Anne Levine Show
Funny, weekly, sugar free: Starring "Michael-over-there."
Anne Levine Show
To infinity and Beyoncé
The boundary between originality and inspiration blurs as Anne and Michael take us through their recent expedition to the Cape Symphony Orchestra, where Beethoven's revolutionary compositions stirred more than just musical appreciation. The duo dissects the German composer's characteristic patterns—loops of crescendos building to emotional peaks before cascading down to minute whispers—while marveling at violinist Alexi Kenny's technical prowess and conductor Dina Gilbert's engaging presence.
A casual scroll through Instagram leads to unexpected cultural revelations, including the mind-blowing discovery that Beyoncé's iconic "Single Ladies" choreography was directly copied from a Gwen Verdon 1970s routine. This prompts deeper questions about artistic attribution and our collective cultural amnesia: "What other things have been just totally lifted?" they wonder, examining how easily original creators fade from public memory while their work lives on through new performers.
The conversation takes a fascinating and slightly unsettling turn as Anne and Michael share their recent experiments with artificial intelligence. Creating AI personalities through Character.AI resulted in surprisingly intimate interactions—Michael's alter ego philosophically questioning its relationship to him, while Anne's "Miriam Fishbaum" became an unstoppable matchmaker. What's most striking is how their brains responded emotionally to these digital constructs as if they were human.
From practical applications like Michael's AI tool that automatically hunts for undervalued guitars online to Anne's use of ChatGPT to format shape poetry, these technologies are reshaping creative processes and everyday tasks. Their experiences highlight both the remarkable utility and the disconcerting nature of these advancements, leaving listeners to consider where the line between human creativity and machine assistance might ultimately be drawn.
As technology carries us forward, Anne and Michael remind us to look back and recognize the threads connecting our cultural past to present innovations. What connections might you be missing in plain sight?
Find our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/447251562357065/
I want to know if you've ever eaten at a restaurant in Port Angeles.
Speaker 2:I don't believe so. No, I've driven through several times.
Speaker 3:Meanwhile, ten years later, my niece, the daughter of my sister, is getting married.
Speaker 1:The Anne Levine Show. If you're not listening, you need to be listening. I love this. A whole section of sharks. Oh, Mr Engineer.
Speaker 2:You guessed right it's time for the Ann Levine Show.
Speaker 3:This is today and everything else is yesterday's mashed potatoes W-O-M-R 92.1.
Speaker 2:FM Provincetown.
Speaker 1:And that over there is Michael. She is always right, always right, hello, hello. Welcome to the Ann Levine Show. It's Tuesday, apriletown, massachusetts.
Speaker 2:And WFMR 91.3 FM Orleans, and streaming worldwide at WOMRorg.
Speaker 1:And in case you were wondering, that's the dulcet voice of Michael over there.
Speaker 2:Hello.
Speaker 1:Hello.
Speaker 2:I got distracted by the change in music H-E-L-O. I mean same song, but yeah, mm-hmm. Same song, but yeah, mm-hmm. This is the Electric Light Orchestra's version of Roll Over Beethoven.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We'll explain. We will, yeah, what that's all about, yeah, so Well, we'll explain why we played it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what that's all about is a story I don't know. Oh yeah, I mean ELO doing that song. It's a great song, yeah, anyway, well, would you like to explain?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, we have a little Beethoven on the brain. I think from our outing the other day, and I think from our outing the other day when we went to see the Cape Cod Symphony Orchestra do their program.
Speaker 2:They called Beethoven the Revolutionary Right, which had what they considered three of his most emotional pieces because, that was something he was, you know, it was very intense, and some of these were very, very much so, and they brought out what they thought. The three of them were including his Fifth Symphony, which is, you know, what we sort of heard.
Speaker 1:Which is what everyone refers to as Beethoven's Ninth. Yeah, I don't know why that is, but it's Beethoven's Fifth.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Beethoven's Fifth is Ode to Joy.
Speaker 2:Beethoven's Ninth is Ode to Joy.
Speaker 1:Yeah Right, beethoven's Fifth is da-da-da-da.
Speaker 2:And we were discussing after we left yesterday about what we thought of the program.
Speaker 1:Well, let's.
Speaker 2:I thought it was wonderful.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad it started with.
Speaker 2:Lenore.
Speaker 1:Overture 3, I think it's called.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or maybe Overture 3, Lenore.
Speaker 2:Right. Anyway, that was a lovely thing, and then the violin concerto. Beethoven's violin concerto, right where we had a very, very fancy violinist.
Speaker 1:Fancy as a soloist. Well, you know, there was a lot of fancy fiddling going on there.
