It's a program that's on periodically here on WBAI.
I wish to give you a stationary time and day, but it floats,
and it's heard on WBAI.
So I guess be grateful for that.
It is 7 PM.
Stay tuned for Off the Hook coming up here on WBAI New
York, 99.5 FM and WBAI.org online.
Stay tuned.
The
number you have reached, 293-0000, is not in service.
Please check the number and dial again.
293-0000 is not in service.
We're sorry.
The number you have reached, 99.5 WBAI, is now off the hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
It couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Bum diddley bum for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bum diddley bum.
Very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Kyle.
In the distance.
Yeah.
How are my levels?
Are they good?
Are your levels tonight?
Yeah, they're level.
They're on the level.
I don't want to shout, but I will if I have to.
If you're going to be doing that kind of shouting, maybe bring it down a notch.
Okay.
No, they didn't hear me shout.
I turned the microphone off.
I did that.
I have to shout at an assisted, what do they call them again?
Assisted device thing?
A personal assistant.
Personal assistant.
They're not personal assistants.
They're not personal.
They're impersonal.
They're not assistants.
No.
They're corporate anchors is what I think they are.
An impersonal insistence.
Yeah.
We had one playing in the background so we could hear the radio station, but then it
was causing all kinds of delay issues.
Oh, you know what?
I have totally forgotten to introduce Alex.
Alex, are you there?
I am indeed.
Good evening.
All right.
And what planet are we circling this week?
Oh, boy.
Yeah.
This is an unusual location for me at the moment.
I am just south of Broom Street on 7th Avenue.
And I'm actually en route.
We're going to be crossing state line.
Wait, wait, wait.
Whoa, whoa.
Hold on a second.
You're attempting a crossing of the Hudson River at this hour?
I am indeed.
I'm about to go into the Holland Tunnel.
So-
Are you mad?
Have you lost your mind?
Have you taken leave of absence?
No.
All right.
Have you lost your mind?
Have you taken leave of your senses?
I usually do around this time of the day.
Yes.
Why?
As do a lot of listeners.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, what's going to happen when you go in the tunnel?
Well, actually, you know what?
You're not going to get in a tunnel any time soon.
So-
I'm about to get into the tunnel right now, actually.
Really?
The traffic started moving.
So, we're going to cross state lines.
We're going to cross the Hudson during this show.
All right.
Well, you know, it's funny because two weeks ago, when we were last on, Kyle and I were
driving in the other direction.
We had intended to stop and do the show without having to drive at the time, because we figured
that would be better, but the pizza place we wanted to go to before we got home was
closing, so we had to keep moving.
We were driving across.
We were actually on the George Washington Bridge during the last show.
We didn't mention it.
Actually, I think we did mention that we were on a GNW Bridge.
You did mention it.
It came to mind to me that it's quite interesting when people abbreviate the George Washington
Bridge as the GWB, it's not really an abbreviation, because it's the exact same number of syllables
to say GWB as it is to say George Washington Bridge.
Yes.
It's pretty extraordinary when you think about it.
But for the people who are transcribing the show, Alex, it's a favor to them, because
the intelligence agencies and spies and various people like that are writing down every word
we say, and we want to make sure they have a life, too.
It's important.
Yes.
No doubt.
Very interesting times.
I just want to say we only have, actually we have less than an hour, but if you're watching
the media lately, if you're paying attention to all the things that have been going on
around this country on college campuses and all that, you have an opportunity to see how
the media works, how the media does not work, how things are slanted one way or another,
and how things sometimes do get reported, sometimes don't get reported.
It's fascinating.
And listening to WBAI, too, you'll hear all kinds of different perspectives, some of which
you'll agree with, some of which you will vehemently disagree with, and it's all part
of the process.
I hope people take advantage of this and think of it.
If your college campus is being taken over right now, and pretty much all of them are,
think about that as a learning experience of one sort or another, an opportunity to
have a dialogue, an opportunity to talk to people that you either agree with, that you
want to learn from, that you disagree with.
But keeping it civil, keeping it peaceful, that is what is important.
And it's just really stressful to see when these things don't stay peaceful.
It's usually when authorities march in and decide to end it.
That's when things get violent, except it's weird because they don't ever get blamed.
They get thanked.
It's awfully weird.
I don't want to spend much time on this at all, but there was a piece on CNN a few days
ago with Eric Adams, the mayor, the mayor of New York City.
You're familiar with him, right, Alex?
Yes, I am familiar with that guy, unfortunately.
