AI School Coming to Chicago and Delivery Robots Are Crashing Out

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Today on CityCast Chicago, a teacherless AI school is coming to the city.

Delivery robots are crashing into bus shelters.

Come on, there's got to be some other Chicago news to talk about, right?

It's Thursday, March 26th, I'm Jacobi Cochran, and this is what Chicago is talking about.

We've got executive producer Simone Ali, say, a back in the building with us, Simone,

how you feeling today?

I'm okay, Jacobi.

How are you?

All right, I'm all right.

I feel like I already said it this week, but we have talked more about AI in 2026 than

any other point in our history.

I'm watching the pit right now, so I'm having to engage with like AI in the healthcare

system.

I'm a teacher and professor, so I've already had to deal with what AI means for my students

using chat GPT to develop their public speaking scripts.

I mean, we are talking about data centers across the city and the state.

We talk about how terrible AI looks from a generative standpoint on social media.

But Simone, it feels like things just keep going further and further because now I'm

hearing for the first time ever that an AI powered school that is going to remove teachers

and focus on two hour learning inside the building is coming to downtown Chicago this

fall.

It seems like it's being proposed or voted on.

It seems like it's officially moving into the city later this year.

Block Club Chicago covered this and such.

Yeah, to your point, I think it's sort of like you see this and you're like, wait, there's

no process over it.

So alpha school is a private school that is going to be opening in the loop for the 2026,

2027 school year.

And they say that they're intending to serve about 100 students, K through eight, their

whole model.

So alpha schools has had some schools in some other states.

They've been doing this for a minute.

And their model is basically focused largely on AI powered instruction.

Kids come in in the morning and duties.

They're on their laptops.

They're doing these sort of virtual AI powered personalized lessons.

And then in the afternoons, they are working on what alpha calls sort of like hands on workshops.

They describe them as being very like entrepreneurial in nature.

So like doing TEDx youth talks or like how to run a food truck or stuff like that.

And to your point, they will not they will not be hiring teachers.

They hire adult guides quote unquote essentially to be like coaches who are there to help

monitor the classroom, help students if they get stuck, but they are not developing lesson

plans.

They're not standing in the front of the classroom running through lectures, grading

homework assignments per se.

They're really there as a essentially middle person to not just leave the kids in the rooms

with the laptop.

It seems now some do have an education background.

So that's not to say they just had hiring any old person to just sit in the classroom.

This is not like everybody's gym teacher.

We was coming up in elementary school, but it does sound like the lessons are derived

from the AI system.

The way those lessons are coordinated around standardized tests, SATs, that's all built

into the system.

And again, the teachers have a much more passive role.

It seems in this whole thing.

It's interesting because you know, they've come out and said that they actually want to

recruit local teachers from Chicago, offering salaries starting at $100,000 a year to be

these guides.

And so to your point, you know, I don't think that the point is necessarily to have kind

of any random adult as part of this.

The other thing that they say, you know, we talk about sort of AI powered, you know,

and some of the tools that they're using.

This isn't just like, oh, your kids on chat GPT and has access to the internet.

You know, they say it's a closed loop system that the tools that they're using kind of

only exist.

You know, and that's why the kids like, you know, they go to a physical place, right?

The school is still a physical place, they're not necessarily doing this from home.

You know, they have, like I said, they've been operating in some other states.

They've even tried to get charter school status in some other states and have been rejected.

I think most places so far except in Arizona.

And, you know, I think the biggest reason for that, that, you know, right, again, charter

schools are privately managed, but publicly funded.

And I think the biggest reason for that is, you know, Pennsylvania, I think put it pretty

succinctly of like, this is untested.

We have no idea if this is a good idea or if this works.

No, we're not going to give you any public money for this.

No, and they don't have enough data to this point.

Like we know they've been around for a little bit, founded in 2014 out in Austin.

Like you said, they have spots in Miami, they're trying to expand in Virginia or the parts

of California.

But the criticism is well documented.

