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being Frank right where the only way to be is Frank, only one and
welcome to being Frank. We're the only way to be is Frank. I'm
your host, Frank Lebono, and I'd like to thank you for joining us
on what we like to call the Intelligent Conversation Podcast, where no conversation is
out of bounds and all points of view are welcome. Now, to give
you a little context, we go live to tape. We try to keep
it as live as we can. And it's the ninth of November again a
little bit of irrelevance because we do archive and tell you a little bit more
about that little later on in the program. Well, AI, that is,
artificial intelligence is back in the news once again. Obviously, it's a
story that simply will not go away. At the end of October, President
Joe Biden issued an executive order calling for the safe, secure, and trustworthy
development and use of artificial intelligence. A recent CNN report on bizarre and blatantly
false stories suddenly appearing on ms N claimed that this was being caused by the
network's preference for using AI. Editors instead of human ones, and the last
sticking point of the SAG after strike was resolved when media companies agreed to protect
their members from the unauthorized use of AI generated images, scripts, sounds,
and the like. So joining me once again is my go to guy on
all things media, Fordham University professor, my colleague and frequent contributor to Being
Frank, doctor Paul Levinson. Paul, thank you once again for joining us.
Well, I'm really happy to be here. Let me just say though,
very very quickly. You know, it's not just that we think this
is highly intelligent conversation. Everyone in the universe has that opinion. I just
wanted to make that point. Thank you, Paul. And I'm sure it's
much to your credit because remember, part of Being Frank is falling all over
yourself at one point. But we do have intelligent conversation because I have great
guests and topics like yourself. You know, we try to do a fresh
show. We're up to I'm counting we've done ninety five shows so far,
and you've been a contributor on at least three or four at least. We
always appreciate your honesty and intelligent conversation. Let's jump right in. Let's go
with President Biden. An executive order. That's a big thing. Obviously,
it's not something that's done every day on the safe, secure and trustworthy development
and use of artificial intelligence. What does it mean? Why is it important?
Well, to start with, I just want to dispose of some nonsense.
And we've talked a little bit about this before. What Biden wasn't talking
about is the completely signed fictional idea that somehow AI is going to get together
and declare war on humanity and destroy us. That's the stuff of war games
and the Terminator movies, etc. Etc. Great science fiction, nothing to
do with current reality. But what Biden was talking about is indeed what you
just mentioned. One of the things that he was concerned about is if you
have AI controlling what gets displayed on a news site like the MSN news site,
that is a very dangerous thing. And again not because the AI is
evil or anything like that, but because the AI can be hacked and manipulated
by evil human beings to do bad things. So anytime Lily on AI and
you're blind to how that can be used to distort the truth, to hurt
people, to spread misinformation. You're on a very very bad path, and
we have to be very careful, and frankly, I think too much of
what we're doing now in the news is relying on AI. If ever,
there was something that the public needed to rely on the truth of what they're
seeing in the news, at the very least, those decisions about what people
see should be made by human beings, because you might find a human being
who has bad judgment, but it's hard to hack a human being. Let's
talk a little bit about the MSN situation as reported by CNN, and they
interviewed former chief of editors, obviously a human being, who claims that MSN
has gone almost almost exclusively to artificial intelligence as editors. How does that even
work? I mean, can you explain it? I keep thinking it over
and I'm not sure exactly how that would even work. Well, let's assume
that there isn't any hacking. Even the system without hacking give you very dangerous
and misleading information. For example, one of the commands that the system is
given, let's say the input by the human being who's ultimately in charge of
the system, is to go out and find a story every day about Joe
Biden. And unless the system is also programmed, and this is a very
difficult thing to do to know what is a false story and a true story,
it might well find a very popular story about Joe Biden falling asleep during
some ceremony, which was one of the stories that was highlighted in that CNN
report. And unless there is again a built in mechanism in the AI to
identify and give an alert when it's about to put a false story up there,
we then the human viewers of these stories become vulnerable to receiving this dangerous
misinformation. And that's what it always amounts to. We're still in the early
stages of AI and this blind and increasing reliance on AI in places where it's
dangerous. If the AI even makes an honest mistake, that's what's going to
hurt us. If you think about AI in medicine and your AI is used
to guide surgeons, it has all kinds of great things, but it's not
as if human doctors walk out of the room and turn the blind eye to
what the AI is suggesting. You know, maybe the AI is malfunctioning.
