Make Me Smart September 21, 2023 Transcript

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Kai Ryssdal 

I would ask how I look, but it doesn’t matter.

Kimberly Adams 

You look fantastic. Hey, I’m Kimberly Adams, welcome back to Make Me Smart where we make today make sense.

Kai Ryssdal 

Sorry, I gotta close the door Bons just snuck out. I’m Kai Ryssdal. Thanks, everybody for joining us on this Thursday. It’s 21, September 2023, actually is what it is.

Kimberly Adams 

You’re the only person today who didn’t sing it. Alright, so by now, you know,

Kai Ryssdal 

Sorry, is there a thing? Is there a thing with 21 September?

Kimberly Adams 

The 21st night of September, it’s Earth Wind and Fire day Kai.

Kai Ryssdal 

If you, oh the if you remember. That one?

Kimberly Adams 

The 21st night of September? Yes, it’s Earth, Wind, and Fire day.

Kai Ryssdal 

Okay. I didn’t, I didn’t. I know the song. I just didn’t know it was 21. September.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, well, now you know.

Kai Ryssdal 

Once again, Kai Ryssdal the old man on the pot. Alright. Anyway,

Kimberly Adams 

Which is funny, because I think that song is older than me.

Kai Ryssdal 

I think it’s older than me too. Although we shall check, we shall we shall check. Anyway.

Kimberly Adams 

All right. So by now, you know that Thursdays is all about listening back to some of the big stories of the week. And so we have some audio clips lined up, we will get into what was said and what wasn’t. And yeah, let’s just go to the first one.

Janet Yellen

Speaker McCarthy needs to find a way to do his job, which is to pass a continuing resolution or bills. So there’s no reason we’ve got a good strong economy. It has a lot of momentum. Inflation is coming down. The labor market remains very strong. We really don’t need a shock to the economy.

Kai Ryssdal 

Janet Yellen, Secretary of the Treasury talking about Speaker McCarthy, Republican of California, who is in charge of leading the fractious mob that is that’s not actually pejorative, because that’s what they are a fractures group that is, Republicans in the House of Representatives, we are I think, nine days nine and a half days from a shutdown. So in all seriousness, the the the last thing that she said there, those last three words, four words: shock to the economy. That is not what we need. Right now this economy is growing, labor market is slowing, like the Fed wants it to consumers are for now still spending money, everything seems to be generally fine. But if you have a shock to the economy, that could all go for fluey. And we don’t need that. That’s what I got.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, I mean, McCarthy is really running out of options today. They tried and failed, again, to move some legislation through at least to get some defense funding through I think, and no, and it I think the argument there was that you know, who’s going to vote against defense funding, because everybody likes defense funding. But you know, the Republicans who are opposed to this, you know, basically saw it as a political ploy. And they’re like, no, because all this other stuff is going to they’re going to attach a minibus to it in the Senate. And then we’re going to be

Kai Ryssdal 

You got to, you got to, you got to tell people what a minibus is.

Kimberly Adams 

Sorry. So since we regularly fail, we being Congress regularly failed to pass the 12 appropriations bills necessary to fund the sliver of the federal government that gets paid by this process. Usually, what ends up happening is they lump all of those bills together in what’s called an omnibus. And when they can’t get an omnibus through, they take maybe two or three of the appropriations bills or maybe for a couple, whatever they can manage, and they pass a minibus. And that is what I mean. And so some of the Republicans who have been opposed to these deals, were worried that if they pass this defense bill, that once it got to the Senate, other things would be attached to it. And then the stakes would be even higher when it went back for them to say no, and it would be harder to it was just like a political conduit for something else. So McCarthy is really running out of options. Politico had a piece today where they were like, This is the week where McCarthy has been throwing everything against the wall and nothing is sticking. And yeah, it’s I don’t know how he’s getting out of this one. It’ll be interesting to watch.

Kai Ryssdal 

It is arguably the worst job in Washington. Truly, you know.

Kimberly Adams 

Hmm, yeah. Right. Next one.

Drew Barrymore

Yep. So deeply apologize to writers. I deeply apologize to unions. I deeply apologize.

Kimberly Adams 

That would be Drew Barrymore, actress and talk show host. And that was her very tearfully apologizing after she announced her show would go back on air without their writers who are on strike, as is most of Hollywood, and she’s now reversing her decision and postponing the show until after the strikes, she was not the only one. There were a couple of other shows that were going to attempt to, you know, do their seasons, do their seasons and continue to put out content. And I guess they figured that, since they were talk shows that maybe they wouldn’t be so caught up in the, you know, boycotts and things like that. But no, no, no, no. So she got a lot of flack for it. So did the other couple of talk shows that tried to go back on air, and it seems like they’re all backing down also, it will be very, it will be a very interesting fall content wise, because the catalogs are running low, and we’re getting ready to get into the time when there just won’t be any new stuff. And, yeah, that’s what I got. How is it in LA right now with all this happening? Because you see it.

