Speaker 1: It's Night Side with Dan on WBZ Boston Radio.
Speaker 2: Thanks very much to Cole. Happy Monday to you and
Speaker 2: to all the night side listeners out there. Boy, the
Speaker 2: weekend goes by quickly, does it. I'm back behind the
Speaker 2: WBZ Iconic microphone here in the eighth to midnight hour.
Speaker 2: Delighted to be here, happy that you are there. Rob
Speaker 2: Brooks is back in the control room. So all is
Speaker 2: right with our world. And we're going to have four
Speaker 2: guests this hour. We're gonna learn a lot this hour.
Speaker 2: We're gonna talk about some very interesting subjects. Maybe we're
Speaker 2: going to have to really drill down on some of
Speaker 2: these topics because they're they're they're not necessarily topics we
Speaker 2: normally talk about, but I think it as a quartet.
Speaker 2: It's an interesting group of topics. So just bear with me,
Speaker 2: stay with us. Coming up tonight at nine o'clock, we
Speaker 2: will talk about ballot question number two here in Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: which is calling for the elimination of the mcast required
Speaker 2: for graduation diplomas and for Massachusetts high schools. And then,
Speaker 2: of course, at ten o'clock tonight, the Democrats are gathering
Speaker 2: in Chicago. Just going to be a wonderful week for
Speaker 2: the Democrats. Everyone's going to pat everyone on the back,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to share with you Marine Doubts column
Speaker 2: from over the weekend suggesting that the Democrats may have
Speaker 2: exercised a coup. But we'll get to all of that.
Speaker 2: I promise we'll have a we'll have a fun night
Speaker 2: going all the way to a minute. I'm going to
Speaker 2: start it off tonight with the first of four guests,
Speaker 2: Kimberly Palmer. Kimberly, welcome to Nightside.
Speaker 3: How are you, hi, Dan, Thank you so much for
Speaker 3: having me. I'm great.
Speaker 2: Well, you're a senior finance writer for nerd Wallet. So
Speaker 2: first of all, let's explain to everybody what nerd wallet is.
Speaker 2: I think most of us know, but give us a
Speaker 2: quick little definition of what nerd wallet is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, nerd wallet is a website and an app, and
Speaker 3: we are trying to help you make good financial decisions.
Speaker 3: So whether you're looking for or a credit card or
Speaker 3: a bank account, we can help you find the right one.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, we'll be able to give the nerd
Speaker 2: Wallet way in which people can contact nerd Wallet at
Speaker 2: the end of our conversation. But we're going to talk
Speaker 2: tonight about a subject or an issue that I had
Speaker 2: never heard of, And it's called funflation. If you inflation,
Speaker 2: not inflation, not deflation, but funflation. So describe for us
Speaker 2: what funflation is and how we have come to coin
Speaker 2: that term.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, funflation basically refers to the fact that we
Speaker 3: are willing to pay more money for experiences things that
Speaker 3: bring us joy, whether it's a concert ticket, a restaurant
Speaker 3: that's fancy, maybe a vacation that we've long dreamed about.
Speaker 3: So even though prices are high, none of this is cheap.
Speaker 3: We are willing to spend that money because we want
Speaker 3: to have that experience. It's worth it to us. And
Speaker 3: we're seeing that people are really willing to to spend
Speaker 3: money on these expensive things just to get that experience.
Speaker 2: Well, a government spends a lot of money, thirty four
Speaker 2: trillion dollars. We're in debt at this point, so I
Speaker 2: guess most people are saying, Hey, if the government can
Speaker 2: do it, I can do it. From a personal finance
Speaker 2: point of view, it seems to me that's a little dangerous.
Speaker 3: It can definitely be a little dangerous. You really want
Speaker 3: to think about your overall budget. We really like the
Speaker 3: rule of thumb the fifty to thirty twenty budgeting approach,
Speaker 3: which basically means fifty percent of your cake compey is
Speaker 3: going towards needs, thirty percent towards once, and twenty percent
Speaker 3: towards any debt payments that you have in savings. And
Speaker 3: so these kinds of joyful experiences like a concert ticket
Speaker 3: or a vacation come into that thirty percent bucket for once,
Speaker 3: and so you just want to make sure that when
Speaker 3: you're looking at a rule of thumb for how you're
Speaker 3: spending money, you're not going to be buying a concert
Speaker 3: ticket that will then be turning into credit card debt
Speaker 3: for the next few years of your life. So making
Speaker 3: decisions based on what works for your budget is a
Speaker 3: really good idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fifty thirty twenty, that's one hundred percent. There's no
Speaker 2: room in there for taxes. Where do you put taxes?
Speaker 3: Great question, So we're actually talking about take home pay
Speaker 3: pay the taxes, yes, and then you can allocate it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I kind of thought. So I just
Speaker 2: wanted to clarify that. So in this was a report that,
Speaker 2: as I understand you folks, did not do. But another
Speaker 2: website called bankrate dot Com actually found that, and I'm
Speaker 2: confused by this. It says twenty four percent of Disney
Speaker 2: goers and forty five percent of Disney going parents take
Speaker 2: on debt for a trip to see Goofy. Twenty four
Speaker 2: percent of Disney goers. I assume that's the overall figure,
Speaker 2: which might include a lot of either single folks or couples,
Speaker 2: but it really goes up when you got to bring
Speaker 2: the kids along, So it's forty five percent of Disney
Speaker 2: going parents. That's frightening in my opinion.