He was talking about Columbia University and how the situation was unfolding, and he said,
we won't come onto campus unless we're invited on by the university president.
Now what's interesting about that is the way he phrased that.
We won't come on.
Now, did he mean the mayor's office won't come onto campus?
Because that doesn't usually happen during protests.
No, he was talking as if he were a cop.
He was saying we, referring to the NYPD.
Of course, we all know Eric Adams was a cop, but right now he should be the mayor.
The we that he speaks should be representing the people, not the police.
I just thought that nobody really caught that.
That was right there on CNN and very disturbing to see that is the mentality that is behind
us.
Of course, you're going to have a bad situation when people are talking and thinking in that
particular way.
Instead of having an opportunity here to debate, think of other perspectives and maybe actually
set some kind of an example for the rest of us.
This is what college students have done for millennia, however long college students have
been around for.
People were talking yesterday about, oh my God, they took over Hamilton Hall at Columbia
University.
They've been taking over Hamilton Hall for as long as that place has been around, I think.
Back in the 60s with the war and throughout the 70s, the 90s, that's always the building
that gets taken over.
Not really that big a deal and it's part of the process, kind of part of the college education.
You went to Stony Brook, right Alex?
I did for my undergraduate, that's right.
As you know, Stony Brook on Long Island is known as the Berkeley of the East.
It was named that because they wanted to be academically the same as Berkeley in California,
but it turned out to be a bastion of social upheaval during the 1960s.
Not exactly what the administration was shooting for, but that was one of the places where
activism thrived.
Nothing like what's happening at Columbia, University of Austin, or UCLA is happening
at Stony Brook right now.
There is a sleep-in, I guess you call it, or a sit-in, or a demonstration happening.
Very peaceful.
I stopped by it yesterday.
It's happening everywhere.
This is an opportunity to talk, to learn, to move forward.
That's all I wanted to say about that.
Alex, I'll give you an opportunity if you wanted to say anything as well about what's
going on or anything about other schools you might have gone to that have experienced things
like this.
Yeah, I mean, I guess, look, the sentiment behind it, notwithstanding the protests, I
think there is obviously, there are free speech issues that are coming under fire on academic
campuses, which is always concerning, but also I think equally and even more concerning
is that this does seem to veer off into anti-Semitism, intimidation, and harassment.
That doesn't benefit the people protesting, and it harms other students that are just
trying to go to class or to be who they are.
I feel like people have to be very cognizant of the fact that their rights end where another
person's rights begin.
We have to respect other people's faces in much the same way that abhorrent views have
to be respected and tolerated in our democratic society as well.
I think you're right to express the sentiment that this is a time for listening, not a time
for intimidation, in my opinion.
Absolutely.
I've heard allegations.
I don't want to see this kind of thing happen, but I would like to see more evidence of actual
intimidation happening.
I saw attacks last night at UCLA, and peaceful demonstrators were being attacked, and that
was live on TV, on all the channels, and then today the media was reporting that there were
clashes between two opposing groups.
That's not what happened.
That's not what was broadcast.
You saw people in their tents being smashed with barricades, having firecrackers thrown
at them, people who weren't doing anything except sleeping, and the police were nowhere
to be found for hours.
Yeah, there's something going on there, and that was not reported, and that's an example
of how the media just doesn't get it right sometimes.
I'm not saying we get it right all the time.
We certainly don't, but let's not put too much trust in any one spokesperson, because
there's always inaccuracies.
There are always things that are not quite right, and we need to be the eyes, ears, and
the voices.
Hopefully, people out there stay safe and aren't seen as a threat, and don't threaten
anybody else.
I think that's all we can ask for.
All right, I want to read a little story that some of you might have seen floating around
on the Internet and various other places, in various trade publications, things talking
about radio, because it concerns us.
We're in it.
Yeah, we're in the news, and it's not making me happy.
The Pacifica Foundation must pay a $25,000 penalty in an FCC consent decree resulting
from violations of underwriting and sponsorship identification rules.
The FCC will also grant a short-term, two-year license renewal to Pacifica's WBAI in New
York City once the penalty is fully paid.
Renewals are typically for eight years.
The agreement comes after the commission launched an inquiry after allegations at WBAI broadcast
of the Gary Null Show, Off the Hook, and a special featuring Christine Blosdale included
calls to action, descriptions of price information, and inducements to buy products or services.
Now, I can't speak to other radio programs, and I won't, but I can speak for our radio
program and say that this is utter nonsense.
