if you'd like to make a call please hang up and try again if you need help stay on the line and a hacker will assist you shortly the telephone keeps ringing so i ripped it off the wall i cut myself while shaving now i can't make a call we couldn't get much worse but if they could they would but the best expect the worst i hope that's understood one day let's go so We'll be right back. 
We'll be right back. 
And a very good evening to everybody. 
The program is Off the Hook. 
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening. 
Joined tonight by Kyle. 
Hi. 
And over in Skypeland, we have Rob T. Firefly. 
Good evening. 
We have Gila. 
Good evening. 
And we have Alex. 
Good evening. 
Who apparently is in space. 
All right. 
We have a special guest that's going to be joining us in just a couple of minutes. 
But first, some rather disturbing news that we're just becoming aware of involving our friends over at the Tesla Science Center out in Shoreham, Long Island. 
I'm going to read a notice that was sent out earlier today. 
As many of you are aware, our beloved Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe Laboratory was struck by a serious fire last night. 
While the fire was largely contained, occasional flare-ups occurred. 
There was one today. 
In fact, local fire departments remained diligently on the site to manage the situations. 
Over 100 firefighters from 11 departments responded to the blaze, demonstrating extraordinary courage and determination throughout the night. 
To these heroes, we owe a debt of gratitude beyond words. 
We are immensely grateful for their commitment and bravery. 
Given the ongoing activity, we strongly urge everyone to avoid visiting the site for your safety and to allow emergency services to operate unimpeded. 
We promise to keep you informed through regular updates on our website and social media channels. 
Of course, we'll be keeping people updated on this radio program as well. 
The full extent of the damage is yet to be determined. 
In the coming days, our site engineer, historical architect, and structural engineer, along with Suffolk County Police Department, the Brookhaven Town Fire Marshal, and the county's Department of Fire, Rescue, and Emergency Services will conduct a thorough assessment. 
Their insights will be crucial in shaping our ongoing plans to restore and rebuild this historic landmark. 
It brings a sense of relief to share that the structural integrity of the building, dating back to 1901, seems to have withstood the ordeal. 
This resilience is a testament to its original robust construction and durability. 
We recognize the profound emotional impact this incident has had on our community and on our supporters from around the world. 
Rest assured, our commitment to transparency remains steadfast. 
We'll provide accurate, timely information countering any misinformation that may arise. 
It is also important to note that while we were poised to begin a significant renovation and restoration project, construction had not yet commenced, sparing us from additional complexities at this stage. 
For ongoing updates and verified information, visit the website at www.teslasciencecenter.org. 
Your support and understanding in these challenging times are invaluable. 
Together, we will navigate this crisis and emerge stronger, honoring the legacy of Nikola Tesla and the spirit of innovation, determination, and resiliency that this center embodies. 
And, you know, I just got to say personally, it's on the eve of Thanksgiving to have such a horrible thing happen to such an amazing place that has just been the focal point for bringing people together, teaching about Tesla, about technology, this real enthusiasm. 
And I know that is not going to die. 
It's just got a little bit harder. 
But, boy, that was a gut punch. 
I don't think any of us needed. 
I feel the same way. 
The heart goes out to everyone there. 
And I know that the site and the project itself, as far as restoration and the future, is in good hands. 
They're really dedicated people that care very much about creating an institution and educational and historic facility there. 
So this is, I think, all the more reason why restoring it and getting it as safe and accessible and usable as possible is important. 
All right. 
Rob, go ahead. 
Yeah. 
The folks from the Tesla Science Center have always been so dedicated to what they're doing. 
They've communicated with us for, you know, on many occasions. 
They've shown up at Hope. 
They've spoken at multiple Hope conferences. 
You might have seen them in the merchandise area if you were there. 
And they just, it's, what they're doing is so important and so wonderful and preserving such an important piece of local history. 
And it is such a shame that something like this would happen to them. 
But, again, I have complete faith in the spirit behind it and the folks who work there. 
And, yeah, they will rebuild. 
They will recover from this. 
And, yeah, throw them some support if you can because this is really just amazingly important. 
And just keep checking that website for updates. 
We'll certainly have more about that next week. 
All right. 
Well, last week you might recall that we told the story of Ron and Mary Knappen of Galesville, Wisconsin, how they've been collecting antique phones for about 50 years or so. 
They've had phones show up in movies, TV shows. 
And they're facing a challenge in so far as selling these things, getting rid of a lot of them because they really have piled up. 
I am happy to say we have on the phone with us right now Ron Knappen from Funko, Funko Inc. 
Ron, are you with us? 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
Welcome to Off the Hook. 
Rick, tell us, how many phones would you estimate you have? 
Probably about 50,000. 
50,000 phones. 
I thought I was a collector. 
It's hard to estimate because it's a mixture also along with a lot of parts like handsets, cases, just, you know, partial telephones. 
They're in 33 semi-trailers in our backyard in two, three fairly good-sized farm buildings on our farm and three or four other buildings, one which is a four-story, 300-foot building. 
And it's overwhelming that it's there. 
How many semis did you say? 
33 old semi-trailers that are pretty full. 
I mean, you can walk down through the middle, but we built shelving through the years so that all this stuff occupies. 
But there's, like, one semi-trailer has about 1,200 oak crank wall telephones with a cradle on the top. 
They're missing the handsets. 
Well, we've got the handsets, but it's kind of a Pepper McGee's closet of all sorts of things related to telephonies, to telephony. 
There's one trailer that has probably around 800 to 1,000 walnut bell boxes that were, the nomenclature would be Ericsson. 
They were used with the Ericsson candlestick phone out of mostly the British island, but they were spread out all over Europe, Eastern Europe, going mostly as far as Antwerp and thereabouts. 
And, of course, Scandinavia, because they're basically an Ericsson contrivance. 
I've got ones sitting on the kitchen table in front of me. 
Wow. 
Just the fact that you have 33 semi-trailers, that would be something that was impressive in and of itself. 
