Episode #1048: Rejected
First Broadcast: 3/23/26
Repeated: 5/25/26
Shortly after the United States began bombing Iran on February 28, 2026, in an effort to accomplish... who knows what... Iran announced it was closing off the Strait of Hormuz to all traffic and it would fire on any ship trying to pass through there, effectively reducing oil shipments through that strait to near zero. Predictably (though, maybe not so predictable to the geniuses in the White House), this has caused oil prices to soar, which will undoubtably lead to other price increases and goods shortages in little time, so there is a huge incentive for someone--anyone!--to prevent those increases and shortages from happening by re-opening the strait. Since President Trump caused this situation by attacking Iran in the first place, you might wonder: what's his solution to fix this or get around it? It seems he was hoping other countries might step in and do the job for him, as detailed in this message on social media from March 14:
Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint, will send Ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait wiil no longer be a threat by a Nation that has been totally decapitated. [sic]
As you might have guessed, the rest of the world didn't exactly fall over themselves to meet this demand, which pissed off Trump to the point where he sent off this missive on March 17:
Because of the fact that we have had such Military Success, we no longer "need," or desire, the NATO Countries' assistance--WE NEVER DID! Likewise, Japan, Australia, or South Korea. In fact, speaking as President of the United States of America, by far the Most Powerful Country Anywhere in the World, WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE! [sic]
That'll show 'em! Perhaps they were all repelled by how Trump has been so belligerent towards other nations in various ways, but perhaps they also didn't want any of their tankers with several hundred million dollars' worth of oil destroyed by a $35,000 Iranian drone, especially since the U.S. only has so many $4 million Patriot missiles to intercept the hundreds of drones Iran is using in its attacks. In any event, Trump seemed particularly perturbed about the United Kingdom's reluctance, lashing out at their Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, thusly:
"I was very surprised with the United Kingdom because the United Kingdom, two weeks ago, I said, 'Why don't you send some ships over?' And he really didn't want to do it," Trump told reporters.I'm sure France was thrilled with Trump calling the U.K. the United States' "oldest ally," and I'm sure everyone was elated to know that Trump apparently has no idea about how democracies are supposed to work. What does he think, you just give everyone a pair of Florsheim shoes and then they do whatever you tell them? I don't suppose there's a happy ending at the end of this movie? On second thought, maybe I don't want to know...
Calling the UK his country's "oldest ally," Trump said that the US has spent "a lot of money" on NATO and protecting Ukraine against Russia. "I think it's terrible," Trump said, going on to say he was "not happy with the UK."
The president said that Starmer had told him yesterday he was meeting with his team to make a decision about joining an effort to help secure the Strait of Hormuz.
"I said, 'You don't need to meet up with the team. You're the prime minister. You can make your own—why do you have to meet with your team to find out whether or not you're going to send some minesweepers to us or to send some boats?' I said, 'You don't have to meet with your team.'"
Episode #1049: It's Weirder
First Broadcast: 3/30/26
Are you wondering when this stupid war with Iran will be over? Perhaps we'd all like to know how President Trump thinks this war will end, especially since he insists that Iran sent him a "present" of some kind, and ... well, maybe it'll make more sense if I let him explain it:
This is regime change, right? They're going to make a deal. They did something yesterday that was amazing, actually. They gave us a present. And the present arrived today. It was a very big present, worth a tremendous amount of money. And I'm not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize, And they gave it to us, and they said they were going to give it. So that meant one thing to me. We're dealing with the right people. ... It was oil and gas related. And it was a very nice thing they did. But what it showed me is that we're dealing with the right people. Because, you know, you don't know, because the leadership was killed. All gone. But we're dealing with a group of people that I think turned out. And the present--the gift they made to us was very significant. And they said they were going to do it, and it happened. And they're the only ones that could have done it.
Maybe I'm wrong about it making more sense. The repetitive nature of these remarks reminded me of a sketch on Conan O'Brien's late night show back in the day, and it also raised a lot more questions than it answered, such as:
Episode #1050: Oleaginous Weasels
First Broadcast: 4/6/26
Did you attend any of the "No Kings" protests on March 28, 2026? Were you one of the estimated 100,000+ people in New York City, or one of the estimated 8,000,000+ people nationwide who made up the largest single-day protest in U.S. history, surpassing the previous record holder, which was the "No Kings" protest on October 18, 2025? Did you know this means that 5 out of the 6 largest protests in U.S. history have occured during Donald Trump's presidency, and 4 of them happened within the last 12 months? Are you pleased that a federal judge ruled as unconstitutional the executive order that Trump issued to end federal funding for PBS and NPR? Are you also pleased that a different federal judge ruled that Trump didn't have the right to demolish the East Wing of the White House and start building a ballroom on the site without permission from Congress, saying "unless and until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorization, construction has to stop!" Are you annoyed that Trump's design for his ballroom is so gigantic that it would wreck the symmetry of the driveways in front of the White House? Are you aggravated that one of the few Republicans who has any ability to stand up to Trump is Curtis Sliwa? Are you astonished at how the illegal war that Trump started with Iran might end with Iran essentially controlling a virtual toll booth for the Strait of Hormuz, something that didn't exist before the war, which would mean Iran would become more successful at extracting money from other nations than Trump was ever able to do with his illegal tariffs? Man, I'm exhausted asking all these questions! Maybe we'll get to a point where the answers will less exhausting...
