Join us in this episode as our hosts delve into a lively conversation covering a variety of topical issues. From recalling the enduring legacy of Elvis Presley to the pervasive role of AI in today’s world, we navigate through an engaging blend of personal stories and societal reflections. Tune in as we discuss how AI-assisted speech writing is reshaping public narratives and consider the curious consequences of facial recognition technology in major public events.
Hey, Greg Laurie here. Welcome to my podcast. I have a very special guest, Joel Rosenberg. Levi, thanks for being on my podcast. Thank you for making time for me. Hollywood’s not the hope of the world. The local church is the hope of the world. And I’ve always felt like it’s my job to set a volleyball that can be spiked at the local level. If God can reach Michael Franzese, who can God not reach? Now streaming on Salem Podcast Network and Salem News Channel.
SPEAKER 05 :
Obviously some Elvis there, Mike. Yes, sir. So why did I pick this? Why did I pick Elvis? Why did I pick this? You know we do a lot of birthdays. Now the Elvis fans will go, no, no, no, January is his birthday.
SPEAKER 04 :
I was listening to your half-hour riveting commentary about the Doobie Brothers this morning. It was really, really good stuff.
SPEAKER 05 :
It was like three minutes at the top of the show, back down.
SPEAKER 04 :
It had to be 30. It just seemed that way to you.
SPEAKER 05 :
Three longest minutes of my life. Well, here’s 60 seconds on Elvis. It’s the other end of the story. It is 48 years ago tomorrow that Elvis passed away.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, gosh.
SPEAKER 05 :
A Lonely Life Ends on Elvis Presley Boulevard was the headline in the Memphis Commercial Appeal. So I said, okay, got to find some Elvis. So I got to thinking. My buddy Mike Gallagher, that’s this segment. You’re born April 1960, right? Yes, sir. Two Elvis songs hit number one the month you were born. That was one of them. Hound Dog? And the other one was… Wow. Elvis dies when you are 17.
SPEAKER 04 :
How on the radar, what did it mean? Oh, it was a big deal. You know, I remember going to Memphis and touring Graceland and being amazed at how tiny all the rooms are. Yep. It’s this weirdest thing. Not huge. No, it’s not a big, he lived, and I don’t want to say modestly, I mean, it’s a big, beautiful house, but buried in the backyard with his name in this film. Like a goldfish. Exactly. Strangest thing ever. They misspelled Aaron.
SPEAKER 05 :
And when I went to Memphis in 1985, the WHBQ had become a talk station after being a music station for years. And in 1954, a disc jockey named Dewey Phillips played a little record called That’s All Right, Mama and changed the history of the world. And on the 10th anniversary of Elvis’ death, August of 1987, I’m in Memphis on WHBQ, did a show from Graceland on the 10th anniversary of his death. I’ll never forget that. There were people, because you’ve got to understand, this was almost 40 years ago. There were people in their… 30s, 35, 35, 40 years old, who were there for all the big hits of the 50s, because that’s how recent it was.
SPEAKER 04 :
I did a remote once outside Graceland. I set up on a little booth. It was in the early days of my syndication life. Was it authorized? Did you work with the Graceland people? We were on a tiny little station in Memphis, and I sat there for three hours. And nobody came. I sat there all… You talk about a lonely life.
SPEAKER 01 :
That could have been the headline in the Memphis commercial.
SPEAKER 04 :
A lonely host on Elvis Presley Boulevard. A lonely talk show host on Elvis Presley Boulevard. I sat there doing a show like a moron, and nobody showed up.
SPEAKER 05 :
Did you just… But it was… Obviously, it wasn’t on a birthday or a death day, or it was just another random day.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, it was something. It was some… No, no, no. There was some reason, but it looked good on paper. It sure looked good in advance, but it did not turn out to be.
SPEAKER 05 :
Speaking of things on paper, somebody sent me something. It’s Friday where we just sort of take care of loose ends. There’s a couple of things going on in the news.
SPEAKER 04 :
And we’re all gone next week.
SPEAKER 05 :
You’re on the cruise.
SPEAKER 04 :
You’re covering for Stegall, who’s on the cruise.
SPEAKER 05 :
This is the last 735 until a week from Monday. A week from Monday. But you, however, did commit to call us from the ship at 430 in the morning. You know, I did not. We have it on tape. We have it on tape.
SPEAKER 04 :
I may put it on tape.
