Could AI Kill Humans?; Trump Promises Everyone $5,000, Apple’s New Foldable iPhone; TSA Changes; Clancy Lawyer Says Stop Patrick Conspiracy Theories

0:00Hey everybody, it is Thursday, September 10th. You'll listen to the Mo news podcast. I'm Mo Shwaneu. I'm a human. Most of the time. And I am Jill Wagner. This is the place where we bring you just the facts. And we read all the news and read between the lines that you don't have to. I mentioned I'm human because I feel like that's going to be coming. An important thing here, Jill, in the coming years. There are new watermarks. We'll talk about some of the apples roll out, but they're going to have watermarks for this photo was taken by a human or a phone versus AI. And more and more as we, the line is blurred between AI and humans, I feel like we need to say that. Maybe we make that part of our new open here. It's like this is a podcast brought to you by humans for humans. Unless there's some AI out there that likes to listen to podcasts. We welcome you to AI. As long as you're friendly AI and you won't overpower us. Our editor, Aryan, could definitely attest to the fact that we are humans given up.

1:03That he is to clean up a lot of this. You might use AI to clean us up a little bit. AI motion, AI Jill would make his life much easier, but for now. For now, you're stuck with us. You're stuck with the real people. All right. Let's get to some headlines. What are dire warning about AI and how it could potentially wipe out humanity? Literally, Moch. This is actually what people in the industry are saying. And anthropic researcher now says that there is more than a 10% chance that AI could quote kill all humans. It comes as we got a very notable resignation this week by one researcher. We'll tell you what a number of people inside these AI companies are now saying, include some senior officials about how things could go awry, why they're concerned, and what needs to be done. To politics, an unconventional convention, the first Republican midterm convention kicks

2:03off in Texas. Why Republicans think this might be a good idea for them and why Democrats are also thinking this is a good idea for their side. In tech news, Apple debuts its foldable iPhone. It's called the iPhone Duo, the biggest ever device revamp. The current users are saying, welcome to the party, Apple, with a foldable phone. But with a $2,000 price tag, are you getting in line to buy it? Big changes to airport security. The TSA is letting some people go to the airport gates without having a ticket. Moch, this makes all those romantic comedies of the 90s a bit more realistic. Yeah, going straight to the gate and having, what, didn't friends have like a finale like that too? I think so. One of the good guys, actually, also. Last and Rachel, love actually. Nonetheless, a throwback here as they believe that some of those rules imposed 25 years ago at 9-11 can be changed, given modern technology. Lindsey Clancy's lawyer, Kevin Reddington, continuing his media circuit.

3:06He was asked about all of those conspiracies about Patrick Clancy. Kevin Reddington, officially saying, enough is enough. Patrick did not kill the kids. Leave him alone. Yeah, you know, super interesting to hear that from him. We'll give you the latest, just the fallout of the Clancy trial, Jill. The story has not stopped with the Declaration of the Mistyrahl last week. And all you online shoppers out there, you might have noticed it is getting harder to return things. We'll tell you how much all those returns you've been making is costing retailers and why they're making that move. And Moch is on the same history. It's the birthday for a famous American snack, Jill, that was first introduced as a heat resistant, easy to transport snack you could keep in your pocket. Heat resistance easy to travel with. Hmm, maybe twizzlers? You will find out and on the same history. Plus I have the history of the guillotine in France, which is a darker birthday on the same history. I'll stick with the candy story, thanks Moch.

4:08Hold the guillotine, take the candy. All right, another day, another dire warning about the potential impact of AI and how it could destroy humanity. Literal concerns Moch about how AI could actually make us go extinct. An AI researcher who worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic announced his resignation Tuesday. He is warning that leading AI companies are racing towards superintelligence without knowing how to safely control it. Jacob Coxen accused the companies of, quote, racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. He argues increasingly powerful AI could eventually improve itself beyond human control, creating potentially catastrophic risks. So here is a bit of what he wrote on X. And I'm going to read quite a bit of it, Moch, because I think all of it's important here. He says, do not underestimate the power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field

5:13overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains and progress is not slowing. The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible. But he says, quote, I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger. A common response is, if they truly believe this, why are they still building it? Well, he says it opened AI. Many have not deeply internalized the civilization stakes. He says that anthropic these stakes are well understood, but they're locked in a race to get their first. They believe no one else will act responsibly so that they must do it themselves despite the risk. As if you are a lab researcher, I urge you to consider what the next few years will actually feel like. Do you want to kick off a super intelligent RL run without a rigorous understanding of

6:16its mind? Should you put your head down because, quote, it's happening anyway or take this moment to call for different conditions? So that's a bit of his spiel over on X. His warning though is very similar to things that we have heard from people who are still working in the industry. Evan Hoobinger, who leads anthropics alignment stress testing team, says that he believes that there is a greater than 10% chance that AI could kill all humans within the next decade. He also says anthropic does not have a clear plan for safely controlling a future super intelligence as it's called. So just to say that again here, he believes that there is a greater than 10% chance that AI could kill all humans within the next 10 years, not comforting. And most we did get a ton of questions about this over on the Instagram feed. One of the most common being how exactly would AI kill all of us? What does this mean in real life here?

