Part One: The Fake Bomb Detector Grift That Killed Hundreds
6/16/202651 min
Robert sits down with Ed Zitron to discuss one of the deadliest fake tech products in history: the Gopher, a fake golf ball detector that became a fake bomb detector and got hundreds of people killed.
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First 90 secondsSophie Lichterman· Host0:00
[upbeat digital music] Coolzone Media.
Robert Evans· Host0:02
[upbeat digital music] Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the very podcast about... Wait, shit. Bad people podcast.
Sophie Lichterman· Host0:11
Bad people.
Robert Evans· Host0:11
The worst in all of history. I'm the host of the show, and also bad at introducing it. Let's distract everyone from me being yet again incompetent at the one thing I have to do other than read a script, and bring on our guest, Ed Zitron. Ed, how you doing today?
Speaker 30:27
What's up? I'm great.
Robert Evans· Host0:29
You're great? That's good.
Speaker 30:31
Yeah.
Robert Evans· Host0:31
That's better than bad. Ed, you have a podcast called Better Offline, don't you?
Speaker 30:35
I do.
Robert Evans· Host0:36
And you've, you've, you talk about a number of things on that show, but you've kind of- Yeah ... uh, you, you've, you've gained a great deal of fame and notoriety lately by repeatedly calling out a lot of the grifty and conny aspects of what some people call the AI revolution. I think that would be- Hmm ... that would be fair to say. And you, you're working on- That's fair ... a book right now, aren't you, Ed? You wanna give- Yes ... the audience the title of that book?
Speaker 30:57
It's called Why Everything Stopped Working, and it's about how everything stopped working due to technology, and how we got to where we are today, which kind of fucking sucks.
Robert Evans· Host1:07
That is a great premise, and I can't wait for the book. And I wanted to help you out with some research, Ed- Okay ... um, on something that's kinda off the beaten path, and not directly involved with the tech industry that you've reported on. But in terms of, like, how people fall for cons, and specifically con technology products, it's a really important story.