People have made complaints about the lesson plan designs, which again, we've already

had so many questions about how much are we teaching to the test?

How much is standardized testing, dictating the curriculum inside of these classrooms?

And it sounds like with AI at the wheel, that is its number one sort of teaching pedagogy,

just preparing students for standardized tests.

Teachers have complained that the lesson plans, it is spitting out the multiple choice questions.

It's spitting out for students, have been proven to be illogical, that the answers don't

make any sense.

The instruction is not really helpful.

And some of those former guides and coaches have complained that the entire time students

are being monitored through their computers, their videos being recorded, their audio is

being recorded.

And they're also like eye movements, keyboard tracking, like really kind of detailed stuff.

And I know a lot of people are listening and have been in like a team or something where

it's like you are being monitored if you work remotely, like how active is your computer?

Is your mouse moving?

Are you working inside documents?

I don't have friends, they have literally taken a nap and just like put like a move, something

moving on their mouse to keep these going.

On their mouse, yeah.

But students have made complaints that they're afraid that the fact that not only they're

being surveilled the entire time, but concerns around the security and access to those

files.

Apparently, you know, it's almost like putting things on a Google drive and if someone has

access to the link, they can see all of the information and the data there.

And so, I mean, I, we have talked at Nazim at this point about my concerns around AI.

And the way it has really popped up in so many tools, whether it's my social media, my

search engines.

Like the whiplash of AI's adoption and again, the fact that the data centers to power

them are being sold to us as these economic engines to pool, disinvested cities and

townships and municipalities out of economic hardship.

It's clear that this speed is moving much faster than any of us can account for.

Any of us can make sense of in the fact that we're already at the point where we're saying

administrators, teachers and staff members won't drive the curriculum, but rather the artificial

intelligence in the system, which can't we've talked about has how well is this dealing

with cultural and racial differences?

How, how attuned is it to different learning capabilities, different physical abilities?

The, you know, at the top of every semester, I get reports on the type of resources that

my students need and the ways I must adapt, but the idea that everything they're going

to be learning curriculum-wise is is on and in the computer and designed by the system

is as very alarming to me, especially at the price point of $35,000 to $70,000 across

the country.

Yeah, $55,000 a year in Chicago is what tuition is slated to be, which, you know, is about

the same as my tuition was at Northwestern when I graduated, just to kind of like put that

into context.

Like, it's not, I think my tuition with food and board and everything was something like

60K.

So, so you play in college prices, I mean, obviously there's won't be a school, a ton of

Chicago's are going to, they're only going to have room for a hundred people, kindergarten

through eighth grade, but how can you not look at that and see those young people as science

experiments?

I also think the, I think the other thing that's sort of interesting here is I do think,

right, the presence of a school like Alpha and sort of their business model, I think speaks

to, is trying to address a frustration that I do think a lot of families have, a frustration

or a fear that a lot of families have, which is just that like, is, does regular school

for lack of a better way of putting it work?

Is it actually educating my kid?

Are they, you know, is there a better way that they could be learning, right?

And I think like, when we think about how public schools work, I know there's a lot of frustration

of like, you know, our kids sort of being educated at the level they need to be educated

at.

We know there was a lot of COVID learning loss, the switch to remote learning, but we have

seen those scores.

I know teachers have concerned about the students who are coming into their grade level aren't

at the, the correct reading level, aren't at the correct writing or math level.

And so, and the system of holding students back or summer school has gotten more laxed

in the pandemic era.

I think it is, and it's very tough because public, what public schools have to do and they're

in a tough situation is you have to, you have to be able to serve everyone.

And on a fundamental level, different kids have different needs, right?

And so there are, there are reasons that I think that public schools sort of when we think

about pedagogy and curriculum and how things get taught, like, again, they certainly have

their own issues.

And there's certainly, I think you, if you talk to a lot of like CPS high school students

who feel like they're on a bit of conveyor belt themselves when it comes to, when it comes

to that kind of thing.

And so then when you see something like, oh, they get to do these entrepreneurial workshops

like learning to, to run their own food truck or how to run their own Airbnb and they're

learning these financial literacy skills.