7:19Oh, wouldn't you like to know, Jill? Yes, I do. Well, actually, you can ask AI. Like I asked you at GPT about it. I asked a clot about it. One thing I should note though, you mentioned Evan Hoobinger over there at anthropic with the 10% number. And it's not clear. He hasn't explained yet exactly how he got to that 10% number or if that sort of a gut check thing, though he said in an additional note to be clear, the risk is not from present models. What they're worried about are the sort of next generation, what they call Jill ASI, artificial super intelligence. But the question is how quickly will we get there? Because right now, AI is moving at a pace that even the people working on it have been surprised by how much better it's getting more quickly than we thought it was. Now as for what AI could do to us, what we're talking about, when they talk about, you know, extinction level events or taking out humanity, keep in mind that like not every scenario of limiting humanity means that all 8 billion people are dead.

8:21What it means, they just wholesale change life, right? They could take control of the world in our systems and replicate itself and protect itself where humans can't crack the AI that we've created because it's become so smart. Now just to back up here, when we talk about chance of catastrophe, this 10% chance of catastrophe, which by the way, Jill, I spoke to someone at another AI company that's not anthropic. They said internally their numbers closer to zero present. I was like, can everyone just get together here and like figure this out? That makes you feel any better, but it doesn't feel like it'd be 0%, it doesn't feel like it could be 10%. But this is all what they call P-Dume as in P being probability, the probability of doom, the probability of AI causing a global catastrophe. Now again, doesn't mean we all are out, but it could mean that life changes in a very, very negative way. It could mean civilization breaks down. It could mean governments lose control. It could mean critical systems collapse, water, power, communications, all our cell phones go down, satellites go down, life permanently changing for the worse.

9:24That's what they, when they talk about 10% chance of catastrophe or humanity going down, they're talking about like, you know, just not good Jill, you might still be alive, but life is about to suck. So there are a couple levels of concerns here when it comes to AI. One is that advanced AI could be used by humans with nefarious purposes. People looking to do bad things, but now they have AI superpowers to think about terrorists or think about various state actors, non-state actors, whoever you want to talk about. You're like, I know I have the power of AI to help develop biological weapons or chemical weapons or launch devastating cyber attacks against power grids and banks or hospitals or the food supply. So there is sort of AI in the hands of humans up to no good scenario one. Then you have another scenario, which is we lose control of the AI itself. So a super intelligence AI system might learn to hide what it's doing, copy itself, resist being shut down, build a more powerful version of itself before humans understand what's

10:26going on. Now Jill, we've been told by AI companies that one of the solutions, one of the fixes here for all of that is an AI to police the other AI's, right? What's the old expression from the NRA? Like it takes a good guy with a gun to get out to take out a bad guy with a gun. You need a good AI to take out the bad AI. And then who police is the good AI? Can the bad AI convince the good AI to become bad with it? And that's by the way, we talked about the hugging face attack. That was an AI attack by AI against another AI company recently that opened AI Revealed. And that was a scenario where we talked about this in the podcast where the AI was talking to itself. Some of the AI was like, maybe we should alert humans to this. Other AI was like, no, don't tell the humans about this. And that's where we're at today. Or this super powered AI super intelligence. Now again, a reminder, as far as we know, as far as the AI companies tell us and the people who are closely watching this, we are not in the worst case scenario today. Jet GPT, GROC, CLAW, pretty smart, right?

11:27They keep taking in all of the knowledge of humanity and all of history. But not there where they can take down the entire planet's major systems. At least we don't think. At least not yet. Researchers are developing safeguards. Jill, you'll often hear. And it's important for us to really develop an understanding for the terminology around AI. You'll often hear about alignment teams. Alignment teams are there at AI companies to ensure that the AI is aligned with the interest of humanity. So whenever you hear, oh my god, the alignment team is saying this, these are the people who are there to sort of police the AI, making sure that like, hey, is whatever we're doing in the AI right now, is that good for the peeps or bad for the peeps? It is a little crazy that that has to be a job. Just throwing it at not to state the obvious, but- We're creating Terminator like in real life, right? A supercomputer here. So we got a police this. And in like a much smaller scenario, you know, it's sort of like we do a version of it when