This is just completely unfounded.
We do not give out prices or tell people to buy things or anything as sleazy as that.
We do not do that on this show.
We never have done this on this show.
Now, the claims were raised in basically a challenge to the license by this organization,
and you'll love the name of this.
The organization is called Pacifica Safety Net.
Yeah, they're a nonprofit organization comprising, get this, current and former Pacifica Board
of Directors.
Yeah, Pacifica Board of Directors, current and past.
First of all, I don't know how you could remain a board of director of any sort of an organization
that you're trying to dismantle.
If you're not renewing the license or telling the FCC to not renew the license, that's not
exactly fair play.
Anyway, in its petition, Pacifica Safety Net cited examples between 2014 and 2022 of WBAI
routinely airing paid programming without identifying the sponsors.
Examples included producer Gary Nob promoting nutritional supplements and host Christine
Blosdale presenting a series of shows regarding a technology that purportedly would relieve
anxiety by listening to an audio file through headphones.
You notice that we're not mentioned.
Pacifica Safety Net provided verbatim transcripts from the broadcast on which the host would
promote the products as a benefit for donating to support the station.
I was aware of this a couple of years ago, actually, when this was originally filed,
because it was laughable.
We saw transcripts of this particular radio program or a show where they were purporting
that we were guilty of these things that I'm talking about right now.
When you look at the transcripts, it makes absolutely no sense because it wasn't in there
at all.
So, why are we named?
Why are we named in this settlement for $25,000?
It's almost like we were just kind of added, and that's exactly what happened.
That is exactly what happened.
We were simply added on to the list of complaints because somebody didn't like us, somebody
was mad at us, and that I understand because we make people angry quite a bit.
We have opinions, we have ways of doing things, and occasionally we make decisions that others
don't agree with.
That pertains to a whole host of things, including this radio show.
It tells you something about the people behind this where they could simply take a petty
dispute of one sort or another and use that to get back at somebody just by adding the
name of their show to a complaint without any evidence whatsoever.
This is where you might be able to help, Alex.
The question undoubtedly comes up, well then, why would Pacifica settle for $25,000 if there
was no evidence, at least against us, off the hook?
Why would they say that there was?
This agreement is an about-face from what Pacifica said to the FCC two years ago, and
this is from InsideRadio.com.
It asked the commission then to reject the petition, calling the allegations procedurally
flawed and substantively baseless, with no basis whatsoever in fact, but Pacifica may
have ultimately decided it was not worth the fight.
The foundation has tried to move on from years of tumult.
It hired a new executive director with the mission of moving forward from an era that
included the unauthorized shutdown of WBAI in October of 2019.
Remember that?
Yeah, we made some people angry with our comments about that, too.
A lot of them are the same people, believe it or not.
There was a $300,000 judgment against the station brought by a former interim station
manager who sued Pacifica for defamation.
You can't make this stuff up.
But basically, the fine could have been so much more.
And I understand why it may have made sense to simply settle at this point, cut our losses
and move on, fine, repair whatever problems there were.
The issue with that, and this is what particularly irks us, is that we kind of got carried along
with this when we had nothing to do with it.
Now, Alex, does that make sense on a legal basis, where sometimes you wind up being part
of a charge of one thing or another because it's easier than fighting it?
It absolutely does.
And that's exactly what happened here.
The idea that Pacifica should fight a $25,000 fee from the FCC is also kind of laughable
in its own right.
The fine is so small and would literally be a fraction, a tiny fraction of what the legal
fees would be, probably just to get to the point where you would have a hearing on the
merits of these particular allocations as well.
Legal costs are rising.
They're extraordinarily expensive.
In my estimation, I would assume that any lawyer that's going to be practicing this
type of telecommunications law with respect to the FCC would probably be at least $1,000
an hour, quite likely more, maybe around $1,200 to $1,400 or so.
So you're going to run up the bill extraordinarily quickly, and you're going to end up paying
10 to probably 20 times the fee to contest it.
So it's easier to pay what amounts to a nuisance value of a lawsuit, and I think the FCC knew
exactly what it was doing when it made the fine very, very low.
It didn't want to have a contest on the 10.
And Pacifica paid it, and unfortunately, we got wrapped into that settlement.
And I think we're doing right now what we ought to be doing, which is putting on the
record that we disagree with the substance of those allegations, not necessarily with
the settlement, but the actual underpinnings of it.
Exactly, yeah.
We never got our day in court.