Speaker 3: Really, it really is scary. These costs add up so quickly.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know as a parent myself of three kids,
Speaker 3: once you start adding kids to the equation all those
Speaker 3: ticket prices, it just has a multiplier effect. So you
Speaker 3: can see how this adds up very quickly for family.
Speaker 2: There's a whole guilt thing going on in terms of Disney,
Speaker 2: because obviously your kids want to go to Disney, they
Speaker 2: want to see Nicky and Minnie and Donald Doc and
Speaker 2: all of that, but they have no clue how expensive
Speaker 2: those day passes have become. I mean, I can remember
Speaker 2: when my kids were young the day passes were expensive,
Speaker 2: but they're really expensive now.
Speaker 3: They certainly are. I mean it is quite shocking. I
Speaker 3: know my family considered going and then we check those
Speaker 3: ticket prices and we thought, oh, we could do a
Speaker 3: lot of other things. It's had amount of money. So
Speaker 3: it is really hard for families to manage this. And
Speaker 3: of course you can do all sorts of tricks, like
Speaker 3: take advantage of your hard rewards, for example, to help
Speaker 3: subsidize the trip and make it cost less and shop
Speaker 3: around for discounts that the end of the day, it's
Speaker 3: still expensive, and so you have to decide if that
Speaker 3: experience is really worth it to you. For some people
Speaker 3: the answer will be yes, it is worth it, and
Speaker 3: you'll make sacrifices in other areas to make it possible.
Speaker 2: Well, there are some people look at Disney like the
Speaker 2: Grateful Dead. People look the grateful Dead. I mean they've
Speaker 2: got to go to Disney every year. They got to
Speaker 2: see what's new, just like we got to go to
Speaker 2: the Every Grateful Dead concert. The problem is, though, is
Speaker 2: this what we used to be a nation which tended
Speaker 2: to be pretty fruel. You didn't spend beyond your knees.
Speaker 2: You you tried to enjoy yourself, but you knew that
Speaker 2: your budget was somewhat limited. Have we just basically thrown
Speaker 2: a caution to the winter. There a good percentage of
Speaker 2: us who was saying, what the hell, it doesn't matter anyway,
Speaker 2: Let's just spend and spend and spend, and we'll run
Speaker 2: out with the clear we'll run out of money with
Speaker 2: the clear bankruptcy. Who knows? I mean, have we basically
Speaker 2: lost our minds?
Speaker 3: I think what's really interesting to look at about how
Speaker 3: we've changed is that the pandemic, the experience of the pandemic,
Speaker 3: really fundamentally changed a lot of people's decisions about how
Speaker 3: they spend money because we realized, you know, who knows
Speaker 3: if we'll be able to have this opportunity to have
Speaker 3: the experience again, We've seen what can happen when everything
Speaker 3: shuts down, and it's created this sense of urgency for people.
Speaker 3: We don't want to delay the experiences we might have
Speaker 3: been willing to do to delay earlier, and so people
Speaker 3: are willing to spend enormous amounts of money to make
Speaker 3: sure they have that experience. And I think for a
Speaker 3: lot of in a lot of cases, you can track
Speaker 3: it back to the pandemic and how that changed the
Speaker 3: way we spend.
Speaker 2: The other thing is maybe a lot of people figuring
Speaker 2: with that we might have a nuclear war in the
Speaker 2: next six months. I mean, what what's the diff I
Speaker 2: don't think this is a scary trend, I think from
Speaker 2: from a responsibility point of view. But I'm a down yea, so.
Speaker 3: It is definitely scary. But I think the big picture
Speaker 3: here is that we need to step back and think, Okay,
Speaker 3: is this experience and the cost of it still worth
Speaker 3: it to us once we consider how much it will
Speaker 3: cost ultimately, especially if we're financing it with a credit card,
Speaker 3: for example, you have to consider all of that interest
Speaker 3: adds up and at some point we'll have to pay
Speaker 3: it back. So while we want to embrace the moment
Speaker 3: and have all of this fun, we also want to
Speaker 3: think about the long term impact.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, Kimberly, that was great. You gave us
Speaker 2: a really balanced point of view on this one. I'm
Speaker 2: a little imbalanced on this one. I'm in the idea
Speaker 2: if I kind of afford it, I'm not going it's
Speaker 2: as simple. It's as simple as that. Tell us folks,
Speaker 2: how can folks get in touch with you, or can
Speaker 2: get in contact with nerdwallet.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. You can find me in nerd
Speaker 3: wallet at nerdwallet dot com and also on Twitter at
Speaker 3: nerdwallet and at Kimberly Palmer.
Speaker 2: Kimberly, your great guest. I really appreciate it tonight. You're
Speaker 2: clear and to the point, and I love your approach.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Kimberly, Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: It was talking with you.