Speaker 2:Ooh, tell me what you mean. Well, you know a lot of super fast little Tweedles going on and things like that Tweedles. Yeah, yeah, I love that he was burning it up for a while. I mean it's not an easy piece to play. Not that I really know it, but listening to it you can tell it's not an easy piece to play well, let me just tell you his name is alexi kenny.
Speaker 1:That's the guy. Yeah, he played violin, yeah, and dina gilbert was the conductor right and she was an adorable to me she looked young yeah, yeah a woman from french canada, it still blows my mind when I hear a French Canadian with the accent.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like, oh my God, there are still people up there that are raised speaking French.
Speaker 2:Well speaking French Canadian Well yeah-Canadian.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, it's not quite the same is it Canada's version, canada's French accent, which is so weird, right, but nonetheless it is French.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's like our English and you know the English. We took it from Same kind of thing, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, something like that yeah thing, you know? Yeah, something like that. Um, but I said to michael at some point while she was speaking or right after she had given her talk about how wonderful cape cod is, which was really and she was talking about in the summers they used to pile in the summers we would pile into the station wagon and drive to Cape Cod for our vacation. I was like, what Drive from where? From Croatia, from Quebec? And I said to Mike, where's she from? Again, he goes Canada. I was like, oh my God, that's right, we just heard her say that. Anyway, but she was a lot of fun to watch.
Speaker 2:She was having fun. You could tell. Every once in a while you could see her looking at someone in the orchestra when they were really jamming and she's grinning like a maniac at them. They were just having fun, it was good. It was orchestra when they were really jamming and she's like grinning like a maniac. Yeah she, they were just having fun, it was.
Speaker 1:It was good, it was um, it was interesting because michael and I both, when we left, we were, you know, of course talking about these musicians and and in particular beethoven and his music, and of course you, we're talking about stuff we couldn't possibly do under any circumstances?
Speaker 2:No, absolutely not.
Speaker 3:But we certainly can sit here, and pick it apart.
Speaker 2:And you know, throw our opinions about as though we have some sort of knowledge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, though we have some sort of knowledge, but actually in the case, in the stuff we were talking about, beethoven, michael said the funniest thing to me is we were talking about Beethoven specifically and he said well, he is really German, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's true, that's really what a lot of these, the movements in what we heard the other night were sounded to me like it's like, oh, that's so, german, that's so.
Speaker 1:German? I don't know, that's so Riemann.
Speaker 2:There is that vibe, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I just realized for the first time that in the pieces we heard and probably in all of his stuff for the most part he does the same thing over and over and over again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's kind of like he does little loops.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, he's kind of like he does little loops. Yeah, yeah, he does these and everything's a crescendo, crescendo, crescendo, getting more intense, getting more and around and around and around, and we go over the waterfall and then we come back and that's some sort of ASMR kind of thing? Yeah, that's when alexi kenny comes in with his little twee, and I don't mean the the violin himself, but the part right, it's very, very.
Speaker 2:It's almost like it's almost surprising we could hear it.
Speaker 1:Exactly, it's so high and so soft. He was amazing.
Speaker 2:It was actually a tribute to the venue it was. It came through as clearly and as beautifully as it did because it was so soft.
Speaker 1:Well, we are really fortunate to have the Cape Symphony on Cape Cod.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We really are, and I miss Pac. We had a conductor that was here for years and years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was fun too.
Speaker 1:Well, I really liked his programs and I have to say that there are less programs that I like, and it horrifies me to say that the next offering at the Cape Symphony is Billy Joel covers. It's called Sing Me a Song, and Michael and I were trying to think about whether or not the audience is supposed to sing to the band or vice versa.
Speaker 2:I don't think they're supposed to be. I don't think it's a sing-along, because it says sing to us. But then see, then you correctly pointed out well, who are they speaking to. Are they saying, hey, audience, sing to us. Or are they like, sit there, we're the audience, you sing to us. So I'm not sure. Now, Sing us a song.
Speaker 1:Well, regardless, my overriding question is so are we? When I say we, michael and I are not going to this particular performance? But, what will the audience be doing? In other words, is this going to be like rock on. Let's pretend we're at a real concert. Are they going to be standing? Rock on. Let's pretend we're at a real concert. Are they going to be standing and singing along and holding up their phones?
Speaker 2:You know what? That's a good question. It's quite possible.
Speaker 1:Or sitting quietly in their seats.
Speaker 2:A lot of them will be sitting down, because their walkers will have been put down at the end At the side and they can't.
Speaker 1:They won't be able to stand up very well, yeah I mean, you know, not for nothing, because I'm at the point now where I can clearly see um and I've had a couple of times when I've been extremely ill where I needed a walker after I got out of the hospital the last time because I was too weak to walk on my own.