But the fact that they're filled with telephones and telephone equipment, that is just, you know, it's overwhelming. 
It really is absolutely incredible. 
How did this get started? 
When did you begin collecting telephones? 
Well, in 1942 or so, first of all, I am basically an adventuresome person into the past and have been fascinated by a lot of antiquity, mostly practical stuff that is more not refined. 
And so, but I was a dump picker in 1942 and going into the second grade. 
I don't remember too many phones then. 
I remember one phone in an empty building. 
And then, in 1942 or 43, my neighbor introduced me to, it was a shed full of old wooden wall crank phones, the large ones. 
And I'm pretty sure they were probably Swedish-American because his dad was strictly Swedish by the name of Magnussen. 
And he ran Peoria Electric, and Peoria Electric in Peoria, Illinois, they even had their own nameplate that they put on these old wooden wall phones. 
I don't know for sure how. 
I've seen one or a picture of one, but I don't think I have one. 
I would kind of like to have one just around as a keepsake, just like a poster I have of the county fairs here. 
I sold a few, but I'm keeping one, and somebody wanted to buy it, and I said, you wait until I die. 
I want to enjoy just walking past it now and then and having it in my midst, M-I-D-S-T. 
Just have it around as an atmospheric thing because it reminds me of my adventures into the past and discovering things and like an explorer. 
But Don Magnussen, he showed me these phones in the shed, and I don't know how, can't remember how many, there probably were 20 or 30 of them. 
And they were the big ones. 
And then when his dad got whiff of the wind about this, he confronted me and he said, you can have them for, I don't remember if it was $2 a piece or $3. 
But who was I going into the second grade in grade school to have the money and a place to put them? 
My dad used his garage. 
I eventually kind of filled it up with stuff. 
But I didn't have the wherewiths and how to engage in such a thing. 
And then through the high school years, in 1950, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, I graduated. 
I would enjoy looking through the classified ads in Popular Mechanics. 
And there was one thing that I always remember, and that was an advertisement for old telephones from Bob Prosser. 
I forget what he called his business, A&M Telephone Company or something, or just Telephone Company, Turtle Lake, Wisconsin, who ended up having a million telephones. 
He was featured in the Wall Street Journal some years ago. 
They called me and were going to interview me, and I introduced them to Bob's estate, and that did it. 
They went into the history of Bob Prosser, who allegedly had a million phones, was in Ripley's, believe it or not, Guinea's Book of Records. 
But in the 1950s, he advertised in Popular Mechanics, and I don't know what other else magazines, like candlestick phones for $5 a piece and things like that. 
And I would never have forgot that. 
And when I was in my career of actually teaching industrial arts in small high schools for 12 years, I bought one. 
And I bought it in around 1962 or 60, somewhere in there, and to put it in my dad's basement, it was what they call the 300 set. 
That would be about a 1940, anywhere between 1940 and 1953 Western Electric, before the 500 set, or the ordinary rotary dial plastic phone that Western Electric and IT&T... 
Right, these are the real heavy ones, the ones you could really hurt somebody with, very heavy phones. 
The 1940 phones are very heavy in weight. 
Yeah, they were. 
They first started out steel, or zinc, and then they went to Bakelite, and then a mixture of Bakelite and plastic, and then turned out to be fully plastic by the 1950s. 
But I put one in dad's basement, and then the telephone company, they knew it, and it was a bell. 
And they confronted my dad through a mail and said, you have an illegal phone, and you'll be penalized at a dollar a month for having that illegal phone in your basement. 
Wow. 
So that went on. 
And then I never forgot about Bob Frosser and Turtle Lake, and then I was called an antique picker in the early 1960s. 
And I had a guy pop up in my house that we rented for $25 a month, and he was a telephone collector by the name of my Bud Johnson from Galesburg, Illinois. 
And Bob, he looked all through my antiques and looked for telephone items and bought them, and he told me a few stories, which most all the stories you hear from a lot of these old people are somewhat interesting, because it's an adventure that they experienced and are relating to. 
And I always enjoy sharing these with people, not with charitably. 
And so, but Bud told me he refinished old telephones and sold them for, I think it was $20 or $25 apiece. 
And during the same time, I learned of them taking the old wooden crank phones, they were oak, as a rule. 
There were maybe about one walnut out of every hundred or eighty wood oak ones. 
Walnut was an earlier wood used in the telephones. 
It was plentiful until after the turn of the century, and walnut became scarcer. 
And so they started making stuff out of oak, including the telephones. 
But most of the telephones before 1900 were walnut. 
The candlestick phones, of course, that's another story. 
But Bud offered to sell me his refinished oak crank phones for, I don't know, $25 apiece. 
And I'd buy them, and they were beautiful, and I'd sell them for $29 or $30. 
And then I ran into a, well, he decided to sell his collection. 
And we were at his location near Galesville, Illinois, Galesburg, during Christmas of 1971. 
And I called them up, and I said, Bud, I'd like to buy some more of those nice phones you refinished. 
And he said, I'm going to sell my collection. 
And I went over, and I spent, I think it was probably $250 is all I had on those old phones. 
And they were, they weren't extremely rare, but they kind of got on the borderline of being a little rare, more rare than the common old kitchen phones that were common around the Midwest in the 1930s and 40s. 
And I brought them home in a 56 Buick with the kids. 
I had three kids, and they rode on top of these phones in the back seat and the back floor all the way home, the 250 miles or 280 miles, whatever it was, and with them ringing when we'd hit a bump. 
And got home, and I was nervous, because I spent all our money, and we had house payments. 
And I was on a low teacher's salary, starting out at $4,100 a year in 1961. 
I don't know what it was in 1971. 
It was probably more like $5,000. 
And so I was, and I had house payments, so on a $4,200 old house in Melrose, Wisconsin. 
And I was nervous about it, and I put an ad in the Antique Trader. 
I think it was a monthly magazine at that time. 
And the ad came out on January 6th of 1972, and it was just dumbfounding. 
I was on the phone for about an hour every night for the whole week, taking calls from mostly collectors. 