Episode #1051: Turducken
First Broadcast: 4/20/26
Is $40 a worthwhile price for a half rotisserie chicken with roasted potatoes at a sit-down restaurant? Is it really any better than a half rotisserie chicken with two sides from a take-out restaurant for $18.95? Are either of those a better deal than a half rotisserie chicken from a supermarket for $7.49, or a whole rotisserie chicken for $8.99, or a whole chicken you can cook for yourself for $2.99 a pound? How upsetting is it that food inflation is outpacing general inflation? Do you miss Mama's Food Shop as much as I do? When's the last time you had an RC Cola? How about a Moxie? Or a Manhattan Special? Will we still be at war with Iran, or the Pope, or Cuba when this episode is done? Only time will tell!
Episode #1052: I'm A.I. and I'm Here to Say...
First Broadcast: 4/27/26
It wasn't that long ago--barely seven months ago!--when we here at Free New York bemoaned the concept of A.I.-generated podcasts clogging up the Internet. Now, the music streaming service "Deezer" reports that 44% of all the material uploaded to its site is A.I.-generated music, which "amounts to more than 2 Million AI-generated tracks uploaded per month," or over 24 million A.I.-generated tracks per year. That's bad enough, but in 2025 the Spotify service reported receiving over 75 million A.I.-generated "spammy" tracks in 12 months, which would mean 3 spam tracks submitted for every 4 genuine tracks in their catalog, and the fraud doesn't stop there, with one company estimating as much as "5% to 10% of all streams across the industry" being fraudulent. It feels like a bizarre echo of Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer's song, "Army of Robots" ("I'm going to employ an army of robots / To endlessly play / My stuff on Spotify"), only now the robots are generating the songs as well as streaming them! Creating music as a form of artistic expression and listening to music as a form of recreation all seem to be beside the point! As we contemplated the colossal waste of time and energy this sad state of affairs represents, we also touched on an item that seems like an attempt to make the surveillance state more family-friendly, namely the "Connection Keeper" from Prego (the pasta sauce company), a device intended to be placed on your dinner table where it can record your family's conversations and upload them to the cloud, where they'll be preserved for eternity (or however long the cloud holds out). As you might have guessed, neither of us at Free New York thought this idea was very... appetizing (okay, I'll stop), no matter how good the intentions of Prego's partner in this, Story Corps, might have been. Does every part of our day really need to be recorded? Does every part of our existence need to be preserved in amber? Can't we have some room to be people without having to worry if every part of our existence will come back to haunt us? Pardon me if I cut this short--all this talking about pasta has made me hungry. Just remember to keep the glue out of your pizza!
Episode #1053: The Troy McClure School of Law
First Broadcast: 5/4/26
The 2026 White House Correspondents' Dinner might have been many things, but, in the end, it certainly wasn't dull. I'm obviously referring to the shooting that happened there, which seems to have been yet another assassination attempt against President Donald Trump. In a sane world, one might think an incident like this would cause people to think about gun control, or mental health, or what may have motivated someone to commit an act like this in the first place. Unfirtunately, we seem to live a world that's less than sane these days, so Trump and his cult immediately spun this event as a reason to build his ballroom stat, which seems like a total non sequitor to me. After all, when President Lincoln was assassinated, did people demand the government to build the President his own private theater? When President Kennedy was killed, did people say there should be roads that only the President can use? Likewise, why should this shooting be an excuse to build Trump's monstrosity of a ballroom? For one thing, despite the name, this wasn't an event organized by the White House, so there was no reason to hold it at the White House in the first place. And, second: If the idea is to build a ballroom so that the President never again has to leave the White House to attend an event, then what does that say about how safe the President feels within his own country? And, if he feels that unsafe, how should the rest of us feel? And wouldn't that also indicate that he never intends to leave the White House, if he's essentially building a fortified bunker all for himself? By the way: Why were so many people in line to succeed the President all at the same dinner? Do we all need to watch Andor again? Enjoy your Fourth!