They're not going to take a chance because there could literally kill someone and what
our society needs to realize, I think, and what was very disturbing about
that CNN report was we're being fed misinformation and that might be one of the
reasons why Joe Biden is not doing that well in the polls, which are
nonsense anyway, a here before an election. But we need to be increasingly
careful. The more we rely on AI, the more vulnerable we are to
the AI blindly doing something that's very mistaken. So, Paul, in your
mind, then the hackers must have some plan, if you will. They
must know how to use certain trigger words as you mentioned something along those lines,
to fool AI. In other words, the story themselves are not AI
generated. There's a human i e. A hacker who is creating these stories,
and they must have some knowledge themselves in order to be able to word
things so that AI is fooled. I guess yes, for lack of a
better word, is that accurate? Yeah? And you know, one of
the most common things is look for the most popular stories, or look for
the most provocative stories, because that's what journalism does. You know. It
gets back to you know, dog bites. Man. It's a little provocative,
but it's not unusual. Man, bites dog that could make the front
page. So the AIS program look for an unusual story regarding the President of
the United States. He fell sound asleep at some kind of conference or wherever.
That's a somewhat provocative story, and it even generates evidence there's a picture
of him asleep, because that was false news to begin with. And the
AI it's not that in that case, it's not that the AI was hacked.
It's that the AI was poorly programmed in the first place to seek out
popular stories without having some kind of safe god to make sure these stories are
true. And let me just say, it's easy to see if the story
is true. If you come across the story that Joe Biden fell asleep at
such and such an event, and it looks to be true, you just
check three or four other reliable sources. Is the New York Times reporting it,
is even the Wall Street Journal reporting it, is NBC reporting it,
et cetera, et cetera. If the story is true, it'll be multiply
reported, and therefore no human being would go with that story. The AI
needs to be better programmed. Well, you know, it's interesting in that
you would mention it because something happened on social media a few years ago.
It was Steve Jobs and his dying letter, and many people said, oh,
it's you know, the theme of the letter was basically that money is
great, but without feeling, without family, et cetera, it's really nothing.
It's it's beautiful, but looking at on it and balance it again as
a human being, if you will, not artificial intelligence, real intelligence,
whatever real intelligence I do have. It struck me it was too perfect,
if you will, and if he snopes it, google it, check it
and other sources, it turned out to be false. Now there's another one
making there is, and they're great sentiments. The sentiment was wonderful. And
there's a recent one now with Einstein's daughter, who has now released a letter
again one of these. To me, they're just overly sentimental, overly romanticized.
To me, I think AI is actually making them by again knowing that,
well, this will really appeal to people. Oh my god, it's
Einstein and he breaks down. Well, Ian his famous theory of relativity really
means this, that and the other thing. I got the exact same feeling,
and I said, this just doesn't feel right. It's too perfect.
It fits within what people would like to think instead of what's real? So
of course I snoped it, checked it, and of course it's not real.
But how do we program artificial intelligence on the other end to smell out
a sense whatever? So something's fishing here. It's too good to be true,
so it can't be true, and it isn't It wasn't. Well,
if the AI is programmed to find the most provocative stories, which it makes
sense that it would be what's going to go on the front page the most
provocative news, as we just discussed, then you need to also program the
AI. The more provocative it is, the more the AI needs to find
confirmation in other sources. So that way. Again, it's not that AI
is like overtaking us or too hard to control. It's a combination of things.
First of all, we're learning to do this. Second of all,
people are lazy, you know, they want to go with the easiest way
of doing things. You know, it's very easy to put in an AI
program in a variety of things and let the AI do it and you don't
have to. You can also save money. I'm sure that's what motivated MS
in every network has got to make their money, so they save money through
AI. Wow. But I do think it's great that this was discovered because
I think this will teach news organizations a lesson that they can't rely on AI,
and especially if the AIS programmed to find interesting and then ratcheting it up
more and more interesting provocative stories, because that, unfortunately feeds right into the
most provocative stories are the ones that are usually false, but they're provocative because
they're so unusual because they're false. So with that in mind, Paul,
at some point in the chain, does it need to be checked by a
human being? Yes, And Facebook has been struggling with this problem for a
long time. And frankly, I don't believe anything that Facebook officially says.