One collector, I can't think of his name right at the moment, but we became friends with many collectors. 
And this one collector said, I have kind of a weird hobby. 
And he acted like he was almost ashamed of it, that he collected telephones. 
But these people, I've got a picture here of Walt Adelot from New Jersey, and Steve Hiltz from Saloma, Arizona, who have been friends like this since 1971, or 72, no, 72, yeah. 
And then this Bob Prosser in Turtle Lake, he, and I knew where there were phones. 
There was a guy in Wittenberg, Wisconsin, that's eastern Wisconsin, not quite to Appleton, and southwest of Green Bay a little ways. 
And this guy ran a telephone company there. 
He was 80 years old. 
And I went there, and I bought a lot of old telephone stuff from him. 
And some of them, you know the little plastic mouthpiece that screws in to the front of a candlestick phone? 
Yes. 
It's funnel-shaped? 
Mm-hmm. 
Well, he had those in porcelain, and in the plastic or Bakelite ones he had, I don't think they were plastic. 
They were Bakelite from the 20s and 30s. 
And he had green ones and red ones. 
They were dark colored, mixed with... 
Ron, can I just break in for a second? 
What kind of phone are you using right now? 
I'm using... 
Well, let's see. 
I'll put my glasses on so I can read it here. 
It's called... 
It's a Panasonic Ease-a-phone. 
It's convenient. 
I just pressed speakerphone to dial out and touched the pad, and it had to redial, but it went bad. 
Uh-huh. 
It sounds pretty good. 
There's a slight hum, but I think that's on the phone line, and that's something that you get. 
Yeah, that's on the line. 
Yeah. 
Kyle, you had a question. 
Go ahead. 
Oh, I had a couple. 
This was such a great conversation, but it's such a heavy material, that oak and walnut, and imagining you as a second grader. 
I mean, it's starting this adventure that you're on, but just the logistics of finding a thing like a whole shed full of them. 
After that, was it mostly a string of happenstances through relationships, or did you find, like, more businesses, more offices, and maybe small telephone providers that were looking for a place for all this, or is it mostly those strings of happenstance? 
There were strings of happenstances, starting with Bud Johnson, and then going to when I discovered Bob Prosser, 150 miles north of me here, Turtle Lake, who claimed he had a million phones, and was in Ripley's, believe it or not, in Guinea Book of Records. 
That's all gone. 
A lot of stuff is gone, and my stuff will be gone, too, in not too long of a time, I believe. 
Well, that's part of why we're talking to you, because the reason why this is a news story is because you're trying to get rid of a lot of these phones. 
You're trying to sell the majority of your collection. 
Has that really been a challenge? 
In a way, it just sits here. 
It's not hurting anything. 
The only, you know, but there's several buildings full. 
There is one building that's 300 feet long and four stories high. 
Oh, my God. 
And we're having a hard time getting out of there. 
I've sold the building on a land contract, and I'll get the full payment, which is, you know, not modestly. 
It's a modest amount of money once we vacate the building. 
My wife, Mary, bless her heart, she spends every night until around 11 o'clock sorting parts out, which she brings home in the trunk of her car. 
But happenchance, yes. 
These phones turned up in strange ways and unexpected. 
There was a junkyard in Oregon, Illinois, which is not far from Dixon, where Reagan grew up, Illinois, and 80 miles, might be about 60 miles west of Chicago, Oregon, junkyard. 
And he had boxcars, and Bud went there one time to investigate and explore his boxcars, and the junkyard owner sent him out there. 
And when Bud got out to the boxcars, he was greeted by junkyard dogs, real dogs that were fairly aggressive and scared the heck out of them. 
He never went back there again. 
I guess the trailers were full of mostly ringer boxes, the little boxes you crank that are attached to a candlestick or a non-dial payphone, because, or not payphone, well, yes, those two, but to a phone that didn't have a dial, before dial, of course. 
And so you'd crank that box. 
I used one in the 1950s when I was going to college on the GI Bill, and I called a girl on it, and it was a small payphone, and it had the ringer box connected to it. 
So you'd ring that, and you'd get the operator, and she'd say, what number, please? 
And so I guess I had the number in my pocket. 
I don't remember. 
It was around 1957, and I was going to college on the GI Bill up there in Wisconsin. 
Ron, I just had a question then. 
For the sake of conversation, since you are asking for help with the phones, and if you were able to do some kind of fire sale or something, would you have enough help to keep up, because they're heavy items, and it sounds like a lot of them, even in the best scenario, what would you say the ideal solution for you would be, and would you have enough extra hands to package stuff or to help direct it, assuming everything found a home? 
Yep. 
The thing is, is that if, I just discussed, we had a call today, it was only about two and a half hours ago, two hours, from a fellow in a large city who had the ways and means to buy us completely out in one swipe. 
Whoa. 
S-W-I-P-E. 
And it would take about, oh, close to $200,000, and he could come and take what he wanted. 
And, yes, we have several people here that are employed that would help carry these things or put them on an elevator, excavator, or whatever you call it, a conveyor, yeah, that's what it is, that we put them up into the barn attic with. 
And he would probably take all those phones because we spent, we had people working for us all through the 70s and 80s and 90s who were very proficient in restoring these plastic and Bakelite phones from the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and they're beautiful. 
And they're wrapped up in plastic, and they've put a lot of time, and nowadays, forget it. 
They're spending, what, $30 an hour for employees to do this type of stuff. 
They're there. 
And whoever bought this stuff, I don't care if it was $200,000 or what it would be, they'd just take what they wanted and leave the rest. 
They probably wouldn't take much out of the trailers. 
What I fear is that they wouldn't take the walnut ringer boxes. 
They're beautiful when they're refinished, and you can make something else out of them. 
You don't have to keep them as a bell box. 
They've got two bells at the top, and many times since they're Erickson out of, actually, the British Island, probably made in Coventry, England, in the P. 
O'Connor telephone works right before the Second World War. 