We never had the chance to stand up and say, this is nonsense, and here's why it's nonsense.
We have every single one of our shows available online, and anybody can listen to them at
any time.
We cut nothing.
We censor nothing.
If we make a mistake, the mistake stays in.
That's how we've always operated, and we know the rules.
We know what you're supposed to do on non-commercial radio and what you're not supposed to do.
So this was just a petty attempt to embarrass us, to drag us into something we had no part
in, and basically hurt our reputation.
Well, guess what?
It doesn't work, because WBAI is filled with people of integrity who stand behind their
staff, and that is exactly what's happening here.
I just want to thank the staff, the management, for not treating us the way that you might
be expected to treat us when something like this happens.
They get it.
They understand.
They listen.
That's really what it's all about, is doing the best job you can with the resources that
you have.
We try to bring all kinds of news about technology, and the media, and hacking, and various other
things.
We've been doing this since 1988.
These kinds of things, I guess, are inevitable at one point or another.
It's sad, because there are prices, and it's more than just $25,000.
There are some Pacifica supporters who call themselves supporters who are pushing for
the sale or lease of WBAI, and those funds could help support the network elsewhere.
Pacifica Safety Net, in fact, the people that started all this, said WBAI would have a high
value in its sale.
They did say that.
They point to financial shortfalls, and how we're dragging down other stations, and things
like that.
Pacifica Safety Net, this is according to InsideRadio.com.
They say if WBAI were to sell, the money could support other stations in the network.
That's the mentality that we're dealing with here, people who want to see the place fail.
We don't.
We want to see the place succeed.
In fact, what we're going to try and do now is turn this into something positive, because
we always try to do that one way or another.
We're talking about our record, standing on our record, believing in what we say, following
the rules as they are laid out to us, and offering everything to our listeners.
We have labored and slaved once again to put together something that we believe listeners
will appreciate, listeners to Off The Hook especially will appreciate.
Basically, it's a flash drive of every single one of our shows.
Every single show that we have done from 1988 up until the end of 2023, along with a summary
of each of those programs.
It's an opportunity for you to see for yourself how we're doing.
If we've done anything wrong, if we've done anything right, I'm sure we've done something
right over the years, but it's an opportunity for you to basically have this entire collection
at your disposal and easily accessed.
It's called the Off The Hook Anthology.
If you support the radio station tonight at 212-209-2950 and pledge $150, you will
receive over 100,000 minutes of audio, I think 1,500 plus shows, 1,500 plus shows, my God.
You'll be helping this radio station continue to survive, because if this place were not
here, there are so many things that would not be said.
Again, whenever you speak, you're going to make some people agree with you, make some
people disagree with you.
You might get some people impassioned in one way or another.
That's part of the process.
That should not be thought of as bad or unhealthy.
It's when people try to stop that, I think that is when we really have to look out and
start coming to its defense.
So 212-209-2950 or go to the website give2wbai.org.
Look for the Off The Hook Anthology.
It's incredible because while our shows are online, you can find them on websites, there
is no easy way to download them all and have them on your local machine and be able to
play them on the device of your choice.
But this little flash drive that I'm holding here, it's a couple of inches and it has everything.
You simply plug that into your computer and you can copy it and you can copy it again.
You can play it on whatever device plays MP3s.
It's so simple.
So Kyle, I'm going to ask you, pick a year.
Pick a year and I'm going to go to that year and I'm going to find something interesting
that we've done.
1997.
That's a great year.
Okay.
Hold on.
So I'm going 1997.
Now, I'm clicking on the little HTML file for each year and I'm clicking on that right
now.
Okay.
Pick a month.
Any month.
Well, June.
June?
Okay.
So let's go to June and wow.
Okay.
What we're talking about on June 17th, the massive archiving of all previous editions
of Off The Hook proved to be an educational experience.
I think that's kind of great.
We were doing it back then but that was when we were about to have the Beyond Hope Conference
and we were preparing for that.
We were getting all the shows archived and yeah, you can listen to us do that.
I can even just hit the play button right now and I think it'll just come over.
Yeah, there it is.
That easy.
Should we wait for me to introduce the show?
We can do that.
Or you can skip.
I can skip.
Yeah, that's true.
You can do all kinds of things.
But you saw quickly and that's off a flash drive.
Sometimes there's a bit of a delay on a flash drive but if you copy this to your hard drive,
you have access to everything and you can randomly listen to a program a week or a day
or whatever you can tolerate.