You know, from time to time you see these ludicrous ads on television that,
oh, Facebook is trying to preserve the social fabric of this country,
thanks very much. Rather than spending your millions or billions of dollars on an
ad campaign, instead what they should do is hire more people to look at
what is on their system. And this has been a problem with Facebook for
a long time. You know, a few years ago everybody was concerned well
with false stories that were on Facebook, and it turned out, why are
there's so many false stories on face Facebook is because algorithms were determining what was
should be on that site and what was false and not beyond that site.
And the algorithms were imperfect. They always are, just like human beings are
not perfect. But the algorithms were even more imperfect. And they did a
combination of allowing false stories on the site and wrongly pulling out and censoring true
stories because it tripped off some kind of alert that the system was programmed to
watch for, you know, regarding what you would be on Facebook site.
But the remedy for that is to get people, not machines. Related story,
Paul, and you mentioned Facebook and their responsibility. There's a large lawsuit
I believe it's being filed in California that is claiming that Facebook deliberately as fostered
an environment that's harmful to young people. Your thoughts on that, well,
I didn't see that, But that art is it's saying harmful to young people
who are working at Facebook are harmful. No for for consumers a Facebook again,
these algorithms and again all relative that they target kids love this stuff.
Nobody's checking whether it's healthy stuff or not. It's exciting to them, so
it goes okay. There's been a concern, maybe now as long as ten
years, certainly five years, about how social media is endangering the mental health
of adolescents and even younger kids. And what sided is an increase in suicide
rates. You know, these are serious problems. Every time I've looked into
those things, and every time I've done some research, Unfortunately, suicide rates
have fluctuated up and down for as long as people have been keeping track of
that, And I tend to think that although what kids, and for that
matter, everyone what they see on social media, although that does factor into
how they feel about themselves, usually what goes on in real person to person
interactions are much much more significant. So I would have to look at this
particular study. Maybe it is a very well conducted, carefully controlled study,
but I do think it's Psychologists in general are a little too quick nowadays to
worry about social media. And this actually leads to another point which we probably
don't have all that much time to discuss. But the word addiction I think
is often too loosely used. Addiction is properly used when it comes to something
like heroin or crack cocaine or alcohol, and the way that works is your
body becomes accustomed to it, you need more and more, and you tragically
eventually can take so much of it you die as a result of it.
That's addiction. That's not the case with any kind of communication interaction. And
I remember, you know, years ago, when we first started going up
to Cape Cod, we had no television in the house that we rented,
and I would watch a lot of television. And I remember I was telling
the kids in my class in like, you know, April May, I'm
going up to Cape Cod and they would say, oh, Professor Levinson,
You're going to really go crazy up there if you have no television, because
I would talk to them about everything I was seeing on television. And I
discovered very quickly when I went up to Cape Cart I didn't care about television.
I'm a human being. I was more interested in other things, going
swimming, taking walks, whatever it was I was doing. My point being
that interactions with social media, our secondary interactions. They do have impact on
us, but what really determines whether people are anxious and depressed are the relationships
they have with other human beings, the full real life interactions well, it's
continue with our AI discussion now too. And it's all relative. These things
are all interrelated. On the SAG after strike, which went on for a
long time, I think, the longest in the history of the industry,
and the major sticking point seem to be the use of AI generated images and
that included voice face scripts. It's after the chat g PC gamest I so
don't use it. I can't even say it. Uh, but you know,
interestingly, and I have to point something out and and we'll get back
on track. But it is is relative. A really good friend of mine
was performing at the legendary Turning Point in Piermont the other night and he mentioned
how he was stuck on a song that he was writing, kind of a
protest song about crooked politicians, and he was curious, so he went to
chat thank you, Paul, and it was just curious as to how they
might resolve it. Uh. And he read it and it was it was
excellent. I mean, it was really good, and you know, the
audience was torn and you know, so don't do it, don't do it.
But the temptation was was was certainly there, and really it worked with
what he had led into and was would would lead out of it was just
that kind of missing piece, and it was really it was really well done,
so kind of as a tool. He certainly made it his own,
but it was generated not entirely by himself. So there's an image of an
artist using it. But sometimes the artists get used. And this was the
big sticking point where studios felt they, you know, they could just take
an image and using artificial intelligence, create their own scenarios with them, sell,
buy, et cetera. Your thoughts, well, let me just say,
as far as you know the story of your friend, I remember,
you know, fifteen twenty years ago, I was writing a story, a
science fiction story, and you know how it isn't writing. It's not good
to use the same word too often because it bothers the reader and it's lazy.