Speaker 2: All Right, we come back. We're going to talk about
Speaker 2: would you like to have a human boss or an
Speaker 2: artificial intelligent boss. Now, some of you might think that
Speaker 2: your boss only has artificial intelligence. That's not what we're
Speaker 2: talking about. We're talking about an AI manager as opposed
Speaker 2: to a human being. I like human beings, but will
Speaker 2: get it all explained Benny Traup. He's a solutions architect
Speaker 2: and co founder of Inspire AI Corp. Back on night
Speaker 2: Side right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World
Speaker 1: night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2: So here's a question. I'm sure we're all asking one another.
Speaker 2: Ken an AI manager motivate employees to change their behavior
Speaker 2: at work, reinforce positive habits, improve their reliability, and how
Speaker 2: would you feel working for an AI boss? Of course,
Speaker 2: the question is what is an AI boss to answer
Speaker 2: that question is Benny Traub. He's a solution's architect co
Speaker 2: founder of Inspire AI Corp. You know, I kind of
Speaker 2: like human beings as my boss. Even when I disagree
Speaker 2: with him, at least I can have a conversation. Welcome, Benny.
Speaker 2: How are you? I great to be with you, Dan,
Speaker 2: So tell me explain, you know, in terms that everybody
Speaker 2: will understand. When you talk about an AI boss, what
Speaker 2: are we talking about realistically?
Speaker 4: Well, I think that's the wrong term. I think a
Speaker 4: coach might be a better label, because a conversation.
Speaker 2: Boss coach is softer than the boss. But okay, so
Speaker 2: I'll go with a coach. I'm gonna I'm gonna start
Speaker 2: calling my boss coach. Go ahead.
Speaker 4: Well, you think of a boss as somebody who has
Speaker 4: authority to fire you, hire you, give you a raise,
Speaker 4: and so on.
Speaker 2: Most bosses do have on betty, go ahead.
Speaker 4: Right, right? And and the A equivalent that we would
Speaker 4: we referred to as the AI manager doesn't have that
Speaker 4: authority at least not yet. Maybe that's coming, and maybe
Speaker 4: that's something we ought to be concerned about. But currently
Speaker 4: today they're actually there to help the employees, specifically in
Speaker 4: areas that employees might you know, individually benefit from. Consider
Speaker 4: that the modern age of AI is likely going to
Speaker 4: displace a lot of people, and who's going to retain
Speaker 4: their jobs during this transition over the next you know,
Speaker 4: five or ten years or however long this transition lasts.
Speaker 4: The people that retain their jobs are going to be
Speaker 4: those that have adapted really well, that have great attitudes,
Speaker 4: people that want to be there, people that perform really well, right,
Speaker 4: and the people that don't want to be there probably
Speaker 4: won't won't be there. I mean, if there's an AI counterpartner, yeah.
Speaker 2: Betty, that doesn't change whether or not you're working for
Speaker 2: a human boss or an AI boss. Correct, I mean
Speaker 2: a bad attitude loss, I assume or your AI coach
Speaker 2: is going to figure that out at some point in time.
Speaker 4: And say that's it. That's it. And see, that's one
Speaker 4: of the benefits of an AI you know, manager, if
Speaker 4: you want to call them that is that they can
Speaker 4: see basically everything that's going on all of the time,
Speaker 4: whereas a human manager has limited range of focus. Right,
Speaker 4: they can only see one person at any given time.
Speaker 4: They can stand over any you know, one person at
Speaker 4: any one time, but nobody let's face it, nobody wants
Speaker 4: to be micromanaged. And so what these AI managers can
Speaker 4: do is they can observe all the behavior, and they're
Speaker 4: getting so good at having conversations coaching conversations that they
Speaker 4: can intervene in real time if there's a real time
Speaker 4: incident type situation where an employee can improve their performance.
Speaker 4: And even more than that, they can intervene when a
Speaker 4: habit is emerging that a human manager might not even spot.
Speaker 2: Okay, so just so we understand that. And again, what
Speaker 2: happens is whenever I talk to folks like you who
Speaker 2: are more techle technically astute than I am. Obviously, if
Speaker 2: you work hypothetically, you know in a I don't know,
Speaker 2: you know, a factory or or or a doctor's office. Uh,
Speaker 2: and there's a boss, the capital, whatever you want to
Speaker 2: call them. Uh, you know, they have the power, they
Speaker 2: have the authority, and they get to know their employees,
Speaker 2: get to know their work habits, who stays late, who doesn't,
Speaker 2: who who's given one hundred percent, who's taken long coffee
Speaker 2: breaks all of that stuff, who's producing the reports that
Speaker 2: are clear and legible, et cetera. So that's what that's
Speaker 2: what you know a human manager does. So this isn't
Speaker 2: when you say, AI manager, this is some sort of
Speaker 2: an algorithm. Correct, This is not a person. This is
Speaker 2: not somebody who's looking over a field of you know,
Speaker 2: twenty performers in an office. This is something that is programmed.
Speaker 2: I assume to be a quote unquote AI coach. Right
Speaker 2: or wrong?
Speaker 4: Well, I think you're you're right on the money there.
Speaker 2: See, I want to make sure I understand the too.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, Benny.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean there's more to it than that. But
Speaker 4: under the hood, you're right. It's an algorithm, and it'll
Speaker 4: probably always be an algorithm. And you know, there's a
Speaker 4: lot of debate over whether AI will obtain consciousness and
Speaker 4: all that. But you know, for the sake of our
Speaker 4: conversation today, just imagine you show up for work late
Speaker 4: one day, okay, and you're brand new on the job.