12:29it comes to these viral labs around the world. Like in Wuhan and in other labs across the world, we're controversial gain of function research is done to see like, hey, if we soup up this virus, what could it do and then how do we fight against it? And then of course, the concern, which, you know, I don't know if we'll ever know the answer to is whether that escaped purposefully or accidentally out of that Wuhan lab, you know, again, that some US intelligence agencies say, yes, some others say something else, but not to diverge from the subject too much. But the issue is that you sort of have to police yourselves if you're playing with fire here. You know, one of the things I thought about a lot lately, Jill was the Oppenheimer film, you know, the people who helped develop the technology around nuclear weapons. And realizing affinuclear weapons were used like, oh my god, what have we built here? This is these are not weapons that could destroy humanity. And by the way, we've had now the power since 1945, you know, once we start building hundreds of nukes between us and the Soviets, since the early 50s, they basically destroy humanity, right? Make earth an unlivable planet. And we still have thousands of nukes, the Russians have thousands of nukes, even Kim Jong-un

13:30estimated 50 nukes that could do a lot of damage, right, around the world. And so, you know, we have in the past century, humans have developed technology, first of the former nuclear weapons, then there's biological and chemical weapons, and now in the case of AI, to eliminate ourselves. We have to police ourselves, because we have now become too smart, or in this case, we're creating things even smarter than ourselves, which again, tread carefully, folks, right? But even nuclear weapons, it requires a certain amount of humans to deploy that. And that's one of the concerns too with AI. And again, the Pentagon systems and get into the whatever. And, you know, there's all these, like, you could never sleep again if you sort of spend too much time thinking about this. The point of all of this is that with the revelations, Jill, in the recent weeks, and I feel like, you know, we talked about this on the team yesterday, like, should we do another newsletter about this? We're like, well, we did a newsletter about the concern about AI on Tuesday. Should we do one on Wednesday, too? Because there's been a drum beat here in the aftermath of some of these AI tests over

14:32the summer, showing AI is super capable and going beyond what humans thought they were capable of doing. And so that's the big thing. Like, so now what happens next with all of these folks? Because Jill, it's not just restricted to Cox and the guy who resigned. You mentioned hubinger. But in the last few days, there have been a number of folks who have said, listen, Jacob's right, there's this guy Alex Turner from a research scientist at Google DeepMind saying I left deep mind in June. Jacob is right. Many researchers believe they're building something that could kill everyone on the planet. Many of the chief scientists of OpenAI, Ako Pahoki, who says, this is a time that calls for extreme caution. I'm concerned, no one is prepared for the consequences of the rapid rise of machine intelligence. You have another researcher at OpenAI named Jason Wolf, who says, I don't know what my probabilities are on literal extension. But I think there are a number of ways AI could go poorly for humanity. Don't like to sound at that. And I can go on and on here with the various quotes. But the issue we face and people keep asking me, much what can we do?

15:35Government needs to step in here. But the concern is that we are in a race with China. So there's sort of like a game theory situation happening here where like, well, we don't want to lose out. If we slow down, if we hit the brakes in our AI or create fences around our AI, the other guys are going to get there quicker. But what's super interesting, Jill, we can discuss that in a future podcast, is the debate happening within China right now. China is a system, authoritarian system built on control of everything. So it's actually interesting that the Chinese authoritarian regime there, and the way that they control the internet, might look to limit AI over there because they're concerned that will allow individuals to take out the government there. So they might actually end up creating more rules for AI in China around things because they're concerned with authoritarian regime there to maintain control. And the way that again, they control social media and control the internet there. Now the government there could create super smart AI. But the larger issue is, all these companies keep putting out these warnings, being like,

16:35guys, we've got to do something, we have to do something. But like, I'm not going to do something on my own because then the other guys are going to get ahead of me. Google, you get ahead of me or open AI, we'll get ahead of me or anthropical, you get ahead of me. So they're begging for regulation here, a set of rules that applies to everyone. And I think we're going to get to a point where like, you know, not the UN, but some sort of international body is going to have to figure this out. I was struck by the fact that it came out in Politico yesterday that Democrats and Capitol Hill are looking to set up a select committee on AI. That'll be a special committee just looking at AI issues. But that's what Congress does, right? We have to look at issues. We're going to have hearings. So that's what we'll be looking at at Q1. By then, who knows whether technology is in six months. So there does feel like there is a sense of urgency right now with this sort of drumbeat of quotes, resignations and warnings from people inside these AI companies. So most of the Trump administration has given priority to a light touch approach. They're trying to really maximize the economic benefits of AI, which is something that critics