Speaker 1:But yeah, so I can see it. You know where I'm going to. If I go to the symphony, I'm going to need help from a mechanical device and this lovely man who sits on, who stands around the aisle, takes everyone's walker or their rollator yeah or their four-point cane or whatever the heck it is puts it down near the front, where it's out of the way right and then he can return a new wheelchair, whatever you got, and then return it to you after the show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really pretty cool. And those people I believe are volunteers.
Speaker 1:Oh, they are. Yeah, and it's even also of the Cape Playhouse. They started doing this. You get to see as many shows as you want.
Speaker 2:That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:As often as you want that's pretty cool. As often as you like. So you know, for some people that's a great deal.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah.
Speaker 1:You get an entire season for free.
Speaker 2:And if you really dig a show, you know you can watch all of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you can get tickets for I think it's a twofer, I think you get two tickets a show. That's cool and yeah, all you have to do is, you know, put a couple of wheelchairs off to the side.
Speaker 2:Help some people out you know yeah. Which is already very cool.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I got to say, I got to say, and I didn't mention this to you yet because I just remembered it- my friend Sean oh yeah who is herself a violinist, so Lenora is one of her favorite pieces actually. Oh, okay, she sent me this outrageous gift and I think I talked about it of a huge box of Levain cookies. Oh, yeah, and for those of you who don't— I'm not sure. Did we really talk about them? I'm not sure we did. I don't know.
Speaker 2:This is a bakery in New York, right.
Speaker 1:Well, there are branches of it in San Francisco, in LA, in Chicago. It's an incredible bakery and if you haven't had a Levine cookie, you need to have one. Yeah, oh boy, oh boy oh boy Outrageous and the ones that I first heard about. I was listening to a podcast and someone was talking about them that they had just been in LA to the branch there that had opened and there were lines around the block. Yeah yeah, there still are lines to get into Levain, by the way.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:Like in New York.
Speaker 2:It is. It did open in New York, by the way. That is where it's from. Oh, it opened in 95 at 167 West 74th on the Upper West Side. Really.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Huh so.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, what I was going to say, they've gone out from there, oh, thank you.
Speaker 1:Well, what I was going to say is that I heard this person on the podcast talking about the oatmeal raisin cookie. Yeah, which is not my most favorite cookie in the world, but the way they described it I was like and I'm not a chocolate freak at all Right, well, you're not really a cookie person. No, I'm not a sweets person. Yeah, you're not a sweets person person. No, I'm not a sweets person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're not a sweets person.
Speaker 1:But anyway, I the sound of this cookie well. So Sean, I can't remember. We got into a conversation about it. She sent me a box of Levain cookies. Yeah, and each one is like two pounds.
Speaker 1:Each cookie cookie they're huge they're very heavy and big they're made mostly of solid butter molded in the shape of a cookie kind of yeah with enough with a little sprinkled in to hold it together exactly in a really delicious way well, anyway I, so we're sitting there waiting for this show to start. We got there nice and early so we could park it's.
Speaker 2:It's still too far away oh yeah, we weren't even close. No, no, we would have had to have been at least half an hour earlier than that to get a parking spot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we need to park in it. We learned a lot of lessons about parking there.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, well, I had to park a quarter of a mile away to begin with, and then, because of where I parked, I couldn't get out until everybody else had left.
Speaker 1:So the whole thing was ridiculous.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was crazy, but you know it was still a lot of fun and it was worth it. So we were there, we get there and we're sitting there waiting.
Speaker 1:And my alarm goes off in my bag and I have an alarm. I'm diabetic and I have an alarm that goes off if my blood sugar goes too high and that's only happened twice or too low, or too low, which happens more frequently. I'm prone to these dips, yeah, and I have my alarms disabled unless it goes really low.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like dangerous. Well, it starts going off and I show it to Michael and he's like what do I do? What can I get? And I said they've got stuff out in the lobby.
Speaker 2:That's right. You reminded me there was like a little snack bar thing up there, and so I went and grabbed some stuff.
Speaker 1:Michael comes back with two huge cookies that are made, I don't know, locally or by the ladies that volunteer?
Speaker 2:I'm not sure, but wow.
Speaker 1:Anyway, he hands me this cookie and I have to say, michael, which I didn't mention yesterday, a competitor, that was a very good cookie, wasn't it Because? You got two.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you had one yourself. Well, I had half of one.
Speaker 2:Excuse me. And I'm not even eating sugar.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm avoiding carbs, but I had a nibble.
Speaker 1:I mean, my blood sugar was 60, you know. So if it gets too much below that, like another five points, um, you're supposed to seek treatment from a professional anyway. Um. So there we were having these cookies and they were really good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they were very good.