And so whatever the word I had used, I wanted that exact word
and I didn't want to use it again. And so you know what I
did is I went online, not AI, but I looked up synonym synonyms
for that word. So in a way, wasn't that AI. In otherwise
I didn't think of what the second word would be. I looked online for
that word. It's a tool, that's right. The source is a tool
that's right when necessary, and AI could could be a tool when necessary that's
right. So I don't hold it against that author that that author did that.
Now I can't imagine seeking help through AI if I'm writing a story.
I like agonizing over the story of the block ten times. I like driving
my wife crazy. Hey, honey, what do you think of this?
I do that, you know, that's the way I do it. But
you know, I wouldn't lash out at writers who find some benefit from using
AI. Now, as far as the writers strike, I am delighted that
they were able to get a decent offer from the studios on this. Absolutely
what the studios were originally trying to peddle is okay, we'll pay you,
and not that much anyway. So they got a nice raise, but will
the actors got a nice raise, but the students saying, we'll pay you.
But you know, when it comes to AI, you know that's our
property. Once we pay you, we have a right to use your image.
We can feed it into you know, an AI program and use it
again in another movie. And I think the actors absolutely should get paid for
that, and they should get paid a decent amount now fair enough, not
as much as when they're acting in person, because that's much more work than
somebody it takes an AI image and uses it. But they absolutely should get
paid a substantial amount. I'm not privy to what the sentiment was, so
I don't know how much that was. Yeah, but I'm glad the actors
are happy about that, and I applaud that. I think that's a very
good thing, and the actors were right to hold fast on that. Now,
Uh, let's talk about some of the upsides. And you are,
as I mentioned with my good friend Jerry POTENTI, the foremost beatlemaniacs that I
know. Uh you, uh, you have your your story now and then
an alternative reality of the Beatles and and uh recently, let's get to the
point. There was a song that was built by AI around the demo tape,
as I believe from John Lennon. Tell us a little bit about how
it was created, and really, what do you think of it? Well,
first of all, the name of my story is It's real life.
That's the name of the story. The name of the Beatles dog is now
and then now and then I have my notes and they read them back.
Thank you, Paul, all right, but it's a good title for an
excellent song. Listen. I know a lot of people are throwing this around,
but AI has literally including Paul McCartney at one point, like a year
or two ago. AI has nothing to do with this Beatles record. And
here is what I'm getting at. John Lennon, you know, made a
demo. There was there were problems with the demo. This is up Now
and Then. That's why when the Beatles did a great job in nineteen ninety
five and nineteen ninety six putting the Beatles into John Lennon's demo of Free as
a Bird and then Real Love, that's why they couldn't do it with Now
and Then. Because Lennon's voice was mixed in with the piano and parts of
the recording the piano was loud than his voice and there was no way to
separate his voice from the piano. So all that happened in this recording is
they recording engineers figured out a way using I guess you could call it AI
to separate the voice from the track. But this is not the first time
that some kind of artificial thing which we've been manipulating music for so you know,
on the topic of John Lennon, one of my favorite John Lennon songs,
he actually didn't like it, but I love it. It's only love,
I get how and I see you walk by mile just this is a
great song. I love that song. Lennon heard the recording of it and
thought his voice didn't sound good. He was never happy with his voice.
That was just one of his, you know, his personality traits. And
so George Martin, a genius producer, says, I tell you what,
let me bring you back into the studio and we will record you on another
track singing the same part. So we'll have you two. John Lennon's singing
in unison. And by the way, this is something that Les Paul had
developed like ten years earlier, doing harmony to yourself. No human being can
do harmony to him or herself. No human being can sing in unison to
him or herself. Obviously only a technology could do that. So that was
a very primitive but ryand technique. I think that is no different than principle
than what Paul McCartney and the other people who worked on this original demo did
with now and then and by the way. I think it's a beautiful song.
What do you think of it? I think it's great, And you
know, I have to say I'm surprised. I've seen some criticisms of it.
I saw some last last out at the lyrics. Okay, look,
it's not you know, A Day in the Life, it's not Strawberry Fields.
You know, it's not the best of you John Lennon songs. But
I just was sinking, it's only love. I get high when I see
you walk by. My, oh my, Are those great lyrics? No,
it's the whole thing together. So I thought the lyrics were good enough.