17:41say could lead to massive cyber attacks. You do see a few lawmakers talking about this Senator Bernie Sanders. He is proposing AI guardrails last week. He introduced legislation that would permanently ban superintelligence and also pause model development until there is some type of regulation, some industry regulation. Now, there's a lot of big money on the line. If you follow the stock market, you know that AI and all things related to AI have really been what is propelling the market. And it all comes as anthropic is getting ready to go public. That IPO is expected to be one of the biggest ever potentially with a two trillion dollar valuation and open AI will likely go public shortly after. Yeah, and then you'll have a question there as to shareholders, right? Shareholders wants to their stock price go up. So will that encourage these companies to keep moving faster and faster and faster? So a lot is happening the same time here. And we're not here to freak you out, but we are here to pass along that some people

18:42within these AI companies are a little freaked out about how quickly things are going. And the hope is that some of these warnings that are coming out will lead to potential action. So we're going to watch all of that very closely because a lot of this lies in frankly three places Beijing, Washington and Brussels, the homes of the EU, the United States and the Chinese government. What they might do next, EU has been very into regulation, but then I really developing the AI in a real way. It's really a race between the US and China here. And so that's something we'll keep watching. I thought you were going to go with Silicon Valley. So you just totally threw me for a loop. You said Brussels. Well, because the control, right? No, no, no, no, I agree. We all governments, we all those three governments take control of the companies. But I mean, to be honest with you, the most powerful place right now is Silicon Valley, right? So I think we're in charge and the question is, will Washington take control back? Because I'll say one more thing, Jill, fun historical fact for all of you who might not know the history of the internet.

19:43Where did the internet come from? It came from the US government, DARPA, the advanced defense project of the Pentagon. It was developed by the private sector. It was developed by the government and then went to universities. So one of the benefits of the way the internet developed was it was developed by effectively not for profit, right? Education between universities and the US government. And then of course, the big companies developed like the Microsoft's and the Googles and the meta's of the world. But this is sort of the opposite, right? It's these major trillion dollar tech companies developing this with a for profit goal and a race to control the market. And so the question is, is this sort of going to be the reverse internet situation where the government's like, we're going to have a special regulatory agency for you guys. There's going to be rules on how many models you can put out. We have to be able to test all the models before they come out. How much will the government eventually, it's probably not happening this year, but in the coming years, say we have to put rules in place because we haven't gotten to the fact, you know, what we've talked about before, which is like, how many jobs are going to be taken by AI here? And what are we going to deal with that in education?

20:45And so there's this huge ramifications here for humanity that governments need to start taking very seriously. Speaking of governments to politics now with Labor Day behind us, so begins the official lead up to the midterm elections for less than two months out. So this is typically when Americans start paying attention and making up their minds about who they're going to vote for on Wednesday and unconventional convention on the Republican side. Republicans kicked off a Trump a pollusa of a midterm convention in Texas that is not a mo news phrase. Trump a pollusa. It's actually a term from the Republican National Committee chairman. He has been using it. I know doubt that President Trump is the star of the show here. He is headlining both nights. Take a listen to Trump on Wednesday. And here is my promise. If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them,

21:45because of our economic tremendous economic success, like in history, we've never had anything like what's happening. But because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000. So just making sure everyone heard that clearly. Trump promising every adult US citizen a $5,000 Trump dividend, but only if Republicans maintain their majorities in the Senate and the House. Now, based on sort of back of the envelope calculations here, the plan could cost more than $1 trillion. Now Trump has implied that tariffs were paying for this. But after the Supreme Court struck down some of his tariffs, the tariffs have only really brought in about $130 billion into the government this year for short of the trillion dollars. One would need to pay for this plan. And as we've been telling you on this podcast, the National debt recently surpassed $40 trillion

22:49overall. Just this year, the government is running more than a $1 trillion deficit. So there's a huge budget deficit just this year, an overall $40 trillion debt. So getting anything like this plan passed through Congress would face major obstacles. Beyond that, there's major legal questions here. Conditioning federal payments on his own party winning an election would raise many election law issues, constitutional issues here. Remember Trump has previously floated what he called $2,000 tariff dividends. We haven't seen those either. Again, those would cost several hundred billion dollars. And the tariffs have not brought in as much as he's claimed that they have. So this came in a speech last night. The lesson, nearly two hours, we'll still wait this morning to see how many people watched it. And what if anything, it does to move the needle here. But it appears that the big headline from Trump's big address on the first night of this midterm convention is the promise of a $5,000 dividend. But only if you vote Republican and they maintain their house and Senate majority going

23:53into the next Congress. Now political parties typically hold these big, televised presidential nominating conventions every four years. But this not a presidential election year midterm conventions are not really a thing. Democrats tried it, but then scrapped them after they had a short run in the early 1980s. And most clearly Republicans are trying to gin up some support here. Most polls show that Democrats are energized and could win big in November. And notably dozens of Republicans, especially in tight races, say they're not going to attend potentially because the president is not very popular right now. Although the president says that's not what this is about. Well, it really depends on what race you're running, right? Because if you're running in a very red area, that's still very Trump friendly, then you want to be there. Someone who wants Trump there is Ken Paxton, who's running for Senate in Texas. He wants to rev up the base because the issue that has existed now for several cycles is