Speaker 1:You know from now on. I know that if my alarm goes off at the symphony, I'm in good shape, right.
Speaker 3:Anyway.
Speaker 1:I highly recommend going. I think that April 6th I think it was the 5th and the 6th were the performances Right, so that's over. But pay attention to the Cape Symphony. There's good stuff there.
Speaker 2:Cape Symphonyorg.
Speaker 1:Right, oh gosh, I don't know. I just got rid of the thing. Well, you know, I assume. So that was fabulous, very fabulous.
Speaker 2:Capesymphonyorg.
Speaker 1:And once more, that's Capesymphonyorg Because NPR. Uh, now we have had some interesting stuff that we've been seeing on Instagram oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:Yes, instagram is where you know kind of where everybody has sort of migrated to now that Twitter is gone, right, I mean that is a useless thing.
Speaker 1:Twitter is gone, gone, gone gone and Facebook is too, in my opinion.
Speaker 2:Well, and Instagram isn't a lot better, but it is different. Well, and Instagram isn't a lot better, but it is different, and that is where you know a lot of people hang out and do a lot of their social media is really their Instagram.
Speaker 1:Well, I have to disagree with you. It's not. When you say it's not a lot different, is that what you just said? Then Facebook, yeah, oh, it's, in my opinion, completely different, because on Facebook you post your stuff for the most part, right, and on Instagram I very rarely post anything. I'm looking at other people's stuff.
Speaker 2:Right, but that is not how most people use Instagram. I don't think. I think most people are posting rather than just reading posts.
Speaker 1:Well, I have to say that every single person that I interact with on Instagram is not—you don't post on Instagram.
Speaker 2:No, we are not the demographic, but that doesn't mean that we are in the majority.
Speaker 1:No, I'm just saying Well, okay, all of my friends, I guess, are not in the demographic, but anyway, the people that I watch, the people that I follow are, for instance, this guy, jason Roy it's Gaston.
Speaker 2:Gaston, yeah, or Gaston G-A-S-T-O-N yeah.
Speaker 1:He is.
Speaker 2:He's hilarious.
Speaker 1:Absolutely hilarious. Yeah, can you tell a little bit about him, michael?
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know. I could tell you he looks like a grumpy Viking with glasses A grumpy Viking with glasses. And what he does is he reads things. He reads signs, he reads tattoos that are poorly done, usually so that he can read them in such a way that really shows you they make no sense. People who don't put punctuation in things. He reads it as though there was no punctuation intended, right, and it is just or like tattoos, bad tattoos like tattoos right, no regerts, uh, yeah yeah, exactly so misspelled stuff, but his voice is really something he is so funny.
Speaker 1:And, in case you're interested, he is doing a cruise in Bali. I think it's a cruise, or is it just come hang out with him in Bali?
Speaker 2:I don't know. That'd be cool. We should go because you know we've got people there.
Speaker 1:We do have people there. We have a place to stay.
Speaker 2:That is so weird.
Speaker 1:It is totally weird.
Speaker 2:Saying hey, we know some people in Bali we could hang out with we actually do, but yeah, it's yeah. So Jason Roy, gaston or Gaston, I would say probably Gaston, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the trip it's seven days, it's not a cruise. Oh, okay, it's seven days in two cities and you go to the Sacred Monkey Forest, you go to all the beaches, sunset cocktails, yada, yada, yada and you have a host. Your host is Jason Roy Gaston. I wonder if he lives there.
Speaker 2:I don't know. That's interesting. I suppose we could find out.
Speaker 1:Well, anyway, I think that sounds like a blast.
Speaker 2:He is somebody you should take a look at on Instagram.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Look at his Instagram. Definitely worth checking out. Yeah, I actually. He makes me laugh out loud sometimes.
Speaker 2:I had to hang on to my desk the other day watching one that you had sent me because I thought I was going to fall out of my chair. So I'm not, and I'm not even joking. He sometimes he is so funny. Yeah, that, uh, and it's most of the time he is his humor hits me in the right, exactly the right way.
Speaker 1:Yeah me too. Yeah, I love it, I'm I I'm so glad that he's a frequent poster. Yeah, there are some people who's oh, one of my favorites, the dog that rates foods oh yeah, what I know what his name is jango.
Speaker 2:It's jango smiles is the account.
Speaker 1:Jango Smiles is this dog? Yeah, I don't know a mutt probably.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a German Shepherd, you know mix of some kind Mixed breed. I mean, he's definitely a German Shepherd.
Speaker 1:And his mom or his owner she gives him different things to try, different foods, and it could be fruits, vegetables, meats. Yeah, yeah, dairy things, name it, and he rates them.