Episode #1054: Like You Scrub the Ducks
First Broadcast: 5/18/26
Helpful hint: If you ever find yourself giving a commencement address to college graduates in the year 2026, maybe don't be surprised when they boo the technology that's trying to put them all out of work and cheer the idea of world where that technology doesn't exist. That's what happened when Gloria Caulfield, the "vice president of strategic alliances at Tavistock Group," gave a commencement address at the University of Central Florida on May 8 of this year, and she seemed completely puzzled when she told the students that "The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution," and they booed her in return. She followed up by telling them, "Only five years ago, A.I. was not a factor in our lives," a fact which they loudly cheered, their reaction aaprently equally surprising to her. All of this made me wonder: Why was someone so seemingly out of touch with these students even asked to speak to them in the first place? Perhaps the answer lies with her company, Tavistock Group, which, according to Google, is built around a "core philosophy" of "We strive for excellence," which sounds about as generic as you can get for a philosophy these days. Wikipedia has a slightly more concrete description of the company:
Tavistock Group is a Bahamas-based private investment organization founded in 1975. It has offices in 13 countries; Bahamas, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Mexico, the United States, Jamaica, Argentina, Poland, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, and Sri Lanka.
"Bahamas-based," you say? Now, why would an international company base itself in the Bahamas? Well, Wikipedia has a clue to that too:
The economy has a very competitive tax regime (classified by some as a tax haven). The government derives its revenue from import tariffs, VAT, licence fees, property and stamp taxes, but there is no income tax, corporate tax, capital gains tax, or wealth tax. [Emphasis added]
So, the speaker works for a company that's actively trying to avoid paying taxes to the country where she's speaking, and endorsing technology that aims to make an entire generation of people obsolete and unemployed. Wonderful role model so far. But why was she speaking at the University of Central Florida in the first place? Wikipedia, can you help us a third time? Tell us more about the planned community of Lake Nona, Florida, which gets a special shout-out on Tavistock Group's Wikipedia page:
The centerpiece of the community is Lake Nona Medical City--which includes the University of Central Florida College of Medicine... [Emphasis added]
I think, as John Hodgman might say, we have now found the crux. What better way to ingratiate yourself with your benefactor than to let one of their executives spout a few ill-thought words of wisdom to your latest generation of indebted customers consumers students before an afternoon of mingling with the help faculty? Maybe everyone involved in this debacle thought a speech like this would be enough to distract the audience from the 50% increase in the price of coffee since 2020? Or the 37% increase in electricity prices since 2020--prices which are no doubt spiking because of the tremendous amount of electricity required by data centers in order to operate the very A.I. that's causing the "revolution" that might be consigning all the listening students to a life of eternal poverty? Maybe I need to distract myself with some conveyor-belt sushi (that's replacing a McDonald's? Who knew?) in the near future.
Episode #1055: It Feels Broken
First Broadcast: 6/1/26
If anyone who had any influence with the Alamo Drafthouse movie theaters is paying attention to this program, we here at Free New York have a simple request for you: Go back to the pen and paper. In late 2025, the Alamo chain decided to switch from its pen-and-paper ordering system--where an audience member would look at a physical menu, or a menu in the Alamo's phone app, and write down on a physical order card what kinds of snacks and drinks they wanted, after which a server would physically take the card, read it, and then deliver the order to the audience member's seat and drop off a check at the same seat near the end of the movie, which the audience member would pay with either a card or cash--to a new system centered entirely around using a mobile phone to order snacks and drinks, requiring an audience member to log on to Alamo's wifi network, enter the seats that are covered by the order, enter the order, enter the info for the credit card being used to pay for this order, and close out the check for the order, all by using a mobile phone for the entire process from start to finish. As you might have guessed, there are a myriad number of problems with this new setup, not the least of which is requiring people to take out their phones in a movie theater to order snacks, instead of keeping phone use verboten in the theater. It also requires people to keep their phones connected to the internet at a time when phones should not be receiving alerts from the internet; it sends texts to phones at a time when no one should be receiving texts on their phones; it takes the user outside of the Alamo app to view the menu and place a food order, even though the Alamo app contains food & drinks menus; entering credit card information is cumbersome to do in the moment in the theater and seems to defeat the purpose of entering credit card info into the Alamo app; the option to use cash instead of a card is not intuitively clear, assuming it exists; and the option to adjust the tip was equally unclear, as I personally didn't see a way to change from the default amount of 20%, which I only saw after the check was closed out. I know I've mentioned that order cards and pens are still available to use in the Manhattan and Brooklyn theaters, thanks to union requests there, but it seems like the theater is going out of its way to make it impossible--if not extremely difficult--to use the cards and pens and bypass the phone ordering system in the first place. Granted, the experience as a whole wasn't as horrible as I had expected, but it was a giant step down overall from all the previous times I had seen movies at the Alamo under the old system, and I know I'm not alone in thinking it would be much better for everyone if Alamo just went back to old way of doing things--you know, the way that made all its fans enamored with the Alamo Drafthouse in the first place! As someone once said: "It's never too late to do the right thing." P.S.: Shout-out to Stephen Colbert, who might have lost his unfairly maligned late night show way too soon, but he may have found a very promising career in public access. Hey, take it from someone who's been here a while: it's not a bad place to be!