How many times Jacobi, have you talked to someone who was like, man, I wish someone taught

me how to pay my taxes in high school, right?

100%.

Like, we kind of have these, these ideas of what we wish we would have learned in school

or what I hope my kid is learning in school that there are elements of, of Alfa's model

here that, that I think appeal to.

I think to me, the sort of fundamental alarm, the thing that is still fundamentally alarming

to me is that the core basics, reading, writing, math, language arts, the fact, the idea

of that not being sort of led primarily by humans, the other thing that I think is kind

of key here.

So Alfa has sort of pointed to that, you know, their students are performing in well on

these standardized tests, you know, in the top one, two percent.

But you know, there's some experts have pointed out like, well, it doesn't really make sense

to compare these students whose parents can afford, you know, thousands, tens of thousands

of dollars a year for tuition to the general populace and the general population of students

taking these tests.

In fact, what you want to do is you want to compare them to students at other elite private

schools who are also really high performing.

I don't know that we have those comparisons.

But you know, when you think of schools like, you know, the Latin school in Chicago, right?

Is this sort of like high-end prep school that with, with really high performers or even

to specifically to Chicago's selective enrollment schools, right?

Like I think when we think about these comparisons, it doesn't make sense to compare the performance

of these students to CPS writ large, but you got to compare them to these other schools

where you have privileged families who are able to kind of take advantage of what these

have to offer other parents who are able to pay $55,000 a year.

Because we are driven so much by, we want our kids to, like the rhetoric of we want our

kids to succeed.

We want them compete in a global marketplace.

It feels like it gives us sort of carte blanche ability to experiment in the education space

in ways that we would not do otherwise.

And this school feels like an experiment.

Again, like the, like, like, idealistically sounds good on its face, but given all of

the ways we've scrutinized, I'm not even sure if, idealistically, it sounds good on its

face per se.

The idea of students having shorter lessons, like AISI, the idea of students having shorter

lessons, more interactive courses, learning more realistic life skills, like all of those

things, right?

AISI portion, like, and that's the thing because they can say, like I was reading one of the

job description for the guides is, instead, you'll lead workshops, ignite curiosity, improve

that learning knows no bounds when students own their education.

Like, if that's a bunch of PR words, Sally, what does that actually mean?

But because the goal is to uplift young people, it feels like the scrutiny is like, like

scrutiny becomes an after the fact, like, like, no, why are we criticizing this?

We should try this.

This could help us, you know, help us close the gap of learning loss we've seen in years.

We should give this a try.

And so it feels like it just allows the gates to open up a little wider for so many different

pedagogies to come through, led by tech billionaires and people connected to the Trump

administration, which, yeah, not leaving me with a whole bunch of confidence at all.

Hi, CityCast listeners.

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I'm one of the hosts of the Political Gap Fest, Slates Politics Podcast.

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So Mom, we have gone back and forth about how we feel about going outside to a delivery

robot named Andre, pulling up with our takeout order.

And maybe the delivery robots heard what we had to say.

I know the city currently is going through a couple of pilot programs giving some companies

the opportunity to test out their machines on our roads.

A lot of them are in like the downtown west loop west town area, but we're up here on

the north side.

Yeah.

Or up there on the north side.

But Simone, it seemed like robots don't like how I was talking about them calling them

clankers and everything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think I don't know.

Are they taking their revenge, who's to say?

So a video has been making the rounds of a delivery robot crashing into a CTA bus shelter

shattering the window on grand in west town.

That was a robot operated by serve robotics.

And just as, you know, the discourse has been kind of growing on that video, we learned

that another robot also crashed and shattered glass at a bus shelter in old town.

That was a cocoa robot, and that happened on Tuesday.

And so I mean, you watched the video, right, of the, of the serve robot.

I was very confused because I've seen a couple of angles and it looked like it was moving

at a snail's pace.

I was very concerned at how much force it was able to generate relative to his speed.

It was wild.