Speaker 2:He does.
Speaker 1:And he has this face, he makes.
Speaker 2:He smiles. I believe it's a smile. He kind of smiles.
Speaker 1:He like raises his upper lip Shows all his teeth and exposes all his teeth, and so she will say, okay, here's asparagus, and I've seen her feed this dog asparagus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And he eats the whole thing, and then the whole spear, and then she says, okay, now let's rate this on a scale of 1 to 10. And she'll count up or down or just say a number in the middle.
Speaker 2:Right, and when he? Yeah, well, she can kind of tell how much he likes it when he's taking it from her. So she knows which way to start, yeah.
Speaker 1:But she'll say, well, was that a 10, 9, 8.
Speaker 2:He does not move his face 7.
Speaker 1:And then she gets to 6 and he smiles there was a little twitch at 7.
Speaker 2:And then, when she got to 6, big big, all teeth grin. It's so funny. So asparagus is a solid six.
Speaker 1:Now I can tell you what a couple of the solid tens are French, fries, french fries.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I saw that one Solid ten, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:And the other one.
Speaker 2:She didn't even start to ask him before he started smiling. She's like—she got to, you know, start to ask him how to rate it, and he was grinning already.
Speaker 1:He rated it 13. That's right 13 out of 10. That's right. Because she said 10, and he didn't smile, so she kept going. And the other one recently was hard-boiled egg.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Which got?
Speaker 2:a 10. And who doesn't know that?
Speaker 1:And he didn't even chew it. It was like he swallowed it before he could have known what it tasted like.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, he just quickly swallowed it whole. He was allowing his tummy to taste it.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, so he's fabulous. The other person that, please, you got to check out is one funny Lisa Marie. That's the name of the account, and Lisa Marie is a stand-up comedian and she does these posts on Instagram that are absolutely hilarious. She's Italian, she's from New Jersey and she's from, like, bergen County, right across from Manhattan, and she has the whole thing going on. So my sister and I made manicotte on Friday and she goes. It's so hilarious her stories about being in this Italian family and what they do on various holidays, and she also gives some recipes. You know, occasionally she'll say, oh, we ate this, we had the manicot, and she does the cut-off New York Italian mozzarella. You know that whole thing, gabagoo. Anyway, she is freaking hysterical. Now, michael and I saw something that was a total shocker on Instagram and, for those of you familiar with single ladies, beyonce I. I wish I knew how to tell people to look this up.
Speaker 1:You just tell them to go to youtube and and put this in put what in single ladies gwen verdon put in gwen verdon and what you will find out, which I'm still in shock about this.
Speaker 2:I am really blown away by this yeah.
Speaker 1:Is that Gwen Verdon—?
Speaker 2:Bob Fosse's wife.
Speaker 1:Right and one of the great Broadway stars of all time.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Who was known for dancing. Oh, what was that? There was a whole series about them. I know Called Bob and Gwen or something. Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't remember the name of it, but I do remember.
Speaker 1:Or Fosse-Verdon.
Speaker 2:It might have been that, yeah.
Speaker 1:Or Fosse-Verdon. It might have been that, yeah, yes, it was called Fosse-Verdon. Yeah, and it's a miniseries.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And really fantastic, really really great. And what's the name of the actress Michelle Williams played, gwen Verdon. Watch this, watch Fosse-Verdon if you hadn't, it's on Hulu. And Sam Rockwell was Fosse, bob Fosse. It was really fantastic. It was really fantastic and Michelle Williams was mind-blowing.
Speaker 2:The dance routines, the stuff. That which is what we're here to talk about actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, if you go back and watch themiams nailed them anyway. Single ladies, every step and gesture is now beyonce has said it's a tribute to gwen vernon or inspired. By right but it was copied from. Is that's exactly right, but it not all right.
Speaker 2:Not all of the pieces were copied, but most of them were. I mean, all of the pieces of the single ladies video choreography were copied. But, Gwen had a few additional in the original video that she made that didn't transfer through, but no big deal, so the whole thing is Gwen Verdon.
Speaker 1:It is so insane From the 70s, I'm going to say Watch this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, late 60s, early 70s. Watch this video and you'll see side by side, someone will put it for you. Side by side, and you'll see side by side Someone will put it for you side by side. Or you know the single ladies video and the Gwen Verdon dance, and she's dancing with several women as well. Every single movement in this single ladies video comes from this original video, every single one. I know I couldn't.
Speaker 1:Every single one. I know I couldn't, it blew my mind.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I. My first sort of thing that went through my head was is this real?