Speaker 4: Say it's your second day on the job. You know,
Speaker 4: a human manager would take you aside and say, hey, listen,
Speaker 4: it's your second day from the job. I got to
Speaker 4: tell you, it's really important for all of our people
Speaker 4: to show up on time. Okay, So consider that little Obo,
Speaker 4: the human manager observed the person this newbie performing poorly,
Speaker 4: the human manager took him aside, treated him fairly, just
Speaker 4: had a normal conversation with them, empathetic. You know, hopefully
Speaker 4: you didn't, you know, there was nothing wrong, you know,
Speaker 4: did something happen on the way here? Is that why
Speaker 4: you're late? But he would make the point, Yeah, right,
Speaker 4: this is our culture and the AI manager you can
Speaker 4: do that exact same thing. You can observe that behavior
Speaker 4: in real time. They can take the employee aside, have
Speaker 4: a private conversation with them, and just explain the rules
Speaker 4: of the road, you know, for the new employee and
Speaker 4: then but you wouldn't ever want to do that for
Speaker 4: a veteran employee, right, because you don't want to micro
Speaker 4: manage people. You don't want to take away their autonomy
Speaker 4: and that type of thing. So however, you know, so
Speaker 4: you know, somebody like you or me, say you've been
Speaker 4: on the job for five or ten years, you would
Speaker 4: never micro manage them. And you know, tell them that
Speaker 4: it's the proper thing to do is to show up
Speaker 4: on time. Obviously, that's the proper thing. That's the proper
Speaker 4: thing to do. And they know very well so that.
Speaker 2: That individual just so I understand that that individual would
Speaker 2: at some point, maybe later that morning, the morning that
Speaker 2: they showed up late, get an email or a mess
Speaker 2: or a text message from the artificial intelligent coach. Hey,
Speaker 2: notice you can go late today.
Speaker 4: You know, well, there'd be a conversation. It wouldn't be.
Speaker 2: An email, it would be a conversation. What do you
Speaker 2: mean a conversation, Well, yes, I have a conversation. I
Speaker 2: think of you and me talking.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well it's just like that.
Speaker 2: I don't mean it's like that.
Speaker 4: Well have you I'm not sure if you've had the
Speaker 4: experience of having deep conversations with any of the other
Speaker 4: chat busts that are out there.
Speaker 2: Like chat conversation with my wife Betty.
Speaker 4: Come on, well we'll get ready, because this is people
Speaker 4: are actually having really really deep conversations with these AI
Speaker 4: chat bots. And our chat bot is actually will speak
Speaker 4: to you in voice. You can talk to him and
Speaker 4: voice on your headset that he will.
Speaker 2: Talk back, and they'll say, hey, Benny, you notice second
Speaker 2: day and a job. You're a little late today. What's
Speaker 2: up with that?
Speaker 4: And then well more with more empathy.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, five everything, Okay, we noticed that you're a
Speaker 2: few late this morning.
Speaker 4: You treat people as human beings, right, yeah, you.
Speaker 2: Guys programming just so I understand that, Benya, someone programs it,
Speaker 2: you know, and they say, well, you know, first day,
Speaker 2: second day, third day, fifth day. Maybe if it's the
Speaker 2: third time in the first two weeks, it becomes a
Speaker 2: little less empathetic. What you're saying is you can you
Speaker 2: can program the AI so that they can they can
Speaker 2: be a little more stern, a little more serious, depending
Speaker 2: upon well.
Speaker 4: Really, it's quite it's quite common sense based. Like the
Speaker 4: very first time there's a confrontation on a particular topic,
Speaker 4: it's quite gentle. It's it's more like, you know, is
Speaker 4: everything okay with you? You know, I just want to
Speaker 4: let you know I saw that we do care about this,
Speaker 4: and that's the converse conversation. The second conversation might take
Speaker 4: a slightly different tone, like you know, we see this,
Speaker 4: we care about it, and you know, we won't tolerate it.
Speaker 4: And the third conversation goes another step further.
Speaker 2: You see it.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, no, you see it, we care about it,
Speaker 4: we won't tolerate it, and you know, again, if we
Speaker 4: can't make changes here, there could be long term contact.
Speaker 2: You having fun with you a little bit here for
Speaker 2: for a second. Trust me, I'm having fun and I
Speaker 2: want the audience to play along with us. So here's
Speaker 2: my question. What percentage of companies? And I don't know
Speaker 2: if you can put a figure on this. At this
Speaker 2: point have gotten rid of the human bosses, and now I'm.
Speaker 4: Not one of them.
Speaker 2: Not one of them.
Speaker 4: Okay, you know, at most, at most they coexist, okay,
Speaker 4: at most, and the current AI managers play a very
Speaker 4: small role. In fact, that last sequence I was outlining
Speaker 4: to you, where there's this escalating conversations. Every time there's
Speaker 4: a repeating incident, it comes to point at some point
Speaker 4: where the AI doesn't even confront the user anymore of
Speaker 4: the employee. He just sends an email to the boss,
Speaker 4: the human boss, and says, hey, I've had three conversations.
Speaker 4: Here's the transcripts of the conversations. Here's the dates I
Speaker 4: had the conversations. I think it's it's probably best you
Speaker 4: take it from here.