The company was, the manufacturing plant was blown up during the war, and then they ended up with a lot of surplus. 
And these walnut ringer boxes apparently survived, and maybe some of them came out of Antwerp. 
I'm not totally sure, but they're beautiful. 
When you refinish those, that's solid, genuine walnut wood, and they are just outstanding. 
Well, I am convinced, Ron. 
I'm convinced that many of our listeners would be very interested in getting their hands on some of those. 
What would be the best way for them to start that process? 
One of the things that I would emphasize would be to get a hold of, not that I'm trying to solicit sales or promote sales. 
I would enjoy the charitable of being able to share what I know about this stuff. 
I like to share stuff like that. 
And I approach it from a chronological, historical telephony correspondence type thing. 
But I've done a number of books on telephone history, and I would encourage people to get a hold of them. 
They're $30 apiece for CD or flash drive. 
And all you have to do is give us a call, and we'll be glad to sell them to you. 
And I'll be glad to announce my phone call to anybody that wants to hear it. 
Okay, well, we'll give out the website and the phone number in just a bit. 
Rob, I think you had a question? 
Go ahead. 
Yeah, Ron, thank you so much for joining us tonight. 
I know all of us on this program are so interested in the vintage telephone stuff that you're so into. 
I can't hardly hear you. 
Okay, I'll try to turn him up a little bit. 
Try it on. 
Okay, Ron, it's so great to hear from you tonight. 
And I know so much of us are fascinated by what you're talking about. 
And we got a wind of your story from a great write-up you had recently in the Wisconsin State Journal. 
And it mentions another thing that you have done is supply phones to, like, film and television productions and things like that. 
Because, of course, they need old phones if they take place in the past. 
Could you talk a little bit about what that's like? 
Did you just ask me about movies and our phones appearing then? 
It sounded like that, yes. 
Did you have a good question about? 
Yes, that's what he did. 
Okay. 
And our phone call building, we call it, a building that we operated out of starting in 1980, I guess you might say, and we're still occupying or doing business out of that large building in Galesville, small town near La Crosse, Wisconsin. 
Listen, there are pictures along the wall of movies in which our phones appeared in. 
I can conference call Mary, and she has a better recollection naming these movies. 
You've all seen them, and you've seen our phones in there, but you weren't aware that that's where they came from. 
But I can conference call. 
Yeah, but we'd love to hear the conference system at work, but definitely bring Mary in, your wife, who is also part of this business. 
We'd love to hear her perspective. 
Okay, Ron is making a conference call now inside his complex of 50,000 phones out there in Wisconsin. 
It's ringing there now. 
I hear it. 
I hear it. 
And I assume she'll answer. 
She was in the office a while ago, but it's hard to tell. 
Well, just let her know she's on the radio when she picks up. 
That's very important. 
Hello. 
Mary? 
I'm listening to you. 
You are? 
Okay, Mary, tell us, please, what movies, you remember them, and they're right there down there downstairs where you're at in the building. 
Tell us what movies our phones appeared in that we engaged them in. 
Well, the early ones were Eight Men Out and Fried Green Tomatoes. 
But we also did, oh, geez, lots of them. 
J. 
Edgar Hoover, Men in Black, X-Men, Mammoth. 
I know a number of them, JFK, Mad Men, Charlie's Angels. 
How recently? 
What's the one that was most recent, Mary? 
Oh, I can't remember the most recent one. 
Saturday Night Live, we've supplied a few phones for them. 
Oh, that's great. 
Yeah, the advertising companies. 
Do they keep the phones, or do they send them back? 
No, they keep them. 
Okay, wow. 
So, that is incredible. 
Mary, let me ask you, have you had the same interest in phones as Ron? 
Were you? 
I'm very curious how that developed. 
I don't know. 
I guess I've stuck with it, and I've, you know, yeah, it's interesting. 
Wow. 
They want to keep running the business, and that's okay. 
Chicago, we were in Chicago, movie. 
Catch Me If You Can. 
Wow. 
She enjoys. 
Just reading off the list here. 
Field of Dreams. 
Yeah. 
All kinds of movies. 
It's such a critical role, and I hope you know that as lovers of film ourselves, and I'm sure I can speak for many other people, that getting it right and having the real device in a story just sets the scene. 
And especially for people who are fans of telephones, knowing when they might appear, and it really does lend some of that. 
But it's just like any other costume or set dressing. 
It's so important to stories we're telling nowadays. 
Do they know what they want when they ask for a phone, or do you have to guide them to the right kind for the era? 
No, they usually know. 
And they give us a lot of times they'll send us a picture. 
Okay. 
What they have in mind. 
That is so interesting. 
Mm-hmm. 
That is amazing. 
Yeah. 
We've sold a lot of multi-line phones, too. 
Like key systems. 
Business phones. 
Key system or 1A2. 
Yeah. 
Now, Mary, we're going to ask you the same question we asked Ron. 
What kind of phone are you using right now? 
Panasonic. 
You guys like Panasonic. 
Well, they were practical. 
They're one of the last ones that held up okay. 
You know, for a while, the phones coming out of Taiwan were pretty junky. 
And you couldn't fix them hardly either. 
But in the last 30 years or more, they've been pretty substantial. 
And they'll last a long time. 
Our son had a dealership, and we're selling them. 
So we got one. 
And our business had this phone. 
We can do extensions and multi-lines and so on. 
That's great. 
That's amazing. 
So now let me just ask you guys, is there a favorite era of telephones that you can point to and say, this is when phones were at their peak. 
This is when they were really, really good. 
You mean from historical, antique, and selling adventure, or just in a general sphere? 
Generally, just as a phone that you would use. 
You know, voice quality and durability. 
What do you think has lasted the best? 
Well, the 500 set, that was really the, that had a 20-year lifespan when it was new. 
Back in the 80s, early 80s, 70s, 20-year lifespan. 
They just never would give out. 
I mean, everything that ages suffers from certain things about the age, including the human body. 
But the telephones, they'll absorb corrosion of different types. 