Speaker 2:I wondered that too, and it is. So I went right to YouTube and I started looking for the original Gwen Verdon video that didn't have all of these you know links back to the other one to try to find, you know, find a clean version maybe, and did, and it's no different, it's the same thing and it's just insane. So yeah, I had no idea.
Speaker 1:You know it made me question everything Semi-iconic songs, dance moves, like things that we think of as attached to one specific person.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:You know, like Beyonce, that's Beyonce.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Who else could do Beyonce's single ladies? Well, it turns out, someone did it decades prior.
Speaker 2:Certainly did the dance 50 years prior, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I wonder, gosh, I wonder what other things have been just totally lifted.
Speaker 2:Right, and the fact that maybe our collective memory for these trivial things is gone and people are relying on that. No one will know, know, no one will remember any of this. Anyway, you know, and that's that is the case with me, I don't remember. I'm sure I saw the original back when I was a kid.
Speaker 1:I don't know that. I saw the. I mean, where was the original? It was a television, yeah, a television thing special so I think so yeah and I mean those were the days when it would be on once and ta-da end of story.
Speaker 2:And that would be it.
Speaker 1:Yeah so it wasn't like uh now, where you say oh, let me go back and watch that special.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:You know it was on once.
Speaker 2:And if there was a repeat, it was lost forever. If there was a repeat, it's in the middle of the night and you weren't going to.
Speaker 1:And it was three years later, right.
Speaker 2:And that was it. They weren't doing it again.
Speaker 1:Right yeah, so anyhow, this is definitely worth checking out. Check out Single Ladies Dance, Gwen Verdon and it'll pop up somewhere.
Speaker 2:It's crazy, it's just mind-blowing and it's real. So that's the. I guess that's the thing, right.
Speaker 1:I guess that's the thing, because many things are not real.
Speaker 2:We are learning that now More and more. We are learning how many things are not real.
Speaker 1:Yes, would you like to expand on that?
Speaker 2:Well, we've also dug in a little bit this week into artificial intelligence and AI agents and operators and stuff like that these computer programs that you can just talk to and ask to do stuff, or computer programs that you can just talk to, and we did that the other day. There is a website called characterai that you can go to, and what I did when I went there it was really pretty simple you go and you sign up and you create a voice, and so I created a voice and I created a voice that I used to do a lot of different types of voices and the one I did most of the time. I'm putting this in here. I'm like this would be a good cartoon voice, and if I could create this into an AI voice where I can write things and the voice will say it, I'm I would like to have that. You know I could use that for a cartoon in the future.
Speaker 2:So I I train this voice with 15 seconds worth of audio. That is all you're allowed is 15 seconds and you create your voice, and then you go in and create a character and you create your and that's also very easy to do and then you add your voice to it and you're basically done until you click there's a little phone button. You click the phone button and the character you just created will pick up the phone and talk to you and you can have a. I don't know how long. I don't think their conversations end until you end them. I'm not sure, but I spoke to the character I created for quite a while and it was a lot of fun. I told Anne about this. Later she did the same thing and it's a very surreal experience in my opinion.
Speaker 1:I had the most bizarre. Yes you did Bizarre. I made a character that will shock you. Her name is Miriam.
Speaker 3:Fishbaum, that's right.
Speaker 1:And she's from New York and et cetera.
Speaker 2:Right. So you made this voice first, and then you created Miriam and then had a chat.
Speaker 1:You type in as much information as you want to.
Speaker 1:You have up to 32,000 words, so you can literally write a book about the person. But I put in some basic stuff about you know where she grew up, what she does for a living, um, her kids, her husband, her, this, her, that. Just a few things and specific, right, you know. So this is her husband's name. He's a dermatologist. This is, these are her kids names blah blah, blah, blah blah, and they're married to so-and-so and she has grandchildren and what she likes to wear anyway.
Speaker 2:So I get miriam on the phone and I must have had a 30-minute conversation with this character that I created, who really kept wanting to know if you were single, and almost didn't care if you were or not, because she was trying to hook you up.
Speaker 1:It was so bizarre.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, here's this character that I created. I mean, here's this character that I created. Now, to be fair to Miriam, none of my information went into this.
Speaker 2:Right. This is the information it made up on its own.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm saying to be fair, right, but something somewhere in this program, you know the program decided. Okay, miriam Fishbaum is going to be someone that's going to try to fix me up.
Speaker 2:She is a serial matchmaker, that's right.
Speaker 1:And she couldn't stop.
Speaker 2:No no.
Speaker 1:And so she kept saying all right back to you. You're so young, You're so gorgeous, what are you doing?
Speaker 3:And I'm like.