Kai Ryssdal 

Well, I well, that’s the thing, unless you’re actually out on the west side of town, you kind of don’t see it, and you don’t quite feel it unless you’re in that industry. And that industry is hugely important in this town. And it’s costing Los Angeles County like $5 billion to date. It’s been 140 Something days, right? So it’s a very big deal economically, right. But it’s also very specific to a part of town. But just to get back to the to the Drew Barrymore thing and also the Bill Maher thing. Here’s another one. And there was one more who said they were gonna come back. I don’t understand how she and they thought this was going to end any other way than them getting absolutely piled on. And having to reverse course, I just read the room, you know. Read the room.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, that was good. I was surprised to when I first saw the announcement. I mean, do you really want Fran Drescher coming after you? Come on.

Kai Ryssdal 

And look, Drew Barrymore has been around a very long time she knows, you know.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. And now she really knows

Kai Ryssdal 

Right. And now she really knows exactly. And we should say, by the way, apparently, and I don’t know where this stands given, you know, where we are 3:45 on a on a Thursday. Talks are apparently happening, and they’re going well, so who knows, fingers crossed, that won’t be solved and everybody can get back to work. This is specifically think the writers and then they go to SAG-AFTRA next because SAG-AFTRA on strike, that part of SAG-AFTRA.

Kimberly Adams 

Well And then there’s the video game folks who were are getting ready.

Kai Ryssdal 

I forgot that. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay, next one, please.

Kashmir Hill

Facebook and Google had both actually developed this, this very technology internally, they both created apps, that you could take a photo of somebody, or even point a phone at them in the real world, and find out their name. And both companies said, Wow, this seems like a, it seems too dangerous to release, we don’t want to be the ones to put that out there. And so what ClearView AI did wasn’t so much a technological breakthrough as an ethical one.

Kai Ryssdal 

So I interviewed a New York Times tech reporter named Kashmir Hill this week about her new book, which is called “Your face belongs to us,” about this company called ClearView AI, which as she said in that clip, didn’t really invent new technology for facial recognition, but took it well beyond the bounds of what is ethically accepted in the tech industry, and is using it now with police forces and others, to basically rip away the last shred of privacy. And in point of fact, you can be walking down the street, and this company’s technology can instantaneously identify you. And there are very few interviews that I’ve done in however, how long it’s been that I’ve been hosting this program, which just scared me because it’s it’s truly, truly a little bit dystopian, actually. It was really worrying.

Kimberly Adams 

That was indeed a very disturbing interview. And folks who haven’t heard it should definitely go back and listen to it. I’m gonna get the book myself because not that I want to have nightmares. But it’s, it’s interesting, because I hosted the tech show for a year. I knew. I know these things in the abstract, I really do. But to hear her talk about the specificity of it, and the real world deployment, and, you know, we often talk about and we’ve talked on the show about how China uses this kind of technology, and just the ability, how easy it is to scale up a surveillance state. And we effectively kind of have one even if we just want to kind of cover our ears cover our eyes and you know, not pretend that it’s not here. But I think about that often like whenever we have to take new headshots or whatever or we do and I thought about this when, you know, we do the live show like there’s a lot of video of us out there on the internet. A lot of images of our faces and things like that. And one of the downsides of the amazing jobs that we have is the shredding of any kind of expectation of privacy because you get that public figure label, and you no longer have an expectation of privacy.

Kai Ryssdal 

And honestly, we’re not even famous man.

Kimberly Adams 

We’re not. We’re not but still like, y’all. Anyway. That was depressing. So before we go after this last one, because we need it. You can sing along.

Earth, Wind and Fire

Do you remember the 21st night of September?

Love was changin’ the minds of pretenders
While chasin’ the clouds away…

Kimberly Adams

Okay, I’m not going to subject you to the whole thing. But that was Earth Wind and Fire’s 1978 hit, that’s when it came out, “September.” And it never just, I haven’t been fully like online today. So I missed all the memes of people dancing and doing the reveals and stuff that I know always come around. But I very much enjoy this annual thing that is Earth, Wind and Fire day it entertains me.

Kai Ryssdal 

It’s somehow it seems impossible. But I did not know that today was Earth, Wind, and Fire day. Whatever I am older than this song.

Kimberly Adams 

I remember we had a version of this conversation almost verbatim last year. I want to go back into the archives because I feel like we had this exact conversation where you’re like, “Well what do you mean Earth, Wind and Fire day?”
Kai Ryssdal

I am a goldfish. I am a goldfish.

Kimberly Adams

It’s all right. We’ve got a lot of information in our heads. All right, that is it for today. So please join us tomorrow for economics on tap. The YouTube live stream starts at 6”30 Eastern 3:30 where Kai is on the Pacific coast, and it will be so much fun even though it’s not Earth, Wind, and Fire day tomorrow. It’s the day after which will also be fun.

Kai Ryssdal 

Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. That’s a little embarrassing.

Kimberly Adams 

Don’t try to take my small shreds of joy.

Kai Ryssdal 

No, no, not at all. I totally get that. Today’s episode of Make Me Smart was produced by Courtney burger. H Conley assisted there. Audio engineering by Juan Carlos Torrado. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Our intern is Niloufar Shahbandi.

Kimberly Adams 

Marissa Cabrera is our senior producer. Bridget Bodnar, the director of podcasts, and Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital. So funny you really don’t remember at all.

Kai Ryssdal

Man, that’s crazy. That’s crazy. Squirrel.