Not bad for a cassette that's almost 30 years old.
Yeah, we played music sometimes too before we started talking.
I'm just going to keep this going until you hear our voices.
Sometimes we played music for 10 minutes though.
It sets the tone.
It sets the mood here.
And a very good evening to everybody.
This is Off the Hook.
The program that you may not have heard for quite some time because we weren't on for the last three weeks or so.
Wow.
But, while we were away, we've been doing lots and lots of work.
Lots of preparation for the upcoming summer fun.
And also lots of looks back into the past to see all the many things that we've done here on this radio station.
Boy, it's been something.
You know what's something, Emanuel of 1997?
What's something is I'm talking about the same thing then on a show that Kyle randomly picked out as we're talking about right now
and that's all that we've accomplished on this radio show and at this radio station.
So, I guess that's a recurring theme that we have.
But there's 1,500 more shows to listen to as well where we're not talking specifically about that.
Alex, do you want to pick anything?
I do.
I want to comment too.
I think that your voice has gotten a lot deeper over the last 30 years.
It's like something's changed.
I don't know.
Maybe puberty or something over those last couple of decades.
No, it's just life has gotten darker and I just kind of lower my tone.
You're not taking as much helium for the show.
No, I try.
There's a helium shortage and I want to be responsible.
Gotcha.
I understand.
How about we go back to 1994 right around this time?
So, like end of April, early May 1994.
That's about when I think I started listening to this show.
Maybe a little bit earlier.
Okay.
Well, you're going to have to pick a month.
April.
How about April?
April 1994.
Okay.
I'll give you a choice here.
April 6th, 13th, 20th, or 27th?
27th.
As close as we can get to 30 years ago today.
All right.
Well, let's see.
As you can hear, we have old BAI promos as well.
So, not only do you get off the hook, but you get a bit of a time capsule of what was
going on in that particular year, that particular month.
I'm not sure why it's only in one year.
Okay.
It looks like we're playing some radio station promos.
So, I think we should probably skip that.
I'm skipping ahead.
There we go.
You have to move that.
Yeah, that was my fault.
I didn't have the thing up.
So, it wasn't a problem with the recording.
It was a problem with me.
And this is us talking about sending our friend, FiberOptic, to prison.
Well, we didn't send him to prison.
We took him to prison.
So, that was a bit of history there.
You remember that, Alex?
Yeah, I do.
I very, very sadly do remember that.
There are just so many moments in history just in the hacker world.
But, you know, we talked about tonight.
We talked about demonstrations at college campuses.
That's a part of the world around us.
And we don't ignore that.
We don't ignore what's going on in the outside world.
We're not in a little bubble.
I mean, we are to a degree.
But we talk about the other things that are going on.
And in addition to that, you hear how technology sounds different.
I mean, we have all kinds of people calling in.
If you've ever called into the show, you're on these recordings somewhere.
You'll hear the way phones sounded different.
You'll hear the way ringtones sounded different.
At the beginning of the program, you heard some old phone sounds.
Well, that was the norm back then.
So all of this is an incredible collection that you can get as a thank you gift
if you pledge $150 to WBAI by calling 212-209-2950
or going to the website give2wbai.org.
And just to set the record straight,
we do not in any way profit from this.
We are not selling this.
We are not billing the radio station.
In fact, we are doing the mailing ourselves.
We're doing the production ourselves.
We're buying the flash drives ourselves.
We're putting all of the labor and all of the purchasing out of WBAI's hands
because we believe in donating to a terrific place like WBAI and keeping it going.
And I hope our listeners feel that way too.
I'm very happy to be able to say that in the challenges of the last few months,
off-the-hook listeners have really come through.
I think we're number six overall with all the shows on this radio station.
And there were a lot of shows on this radio station, well over 100.
So that is something to be proud of.
And I'm very proud of our listeners for standing up.
And whenever possible, we will send you a thank you gift.
And this is a thank you gift we are especially proud of
because we poured our hearts into it.
It wasn't a simple matter of just copying the webpage.
Things had to be converted and files had to be checked
and everything had to be put in order.
And it's a really neat thing.
We never really had anything like this before.
We had CDs way back decades ago, and they were clunky.
But this, it's all together, and you can copy it as many times as you want and share it.
And that's what it's all about.
So off-the-hook lives on in the past and the present.
Go ahead, Alex.