I think the melody is haunting and effective. And here's where I think
McCartney also came in. He did a great job, putting in a new
bass, putting in an additional guitar part they already had George Harrison. It
was very poignant. I mean I was moved to tears when I first heard
it and saw the video. I mean, they put together so many parts,
and you know, including a guitar part that George Harrison put in in
nineteen ninety six. But again, they didn't think Lennon's voice was strong and
to put it out as a record, so they worked really hard on it.
And it's not the best song the Beatles ever did, but it's not
the worst song. You know. I like it a lot, you know,
better than Paul McCartney's you know, Maxwell's Silver Hammer, or or even
John Lennon's Happiness is a Warm Gun. I mean, is that a great
It's all right. It's a little frankly stupid, nobvious, So you know,
it's a middle of the road in between the Beatles best and worst.
But since it's the Beatles, I think it's a great addition to their openers.
Oh well, you take a break. When we come back, I
put your professorial media professorial head on once again, and we'll talk a little
bit about the First Amendments. And I know you are an expert in addition
on the First Amendment. And it keeps popping up with the current trial in
New York with the gag order with former President Donald Trump, who claims he
has a right to say what he feels, and the judge pushes back and
says, well, maybe not. I want to get your feelings on that.
We're going to take a quick break. My very special guest tonight is
my colleague and Fordham University media professor, doctor Paul Levinson. I'm your host,
Frank Lebaro. This is Being Frank. We're the only way to be
is Frank, and we'll be right back with some more intelligent conversation right after
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Com. Welcome back to Being Frank, The Intelligent Conversation podcast. Thanks for
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Frank with your family and friends. A very special guest, frequent contributor and
media expert Fordham University professor doctor Paul Levinson. Paul, before the commercial break,
we teased a little bit back in the news, just for a change,
former President Donald Trump, but once again arguing the point where he has
been given again order by the judge in his case in New York. After
making certain threats and accusations against the judge and his staff, Trump pushes back
and says he has a First Amendment right to speak his mind. Who's correct
here? Well, unsurprisingly, Trump isn't correct. And let me broaden this
discussion a little bit. You know, we've talked about this half a dozen
times in the past couple of years. I always take pains to point out
that, even though I'm pretty much of an absolutist regarding the First Amendment,
the First Amendment does not protect speech that leads to criminality. It does not
protect a bunch of people who are communicating for us at any distance about how
to murder someone or rob a bank or any of those crimes. So,
actually, before we even get to Trump, let me just say that,
on a lot of campuses, and thank goodness, not on Fordham University's campus,
but on a lot of campuses like Cornell University, Jewish students have been
subject to all kinds of harassment and death threats by people who are opposing Israel.
They are entitled to their views. They're entitled to criticize Israel as much
as they want. What they're not entitled to do is call for the death
or in any way hurting any other human being, including Jewish students on campus.
And I haven't been up at Cornell myself, but I understand that some
of the professors there have been supporting those students who have been making those statements.
So, you know, the statements that Jewish people should be hurt,
you know, and even worse than hurt. So the First Amendment is not
a license to commit a crime. Now, going to Trump, the reason
that the gag order was imposed, and Trump has been well advised about this.
It is very important in a trial where there are going to be a
jury, or even if there's not a jury, there are going to be
various witnesses, the potential witnesses, that the judge, that people who work
for the judge are in any way impugned publicly, because that could create a
prejudice against what they're doing in the courtroom. This started hundreds of years ago,
goes back to actually British law before there even was the United States.
It's a very profound, almost ancient part of law. Trump thinks he can
shoot his mouth off, it doesn't matter, you know, whether he's on
trial or not. And he has apparently yet to learn or learn completely,
or maybe he's learned it, but he doesn't care. He thinks it's like
twenty sixteen and he can say whatever he wants about anyone. But it's not
twenty sixteen. And he is now indicted in a variety of criminal situations,
and he's also a defendant in a civil trial where there are still criminal penalties
if you violate the code of conduct that all courtrooms adhere to. And that's
why Trump is completely wrong. He does not have a First Amendment right to
go against the rule of law in a courtroom. He has no right to
undermine the judicial system in his own trial. Well, when does free speech
become libelous? Is there is there a distinct line that someone like I know
you talked about inciting violence short of that. Is there a distinction because there
is such a thing, why you libeled me? Well, well, I
was my opinion. I'm entitled to my opinion. When do we cross that
line? Okay? The First Amendment really doesn't address that. That's again a
civil matter. And if someone defames someone, either in writing or in speech,
then the person who feels he or she was defamed has the right to
sue that person, and that also has worked out, usually in a court
of law, in order for a judgment of either libel or slander, depending
upon whether it's speech or writing, so or just call it defamation. In
order for a judgment like that to be sustained, it has to be shown
that the person who made the communication A knew the communication was false, and
B was doing it deliberately to hurt that person, And if that can be
proven in a civil court of law, than that person who made that statement
again not thrown in prison. It's a civil matter, but that person can
be fined a lot of money. Always enlightening, Paul, tell us,
what's the latest with your radio play? It's real life? See I got
back on track. What's the latest with your radio play? An alternative Beatles
story? Tell us what's going on? Okay, Well, the latest is
I have expanded it into a short novel. It's about fifty thousand words.