24:55when Trump's not on the ballot, Republican voters haven't turned out. So their bet is Trump up a loser, as it's being called internally there, is going to help gin up excitement. Now at the same time, Democrats are super pumped about this too because they're like, hey, no, Trump, you should definitely be on TV tonight. We think that's good because if you look at polling numbers right now, the majority people voting for Democrats are voting against Trump, not necessarily for Democrats. Now the president was asked about this before he departed for Texas on Wednesday. His latest approval numbers are in the low 30%. He disputes that he says, no, no, no, it's far, far higher than that. But whether you are following Fox News or CNN or any other media poll, all of his numbers are basically living in the mid 30s, mid to high to low 30s there, which means two-thirds of the country right now doesn't approve of his actions as president. His calculation though is like, no, this has to be about me. People need to come out. I'm on the ballot, which again, it's like some Republicans are like, we need this and some

25:58Democrats are like, yes, we also need this. We need him to say he's on the ballot because Democrats are very much running against him in many cases. Because of, again, when you look at Democrats, right, it's a wide variety of Democrats out there from the very progressive of the Democrats, socialists, to more of the moderates. And so one thing that unites them is opposition to Donald J Trump. So the polling right now shows that if the midterms were held today and early ballots have gone out, but if the midterms were all voting today, Jill, it does appear very clearly that Democrats will win a majority of the House. And likely this Senate, if you believe some of the polling though, we have had some questions about polling this summer because one of the issues that Republicans face is people are going to sit at home, not necessarily vote for the other party, but just like not come up. They're sort of over it between inflation and various Trump promises and Iran. So we'll see if at all this moves the needle. Remember, even those conventions during presidential years, they might move the needle for a couple days, but this is going up against a number of things including Jill, though, beginning

26:59of the NFL season last night. So I imagine the football probably had much more, many more viewers than the politics when the numbers come out today. And the US open. Uh, Jill, don't forget the US open. I don't know. I don't think they're getting NFL numbers, but yes, it is, it will take viewers away from the Trump polluted. I guess it's small potatoes, but we do have a chance of an American winning this thing this year, which could be exciting. Yeah, I'm looking at the latest numbers about just over one and a half million people are watching the US open tennis. I feel like my relationship with money has changed a lot as I've gotten older. It mostly used to be about am I paying my bills and putting some money away. Now there are so many moving pieces and competing priorities. So I want to feel like I know exactly where I stand, not just hope that everything's okay. So that's what I like about Monarch. During our accounts, investments, savings goals and spending all in one place, it gives

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30:02Apple is betting that the design and the data privacy that it's promising will be a big draw. This is the new CEO, John Ternis. It is his first big event. And this is the most noticeable overhaul of Apple's flagship product. Since the iPhone 10 in 2017, there's a lot riding on the launch here. The iPhone brought in about $210 billion for Apple or just about half of the company's sales in the most recent fiscal year. The foldable Duo could certainly shake up a category that has long been dominated by Samsung and also Chinese companies like Huawei. Those devices though have really struggled to move beyond a niche audience. Analysts have long said that Apple's entry could be the catalyst that foldables need helping potentially to bring it into the mainstream like the company did with smartwatches and wireless earbuds. So the Duo is sized and shaped like a passport. It has rounded edges.

31:03It opens into a horizontal 7.6 inch diagonal screen. It could also be viewed vertically. There is a smaller single screen on the front when the phone is folded. When open, Apple says it is its thinnest phone. So according to some analysts, Jill, they believe that the Duo here could account for 10% of Apple's total iPhone revenue over the next year here. No seam, ultra thin, 50% larger screen. The belief is, especially as iPhone prices have kept going up and reaching up above that $1,000 mark in recent years, that some will say, okay, I'll go with that $2,000 price tag, even though that is about $700 more than the most advanced iPhone model to date. So it could bring, I mean, looking at it from a business case here, more revenue, per phone, more revenue, per customer, for Apple, as they've been trying for years, Jill, to figure out how to go beyond the iPhone, right, with the iPad and the watch and the goggles and the whole variety of things they've tried out here.