Speaker 2: So what percentage of companies? Again, just I don't expect
Speaker 2: to give me a precise figure, but what percentage of
Speaker 2: companies do you think already using this algorithm in conjunction
Speaker 2: with their human bosses?
Speaker 4: Well, I's far less than Okay.
Speaker 2: When when do you think it will hit, you know,
Speaker 2: a more recognizable number. That's my last question we talk.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think it'll hit recognizable numbers until companies
Speaker 4: are literally forced to adopt the technology. And they won't
Speaker 4: be forced to adopt the technology until their competitors start
Speaker 4: being able to slash their costs because their productivity is
Speaker 4: just so much better. And I think there's going to
Speaker 4: come a tipping point here where companies are going to
Speaker 4: be forced to adopt AI in every single form AI
Speaker 4: Manager and task automation and every other which way you
Speaker 4: might imagine robotics. At some point, we're all going to
Speaker 4: have to do it.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you something. I get so tired about
Speaker 2: dealing with companies where I can't speak with a human being,
Speaker 2: and whether or not it's a health insurance company. I
Speaker 2: got to tell you, I'm so happy I'm on the
Speaker 2: wrong side of fifty Benny Trout, Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: How can folks get in touch with you if they
Speaker 2: want more information? What's your go to?
Speaker 4: Our website?
Speaker 2: Inspira AI inspired is spelled I N S P I
Speaker 2: R A dot AI. Betty, Thank you very much. I
Speaker 2: enjoyed the conversation. I hope you didn't feel it was
Speaker 2: too bad. Much back and forth, and I want to
Speaker 2: always have fun. It's thanks Betty talking to you. When
Speaker 2: we get back here at Nightside, we're gonna talk about
Speaker 2: a culinary historian, uh, author of Endangered Eating America's Vanishing Foods.
Speaker 2: This will be interesting because I don't want any food
Speaker 2: to vanish, but I guess some are disappearing before our
Speaker 2: own eyes. We're gonna talk here on Nightside with Sarah
Speaker 2: Loman on the other side of the news break at
Speaker 2: the bottom and the hour. My name is Dan Ray.
Speaker 2: This is w b Z in Boston ten thirty and
Speaker 2: the Am Dollar. If you can't get us on the radio,
Speaker 2: you can always check us out. Just go to WBC
Speaker 2: News Radio on the iHeartRadio app. We'll be back right after.
Speaker 1: This Night Side with Dan Ray. I'm Boston's news Radio.
Speaker 2: Well, they said we're talking to sort of different guests tonight,
Speaker 2: and we're now going to talk with a culinary historian.
Speaker 2: I didn't even know there were culinary historians in existence,
Speaker 2: but we have Sarah Loman with that. She's the author
Speaker 2: of a book called Endangered Eating America's vanishing foods. Sarah Loman,
Speaker 2: Welcome to Night Side.
Speaker 5: Hi Dan, thank you.
Speaker 2: We've all heard about endangered species, endangered animals. I didn't
Speaker 2: realize there were in some endangered foods, and one of them,
Speaker 2: as I understand that God forbid, are apples.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yes, I mean that's saying thought is what an
Speaker 5: inspirement to write this book? Should we talk about saving
Speaker 5: pandas but not pasta? But it's true both they foods
Speaker 5: and even plants like apples are going extinct. It's believe
Speaker 5: we've lost at least seventy five percent of apple varieties.
Speaker 5: And currently there are actually teams that people out there
Speaker 5: who will hike through the woods, look at old land
Speaker 5: maps and try to rediscover long lost orchards to be
Speaker 5: able to save some of these varieties that have disappeared
Speaker 5: from the market.
Speaker 2: So you're telling me that there are apple orchards. The
Speaker 2: picture you've paint is there are apple orchards in the
Speaker 2: woods which have gone oh you years.
Speaker 5: Yes, you will never especially in the spring when the
Speaker 5: trees are blooming. You'll never look at an apple tree
Speaker 5: the same way. Again, it certainly changed for me. I
Speaker 5: mean sometimes an apple tree pops up just because someone
Speaker 5: threw an apple core out their window and they're grow kippen.
Speaker 5: That's the name for an apple tree that grows from
Speaker 5: a seed. But sometimes you know, you're looking through the
Speaker 5: woods and you say, huh, they're actually about five trees here,
Speaker 5: but the whole forest has grown up around it. That's
Speaker 5: actually exactly how some historical apples have been rediscovered. One
Speaker 5: recently was found in Upstake, New York. It's called the Povishome,
Speaker 5: and it happened essentially because someone a cider maker who
Speaker 5: is looking for this apple, created a whtu poster. This
Speaker 5: is actually a pretty common technique for hunting down lost
Speaker 5: apple varieties. You use a description and a picture from
Speaker 5: an early nineteenth century source. They published an edible New
Speaker 5: Jersey magazine. Someone picked up the magazine and saw it
Speaker 5: and realized that they had that apple growing on their property.