They call it, what do you call it when you get a contact points that become corroded? 
I guess corrosion. 
And it doesn't have to be because it's in an atmosphere that's subject to corrosion. 
It can just be old age. 
I mean, nothing much you can do about it. 
It just happens. 
It's like the body. 
And so, but the 500 set was, and you get into the 2500 set, there you get into a challenge with the touch-tone dial. 
And there are weaknesses that are inherent in a touch-tone dial that aren't in a rotary dial. 
Well, they started making those in 1921 or 22, and, well, earlier, but really got off the start big in 22. 
And Ericsson, all their parts and the dial were made on a, by machine. 
They weren't stamped out like automatic electrics were. 
But the touch-tone dial, but the touch-tone dial offered some challenge in working, but they were pretty good. 
Western Electric wasn't the only name. 
Northern Electric, which is a twin to Western, out of Canada. 
And then, of course, IT&T and Stromberg-Carlson, those people almost, I think they copied Western Electric. 
And so they were identical, and parts would interchange. 
But the touch-tone dial, that touch-tone dial, American-made, was really great. 
Now, I'm not running the foreign ones down right now, the Panasonic. 
I don't know if I've ever had a Panasonic touch-tone dial go bad on us. 
And we've used them for, wouldn't you say, 20 years, Mary? 
Yeah. 
That's great. 
That's great to have something last that long. 
And I have to say, you know, we use 500 sets around here, too, because they just sound so good. 
They're solid, and it doesn't make a difference if somebody calls you on the phone, and you're speaking to them on a rotary dial phone, as long as it sounds good. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
The nice thing about the older phones, too, is you can replace the parts, like a transmitter and receiver, if they go bad. 
Yeah, you just unscrew a cap on the handset and pop it out and pop another one in. 
It's a great way to teach people how phones work. 
Take it apart, put it back together, see how it all operates, because the theory is pretty much the same. 
It's just, with today's modern equipment, you can't do anything with it, so you don't learn how it actually works. 
Yeah, and the people that were fixing the electronic phones, they've disappeared, haven't they, Mary? 
Yeah. 
We used to send people to them, because we were, it was beyond us to fix most all the electronic phones that were made in the last 20 years or so. 
So we'd send them to certain specialists, but I don't think they're around anymore. 
A lot of this stuff is gone, G-O-N-E. 
Yeah, I think that's something that a lot of us are experiencing, and unless you have the tooling and microscopes and stuff, it can be incredibly difficult. 
And many of the repair shops can't create much of a business model around it, because the costs for a lot of the products are so low that the amount of labor hours to do component-level soldering for different types of chips and fuses and pieces on the board... 
Yeah, unfortunately, the labor cost now is extremely difficult. 
Sure, sure. 
...and there's not a good way to streamline the procedures on these things to make them cost-effective at all. 
It's not like McDonald's. 
No, no, it's not. 
Ron, let me ask you, have you ever been to a telephone museum, and have they taken notice of what you guys are doing? 
We've got one. 
Well, yes, you live in one, that's true. 
But there's one in Seattle, there's one out here in Long Island, they're all over the place, run by telephone pioneers, usually. 
Well, we created one in our building, and it's still there, and there's pictures of it in that article that the people from the Wisconsin State Journal did, just like an aisle where I'm standing at the end of it. 
And there's a, you know, how many phones do you think's in there, Mary? 
About 80 or 100? 
Oh, probably more than that, probably. 
150 to 100? 
But, uh... 
Including the Erickson Eiffel Tower, which was 1892, and with the iron-curving legs and the pinstriping and all that stuff. 
If that's in there, I think there's three or four examples, all the stuff's for sale, because we want to move out of the building. 
We sold the building on a land contract, and when we vacated, we get the full amount for the building, and then we can live happily ever after in Mayberry or Dreamland. 
Well, Bell used to have a big telephone museum in Chicago, Ron. 
Yeah, but, uh, top story of the Bell telephone building, I put, I drove in there, you go down through a door in the basement, and there's a turnstile, and it'll turn you around, park your truck or whatever. 
I had an old, big old Suburban, and, uh, then you take the elevator up to the top floor, and there was a regular museum up there. 
And Bell employees would donate, you know, when they retired or died, uh, the people left over would give their phones to the museum. 
I went there and bought duplicates from the curator. 
Yeah, that was a nice museum, but it went, for some reason, they discontinued it, but all the surplus and all the phones went to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, which is sizable itself, and I haven't been back there to see that. 
Wow. 
You know, uh, one thing that, uh, you said, uh, about the old phone from the 1800s, uh, leads me to ask, um, what is the oldest phone that you have, and the oldest operating phone? 
Well, Mary, you helped me a little bit, but I think there's probably an 18, there's, of course, duplicate, reproductions of Bell's invention, the, what do you call some of those, Mary? 
Help me. 
Well, the camera phone, the gallows phone, the... 
Yeah, those are repros. 
Yeah. 
But there's a few that go back into the 1880s, I think, and I, I don't, I don't know if I can associate them or not, can you, but then... 
Well, the two-box phones, you know, the... 
The three-box phones, really. 
But they could only go back to the 1880s, or even 1890s, Mary. 
I don't know as we have any that really go back into the early 1980s, or 1880s, or the late 1870s. 
Wow. 
We have some fragments, or parts, partial ones, maybe, but I, I don't, they probably go back to 1878 or something, those partial ones, but nothing that, there's, you know, how many collectors, Mary, 400, that belong to the two main telephone collectors club? 
Yeah, one time there was close to 4,000. 
Were there? 
Yeah, I don't know how many there are today. 
Oh, it's dwindled. 
Yeah. 
The interest is, is diminished, and then most of us are... 
Well, a lot of them have died off, too. 
Yeah, and most of us left are, you know, in our, in our 70s or 80s, and, and, and we're, we're, we keep dying. 
And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and some of them specialize in some pretty weird stuff. 