Yeah.

So it's like, it's like in the bus shelter, right?

And I think it's clearly probably supposed to be going around it.

And then you kind of just see it.

It is kind of bumps.

Like, I just like, it looks like a little bump and then it just shatters.

And like, you know, I sort of saw that and I was like, how easy is it to shatter a bus

shelter?

Like, is it, I feel like, is it, I should be harder, right?

I definitely started victim blaming a little bit.

I was like, what kind of glasses y'all using for these shelters?

I don't protect it at all.

I also just because it's hard to think that a robot, you know, so, so that, like I said,

that was a serve robot.

The cocoa officials say that their robots only operate at a top speed of five miles an hour,

which is like, you know, that's a 12 minute mile, which is a brisk.

It's like a slow jog, you know, like, it's not super fast, and you know, you see them

with their little faces right where the lights are like the little, and it's like kind

of hard to be like, that little thing, that thing just smashed all that glass.

I would say I've seen them a few times around the city, even more since we started talking

about them.

Some in action, some just kind of posted up in a inconvenience spot on the corner, having

to walk around it.

And I will say, I've given them a couple playful.

Kicks.

And I say playful, mostly because I realized the first time I keep that thing was stiff.

Not going to like, didn't really move all that much.

I wonder how much do the cocoa robots weigh?

How much does a cocoa delivery robot not cost?

I don't even have a damn about that way, you know, a hundred pounds.

So it weighs less than I do, like, yeah, and feature 90 liters of storage space.

Okay, so a hundred pounds plus whatever is in it.

I mean, that's, that's probably enough.

100 pounds.

That's a small person.

Yeah.

Yeah.

100 pounds.

That feels like it gets shatter a window pretty quickly.

I also didn't watch the video long enough or don't know if there was a long enough video

to know if it got a few attempts in it, like, did it boom back up, boom back up through

it, loosen it.

Yeah.

Did it prep it or no?

I thought I'd not.

It was a good shatter.

Not in any, I don't know.

I haven't, I haven't seen a longer video as well.

You know, so obviously the folks behind these companies have come out and we're like,

oh, we're going to, we're going to take a look at this.

We're going to make sure everything is okay.

You know, I do think it is causing, it's interesting because I do think people, people

were already starting to get quite skeptical as these proliferated, you know, the, the

pilot program was actually approved in 2022, but we didn't see launches until 2024 and

then in late 2025, in Lincoln Park, you know, there was a neighbor who launched a petition

to try to pause that program, you know, at Alderman, Daniel, Espada, and the first, you know,

decline to allow the robots to expand past kind of the pilot area.

You know, I think the pilot lasts until May, 2027 at which point the city council would

have to approve if like, you know, they can kind of engage in this city wide.

You know, it's interesting, too, because I think it prompts this other question of like,

how autonomous are these vehicles?

And I was trying to look it up because in 2023, when Coco was pretty much operating

in the West, and they were kind of testing stuff out, they were using workers behind like

Xbox controllers, like they talked about how they were like hiring video gamers to

kind of pilot these, you know, as serve launched in Chicago late last year, you know,

these days Coco is saying that their bots are monitored by humans, serve says that humans

step in as necessary.

So it's, you can imagine maybe like, I don't know, there's some alarms going off or something,

and then they have to step in and kind of help pilot the robot.

I don't know.

That's, that's always a question to me when we talk about anything quote unquote,

an autonomous, which is just like, okay, but how autonomous is it really?

And when somebody says a human is monitoring it, no disrespect to the people who got

these jobs, because I can imagine it sounds like what I'm saying is if you work from home,

you got to easy, you napping all day, but when I picture someone monitoring one of these

vehicles, I do picture somebody with a feet kicked up, eating flame and hearts, rewatching

the wire.

Like it seems like a job that you can turn away from, kind of let the, the robots do their

own thing.

Well, maybe then the robot runs into a bus shelter, and I will say the robot looked drunk the

way it's like backed up has to be a line.

That's what it was.

It was shaking itself off.