Speaker 5: When they did a little digging, they realized that the
Speaker 5: people who used to own the property, originally own the
Speaker 5: property were from Newark, where this apple was from. And
Speaker 5: they were able to sort of compare DNA and the
Speaker 5: appearance and the appearance of the tree, and also the
Speaker 5: fact that there were four or five of these trees
Speaker 5: growing in a specific pattern out in the woods. So
Speaker 5: you can use all of this evidence to rEFInd these
Speaker 5: lost apples.
Speaker 2: Just assure me, please, Sarah, that Macintosh apples my favorite apple,
Speaker 2: the greatest apple is not Conway.
Speaker 5: Oh it's doing just fine right now. And you know,
Speaker 5: even gold red Delicious is an apple from the nineteenth century.
Speaker 5: It's been attributed to one of Johnny appleseeds apple actually,
Speaker 5: but there are literally thousands. I mean, when we think
Speaker 5: about how many apples we see in the grocery store,
Speaker 5: even in a good orchard where you're probably getting those macintoshes,
Speaker 5: you know, maybe we see half a dozen varieties, maybe
Speaker 5: two dozen at the most.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you got gala apples and the crisp apples
Speaker 2: and green and what are they the green ones are called?
Speaker 2: What are they called? My daughter loves those.
Speaker 5: Yellow delicious different speaking apples.
Speaker 2: What is the one that's it's just green, it's just
Speaker 2: a green, It's it's always green. I don't know whatever,
Speaker 2: but I'm in. I mean, I am a died in
Speaker 2: the wool Macintosh guys. A matter of fact, every time
Speaker 2: this time of view and I walk in a grocery store,
Speaker 2: no matter when any from August fifteenth on I'm looking
Speaker 2: around the vegetable and the fruit area. Where are there
Speaker 2: are there? Are there any macintosh? And then when I
Speaker 2: finally see yeah, absolutely, So what else? What else is
Speaker 2: going away or has gone away? What did people used
Speaker 2: to eat that no longer exists?
Speaker 5: Well, hopefully the one thing dealing in the book. We're
Speaker 5: not talking about things that have totally disappeared, although that
Speaker 5: can happen with things like apples. Are also right about
Speaker 5: date palms too. There are some date varieties that the
Speaker 5: date industry was brought to the Potella Valley in California
Speaker 5: about a century ago, and date trees only have a
Speaker 5: pretty small amount of time where you can basically clone them,
Speaker 5: where you can take a cutting from them and grow
Speaker 5: new trees. So some of those varieties have been lost.
Speaker 5: But a lot of the food elements that I talk
Speaker 5: about in the book are part of indigenous cultures. And
Speaker 5: part of the way that America has tried to colonize
Speaker 5: nagenous cultures is by grooving them from land, which then
Speaker 5: ulster removes them from native food sources, and even by
Speaker 5: replacing some of those foods by giving government supplies too.
Speaker 5: So I also focused on places like wild rice, which
Speaker 5: comes from the Great Lakes region. I talked about file
Speaker 5: powder from the Gulf Coast of Mexico, which is a
Speaker 5: part of a lot of different cultural groups down there too.
Speaker 5: I talked about the Navajo truro sheep, which is I mean,
Speaker 5: it's the sheep variety of the Navajo people. The meat
Speaker 5: taste like home and if you're familiar with Navajo weavings,
Speaker 5: those weavings come from the rule of these animals.
Speaker 2: I heard that that Navajo churro, it's beef, but it
Speaker 2: tastes like chicken. That's what everybody says to me. Oh,
Speaker 2: try this food. This tastes like chicken.
Speaker 5: Tastes like chicken.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wait is that And now you said that they
Speaker 2: used to harvest wild rice, yeah, the Upper Midwest.
Speaker 5: I'm still new.
Speaker 2: It's just I don't think that is being in the
Speaker 2: Upper Midwest. They think of rice as being, you know,
Speaker 2: somewhere in Asia or maybe Central America. Wow, I never.
Speaker 5: Realized that, Well, rice is from Asia, but wild rice
Speaker 5: is actually a distinct grain from rice. It's more it's
Speaker 5: closest relative as corn. So knowing that, I mean, makes
Speaker 5: more sense that it's an indigenous grain to North America,
Speaker 5: and there's several different varieties. You can actually find it
Speaker 5: all over basically east of the Mississippi. But the northern
Speaker 5: wild rice, which is the variety that's traditionally harvested that
Speaker 5: you find throughout the Great Lakes region, Upper Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota,
Speaker 5: and even into the Dakotas a little bit, and it's
Speaker 5: the big people that harvest it.
Speaker 2: I got one question for your book. Yes, this long
Speaker 2: horned cattle are now categorized as critical. That's hook em
Speaker 2: horns right University exactly, hookham horns. They're going to be extinct.
Speaker 5: It's an iconic animal, but it doesn't really have a
Speaker 5: place in the way our food system is today. It
Speaker 5: is considered one of our oldest livestock breeds. But those wide, wide,
Speaker 5: wide horns, they don't get into railway cars. So at
Speaker 5: the turn of the nineteenth century, when we stopped slaughtering
Speaker 5: animals locally and they were instead rounded up and put
Speaker 5: on trains and taken into Chicago, the longhorn didn't into
Speaker 5: that system. So they're really really hearty, durable, beautiful animals,
Speaker 5: but we don't eat them anymore. So that is what
Speaker 5: puts them at risk because the only people that will
Speaker 5: you care for them are someone who's just interested in
Speaker 5: having an old breed around.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: Boy, that's it. That is really interesting. When does your
Speaker 2: book already out or is it coming out?
