic, right? And and I think a lot of people in Europe don't really understand where it's coming from, sort of make fun of Americans having guns in their car, in their, you know, everybody owning a gun, which is not true. I know a lot of Americans don't own a gun. And yet I I know and I've been you know shooting at a range with friends who've got guns. And so it's it's really part of the culture. I think it's part of the history, it's definitely part of the constitution, it's a constitutional right, and that is something which is surprising for a lot of Europeans coming to the US. There is another aspect that many Europeans don't understand at first, is you know, this sort of extremely welcoming, uh smiling approach many Americans have uh at a first, you know, uh uh at a first level. You know, people will you you feel if you're not prepared, you feel that you made a friend instantly, and then you meet the guy tomorrow the the next day and he barely remembers you. And you go, oh the the Americans are fake. Well, no, Americans are not fakes. Americans are nice and it's part of their culture, and they they they want you to feel welcome. That doesn't mean you made a friend, right? It it's like anywhere, it takes some time before you make a friend, but at least you got a a nice smile and a nice conversation on the get-go, something you might not be able to do in Europe, right? People might feel a little to an American. I'm sure many Europeans feel cold and and maybe arrogant or you know, closed. So that is definitely uh something a lot of Europeans comment on and are surprised. But you know, at the end of the day, people are people.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

That's true. And I and you know, I have been having lived in Europe back in the mid-80s, uh I I I kind of know where you're coming from there, but I always kind of took that as a challenge because I I would purposely like when when when I first saw your picture pop up on the screen, I smiled. That's just what I do. So I don't I guess that we don't see that as as being very very unusual. So uh it's nice that you're you that you're able to look at uh at American culture from a different perspective and and maintain that perspective, even though you've been here for a long time now. Is there something about the American identity that strikes a chord with people from other parts of the world or specifically Europe that, you know, I don't know, maybe they aspire to, or perhaps on the other side of the coin, are happy that it does not exist where they live.

SPEAKER_03 35:07

I and maybe this is because of education, but there is something that Europeans find a little bit disturbing is the lack of understanding for many Europeans of different culture, of different identities, of the fact that the world they know is not the world that everybody lives in. I think it's in great uh because the US is such a big country, people travel within the US sometimes and don't really take the opportunity to travel abroad. So many Americans have not been exposed to different cultures. Plus, in school, you don't study geography as much as people in other countries do, right? So uh quite often Americans have no clue of you know what the rest of the world looks like. You know, you can name a country somewhere and they go like, why that? So this exposure to the war, exposure to different culture is lacking with many people, which uh create sometimes uh uh uh uh uh an arrogance in in American. You know, they they they they go, they move, uh they will travel abroad and uh and expect everybody to speak American and to behave like they are used to, etc. So that will come across as being very arrogant, and um and that that is maybe something we in Europe are glad not to be.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

You know, uh it's funny because you mentioned that because usually you know, like I remember walking around, walking up to perfect strangers saying, uh and sure to uh uh sprackens the American. And they would always almost everyone had the same answer, a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 37:09

A little bit.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

Uh in fact, I think the only I think the only time I ever ran into someone who didn't speak English was was uh on the French Riviera, but uh that was their territory, so I you know I was I I needed to learn their their language. Now, Stan, uh uh you you are a man of many talents. You're in marketing, you're in AI, you you have the podcasts, and and um, but you as you mentioned earlier, you're also a trained journalist. Now, I spend a lot of time on this program criticizing American media and the spin, the omissions, the misdirection that I believe is prevalent in today's media, and try to give people the tools to recognize when this occurs. How do you see today's media? And am I correct in my assertion that it's mostly to manipulate rather than inform?

SPEAKER_03 38:06

Wow, very harsh critic. Uh I'm I'm less harsh than you. Um I've had the privilege to attend uh conferences in Princeton, in New York, by publications like The Atlantic, The New York Times. Uh I I uh yeah, a guy was from the the Washington Post. And I think those publications understand that they have a job to do in better educating the public. There is a, as you say, a big mistrust of the public from what people call uh you know mainstream media, and they know that if they want to survive, they need to do a better job at explaining how they do journalism, what is fact-checking, why is independent press so important to democracy? So that's number one. Yes, you have a lot of publications which are doing exactly what you do for commercial reason or political reasons or both, and that's that's too bad. But I think what's really too bad is the fact that the media, the press is dying, that you don't have local newspaper like you used to have. And you know, I mean, you've got big publication on both coasts, but the the the rest of the country is deserted. It's it's a press desert. And what happened when your small uh, you know, your your township meeting has no journalist? Who you know is watching over what's happening during those meetings? What about your school board if nobody reports on them? Well, actually, it's not true. This is what mainstream media is today. Mainstream media is social media. People go to Facebook, to Twitter to get their news. So rather than accusing, you know, Fox News or CNN or all those publications of being mainstream, people should think no. I mean, in terms of viewing, Facebook, Twitter, you know, all the stuff are becoming the mainstream media. And they are manipulating the opinion because you end up having one person attending your school board meeting and reporting whatever they are going to be reporting without any face uh fact-checking. So if you're lucky, this person is going a super good journalistic job reporting only the facts, but nobody is really uh checking on that person. If you don't have media, if you don't have the press, if you don't have an independent, unbiased unbiased is hard because we all have our own biased. But at least people reporting both sides of the story factually, with an army of fact-checkers on the back, making sure that this story has been properly reported. If you don't have that, democracy is going to die. So that's that's my take on it. I'm I'm very passionate about the press. I've been trained as a journalist. I worked, um, you know, I published with the Wall Street Journal, I worked for Reuters, and I truly believe that, at least at the time, I was working with passionate people who really had a mission and uh and wanted to do a good job.

SPEAKER_00 41:23

Well, I too am a trained journalist, and my definition of news, or the definition of news that I was taught, doesn't seem to be the definition that is used by journalists today. And so I often wonder if our media publications and broadcast companies even have a definition of news. Do you think they do?

SPEAKER_03 41:54

I I want to believe they do, and uh because the world would be extremely sad if they didn't. I I I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, uh to the New York Times, and and I'm I know it's left-sided, left, you know, on the left side of the political spectrum. And yet quite often I see how they are trying to be to bring both sides of the story in their reporting. Yeah, that I'm not sure what to say, but definitely the I think just like our country, uh the US has changed, how divided the country is, the press is uh is just uh mirroring this divide, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 42:41

Yes, I agree. It is unfortunate. So well, Stan, we're we're just about out of time. Is there anything I didn't ask you about that you'd just like to share with us?

SPEAKER_03 42:52

Well, we could be speaking forever, but we covered a lot of ground, and I really want to uh take a minute to thank you. Uh thank you for being a good host. Thank you for uh bringing clarity to those important topics. That that was fun.

SPEAKER_00 43:07

Thank you. Well, thank you, Stan Bertelou. I enjoyed our conversation. Stan is also the co-founder of Share My Meals, a nonprofit organization that uses technology to reduce food waste and get it to those who need it. Thank you, Stan, for spending some time with me in the listening tube. The listening tube is written and produced by yours truly, copyright 2026. Shout out to some new places checking in. Weirton, West Virginia, Panama City, Panama, and Duchessny, Utah. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. Follow the listening tube at thelisingtube.com. I'm your host, Bob Woodley, for Val at Infinitum.