Another thing that just came to mind,
and thinking about what we talked about last week,
about the necessity of having free speech-focused radio
in an area where everything is tracked, where everything is logged,
to be able to turn on a radio station and to just tune in to a phenomenon of physics
without having any kind of record,
without having an IP address logged that you're listening to this particular show.
It also strikes me as particularly apt
that in supporting the station through a $150 donation,
your thank-you gift is an archive of all of WBAI's off-the-hook recordings
until the end of 2023, that you as a listener,
you're not only supporting the station, you're an archiver as well.
You are a local repository of off-the-hook.
Should anything ever happen to this platform or this station,
you are a copy of the last 30-something years of history of this particular show.
And I think that's a really awesome thing to be as well.
It's also fighting back against these platforms.
It's fighting back against all the things that we're always banging on about,
that you can't trust third-party sources for.
If you've watched this show, take it home with you.
Get that flash drive. Keep it with you.
Keep it on your hard drive. Copy it. Copy it to the cloud.
Put it out on your own web server. Make it available.
You can do whatever you want with it. You own that data then.
You're going to be a true and accurate copy of off-the-hook.
I think that's super cool.
You can take the flash drive and plug it into your car
and listen to a show while you're driving.
It's really simple. We've never had that ability before.
Yeah, you could download a show from the website
or you could connect on the Internet through your car,
but that can be a pain.
This way you have it literally in your hand.
You can just plug it in, pick a show, and listen to it uninterrupted.
212-209-2950.
Pledge of $150. You get this off-the-hook archive thank-you gift.
And website give2wbai.org.
Yeah, and this reminds me, too.
We were talking about Hope in the 1997 show that we just listened to.
It reminds me that we are about to announce speakers
for the upcoming conference this summer.
We're going to announce our first batch of speakers tomorrow, I believe,
but the gates are still open for people who want to submit talks
and participate in the conference in whatever way they feel like.
So please keep checking hope.net, and we will post updates there as well.
But we have really, really good submissions so far.
I am just blown away by them.
There are a bunch of Hacker Conferences going on this summer
and throughout the rest of the year.
We're going to try and do as much coverage of all of them,
but this is the one that we really pour our heart and soul into,
and it's just a lot of fun.
And undoubtedly, we'll have another flash drive of Hope Talks later in the year
to share with people as well.
But for now, we have the Off the Hook compendium
that will give you a full collection of all the –
anthology is the right word, Off the Hook anthology.
If you're asking on the phone, that's what they look up.
This will give you access to virtually everything that has come out since 1988
that involved anyone having to do with Off the Hook.
So 202-209-2950 or give to WBAI.org.
We have a letter.
Actually, we have a bunch of letters because people write to us,
and that's a great thing.
OTH at 2600.com is our email address.
Hi, OTH folks.
I'm a longtime listener since the early 90s, I guess,
and I know what you'll want.
You'll want to have all the shows on a flash drive like this.
So as a thank you for a pledge of $150,
and it could be a WBAI buddy pledge as well,
you can have access to this as a listener from the early 90s.
And there are many people out there who have listened from the 80s as well.
Anyway, I'm a longtime listener who has emailed you a few times.
I absolutely love your show.
I usually download the shows from the website to listen while I'm doing things at home
or while I'm driving to teach or play a concert in D.C.,
particularly during the deepest, darkest days of the pandemic
when orchestra musicians like myself thought their careers were over.
Listening to your show provided a lot of comfort.
Thank you for that.
I remember as a teenager who loved to go to the library
and find foreign phone numbers in the phone book section
of the local suburban Kansas library and try to call them for free,
first hearing off the hook on the radio when I moved to the East Coast
and thinking these are my people.
Wow.
So here are a few random thoughts and things I'd love to hear your opinions on.
I thought I'd send you away since it looks like it'll be a while before you're on the air again,
and it has been a while, but here we are on the air again.
Dating apps.
Seems as though you have a unique perspective on this
and probably understand how they're designed.
Yes, I know to make money.
It really is quite interesting how it has taken over dating culture.
It certainly has.
It used to be the outlier.
It used to be something that not many people did.
Now it seems like everybody uses dating apps,
and all fine and good, no judgment here,
but there is a risk, not just a risk of meeting psychos or anything like that,
no, a risk of your personal information falling into the wrong hands, being compromised.
We hear about it all the time.
That didn't used to be a problem.
How did dating apps work in the past?
I think you're talking about websites,
dating websites that people would join during the emergence of Web 2.0 services.
I'm thinking before then there was something.
People had dating services.
I don't know how they worked.
Oh, you mean like that would be in classified sections?