Speaker 5: It is No, it's already out. It's in hardcover right
Speaker 5: now and audiobook and ebook and you can get it
Speaker 5: in paper book on November fifth.
Speaker 2: Endangered Eating America is Vanishing Foods by Sarah Loman. Fascinating.
Speaker 2: I never thought of this. You get it on Amazon,
Speaker 2: Real Easy and other bookstores. I've really enjoyed the conversation.
Speaker 2: I learned a lot from this ten minute conversation, none
Speaker 2: of which makes me happy, but we should be aware
Speaker 2: of this. The one thing that makes me happy is
Speaker 2: the Macintosh. Apple is going to be around for.
Speaker 5: A while, right, And hey, there's a lot of help
Speaker 5: in the book too. You know, it's not about things
Speaker 5: that are disappearing, it's about the people who are saving them.
Speaker 2: Great, great Sarah. I really enjoyed the conversation, and this
Speaker 2: was fun for me, and it was also very instructive.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Thanks so much.
Speaker 3: Stand by all right, we get back.
Speaker 2: We're going to finish up with Christine Rosen She's a
Speaker 2: senior fellow at the AEI, the American Enterprise Institute. She's
Speaker 2: written a book called Extinction of Experience Being Human in
Speaker 2: a Disembodied World. I can identify with that and hope
Speaker 2: you can as well. Be talking with Christine Rosen right
Speaker 2: after this break on Nightside.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan Way live from the Window World
Speaker 1: night Side Studios. I'm WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2: My guest is Christine Rosen. She's a senior fellow at
Speaker 2: the American Enterprise Institute, a great think tank. Wrote a book,
Speaker 2: the Extinction of Experience Being Human in the Disembodied World.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you, Christine, I feel like I could
Speaker 2: have written the book myself. I mean, everything now is virtual.
Speaker 2: And earlier this hour we talked with instead of having
Speaker 2: a human boss, we're all gonna have AI boss who
Speaker 2: are going to send us these little notes that you
Speaker 2: relate for work today. That's not a good thing. Please
Speaker 2: get your act together. We're going down a bad direction here, Christine,
Speaker 2: at least from my perspective. What say you, Christine?
Speaker 5: Well, I couldn't agree more obviously.
Speaker 6: And I think one of the great challenges going forward
Speaker 6: is that we've been told and we've experienced ourselves using
Speaker 6: a lot of these technologies. Their ease, their convenience, their efficiency,
Speaker 6: and what we forget is what we lose when we
Speaker 6: replace our human interactions looking each other in the eye,
Speaker 6: talking to each other face to face with communicating with
Speaker 6: each other on our phones and on our screens. It's
Speaker 6: just not the same, and the quality of those interactions
Speaker 6: isn't It isn't as deep and isn't as rich.
Speaker 2: You know what, I really don't like my kids. They're adults,
Speaker 2: they're in the thirties, but they want text messages. So
Speaker 2: they send me a text message if they can write
Speaker 2: in about five seconds. You know, dad, what do we
Speaker 2: doing this weekend? We have some plans. I'd like to
Speaker 2: figure out what your schedule is, so I then stumble
Speaker 2: through you know, okay, what do you want to ask
Speaker 2: me about? The sentence and the the sentence in a
Speaker 2: preposition inappropriately, Well, the questions that we have and they
Speaker 2: go on for like fifteen you know what. It takes
Speaker 2: me ten minutes to read it, and then I have
Speaker 2: to answer it and then back and forth. Pick up
Speaker 2: the phone, call me and tell me what you want
Speaker 2: to do this weekend. I'll let you know if it
Speaker 2: can work, they don't want to do that. What's going on?
Speaker 2: I mean, well, well it's my kids. I think it's
Speaker 2: all the thirty somethings just they want text messages.
Speaker 6: Well I have I have eighteen year old, so I
Speaker 6: can sympathize. I think if you're raised in an environment
Speaker 6: where it's very easy to control your interactions with others
Speaker 6: by using technology as a mediator, then you start to
Speaker 6: become uncomfortable having to listen to someone on the phone,
Speaker 6: having to have the patience really to wait for a
Speaker 6: return phone call, for example. But what they miss again,
Speaker 6: tone of voice, a chuckle or a laugh, or maybe
Speaker 6: someone sounds tense. They miss an opportunity to connect at
Speaker 6: a human level by using this more efficient technology. Sometimes
Speaker 6: it's great, but when it becomes the overwhelming replacement for
Speaker 6: our interactions, I think we suffer.
Speaker 2: See I don't even really, I don't even accept the
Speaker 2: fact that it's more efficient. The point I was trying
Speaker 2: to make before is that I can accomplish in a
Speaker 2: thirty second phone call verbally what might take me ten
Speaker 2: minutes to interact with messaging back and forth. Plus you
Speaker 2: lose your train of thought because someone else messages you.
Speaker 2: It just to me is horrific. I mean, I can
Speaker 2: remember I've been in the media for a long time.
Speaker 2: We used to do stories about how people lived in neighborhoods,
Speaker 2: and even going back to like the Kiddy Genevieve story
Speaker 2: in New York in nineteen sixty. I wasn't working there.