I'm pretty sure I'm finished with it. The last time we spoke was maybe
about forty thousand words. But now I feel I think it's pretty much finished.
So now I have to decide what to do. And you know,
there are a whole realm of choices that any writer faces nowadays. Do I
want to go with the big traditional publisher. There are advantages and disadvantages to
that. Do I want to go with a small niche publisher. I'll get
much more attention, but probably it won't reach as many people. And so
there are all kinds of possibilities. And now, of course that the strike
is over, I'm also interested in seeing this made into a movie, maybe
a short television series. And I'm just getting nothing but good responses from people
who have read the story. So you know, it was written and published
in January twenty twenty two. It's won a major award, the Mary Shelley
Award. It was a finalist for another award, the Sidewise Award for Alternate
History. The radio play is attracting increasing attention, got some good reviews,
and as far as I'm concerned, in my arrogant way, the sky's the
limit when it comes to this. And I'll tell you just one other interesting
thing. The day before I felt that the novel was finished, it was
just a couple of days ago the Now and Then record came out, and
I said, of course, know about that. I knew that there was
a big time, and I said that I don't kiss me margin of my
notes. That's why I put it into the novel. So the novel is
that current. That's great. Yeah, So I'm very excited about it and
we'll see what happens. And I appreciate all the publicity you've been giving to
it. Thank you. Well, you know why, because you deserve it,
you do. It's just great. You truly are a renaissance man.
Who was one of my students the other night, I said, oh,
you're going to interview to Professor Levinson. I said, oh, yeah,
he's kind of a regular on being Frank, so hopefully she tuned in and
checked us out this evening. Paul. Of course, I always want to
thank you for being Frank and your intelligent conversation are always welcome back here.
Thank you. This was a great conversation on a variety of important topics.
So great that I'm here. You can count on me anytime. We can
roll you and I for poor students, And of course we offer a special
thanks to our listeners who take the time to give us a voice in their
lives. Remember we offer a fresh topic every week, and you catch us
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consider sharing being Frank with the others? Remember you can go to Hudson Riverradio
dot com and find us. I got a little slogan for you. You
know it comes from Maya Angelou. You can't use up creativity. The more
you use, the more you have. We certainly hope so well. I
have a special treat for you. You know my I call the mailman or
engineer Neil Richter. Well, he's another renaissance man. Not only does he
keep us streaming, he also happens to be an extraordinary drummer, often sitting
in with the bag Daddy Olds. And he just had a very interesting experience
playing, not running, playing at the New York City Marathon. He's going
to join us, tell us a little bit about that, and introduce a
song he has for us to close the evening. Go ahead, Neil,
Hi, thank you, Frank, and hello everybody. And oh you're you're
you're much too kind with your your introduction there but a renaissance. Man.
I've been called a lot of things, but never that. But I like
it. But yeah, yeah, it was over the past weekend the New
York Marathon, you know, which is an annual event. The organizers of
the event, what they do is they they invite you know, a whole
bunch of different bands to play along the route of of the of the race,
you know, every you know, number of blocks or whatever. So
it goes on. There's you know, music going on throughout the whole thing,
and it really turns the event into a real, a real block party,
a real, a real everybody's just happy and cheering on the runners and
you know, groove into the music and it's a real, a really upbeat
and fun event. And uh, I've done it a few times now,
I haven't in a few years, so this was the first time back.
And indeed it is a marathon to play it too. But I was gonna
say, it's kind of a marathon for you as well. You had played
quite a few hours. It goes on for a number of hours, and
uh, you ain't no kid no more either, you like all I'll speak
for Paul, he's laughing. They can't see us on zoom, but but
I could tell. I could assure you he's smiling. We're a little gray
in the long in the tooth, gray and the beard. So it was
hard. It gave me a workout, no pun, no wait, pun
intended, it gave me a run for my money. But it was,
it was, it was. It was a blast. And and uh,
you know, we didn't have enough material really to play all that long,
so we were just making things up, playing you know, standards and you
know songs we all knew anyway, and people were just having a great time.
