4 chapters across the catalog
John Dvorak recounts attending a retirement event for New York Times journalist John Markoff. He describes the atmosphere of the event, which featured robots, and his experience introducing himself as a "podcaster" to a crowd of traditional media elites. Dvorak also mentions a brief discussion with attendees about the popular vote in California.
Charles Manson, Global Warming and Robot Obama
Convicted cult leader Charles Manson made headlines with eccentric comments regarding environmental issues and politics. Manson reportedly expressed concerns about global warming and claimed that President Barack Obama is a "robot." The hosts dismiss the story as a "distraction" from more substantive news items.
Robert Gates Comments on Iraq War Validity and C-SPAN Robots
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates reportedly stated in Baghdad that the premise for the Iraq War was not valid, even if the outcome was positive. The hosts note difficulty finding the specific quote in the C-SPAN video library. They discover that C-SPAN's robots.txt file blocks most search engine crawlers from indexing their transcripts, with the exception of Google.
Shanghai World Expo 2010, Chinese Media Robots
China is preparing for the Shanghai World Expo with massive construction projects nearing completion. The hosts mock the delivery style of Chinese English-language news announcers, suggesting they sound like robots or "Tokyo Rose" figures.