It looked like a drunk Chicago went running through the glass and just sort of, I think there

was a familiarity maybe.

Yeah.

I think I've seen this character before.

I think I've seen this, uh, let me just go for a shot about a robot.

It's the eyes, the way the eyes are not to anthropomorphize it.

Yeah.

The way it was moved.

I test the way I was looking for the way it was moving and just the little eyes.

It looked hella drunk.

And so which is the part of the trick that's what they want.

They want us to think it's cute.

So that right to it.

Right.

Like that's kind of the whole thing.

Now, it looked like the little animal from Shang Chi that Trevor had befriended, but if

some, if you're, because now I'm wondering the PR spin of it, right, is this, do you put

it off on a human monitor and say, I don't want people to lose faith in the robot.

So we don't throw somebody under the bus and say they should have been paying attention.

The sidewalk was difficult to navigate.

Not every Chicago sidewalk is the same dimensions.

And so the robot misaligned itself, that's where human monitors should know.

The error code step in.

Okay.

If I'm the CTA, you know how I'm spinning this?

Look at how clean the glasses.

The robot can't see through it.

It doesn't know the glass is there.

Oh, no.

People always complain about our, our blood shelters, our training platforms, the glass is so

clean.

Robots weren't right through it.

Robots can't see through it.

No, that is.

That's my spin.

That's my.

I need a sketch now of the bus, the CTA glass cleaner.

And then going, I mean, I'm doing my job so well, like, like, like, what do you expect?

What do you expect?

Honestly, it was a compliment to me.

I was pretty cool.

We got to put reflective things on the glass so that people don't run and do it, yeah.

If you want to get a little more political attack, yeah, with it, I'm using this to attack

Waymo.

If I'm CTA, stick with public transit.

Even if there's not a conductor there, you're going to get where you need to get like

or.

Like trust CTA, you know who can see the bus shelter, the bus driver exactly.

It's like trust the bus driver before you trust the robots.

Like I would lean into an anti robot campaign campaign if I was CTA, but I also think there

is some tongue in cheek to saying, come on, I want an award this year.

My glass was so clean last year, two different autonomous robots ran into it because they thought

it was just open air.

That's, that's a damn good idea.

Someone that's a damn good idea.

I want to hear from y'all seven, seven, three, seven, eight, zero, zero, two, four, six.

What do you think about the idea of an AI powered school?

No teachers, two hour learning plan, uh, two hour lesson plans on the computer.

I want to hear your thoughts, but also delivery robots has this changed your mind on them.

Are you less likely to order one now?

Are you more interested in ordering one to see if it gets into a catastrophic accident

with the, with the bus, uh, with the bus glass.

Again, let us know at seven, seven, three, seven, eight, zero, zero, two, four, six.

We really want to hear from y'all on this.

Someone before you get, before we get out of here, uh, I got to ask you,

what would you rather be talking about right now than the rise of data centers,

delivery robots, autonomous vehicles, AI schools,

chat GPT cloth, like, uh, man, how quickly this has become daily conversations, mentors, man,

like you better learn AI or you're going to be knocked out of the job mark.

Like, shut up, shut up.

What would you rather be talking about right now?

I'm obsessed with the grubs in Wells Park.

Oh, yes, every time this story comes up, because they feel like they've done everything they

can over there. Yes. Okay.

If you have not been following this, I'm obsessed. I am obsessed with the,

and they're in Winnemack Park, too. So, so, uh, Wells Park in the Lincoln Park

neighborhood and then Winnemack Park, sort of, Lincoln Square Bowman Bill.

One of my favorite places to watch a little lily.

Yes, and it's, it's the grubs are ruining little league. Okay.