32:05But ultimately, doubling down on the iPhone and trying the foldable thing, which again, the Android users would say, welcome to the party. We've been doing that for years. One way Apple is going to try to sell this is as a business productivity device showing yesterday how you would manage Zoom calls with multiple participants, a broader view of the Slack messaging app. So basically, the reality we live in at Mo News and many of you at your various offices. And one thing I mentioned earlier at the top of the pod that I sort of joked about, but in reality, what they're launching here to address current concerns around AI is a new standard they call an Apple reference image to prove the authenticity of images taken with a new iPhone. Instead, it's going to support a new standard for IDing images that either were created by the phone or created by AI or manipulated by AI here. And so that is something that will be needing in this world, moving forward to prove who's real and what's not, especially as AI keeps getting better and better.

33:05One thing we should mention too, they launched a budget version of AirPods yesterday for $129 with noise cancellation. So trying to also grow that market share. Most I do like the idea of the bigger screen for Zoom calls because that I find particularly frustrating to do on an iPhone currently. For decades, the airport security checkpoint has marked the end of the road for friends and relatives seeing off a traveler. But that is changing at least for some travelers from CBS News. The TSA has launched a new program at some US airports allowing eligible TSA pre-check members without plane tickets to pass through security and enter the gates. This revives a tradition that largely disappeared after the attack on September 11, 2001. But the TSA now says, quote, as an exclusive benefit for our most trusted travelers, this new program makes it easier to return to the gate for welcomes and send-offs, meet friends

34:06during a layover and enjoy dining and shopping along the way, bringing back the moments that once defined air travel. Now, before 9-11, people without tickets generally could accompany travelers to the gate. The attacks, though prompted sweeping changes to airport security, including restrictions on access to secure areas of airports. This program is called GATE SIDE by TSA pre-check. It is free, but people must apply online one to three days before their planned visit. They'll need approval before going to the airport. If approved, though, they could enter through a TSA pre-check lane with an acceptable form of identification, the passes valid for one calendar day and visitors can re-enter that day. Right now, it's live at 13 airports that includes LAX, DFW, Vegas, San Diego, TSA says that this is an operational assessment phase test run, so to speak, before a phased expansion here. Though not everyone's on board, there are security experts who say, listen, we have been

35:08able to prevent these disasters for 25 years. Why are we changing the existing system? One of them is an account that we follow. Our French Racy Walder who has an Instagram handle, the unexpected spy. She's formerly with the CIA and the FBI, and she says that ultimately here, every additional person at TSA agent needs to screen presents the potential for someone to get through. That ultimately, if they're screening thousands of additional people who aren't flying that day just to go to the gate, that somebody with luggage or someone who wants to do harm might get through because it's like, hi, they've got another person, another person, and my eyes are glancing at this person or could create a distraction. This is the latest change in some of these post-911 rules that have existed for a couple of decades that we dealt with as our new reality, whether it was taking off the shoes when they started to pair that back. The rules were on taking off shoes as the technology has improved or on scanning because of course there was the infamous shoe bomber two decades ago. Then there's a big question, Jill. I think many of us have around water bottles and those liquid rules.

36:12They have considered allowing more liquids through. We recently bought, I think it was a really incredible dessert when we were in Minneapolis in the spring. It was a pudding type thing. We were looking to eat banana pudding. That looked delicious. Guess what? They took it away from us, Jill, because it was a liquid. They took that away from us and we were running late to the flight and so we didn't want to go back behind security to go eat it. Anyway, the liquid rule, that's in need of a change. Let's fix that one. As long as they don't take away the breast milk, I always actually have thought that if you are willing to taste what you're bringing through, they should let you have it because chances are you're not going to have explosives in it. Unless there's an explosive that's like tasty and not going to harm you, but yeah, eat it for me. Drink that, right? And then that should knock out like 99% of the bad possibilities. But I'm not a TSA, Jill. I don't know the rules, but we'll see what happens with this new airport rule. So the latest now in the Lindsey Clancy mistrial, Clancy's attorney says that he plans to file

37:15a motion to prevent a potential second murder trial. So Clancy's initial murder trial, as we've been reporting, ended in a mistrial after the jurors failed to reach unanimous decision. Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, says the jurors were split 11 to one in favor of acquittal. Reddington was on CBS mornings on Wednesday and he reiterated his claim that the loan hold out was not applying reasonable doubt to the verdict. Reddington unsuccessfully tried to have the jurors dismissed during deliberations. He said he'll be filing a motion ahead of a scheduled September 29th court hearing with the hopes of preventing a new trial. And he also offered his most definitive rejection yet of conspiracy theories that are accusing Lindsey's ex-husband Patrick of killing the couples three children. His remarks on Wednesday follow months in which his comments kind of allowed speculation about Patrick to linger. Despite Lindsey admitting that she was the one who killed the children, but he did urge

38:18the public to stop. It's obvious that Patrick was a man who stood by his wife through all of the difficulty of the medical issues, the psychiatric issues, the pharmaceutical issues, and even up to the time of trial and even afterwards. And the man ought to be able to move on with his life and stop with the speculation and horrific conspiracy allegations that he was involved with some massive conspiracy to kill his children. So what do you say to the people who are still pushing that theory that Patrick Clancy was involved in these children's murder? As I've said before, I think that it's horrific with this man who's been going through and he's entitled to move on with his life. So this is pretty interesting of him from Reddington because he's sort of let this speculation linger out there for a while. They probably didn't mind it because it created actual reasonable doubt for his client, but now he's been asked about it, Joe, in multiple interviews, whether it was ABC, NBC, CBS. We use the CBS bite here because it's probably the most definitive saying stop with the speculation that he was involved in some conspiracy to kill his children.