SPEAKER 05 :
ChatGPT, please send a report to Mark. This is exactly where I’m going. Yesterday, you revealed that you, was this a bit or was it for real? Did you have ChatGPT kind of write some remarks for you and then you added them somewhat and then delivered them to a crowd? Did that happen? I did. Sure. And again, we’re having a little fun here, and it’s half of a bit. I lament that this will cause our brains to atrophy because we’re no longer writing our own stuff. It’s not like you are a totally absent partner, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But along comes a, who’s Tyler Durden? That name rings a bell. Isn’t that the dude in Fight Club? It’s a pseudonym. Anyway, somebody writing something at a website who says the most insidious trick of all the AI language models is – the problem is that AI absorbs – and spits back conventional wisdom gleaned from every source, which makes its judgments no better than somebody wholly uninformed on particulars, but gains opinions from the mood of the moment. It has no capacity to judge good quality over bad, so it just puts it all into a melange of blather, distinguished only because it looks and feels like English.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, I think there’s merit to that because it takes the speech that I got some help with from ChatGPT relied on Wikipedia. Now, if you’re relying on Wikipedia, you’re going to get maybe a point of view that isn’t particularly your own or objective, but it sort of culls all the Internet, takes all these different sources, and then puts it together in one delivery. You did tell it to make it sound like you, and it did. Oh, yeah. And it did. I said at the end, fight the good fight. Here’s an AI horror story. You ever heard of the name James Dolan, the guy that runs Madison Square Garden? So he’s a guy, very controversial figure, kind of bombastic. He runs MSG and he runs Radio City Music Hall. I think he owns the Knicks. He’s a real powerful mogul. Well, he doesn’t like his enemies very much. So you know what he’s done? He uses facial recognition technology at the entrances of Madison Square Garden. And if you’re a critic of him or Madison Square Garden, you get kicked out without a refund. You know the big law firm Morgan & Morgan? I was just reading an article in the New York Post. They’re involved in ongoing litigation with Dolan and Madison Square Garden. This guy shows up to see a Knicks game or something at the Garden with his seven-year-old son. He’s going through security. All of a sudden, he’s swarmed by security guards. They get him from facial recognition technology. He’s identified as a lawyer with Morgan & Morgan. Now, he had nothing to do with any of the ongoing litigation, but just by guilt by association, being a part of Morgan & Morgan, He gets kicked out.
SPEAKER 05 :
That is weird. I’m half tempted to call BS on this whole story, although it seems kind of real, right? First of all, they have facial recognition at all the portals at Madison Square Garden.
SPEAKER 04 :
It is a real story.
SPEAKER 05 :
Number two, can you load? I guess you can load. I mean, that’s how they find criminals, through facial recognition, which I obviously support. I guess if it’s you or it’s me who’s an enemy of this dude, they can load a picture of Mike or a picture of Mark, and it’ll go, you know, and we’re trying to go in for a Knicks game. For no reason.
SPEAKER 04 :
And how far does it go?
SPEAKER 05 :
If I have a ticket to a thing, I feel like I’ve got a right to be at that thing. Unless I’m drunk or beat somebody up.
SPEAKER 04 :
According to the ticket, they have a right to kick anybody out for any reason. I guess they do. That’s the contract of carriage or whatever it is. But I mean, this is kind of where we’re headed. It’s what makes people worried about Big Brother and…
SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, we’ve got to quickly trump his wheels up, as you said earlier, for Alaska. Mark, what are all the Ukraine lovers going to do if he brokers peace between Russia and Ukraine? All the people with the flags and the lapel pins and the flag in their bios and their pronouns? Well… Slava Ukraine?
SPEAKER 05 :
So it depends. If it’s Adam Kinzinger, he’ll have to go find other things to do. If it’s real Ukrainians, they should be happy. I was listening to what’s left of NPR on the way in this morning, just doing up and down the dial, now funded by real human beings, as it should be instead of government. And they talked to – this was kind of cool – Ukrainians living in Alaska. So they’re right there in the belly of the beast for the news. And they all said, with lovely, lilting, remaining Ukrainian accents, they said, we are hoping for peace. We hope that Mr. Trump is successful. And, of course, they would be because that means that their fellow Ukrainians aren’t going to get killed by Russians anymore.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, but none of the people here with the Ukrainian flags are Ukrainian.
SPEAKER 05 :
They’re just leftists. They’re progressives. None of the people in D.C. protesting the National Guard live in high-crime areas. That’s right. It’s protesting by proxy.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, you heard Chuck Schumer declare, look, it’s safe for me. I walk around. He left out his 20-person security guard. He’s got a big security detail that takes him everywhere he goes. I’m so excited that the Democrats have taken the bait on this crime issue. This is one of the issues that is so, so clear, crystal clear. They go to the wrong side of every 80-20 issue in the world. I’m reading Axios this morning. And they’re trying to do a hit job on the fact that I heard Jessica Tarloff spew this garbage the other day on The Five. Well, these are red states with all the violent crime. So Axios does a deep dive into where the homicide rates are the highest. Okay? To hear President Trump tell it, they write, they tsk-tsk. The nation’s murder problem is particularly bad in New York City, Chicago, Baltimore, D.C. Well, new FBI crime figures from 2024 tell a different story. Big picture. Now, check this out, Mark. 13 of the 20 U.S. cities with the highest murder rates were in Republican-run states. Then it says, wait a minute, many of those cities, many, remember this line, many of those cities were run by Democrats. who are often at odds with state officials. Well, then they show the map. Mark, all of the cities with the highest murder rates are run by Democrats except one. So there’s this city, and the city, by the way, you’ll find interesting considering your location, Shreveport, Louisiana. That happens to be run by a Republican mayor. And only for a couple of years, by the way. But every other city in the supposedly red states are Democrat-run cities.