Uh, uh, uh, so this year, once again, these June beetle grubs are,

are coming up and they're ruining the grass at these parks and the, and the turf and the problem

is, is it, it, like, it makes the little league fields, like impossible to play in, like,

it's all, it gets muddy and gross. And then of course, you've got all these grubs everywhere

that are disgusting and thing, you know, they're not, they're not cute, man. I mean, unless you're

into bugs like that, like, they are, it's, right, it's, it's not fun. But this has been happening

a few times over the past several years, this keeps happening where the grubs, like, are delaying

little league, they're ruining the park and the neighbors are just, like, racking their heads,

trying to figure out how to end the park district for that matter over, like, how to

deal with these grubs and, you know, they've been receding and they, like, the, the turf comes,

you know, the grass comes back up, but they're talking about, like, unleashing a bunch of chickens

to eat the grubs, which, like, that is a site I desire to see, is a bunch of chickens just,

like, pecking at the grubs, but then the problem might be that the chickens can't peck deep enough,

because the, they burrow really, really deep. And then, like, that's how they, they, like, lay their eggs

really, really deep. And then the grubs kind of come up during rains and stuff in the spring time.

Like, this has to do with, like, when you want to use animals to push back on other animals.

So my favorite brands of, like, ecological maintenance, like, let's introduce these chickens,

let's introduce their cats. Well, and then you have people who are, like, okay,

well, what about all of the, like, migrating birds? Because apparently, like, geese or whatever

would be better at it, they could get deeper, but fewer birds are migrating through Chicago,

like, we've had a lot of issues with that. So it's, like, a broader ecological question of, like,

who is going to be eating these grubs? The grub, it also is associated with, like, cycles of drought

in Illinois, that they, like, when we go into kind of drought cycles, that they're

tend to be more of them and they come out, I'm obsessed. I, I am obsessed with the grubs

in these parks. I, I don't know why I, I think it's just, it is just such an interesting story to me

because what do you do about them? And if the answer is unleash chickens, I want to be there

and I want to see the video. No, that's a good one. Every time this story comes up, I stop and pay

attention. A question for you, I'm not sure. Like, are these something, because I know that they've

had incidents in 2021, and now it's back again in 2026, like, what's caught, what's leading to the,

the growth there? Is it the lack of, like, the dwindling population of birds migrating through? Is

it something they're doing with the soil? Like, when, like, when would they, it's a lot of different

produce, but go ahead. Yeah, I think, I don't know why necessarily this has come up most recently.

I think partly it has to do with some climate patterns. I think maybe it has to do with the

bird patterns. I think the other thing that it speaks to you is like, you know, they talk about,

we talk about, like, monoculture of grass, like, grass. This is another thing that I would love to

talk about more often. Like, turf, grass, like, most grass is not like a natural thing in most

places in the United States. It's like, lawns and big, like, turf fields. Yes, it's real grass.

Yes, it's a real plant, but it's not like a thing that naturally grows here or how the natural

environment would be growing. And so this sort of monoculture is, this speculate is one reason that,

you know, we see kind of these infestations of bugs like this. And so it has a lot to do with, like,

the story of Chicago's natural environment is being told with the emergence of these

grubs and the ruining of little league fields here on the north side. They're looking for better

irrigated fields. It sounds like, sounds like the amount of foot traffic, which like parks, which

like parks, it's like a big, yeah, it's like a big open area that gets watered frequently, right?

Either because, you know, the parks maintenance staff, right, they're keeping that up. And

so drought and other parts of the city means that they'll come and they'll later exist there.

And then the grubs, the grubs come up. And it sounds like because these park whales park,

when the met park are so heavily traffic, so many people are going through them and using them.

It sounds like those birds are less likely to come in and really get their sort of goat clearing

a weed field. Oh, and so interesting, interesting. So what do you think they should do? Is this

a thing where you maybe hold off people like close the park down for a little bit and let the birds

go out? Do you, is it simply planting different native plants and different, like using different

soil? I don't know how you solved the little league. I would love someone. I don't know if anyone's

out there. I guess this is the story. This is the true story. If someone is out there who can marry

sort of the planting of native plants with how to still have little league, like that's the

crossover that I would want to see. I personally get rid of the grass. I don't care. I don't like it.