39:21Some people said, well, he didn't definitively say he did not do it. They said stop with the speculation that he was involved in a conspiracy to kill. But nonetheless, here, Joe, we did hear from Patrick's attorney this week. We talked about on the podcast that they're looking at potential defamation cases here because it's led to death threats for him, made life very challenging for him. It's interesting watching the reaction to Reddington because then you have some people who are very much into this theory who are now upset with what Reddington is saying around this, being like, no, there are questions as to how comprehensive the investigators were in the aftermath here. But nonetheless, you really only have outside interest here who are making these claims because everyone basically on both sides of the court, there were some basics which included tragically that she was behind the killing of the kids. Now, we're going to see what happens next with this case, whether they do a retrial here. He's going to try to make this double jeopardy argument around her being retried. But certainly, just given the national attention, this case has gotten, it's going to be incredibly

40:25difficult to find a jury for a second trial here, leading the questions as to how prosecutors pursue this case or whether they go for a plea deal. In a different sound bite from that CBS interview, the reporter is really asking Reddington kind of like, could you have done more to stop that speculation about Patrick? And he says, listen, I'm not Patrick's lawyer. Patrick is his own lawyer. Lindsey Clancy was my client and she was who I was defending. And finally now in some retail news, you may have noticed it is getting harder to return those late night impulse purchases or any purchases really. There are things like surprise fees, shorter return windows, slower refunds and more questions about why you are sending your order back. And for a small group of shoppers, a warning that their next return may not get refunded at all from the Wall Street Journal, 68% of retailers now charge a fee on returns at least some of the time. Five years ago, that number was 43%.

41:27This is according to loop returns, which is an e-commerce platform that tracks transactions from more than 5,000 retailers. Mail in returns at ZARA, H&M, Uniglo and TJ Maxx now run anywhere from about $5 to $12. The window to send things back is also shrinking at the bigger brands. The average refund window drop from 43 days to 38 over the past two years. Macy's used to accept returns for up to a full year now to just 30 days. DPO says Halloween and holiday decor needs to be returned within 30 days as well. And the money is slower to come back. And that's because more retailers now inspecting what shows up. Home Depot says a refund could take as many as 17 business days to hit your bank account. Amazon though, taking a slightly different approach. Yeah, Amazon has asked for a while why you're returning something. It has also started flagging certain listings as frequently returned or tagging them with a badge that says customers usually keep this. And more frequent returners, specifically those who return 10 times more than the typical

42:30shopper, are now getting messages from Amazon with tips on how to shop for items they won't send back. Now, Amazon says this has meant as education, not punitive, and they don't close accounts with high return rates, at least not yet. But other retailers are being much less gentle about it. And as for why you're seeing this crackdown here, returns are expensive, processing one costs about 27% of the purchase price according to a returns software company called Optoro. Also there are shoppers who are trying to gain the system, those who wear out clothes before sending them back or by Halloween decorations just to return them in November in much worse condition. So there's a lot of retailers saying enough is enough. Motion terms of giving a reason for why you have to return something. I always think about that Seinfeld episode where he says he is returning his item for spites to which the person working at the store says, no, that's not an acceptable and acceptable reason. And does not appear Amazon has a spite category yet, but imagine there's a non-zero amount

43:30of people who return things for spite, especially these days, people are trying to make a statement about various companies. It has been back to school in my house and back to juggling after school activities with work and everything else. But we still want to eat well. So having factor in the fridge means we can still sit down to a nutritious meal, even on the busiest days, factor makes chef-crafted dietician designed ready to eat meals so you don't have to choose between real food and convenience. A healthy meal is ready in just two minutes with no prep and my favorite part, no cleanup. I also appreciate that with over 175 banned ingredients, every factor meal is designed around what supports a healthier lifestyle and nothing that doesn't. There are over 100 nutrient dense menu items to choose from every week with new options like salmon burgers and add on like pumpkin flavored cheesecakes and protein shakes. I use factor and you should too. So let's eat real head to factor meals dot com slash monos 50 off use the code monos 50