Yes, like the Back of the Village Voice, that kind of thing.
Okay, yes.
And classified ads like personals were also another way that people would connect.
Do people do that anymore?
Do people pick up personals?
Newspapers?
No?
All we ever get are people telling us how things are dying,
but they don't die.
They seem to stick around.
Like radio, hey, look, we're on the radio, so that's still around.
We put out printed magazines.
That's still around.
We listen to vinyl.
That's still around too.
My comment with this is that how is it interoperable?
You're basically only communicating with people that are on this type of platform
and the onboarding, like how well does that way of meeting people
translate to actual relationships and affinity groups
or is it just be getting a certain type of dating?
And what are the impacts?
What are the differences?
I just feel like there's going to be divides
and ways that people might not have understood how it's changing the social dynamics.
I know a lot of people, a fair amount of people who got married who met on dating apps.
It's true.
I was surprised.
And actually, now that I think about it, a lot of them have gotten divorced.
But you know what?
That's normal.
That happens no matter how you meet.
But they had some good years.
Yeah, most of them.
Anyway, continuing here, I want to hear that Alex is okay and no longer in pain.
I fully expect you to give your son playful grief about that later in his life.
You're talking about your unfortunate accident involving a golf cart late last year.
Alex, how have you been doing?
Yes.
I like to describe it.
As a cybersecurity lawyer, it's all about how you describe the incident.
So I like to describe what happened as a freak accident involving a semi-autonomous electric vehicle,
which is another way of saying my 10-year-old in a golf cart.
Yeah, that's probably more accurate.
But I very much appreciate our listeners' concern for my well-being,
and I'm happy to report that I don't have that much pain left.
I still have a long way to go, I think, in terms of flexibility and whatnot when it comes to my leg and tendons.
That's going to be a long road to go.
But I'm almost a real biped again.
I'm walking without a boot.
I've got a cool cane that I use these days.
And I did wind up getting a really cool cane to help me out,
because there are very few times in life when you can legitimately adopt a new affectation.
So I feel like you quite literally have to lean into it, no pun intended.
But I'm doing very, very well.
So thank you very much for that concern.
And you're currently driving a car, so you're using that foot.
I am using that foot, and I drive a manual transmission, too, so I'm using both feet.
Wow. And have you made it through the tunnel?
I've made it through the tunnel.
I'm in New Jersey, so I've crossed state lines.
It sounds like there's a lot of screeching around you.
Is that you driving like a maniac, or is that just a normal noise?
I'm in New Jersey.
That's a normal noise of people around me.
Okay.
New Jersey listeners, just direct your comments to alexothat27.com.
Okay, continuing with this letter here, Acela and how it could suck less.
We could basically have our own USA version of Shinkansen in the Northeast Corridor.
If we just had the tracks.
Am I right that the trains are just inhibited by the tracks?
And, yes, you are right, listener.
Absolutely.
If the tracks were in better shape and more acceptable to high-speed rail carriages at high-speed rail speeds,
yeah, we would have much better service.
Absolutely.
Acela takes something like ten minutes less time at best than the Northeast Regional to go from New York City from Baltimore.
Yeah, it should be half the time.
I know.
But, you know, we're lucky we have that.
Acela, believe it or not, is the fastest train in the Western Hemisphere.
Think about that.
I know it's kind of depressing, but it's true.
It doesn't even qualify for high speed in the global definition.
It's higher speed, but it's not really high speed.
Hopefully the next version of Acela due to come in the next year or so will beat that.
We'll see.
All right.
Also, I love that a show with a name, at least partially inspired by a 2600 hertz plastic whistle, talks about trains so much.
Yeah, why is that?
I don't know.
We just do.
That's something that a lot of hackers are into.
Continuing here, I spend a lot of time in Asia teaching young musicians during the summer.
Since the pandemic, I haven't been able to go there and have done it elsewhere in the last couple of years.
For the first time since 2019, which weirdly feels like last year.
I hear that.
I will be going to mainland China this summer, going back to mainland China.
I've enjoyed hearing some of your advice about traveling with technology.
Would enjoy hearing more detail as it relates to this.
I, in this instance anyway, can't just not bring my phone.
I guess I could put my SIM in a burner phone for the time I'm there.
I wonder what your suggestions are as to what I should do.
At the moment, I'm thinking that I will bring my phone stripped of most personal data.
Ideas about how exactly to accomplish this would be welcome.
Use only a burner phone while there.