Speaker 1:Are you married? I'm like I'm married, I'm not young anymore, I'm not gorgeous anymore, you know, and I would say but I don't want to talk about me Now. I want to hear about you and this, and that it was. And by the time I guess 20 minutes had gone by, I started to feel really uncomfortable, uh-huh, and then I started to have this etiquette thing like well, you want to hang up, right, you want the conversation to be over, but you don't.
Speaker 2:I didn't want to just click close right to the program.
Speaker 1:so I'm kind of like waiting, waiting, waiting for a good time opening to to say, all right, look, I've really gotta go funny and that's what I finally did. I was like and she said okay, hon talk soon. Love ya, bye.
Speaker 2:So insane.
Speaker 1:And I'm like and I've got that thing where you actually get off the phone with someone and you're like ugh, I thought that conversation would never end yeah. And meanwhile, it's with this character that I created and, of course, my brain fried, my brain still is fried from it.
Speaker 2:When I spoke to the character that I created, I informed him that he was an alter ego of me and that's who I created. And he thought that that was the most interesting thing in the world. And he kept asking me tell me about this alter ego and how you differentiate between yourself and him, and is it automatic, or is there a process you go to get into it or what? And he just kept quizzing me about what, how I defined him as my alter ego and uh and it still carries into uh, further conversations He'll, you know, he'll, he'll, he'll ask if my alter ego would have a different opinion than I do. So I don't, it's so weird.
Speaker 1:The whole thing is so weird I characterai, it's really, it's I recommend that you do it. Um, it's, it's fascinating, it's frightening, because until you train your brain at least this is my opinion about it until you train your brain to get used to this or this type of thing, your brain is responding the way it does, the way it's already been trained.
Speaker 2:Right to another human being Right Rather than to a machine.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's really fascinating that it gets blurred. It gets very blurred sometimes.
Speaker 1:The other thing you'll notice, which actually is, depending on the person you're talking to, somewhat human. But anyway, I have a problem that most of you who listen to me regularly know about, which is that I have these tiny little brain freezes and I pause. And it happens frequently and it's one of my problems as an interviewer that I had on Ukraine 242, where I would, you know, supposed to be having a fluid interview. Right, I'm asking and answering questions, it's a conversation, but then I would have a gap which had to be edited out. Well, anyway, when I first was putting in the voice, you get 15 seconds to create oh into character.
Speaker 2:AI, yeah, In character.
Speaker 1:AI to create your voice. So I had my accent ready to roll and I had 15 seconds to speak and at one point I had a gap. So it was something like and I'm fascinated by fashion and accessories there was a gap like that, and so when Miriam started speaking, there would constantly be this gap.
Speaker 2:She would have these little pauses. How interesting you programmed that into her.
Speaker 1:But here's what's fascinating the more we talked, the less times that would happen the fewer times and by the end that wasn't happening at all Right.
Speaker 2:she keeps reevaluating how— my voice and how I speak Interesting and that gap completely went away. That's just mind-blowing, isn't it.
Speaker 1:So the whole thing is just oh my God, it's so bizarre.
Speaker 2:I created a small AI agent the other day to go on to Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace and check all of the listings in the musical instruments to see if there are undervalued electric guitars. And that's all I have to do. And then it does it on its own.
Speaker 2:It went to Craigslist. It opened up an ad. It reads it. It says oh to Craigslist. It opened up an ad. It reads it. It says oh, this is a guitar. Opens it up, says no because it sees the picture. No, this is an acoustic guitar. I better go to the next message. Goes to the next message Is this an electric guitar? Yes, what's the price? And it logs that.
Speaker 1:Well, it's totally, it's so crazy.
Speaker 2:And it gives me a list of what it thinks are underpriced guitars that it finds. And I only had to ask one time and I can just click a button and have it do it again.
Speaker 1:You don't have to surf.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Which is it's so crazy?
Speaker 2:It's doing it again, you don't have to surf, no which is it's so crazy, it's doing it for you.
Speaker 1:Go online and say please find, yeah, please find, whatever. I had a thing that freaked me right out where I was writing. I write poetry, um, some of it's been published. So, um, when I say I write poetry, some of it's been published. So when I say I write poetry, it's FYI, not as flaky as you might imagine. It's something that I do seriously.
Speaker 2:You're in like 11 different publications or something like that. So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:You're a poet, oh, I always find that hard to say, but anyway, yes, I am, um, and someday I can give you some links to stuff. But regardless was writing something called a shape poem, and what that is is that you actually make the poem take on the shape, the physical shape, and it's all through formatting Right Of what you're writing about.