Uh, John Dresser's one of the names, um, he's from out west somewhere, and he's very active, and Tom Adams, he lives right out there on the eastern part of the country. 
He's fairly famous with the collectors, and very, very, uh, sharing, uh, uh, charitably with his goings-on with restoring these old telephones. 
Very interesting. 
Have you found that there's, uh, uh, much interest in younger people in, uh, collecting old phones? 
No. 
Really? 
No, there was a, a, a kid, high school kid, how old was he, Mary, 15, and he killed himself? 
Mm-hmm. 
He, he, he, he had, he had some special, uh, things about him that were, um, were mishaps about his, his nature, and, um, he was bothered by kids in school or something, and so he, but he, I sat with him at a telephone collector's club, uh, get together, uh, three or four years ago. 
We won the Smitty Award, which is an award for, uh, sharing our interests with people, whoever would inquire, and so we were awarded with that as a plaque that we'll have hanging from the wall in our office when we get out here to the barn again, and it's, um, he sat next to us when we were at that telephone collector's show. 
There's usually one main big telephone collector's show every year, and then there's another one, um, that is competitive with it, um, so there's two collector clubs, and, uh, one's ATCA, and the other's TCI, and they're almost competitive. 
Um, the TCI is, well, it reminds me of the Amis over in, in Pakistan. 
They're competitive, um, for some reason. 
I don't know why, and so there's rivalry. 
Well, some of the, uh, collectors, um, sons and grandkids are also interested in phones, so there's a few there. 
Yeah, there's a few. 
In our community, we come across a lot of people who are interested in old technology of various sorts, vintage computers, or old telephones, so they're definitely out there, and hopefully we can help you connect with them. 
But right now, I want to give out your information, because we're coming up to the last, uh, a couple of minutes of the show, which is incredible. 
We could talk for hours about this. 
Uh, the website is www.phonecoinc.com. 
That's spelled P-H-O-N-E-C-O-I-N-C dot C-O-M. 
I don't think there's a dot after www, is there, Mary? 
Yeah, there is a dot. 
Yeah, www.phonecoinc.com. 
And, um, uh, it's okay to give out the, uh, the phone number that's on the website. 
Of course. 
It's 608. 
Go ahead. 
582. 
Well, 4124 is the business number. 
Okay. 
2263 is at home, but that'd be after 9 in the morning. 
I don't get up till after 9. 
Mm-hmm. 
So, I'm 80, going on 88 years old. 
That is incredible, and, uh, you, you, you sound as young as ever, and, uh, I think, I think... 
Well, they say I look that way, but I don't feel that way. 
I think the phones, the phones have a magic property to them, so, uh, I think that's something that, uh, you're, you're, you're gifted with. 
Uh, we only have, uh, uh, one minute left, so is there any, uh, closing remark that either you or Mary would like to give to our audience? 
I would welcome any calls with questions or interest in antique telephones or the subject of that of any type. 
I, I did up, uh, uh, some, uh, promotion material on the Erickson Eiffel Tower, I mean, uh, help me, Mary, the Ericaphone, which was a 1955 Erickson. 
And, uh, I'm running out of time, I'll, I'll bug off. 
Just today, I did that promotion material to go into a telephone collector's newsletter, and it's, it's historical. 
I don't, I, I, I mix it. 
Um, they're available, and I'm not trying to make a money on this stuff so much as I am just offering to get rid of it. 
And, and, and share it. 
And we supply parts, like, uh, mouthpieces that are broken or missing, and cranks, and cords, and receivers, and stuff like that, so. 
It's in a catalog, and our catalog, and we'd be glad to send it out to anybody that inquires about it. 
Yeah, I'm gonna go through and see if I, uh, have a parts list of, uh, some extra things I want to have around for, for some of our phones, so I'm sure other people will do the same. 
Definitely. 
Ron and Mary Knappen of, uh, Galesville, Wisconsin. 
It's been a pleasure talking to you this last hour, and I'm sure we'll have more conversations in the future about telephones, and, and collecting, and all sorts of things like that. 
We wish you the best of luck. 
You're welcome, man. 
We'll, we'll be, uh, we'll be in touch. 
We'll be, uh, definitely. 
Thank you. 
Thank you for giving, having the privilege and the pleasure of sharing with you. 
And I wish you well. 
Thanks. 
Happy Thanksgiving. 
Goodbye. 
Happy Thanksgiving to you, too. 
So long. 
Take care. 
Wow. 
That was, uh, that was pretty awesome. 
And, uh, we are out of time. 
OTH at 2600.com is our email address. 
Please write to us, uh, with any questions or comments. 
And, uh, stay tuned. 
Coming up in a couple of minutes on YouTube, we'll be on Overtime. 
Check the link at 2600.com, or simply go to Channel 2600 on YouTube. 
See you next week. 


And welcome everybody over here on YouTube for Off the Hook Overtime. 
Did you make it okay, Kyle? 
I made it. 
All right, there you are. 
And we have out in Skypeland, Rob, Gila, Alex, you all there? 
Anyone? 
None of you? 
You're moving your eyes. 
Sorry, let's try that again. 
We're here, we're here. 
And greetings to the 21 people who are here with us right now. 
Thanks, gang. 
We're glad you're all here. 
And, you know, the lag was a little confusing a second ago, which means we are live and running on YouTube. 
And we're muted now, so that's good. 
Ad free this week. 
So if you get an ad this week, let us know, because you shouldn't. 
And by the way, we asked people to stick around for the post-roll ads last week, because we were experimenting. 
We wanted people to stick around for the end. 
We didn't have that button checked, so nobody should have gotten one of those. 
So that was kind of... 
Alex, you're there. 
I am indeed. 
Okay. 
Yep. 
A little bit lagged, but I'm here. 
All right. 
Well, that was something. 
That was one hell of an interview. 
Boy, Ron had so much to say, so much to share. 
I was just blown away. 
I felt so small compared to all the equipment this guy has collected over the years. 
And I sure hope that it's something that people who are listening are also interested in. 