Speaker 2: I was in high school. But the idea about the
Speaker 2: neighbors never called police. All they did was without the
Speaker 2: window and watch their name of being murdered. And you
Speaker 2: live in a city block, you have no idea, or
Speaker 2: even you live in a street, you have no idea
Speaker 2: who lives next door? Do you anymore?
Speaker 6: Look, I mean most people can name ten celebrities and
Speaker 6: they can't name a single neighbor. And that's worrisome, right,
Speaker 6: that actually is. You know, it's much easier or easier
Speaker 6: to send a text message across the world than it
Speaker 6: is to tie your own shoe physically, So we do it.
Speaker 4: It's easier.
Speaker 6: But what do we give up in the skills we
Speaker 6: are are we losing in living that way?
Speaker 2: I know they know more about Taylor Swift and Travis
Speaker 2: Kelcey in the intimacy or lack thereof, and their relationship
Speaker 2: and their travel plans that they do about the woman
Speaker 2: who lives across the street who's a widow and is
Speaker 2: obviously struggling a little bit, you know, getting her trash
Speaker 2: cans out every Wednesday morning or whatever. I just I
Speaker 2: think we're losing it. This is particularly in the big cities.
Speaker 2: I don't think that this has infected small town America
Speaker 2: as much. I don't know if you see that distinction
Speaker 2: or not.
Speaker 6: But well, I think the challenge there is that when
Speaker 6: people do get together, there's a sense in which they're
Speaker 6: face to face interactions then have a second life on line.
Speaker 6: So if you look at you know, like a local
Speaker 6: school board election, for example, can become quite vicious and
Speaker 6: terrible when people have battles about it on a Facebook
Speaker 6: group rather than just sitting down together and hashing out
Speaker 6: the problems as adults looking at each other in the eye.
Speaker 6: Because we have this this willingness to say and do
Speaker 6: things when we are behind our screens that we would
Speaker 6: never do when we were face to face with others.
Speaker 2: You know, now, again, I might be very biased, he
Speaker 2: because for thirty one years I was an on air
Speaker 2: television reporter with the CBS station here in Boston, and
Speaker 2: from seventeen I've been doing the talk show and we
Speaker 2: call the talk show America's North, America's back Porch. And
Speaker 2: I fashioned the show to like where I grew up,
Speaker 2: and that people would be sitting on the back porch
Speaker 2: summertime or maybe even the winter time if they were
Speaker 2: able to screen it in, you know, have some weather,
Speaker 2: and you know, someone comes along, makes a comment, sits
Speaker 2: there for a while, someone else comes on. They talk
Speaker 2: about this, They talk about that it was a sense
Speaker 2: of commune, the sense of knowing where you were living,
Speaker 2: who you were living near. And it's and this is
Speaker 2: just it's going away and we're losing it. We're losing
Speaker 2: that that fabric of America that really does hold a
Speaker 2: neighborhood together fast that I can't wait to read your book.
Speaker 2: It's coming out in September. So it's not available now.
Speaker 6: Right, you can, well, you can pre order it on Amazon.
Speaker 6: It comes out on September tenth. Yeah, so it is.
Speaker 6: It will be available very soon. And it does look
Speaker 6: at at all of these issues, and I think you're
Speaker 6: absolutely right. Ultimately, my real concern is that we are
Speaker 6: able to talk to each other, debate each other, and
Speaker 6: really form communities again in a way that will make
Speaker 6: us a happier, healthier society.
Speaker 2: Well that's another problem. Now you can't even have a
Speaker 2: disagreement with someone who might uh you know, who might
Speaker 2: be on the other side of the presidential golf here.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: Oh, you're a bad person because you support him or her.
Speaker 2: It's just crazy. Christine rose has Senior fellow at the
Speaker 2: American Enterprise Institute, a great organization and a great thing.
Speaker 2: Thank The book comes out in September, The Extinction of
Speaker 2: Experience Being Human in a Disembodied World. It's September tenth.
Speaker 2: Don't worry, folks. They'll either be a presidential debate or
Speaker 2: someone will be sentenced from court to prison virtually every
Speaker 2: date in September, So just remember September tenth for Christine Rosen.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Christine. I really enjoyed it, and I'm a
Speaker 2: big fan of the AEI I want you to know that.
Speaker 4: Okay, thank you so much for having me on. You're welcome.
Speaker 2: When we come back, we're going to talk about something
Speaker 2: that most of you know a little bit about, but
Speaker 2: we're going to learn more about it. It's called the
Speaker 2: MCAST graduation requirement. Here in Massachusetts. It is actually going
Speaker 2: to be on the ballot this September as Question two,
Speaker 2: and we're going to have Mary Tamer, former Boston School
Speaker 2: Committee member and also the executive director of Democrats for
Speaker 2: Education Reform in Massachusetts. They are opposed to getting rid
Speaker 2: of the MCST graduation requirement. We'll explain it all, and
Speaker 2: later on sometime either this month or early next month,
Speaker 2: we will have the teachers' union representatives on it who
Speaker 2: want to get rid of it. We'll explain everything, coming
Speaker 2: back right after the nine o'clock news here in a
Speaker 2: Monday night edition at nightside