SPEAKER 05 :
Somebody tried to come after Scott Jennings on CNN and say, in your state of Kentucky, in your town of Louisville, would you be in favor of this kind of response in Louisville? And he said, listen, whatever it takes. Louisville’s run by Democrats. Kentucky has a Democrat governor.
SPEAKER 04 :
But here’s even Axios, who’s supposed to be a credible, objective news source, saying many of these cities. Yeah, how about all of them except one? And they even put the map up. It’s all blue dots. It’s all blue except for one little red dot for Shreveport, Louisiana. Democrats don’t know how to fight crime, and they don’t want to fight crime.
SPEAKER 05 :
I need a report from you from yesterday because I was living in anticipation, didn’t get to hear it. How did it go when you interviewed the guy who admittedly has a business model of I will create a crowd, you pay me, I’ll make a crowd show up for your protest. How did that go?
SPEAKER 04 :
He’s a charming guy, and he joined us from London, and look, he doesn’t mind interviews in conservative media. He admits. He says, look, people get paid. He goes, this is America.
SPEAKER 05 :
How much is 100 people at the courthouse?
SPEAKER 04 :
I asked him your question. Five figures, he said. At least five figures for 100 people. That’s weird.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, that’s 10,000 or 90,000. That’s how he answered, and he pointed out that every protester gets between $200 and $300.
SPEAKER 04 :
Wow. Not a bad gig. And he said, but now, he goes, but now we vet them to make sure they believe what they say they’re going to be protesting.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, sure they do.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, no. Yep, yep, he did. And then he went on to compare protesters to talk show hosts. He said, well, look, you guys, he said, look at how much money Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow make. These are just people taking to the streets doing the same thing that you guys do. I said, wait a minute, you’re comparing… You know, AstroTurf protesters to talk show hosts.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right, because we’re sincere, saying things that we really believe. Now, if he’s vetting the protesters for actually believing the thing they’re sending him to. He says they do. Then at least nobody’s being fooled or defrauded with people who don’t believe that.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, you can’t vet the protesters.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s baloney. Somebody wants the $300. There are people who say, for $300, I’ll hold any placard you want for $300. Some people.
SPEAKER 04 :
And I told him, I said, they all look like they’re out of central casting. They’re all white boomers. And he said, well, and then he got into the whole thing about how, well, a lot of them are retired. They don’t work. You know, they got a little extra cash. God bless America. It was quite an interview. And finally, we’re going to end on the hypocrisy of the Texas gerrymandering debate. So good. A woman named Mariana Garcia wrote a column of the Miami Herald. How Newsom, you know, is going to now gerrymander California. Why, yes. After he declared Texas an affront to American democracy. Don’t you love all these tough-talking Californians taking on Texas? Pritzker, oh, Texas thinks they’re tough. We’re going to mess with Texas. Yeah, the only thing you’re going to mess with is the buffet line over at the Old Country Buffet. I’m sorry. Newsom vowed. So on the one hand, Texas is an affront to democracy, and it risks destabilizing the body politic. Sounds pretty bad, right, Mark?
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s terrible.
SPEAKER 04 :
So then why do they turn around and do the exact same thing? What you’ve done is horrible.
SPEAKER 05 :
Now we’re going to do it.
SPEAKER 04 :
Now we’re going to do it. Apparently two wrongs do make a right. Well, when it comes to impeaching Trump, because Newsom was very transparent yesterday at the press conference, he said, look, it’s all about impeachment. That’s all they care about.
SPEAKER 05 :
I think his bloom is coming off. He remains a pretty man. He remains fairly well-spoken, but I think that he’s just coming across as a car salesman. I don’t want to insult car salesmen. He’s just kind of a huckster. I just don’t think it’s working right.
SPEAKER 04 :
60 seconds.
SPEAKER 05 :
What is your week like? When are you going to Seattle first?
SPEAKER 04 :
Today, later today, we off to Seattle. We set sail out of Seattle tomorrow. We go to Juneau and Sitka and Ketchikan, and we will be… Whining and dining hundreds of our fans on the Patriots Alaska cruise. Can’t wait for stories.
SPEAKER 05 :
We’ll text like schoolgirls. Give me stories I can tell to people because everybody’s going to miss you, and that’ll be great. And I will, too. And we will see you on October 3rd or whenever you’re back.
SPEAKER 04 :
Doing double duty with Stegall and Davis. Have a great weekend. There you go. See you a week from Monday.
SPEAKER 05 :
Safe travels, my friend. That is Mike Gallagher, world traveler.
SPEAKER 01 :
Americans may not agree on much, but we agree on Social Security. We all pay in. It ought to be there when we need it. Social Security could face a funding gap in less than a decade, and I don’t want to see a pay cut. I’m with AARP in the fight to protect the Social Security we earned.
SPEAKER 05 :
Pledge to protect Social Security at aarp.org slash we earned it. That’s aarp.org slash we earned it. Paid for by AARP.