Just the idea of them using a conveyor belt like they use for roofing or something to get more phones into a barn. 
That alone, that said it all to me. 
Like, this is just the epitome of a collection. 
And that he's part of a community of other collectors and is really talking up some of their life's vocation and how that's all gone. 
And Kyle, you just visited the website for the first time, and you had some comments about that. 
I really like it. 
I think we should do more websites with, well, I guess, say, sort of a minimalist, but or text. 
It's got a 1990s look to it. 
Yeah. 
Text, mostly text and buttons format. 
I like the black and white. 
It actually reminds me, and I'm wondering if this is intentional, sort of a newspaper headline or like a- Well, you know, when you say that, that's something that I like in a website is a newspaper look. 
Like, Slashdot had that. 
I don't know if they still do, but basically, black print on white background. 
That works. 
I don't know why people have blue on pink and ridiculous things like that that are very hard to read, and they just don't, you know, you don't take them seriously. 
And this also, and it shares some similarities with our own. 
And I noticed that it has some buttons at the top. 
You have a masthead identifying- But where else do you put the buttons? 
They're always going to be on the top. 
It's a good format. 
I guess maybe we're recognizing some of our own efforts in design. 
No, but the way their buttons look, and we're talking about the website PhoneCoInc, P-H-O-N-E-C-O-I-N-C-O-I-N-C-O-N. 
If you go to that website, you'll see the buttons on top that kind of, they look like something from the 1990s. 
I mean, I remember that, and I don't think that's bad. 
And they function just as intended. 
It's recognizable because of that vintage. 
As long as they work, yes. 
And there's a couple of links that don't work because, well, there's nothing there. 
But the links that do work seem to work just fine. 
I'm going to explore this more. 
Go ahead, Gila. 
I did find out that there is a phone museum in Thorpe, Wisconsin, which is about an hour and a half northeast of Galesville. 
I kind of wonder if everybody there should connect. 
Did you notice there was a Galesville, Wisconsin, and a Galesburg, Illinois? 
What's with the Gales out there? 
Well, you know, it's the prairie. 
It's kind of flat. 
There is a lot of wind. 
I get it. 
Dorothy's last name was Gale in Wizard of Oz. 
That is very true. 
That is very, very true. 
Yeah, the other thing for me is that I, well, first of all, I'm incredibly thankful that we were able to do this tonight. 
And to have that conversation with Ron and then when Mary got on the phone, it was wonderful. 
Hearing them connecting with each other in their own home network was really cool like that. 
And also, just to hear, I don't know, the sound of my people is great because I think, well, you guys are all aware I'm kind of holding it down for the Midwesterners in this particular group. 
Not that there isn't a huge amount of love for the Midwest from all of us. 
Yes. 
We have great, great, great affection for that area. 
But this is sounding like my grandparents and their friends, and it's, you know, I don't know Ron and Mary, but getting to hear them brought back a lot of really lovely memories at this time of year that's a lot about family and remembering and things like that. 
So I am thankful that we had this show tonight for so many reasons. 
Those are just a couple of them. 
It's nice to sort of sit back and just have an hour-long conversation with octogenarians about telephones. 
I feel like we could have kept going. 
Oh, we could have. 
We absolutely could have. 
But BAI would have kicked us off. 
But we could, I mean, Ron has no limit in energy, apparently. 
He can just keep talking all night long. 
I was having this impulse to slow down and try to keep up just because I had so many questions along the way. 
It was such a great, engaging discussion. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Also, like the stories that that man and both of them must have that we couldn't even scratch the surface of in the limited time we had with him, it just reminds me of how important it is to listen to stories like Ron's and preserve them as best we can. 
And I'm glad it now exists in our own archives, and I hope we can continue to add to it. 
How did we not know about this guy until now? 
I mean, we've been involved in this since 1984, and I never heard of this kind of phone collecting, which is simply amazing. 
Yeah, I really have to thank the listener, and the email wasn't signed, so I won't say their name, but they sent us that story from the Wisconsin State Journal about him, which we talked about last week. 
And just, I think with the headline was something like, you know, I saw this and immediately thought of you guys. 
And it's such a joy to get something like that from one of our listeners and be brought into all this, because, yeah, we definitely should have known about this. 
It makes you realize there's so much out there. 
Even if you think you know what's out there, there's so much more. 
Also, just for the record, Galesville was named for Judge George Gale, who founded the city. 
We did have a listener suggest that sometimes Irish people are referred to as Gales, so it could be a nod to early Irish populations. 
Again, we appreciate the thought that so many of our Overtime listeners put in and are willing to share in the chat. 
So, again, thankful for you guys, too. 
Thank you. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
Alex? 
Sorry. 
Yeah, the mute button is a little sticky today. 
I had so many questions for him, but I really just wanted to let him go and let him tell his story. 
I'm wondering, though, if he has payphones just as much as the regular phones. 
That sounds like he has an interest in payphones, but I don't know if he's got a Koka collection or something like that. 
Do you know, Rob? 
Yeah. 
I'm looking at the website now on phonecoinc.com, and there's a whole section for payphones. 
There's a whole section for coin-operated customer-owned telephones, Kokaats, payphone parts. 
And even just looking at the pictures on these, I'm looking at so many things that, you know, if I had a wedding lotto ticket or something, I would be taking so many of these off his hands because they are gorgeous. 
And yeah, this is such an amazing collection. 
He has 33 semi-trailers. 
Like I said, that alone is worthy of respect. 
But can we just get one and drive out there and make some bids on these things? 
Because, boy, you know, we have a phone booth. 
I didn't even get to say that. 
We have a 1950s phone booth complete with rotary dial phone and all that. 
And, you know, I was impressed that we had that. 
But, boy, we are so tiny compared to what he has. 
Someone should make a club for installing all these. 
And you just go there and you can make phone calls and have a lot of background noise with other people. 
It'll be like a public call center. 
I would call it the phone farm because it is a farm already. 
Does he grow anything on top of all this? 
He lives on a farm. 