I don't want the grass there. I have no emotional attachment to grass. But I do have emotional

attachment to little league and I want the little leagueers to be able to play baseball. And so if

there is a short crop natural thing that we could do or a mate or an actual maintenance that we could

pay for and a cadence on which that would work that is not so monocultural and maybe attracts

different wildlife. Now again, does that mean do you end up attracting more birds in the outfield

than you got to watch out for that? I don't know, maybe. But I, that's got to be a better problem

to solve than grubs ruining little league. No, that's actually a very good story, Samo.

Jacobi, what is a story that you would want to talk about instead of the robots?

So what's interesting is I took that prompt in a complete different direction than you did

because it sounds like you actually want to talk about the grubs in Wales Park where it's I do

that it was like what what is something that I would rather talk about because I hate talking about

this so much. And the first thing that came to mind is the proliferation of top dog law

advertising around Chicago. I think it is one of the most if not the most prolific private ad

campaigns running through the city. So many of them are positioned on the south and west sides.

I was through Roseland, Calumet Heights, Inglewood, back of the yards and have Park this weekend.

They're everywhere. They're all over the place. They're on the buses though. I've ever since you

mentioned this to me, I'm noticing it more and more for sure. The likelihood that one of the bus

shelters that one of those robots ran through had a top dog law sign somewhere on it or near it

wouldn't shock me at all. And so I really want to know one, how much are they paying to wrap

this entire city and advertising with the smug face of his white man on the cover and ways that

let's be real feel particularly geared towards black folks, brown folks, they feel a little exploitative

and then I read a story. Well, it's very like ambulance chasey. Exactly. Which again, most injury

personal like personal injury lawyers, it all feels very kitschy, right? Like the goal is to

get you to pay attention as much as possible. But I read an article, maybe it was late last year

about Terrell Lucky John, who is the voice behind all of those wild ass radio commercials

from top dog law. And a part of me is like, damn, get your money, man. You are probably you are the

Jake of state farm for these, these unhinged commercials. But at the same time, I would love to

know the economics of it all. How much does it cost to keep advertising up this long? And also,

is anyone checking on this or some of them just sort of out of date left up? No one's replaced them.

How do you get such a big footprint in a city that's not your founding?

They're headquartered in Arizona, actually. Okay. Which is why? Who knows?

I heard from the host in city cast Billy. That's the same thing there. That top dog law is everywhere.

The commercials, the billboards, the bus wraps. And I'd rather be getting to the bottom

of how this company became the foremost injury law firm in the Chicago land area.

And I'd love for someone to explain to me their marketing strategy, because it feels very

blatant. The WGCI commercials is nuts. They are. It's so funny, because I listen to so little

commercial radio, like the only time I'm listening to it is when I'm in an Uber where it's already

playing. Maybe that's why maybe people undervalue the radio space, the billboard space and the bus

space now. And so they're just able to catch you. I mean, Jacobi, if city cash Chicago could afford

putting your face on billboards everywhere in the way that top dog does, I'd be out here doing it,

Jacobi. You know, I would be doing it. It would be happening. But yeah, that's why the question about

cost is super interesting to me, because like it is not cheap for those that those bus ads,

those billboards, like that's not nothing. I want to give a huge thank you to our executive

producers, Simone. I'll always say always a pleasure, my friend. Hey, thanks to Kobe.

Before we get out of here, you know, I got some good news. If you are interested, it is officially

opening day in the major leagues. And I figure if you are interested, you don't need me to tell you

that. But I'm going to remind you anyway, the Cubs are home for their opener against the

nationals today while the socks start their season on the road against the brewers. Their home

opener isn't until next Thursday versus the blue jays. If you're going to any of these like

first week, first month games, go on and try out the new menu items and reach out to me and let me

know what they're hitting for 7737 A zero zero two four six name neighborhood. And what you ordered,

you ain't got to tell me how much it costs already. No, it's going to be expensive as hell.

Was it good? I appreciate you. I'm going to be back right

near the tomorrow breaking down some of the big stories from the week. I'll talk to you then. Peace.