And it really, it really felt good to bring all of New York
together. It felt like and uh, I'll be honest, that was one
of the biggest audiences I've ever played. There were there were thousands of people.
They were all running by, but it did for a while they heard
some right, No, it was, it was. It was just a
real, uh, real blast. I really enjoyed it. You were with
Ken Rowl and the bag daddy Os one of my favorite I love just even
saying that The bag Daddios so clever. You guys are so damn clever.
I love it. And and you picked a song that's kind of appropriate for
uh uh for the marathon. Will tell a little bit about the song,
introduce it, and we'll say good night. Okay. Yeah, the song,
appropriately enough is called Welcome to New York, and we did we played
it a few times because we had a you know, rotating audience, so
it didn't it didn't get but it was appropriate because there we were in New
York. And of course it's there's a lot of tongue in cheek, you
know, it's it's a funny song, but most of Ken's lyrics are very
very witty, very clever. And oh and one thing I do want to
mention because I got the date and I don't know anything more about it,
but the annual blank Fest, which takes place here in Rockland County in Naiak,
right on Main Street at the Hudson House, will be on Sunday,
December seventeenth, So mark your calendar. The bag Daddys will be there.
I don't know who else is on the on the bill. It goes all
day. You know, Frank, you've been there, so and again it's
just a it's just a big all day party right around the hall. It's
a week before Christmas, so or it's the first or the weekend right before
Christmas, so I think in this case it actually is about a week anyway,
it's a good time and for a good cause. You bring a blanket.
There's no admission for it fee, there's no cover charge, no money.
You bring a blanket as long as it's clean, it could be used
new and and we donated and then a team fans out on Christmas Eve throughout
Lower Manhattan mostly and distribute distributes them to homeless people, which is I think
it's a it's a brilliant concept. There's no middleman. It's right to the
people who need it to keep warm during the winter and win win situations.
Great music all day long. Highly recommend it. It's the Hudson House and
I bring a blanket, makes you feel good. You know you got great
music. You're doing something nice for somebody that's around the holidays. That sounds
damn good to me. Yeah. And and uh, there there are I
mean, aside from the world famous bag Daddy, there there are some name
no name acts that do come. I don't know who's going to be on
there this year. I haven't heard what the what the roster is, but
there's the album there well that there's a know I'll be there. You'll be
at the autograph table. It's Frank Blank confessed December. Neil, thanks so
much. Thank you that that guy up there is he's Neil Richter. I
want to thank Paul Levinson, our guest. I'm Frank Lamaro, and of
course I want to thank you for listening. And we'll catch you on the
next being. Frank, thanks again. Welcome to New Joy. Look up
to John God, John, Johnny, good God. My last night on
the subway and I told the cops, Old, I get on out,
got last guy. I'm not going along. I'm gonna see but a blowing
up the past talk undred much, explain that one today to give away conduct
and the lay a top break much have today to across the street. Welcome
to new Shun, Welcome to where John, Welcome to the Gun, Welcome
to the Dave, John, Welcome to very, Welcome to that Collard,
Welcome to new Con. Welcome to the John. Oh, let's lock the
springtime? What is go takes the la season? The slaughter is just because
you don't have to have a reason. You know what one last week pass
grab off had the new Stone well arena. Hold up, we sad black,
my too, dam listen to two hours show We very Grandma to take
a job. Welcome to this job. Welcome to their John, Welcome to
the JOD. Welcome to their John, Welcome to the Yon, Welcome to
their job. Welcome to name job. Welcome to the jod. The boy
authority stakes and the sewers explode badcast with you all when your car gets time.
I love it, Yeah, just like old loves it. It was
back up to the bridge. Try to see the same guy fumbing change each
day since nineteen eight. Recent I heard the whole thing tolls again that the
man just got a raised. Then back at school, cap and the pot
holes on up in the place. They'll touch your hair and they'll find you
there. There's no place like it anywhere. Welcome to the John, Welcome
to them John, Welcome to the John. Welcome to the John, Welcome
to the God. When to the John. Welcome to you John, w
to the John, Welcome to y Wing to the I'm I'm look at us
John, I love you or love you? Welcome to dog Hudson River Radio
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