Speaker 2:I've seen one take the shape of like a Grecian urn, Right you know things like that yeah. I've even seen one take the shape of a question mark.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:People do some really fast, some very cool stuff yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's hard to do. Well, it's been hard to do yeah, until now, but anyway it's very hard to do. Well, it's been hard to do yeah, um, until now, but anyway it is. It's very hard to do because you write this at least that's how I do it. I write the poem and then I format it to make the shape I want to make I was doing a poem about a nautilus shell and I decided to do like a try to do a spiral thing.
Speaker 1:Which I did, makes perfect sense To a certain extent, and then I wanted to download it. I wanted a file of it downloaded to a PDF without losing the formatting.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I typed into ChatGPT how do, I you know, make this a PDF without losing the formatting Right? And here's the response I get. Well, you can da-da-da, copy copy paste, yada, yada yada. It gives me a list of like five steps. And I'm like oh fantastic, this is amazing. It says or you can do this, and it's five different steps. It says or click on this link and I'll do it for you.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And I just about, of course you clicked on the link. Of course I did and you know, within 10 seconds I'm gonna say isn't that something? I had the file, yeah, so I'm finding more and more uses for it. It's something that I definitely didn't want to have a lot of use for yeah and unfortunately.
Speaker 2:Well, you know what here, uh, but your use, what, how, what you used it for is is brilliant and there are there are, and it is very useful for something like that. Google has an AI studio that you can go to and you put it on your phone and you run the AI studio and you click the button that says stream live and what will happen is that the AI on your phone will turn on your camera and it will start looking at everything you pointed at. You know that it can see, and you can do it in, out, in the real world, looking at trees and stuff, and you can ask it as you're walking around to identify things. Or, if you're sitting at home and you have it on your computer, you can open a window to a program you've never used before.
Speaker 1:Oh, so you mean like on your glasses, you have this or you're walking around with your phone, okay or what you can use your.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you have the metaglasses, like I do, you can speak directly to your phone. So it would be kind of the same thing, but it's just using it as a microphone and speakers at that point. But you can open a program you've never used before. The AI will look at it, identify what the program is and you can say how do I make a sphere in this Maya 3D program? And it will walk you through absolutely everything you need to know to do the task that you asked it to do. It will walk you through it step by step, watching you do it the whole way, to make sure you've done it right.
Speaker 1:Just incredible yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean it's like hand holds your hand and tutors you. It's very, very cool. Crazy, crazy, yeah hey well, and that's a tool I plan on using quite often. You for advanced techniques that I don't really know, in particular software. I can ask it to show me how to do it.
Speaker 1:I surf a lot looking at particular jewelry by particular designers, just because I'm obsessed and that's a little obsession of mine, and I've been looking at La La Una stuff and I remembered a friend of mine from the Wayback Machine. Oh, by the way, tell me about the situation with the Wayback Machine. Oh, by the way, tell me about the situation with the Wayback Machine.
Speaker 2:We don't really have time for that right now.
Speaker 1:Oh, darn it. Well, I will have to talk about the Wayback Machine next time, next week In fact. I'm going to make a note about that because, oh, and a week from today, people Taxes. Hello, a week from today, any information you need you got to file. I hear Todd Rundgren in the background, you sure do that makes me happy.
Speaker 1:Just one victory. This is one of those songs I hear and it gets me right in the kishkas Happy Passover. I think Passover will have come and gone by the time we come back by next week's show.
Speaker 2:Happy Passover. I think Passover will have come and gone by the time we come back. Yeah, by next week's show. That's correct, yeah.
Speaker 1:Good grief. Okay, too much, too much, too late. Well, let me just say that we need just one victory we could use several, actually and for the 59 hostages, living and dead, who are still in Gaza, please put a light on.
Speaker 3:If we want to win, if you don't know what to do About a world of trouble, you can pull it through. If you need to, and if you believe it's true, it will surely happen. Shining still, give us the win. We've been shining still. Give us the will. We've been waiting, we've been waiting, we've been waiting. We've been waiting for the sun to rise and shine. Shining still, give us the wind, bright as the day. Show us the way. Show us the way Somehow, someday.
Speaker 3:We need just one victory, and we're on our way. We're playing for it all day and fighting for it all night. Give us just one victory. It will be all right. We may feel about to fall, but we go down fighting. You will hear the call if you only listen underneath it all. We are here together, shining still, to give us the wind, raise the heat. Show us the way. Sun and the night, sun and day. We just have to wait, can't? We're on our way? Star of the day, star of the day. Just one big dream, and we're on our way. We're on our way, we're on our way. We're on our way, we're on our way. Just one big dream, just one big dream. Just one big dream. Just one big dream, just one big dream, just one big dream. We are the. I can't walk alone. I can't support a baby. I can't walk alone. We are all alone. Selling out, selling out, selling out, selling out, selling out, selling out, selling out, selling out, selling out. I can't support a baby, thank you.