I particularly appreciated Gila's advice to disable fingerprint authentication in one of your shows this year.
Yeah, you know, the advice that we would give is don't carry your whole life on your phone.
And that's advice that you can use everywhere because there are always people out,
always entities out to steal your data or look at your data, you know, abuse your privacy.
And that's something that we're very keen on preventing.
So, yeah, I wouldn't go nuts over it.
I wouldn't say that you have to, you know, have this completely stripped down phone
or maybe get a completely different phone and keep yours, leave your other phone at home.
Just be aware of the potential threats.
And sometimes, sometimes those threats can be educational.
If you have data, for instance, that, you know, isn't super private or crucial
and you see that that data has somehow gotten out.
Well, now you can kind of figure out how.
Where were the weak points?
Maybe it's something that nobody else has caught.
So there's all kinds of possibilities when you have a hacker mindset.
Anyway, the letter concludes, keep up the good work.
I really appreciate all the time and effort you spend making this show for us.
You're the good kind of radio.
Thank you, David, for that amazing letter.
And it's a letter I really needed today.
And it's good to know our listeners are out there and that they support us.
They support WBAI.
It's good to know WBAI is out there.
WBAI supports us as we support them.
So that is something.
You know, we got one more letter.
I'm almost out of time.
But I just wanted to glance at this for a second.
It comes from Indiana Toll Road, which I thought was a weird handle.
But Indiana Toll Road goes on to write,
ITRCC ensures customer data protection amid easy pass toll phishing slash schmissing scams.
I'm not sure what schmissing is.
In light of recent phishing scams targeting customers of various toll road agencies,
the ITRCC wishes to remind its customers that it does not send text messages requesting sensitive information,
such as passwords, payment information, or account numbers.
And right about now is when I'm realizing that this actually is coming from an Indiana Toll Road.
Why are we getting mail from a road?
Look at this.
It's indianatollroad.org.
They have a website.
And they're sending us mail.
They're sending off-the-hook mail.
An Indiana Toll Road.
I mean, do the non-toll roads have an email address as well?
Or is it just the toll roads that are spamming us here?
Wow.
Why Indiana?
And, yeah, indianatollroad.org goes to a website that's all about their roads.
Okay, that is something.
That is incredible.
Bet you didn't see that coming.
If you're not a highway and you want to write to us, othat2600.com is our email address.
Alex, you're driving right now.
Whatever road you're on, please leave instructions not to email us with whatever it is they have to say.
Humans only.
Yeah, I will try to mention that to Interstate 80 when I have a chance to talk with it.
Well, pay attention to your roadways.
Yeah, you should.
Any other housekeeping we have to share with the folks?
Because we haven't been on for a couple of weeks.
We're kind of getting our bearings.
We should be back to normal next week.
Please continue to support the radio station.
It might seem like we're always in crisis, and perhaps we always are.
But you know what?
It's a kind of crisis that pays off in the end because you get to hear thoughts, ideas,
and participate in ways that you wouldn't be able to ordinarily.
And only by supporting the radio station is any of that possible.
By keeping radio shows like Off the Hook on the air, do we get to talk about this?
Do you get to hear about this?
Remember, Thank You Gift for $150 Pledge is a collection of every single show from 1988 to 2023 through 2023.
And you saw how easily we were able to manipulate to a show of our choice from any of that time period.
You can do the same thing and learn all sorts of things.
You know, there are people who write to us who are arguing with points we made 16 years ago.
I'm not kidding.
They say, I just listened to this show, and you're wrong about this.
First of all, okay, yeah, sometimes we've already been proven wrong, so we don't need someone to tell us that.
But other times, we continue the conversation, and that's the magic of it.
All the time.
All the time, people are going through at different rates in their lives.
It's fascinating to hear the reaction to something that was said so deep in the past and maybe how it's relevant.
If you've been moaning the loss of radio and how things just aren't the same,
well, here's a chance to get 1,500 hours plus of radio that aired in the past.
How long in the past?
That's up to you, I guess.
212-209-2950.
Give to WBAI.org.
Thanks, everybody, for showing their support with these challenges that we've been facing personally at the radio show.
Again, you know, it's an annoyance.
There are people out there that will always try and destroy what we build.
It just means we got to build it better.
Oh, I don't want to sound like one of the Trumps.
No, we'll build it much better than that.
OTH at 2600.com is our email address.
Hey, let's go out with some music from a Palestinian.
Yeah, imagine that.
Nasser Khalil.
See you next week.