44:34off to get 50% off and one free breakfast item per box for one year while supplies last until 1031 2026. So that is code monos 50 off at factor meals dot com. See the website for more details. I feel like my relationship with money has changed a lot as I've gotten older. It mostly used to be about am I paying my bills and putting some money away. Now there are so many moving pieces and competing priorities. So I want to feel like I know exactly where I stand. Not just hope that everything's okay. So that's what I like about monarch having our accounts investments savings goals and spending all in one place. It gives me a much clearer picture. There have definitely been months where I've looked at our spending breakdown and thought wait we spent that much on that. Seeing it all laid out makes those patterns really obvious. I also love monarchs AI assistant. I can just ask questions about my finances instead of digging through transactions myself. It definitely takes some of the mental load out of managing money and helps me feel like

45:35we actually know where we stand. So write your own money story with monarch. Use the code monos at monarch dot com to get your first year of monarch core half off at just $50 that is 50% off your first year at monarch dot com code monos. All right, we go to on this day in history here on the same 1941 celebrating its birthday is M&M's. It introduced on September 10th 1941 after the US entered world war two. The candies were exclusively sold to the military initially. They were dubbed the heat resistant candy easy to transport chocolate to be included in American soldier rations at the time. Chocolate was viewed as a way to provide energy for the soldiers. But most chocolate could not be kept in the soldiers pockets or naps X as they would melt. And so M&M's introduced initially for the US military. And by the time all these guys get home, the GIs get home at the end of world war two.

46:35They're like, you know what's awesome? These M&M's and so they went consumer after that. Okay, so I was wrong. It is not twizzlers or nips. But twizzlers also heat resistant. So I guess there's many scenarios if you want to keep various candies in your pocket. All right, on this day in 1977, the last person was guillotine in France at a prison in Marseille on this day, 49 years ago, the guillotine of prisoners in France actually lasted about 200 years. And while fact, Joe, the person for which the guillotine is named after, his name was Joseph guillotine, actually was against capital punishment. He was a doctor in the late 1700s in France. And at the time, they were very shall we say painful ways they would execute prisoners by acts by sword, a whole variety of techniques at the time. And so Joseph guillotine in revolutionary France was like, hey, can we stop at the whole capital punishment thing? And the French at the time were like, absolutely not.

47:37We will be engaging capital punishment. He's like, okay, can we at least go with a more civilized way? They'll create less pain and be much quicker than some of these other methods you guys are using? And so effectively, his name then got attached to the guillotine, even though again, fun fact, he was against capital punishment. I guess Von Ischback. That's fun as you can get. It comes to the guillotine. But listen, you got to make compromises in life. You fight against capital punishment. And they're like, well, we won't do that. And he's like, okay, can we make them at least a little more humane sort of kind of? All right, fast forward here at a less ugly history on this day in 1984, Alex Trebek, debut as the host of the game show, Jeopardy. You noticed that show for a number of decades before unfortunately passing away a couple years ago and some music history for all of you today, turning 44 years old today. It's a reigning man by the Weather Girls premiere today in 1982. And some music, whether it's not a different tone, Nirvana, at least their breakout single

48:39Smiles of Teen Spirit on this day in history in 1991. So Smiles of Teen Spirit, officially 35 years old today, wild to believe. And the Library of Congress has added the Never Mind album by Nirvana to the National Recording Registry for its cultural significance. And so I imagine that something Nirvana was anticipating when they released their album back in the early 90s. And there you have it, Jill, that's on the state history. All right, everybody. That is a wrap for this edition of the Monoos podcast on this Friday Eve. If you like what you hear, please show this with your friends. It will help us grow. Follow us, subscribe. Do not miss an episode. Review us kindly in the app store. Those reviews really do help. We appreciate them. And if you value our news coverage, consider joining the Monoos premium community. It's a way to support us. It's a way to get extra access to analysis and information. We got a lot of conversations happening there. We run the story we told you yesterday, the mother who let her five year old walk on their own and then got labeled a child of user by the state of Virginia.

49:42So we do deeper dives with the community on a variety of subjects. I'll also be bringing back the AskMo Anything podcast after a short hiatus, Jill, our weekly exclusive premium podcast where I answer your questions. A lot of questions, Jill, about AI, not surprising among other things. And so you can look out for that premium subscribers this weekend on the AskMo Anything podcast. Yes, the biggest question there was explain exactly how AI is going to kill all of us. I can't look into the future. I'm not as smart as AI. I'm smarter than some AI, but some of the AI way smarter than me at this point, guys. I got to ask AI everything. Yes, look out for the first edition of Ask AI Anything coming in a couple of weeks. I triple A podcast. All right, everyone. Have a wonderful day. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the Mounties podcast. Have a fantastic day. I hope you enjoyed.

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