But is it all just pay phones or regular rotary dial phones or things from the 1800s? 
Very curious. 
I think one of the news articles about it mentioned that this was a cleared out chicken shed that held most of these phones or a large amount of these phones, rather. 
And so, yeah, I think it may have once been a barn and moved on to its current purpose. 
Incredible. 
Wow. 
Anything else that we wanted to talk about tonight? 
Because I didn't think this would take up the whole show. 
In fact, you know, when when when you book someone who's in their late 80s, you think that maybe you're going to have like a 10 minute interview at best. 
But this he just kept going and had so much to say. 
And of course, we're all into phones, so we couldn't stop listening. 
Yeah. 
And anything else that we want to bring up? 
Go ahead, Alex. 
Yeah. 
Did he mention? 
Well, he did mention. 
So but did I hear correctly that he wrote three books on telephones? 
Is there something like that? 
I believe he. 
Yeah. 
He said he has books. 
I don't know if they're written books or collections of pictures. 
I haven't investigated that that deeply. 
I mean, I'm really interested in that, too. 
If he's got some kind of catalog or, you know, the best of his collection or something like that. 
I'm sure our listeners would be really interested in seeing that as well. 
And I mean, there's got to be something we can do with him, with hope in this coming year. 
I really think there's potential for collaboration here that could be really extraordinary. 
Yeah. 
I'm open to ideas about that. 
It certainly would be a cool connection to have on the campus. 
And if not us, many other people that are enthusiasts, that they might, you know, if their imagination is going wild with possibilities and things they've been having on the back burner regarding phones, this is the place. 
This is the time to really support what efforts that Ron has been doing. 
We can have a whole track just for Ron. 
He tells phone stories for the entire weekend. 
He has the energy. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Yeah, on phonecoinc.com, on Ron's site, there is a books page. 
And the first entry on that is Old Telephone Scrapbook, fourth edition, in Adobe Acrobat PDF Word searchable file format. 
This book includes over 2,200 pages across three volumes, packed full of pictures, charts, diagrams, and historical data, written by Ronald H. 
Knappen. 
And this is something he sells on a DVD or a USB drive. 
Wow. 
Okay, well, all right. 
So an update to last week, our experiment with trying to defeat the crazy ads that YouTube is throwing at everybody. 
I think we learned a lot. 
And it was fun having listeners partake in that with us, sharing the information that they were receiving. 
What we did was we turned on advertising with the most aggressive setting to see if people could figure out ways to prevent that from happening and ruining live feeds, which is what Google has been doing with YouTube. 
I had a particular gripe with virtual rail fans where I have feeds, live feeds of trains. 
You know, it might sound silly, but it helps me relax, especially if I'm writing or working on the magazine. 
Just having these occasional passing trains going by is very comforting. 
And to have them constantly interrupted every five minutes with some ridiculous deodorant ad from Google, it's really perplexing. 
And the solution of paying Google to stop doing it doesn't work because you have to register, you have to have a minimum or a maximum number of connections. 
It's all sorts of restrictions. 
Once you do that, um, I discovered by accident, uh, and actually this was related to what we were doing last week with, um, with the, with the, um, uh, show, uh, some people were getting ads, some people weren't getting ads. 
Um, I noticed that, um, I was able to defeat the ads if I simply brought the live stream back three hours. 
So I did that and, um, and, and I didn't get any ads for the entire week. 
They started again today. 
I don't know why they started again today, but, um, and also the video at some point caught up somehow it like just stuttered. 
And all of a sudden it was live and I still didn't get any ads, but today that, that ended. 
So I brought it back three hours again and again, no ads. 
So that means something, don't know what exactly, but I learned that from, um, from basically all the people experimenting, some people getting ads, some people not getting ads. 
So I knew something was up with that might be connected to number of people watching. 
Maybe if more people watch, there are more ads. 
Uh, I don't know what triggered it today, but, uh, it seems a way of, um, of, of defeating it is to go back in time a little bit. 
And to me, that doesn't matter. 
I don't care if I'm seeing trains from three hours ago or trains that are live. 
It doesn't really matter. 
Um, but, um, I don't know. 
It's, it's, it's something that, uh, we're still studying and, uh, and learning from. 
So the fight goes on your move. 
I wouldn't call it a fight so much as just because resistance, what, what, what YouTube says, and I actually heard from YouTube support on this. 
They say it's a setting, uh, from the, uh, virtual rail fan people. 
Uh, it seems to be a setting they don't know about because they insist that there is no setting. 
Um, and I think that maybe there's a setting buried in there that, that, uh, Google just kind of set by default in order to generate more ads. 
And it's hard to find, uh, because if you go to, um, um, the rail fans over in the Netherlands, same basic premise, but no ads ever, uh, maybe ads at the beginning, but no ads in the live stream. 
So there is a setting that, um, isn't set right. 
I don't think, but it's very hard to communicate that. 
Anyway, that's all I'm going to say about that. 
Uh, any other, um, uh, topics that we need to, um, to focus on before we open up phone lines? 
Um, just want to welcome, we have a listener from Thailand who has checked in, in the live chat. 
So, uh, welcome Thailand. 
And look at that. 
Our listener has doubled since we started. 
That's amazing. 
And we have no ads. 
Welcome. 
Welcome to all international listeners streaming, uh, over, over the internet and everyone who joined us at WBAI earlier and, and stuck with us over here on the, uh, 2600 channel, channel 2600 YouTube site. 
Who would like to give out the phone number? 
Alex, you would go ahead. 
Uh, what is it? 
It's the, uh, area code for Vermont. 
If you don't know that, you have to figure it out. 
Oh, wait, why are you being so difficult? 
Just give out the damn phone number. 
And then, um, it's the last three digits of a countdown for a space shuttle launch and then, uh, hack. 
So, you know, we can, we can do it in a, in riddle form here or just dial 802-321-4225 to call us. 
You got there. 
That's the important thing. 
We got there. 
We got there. 
I did want to say something though, since we are on, uh, the eve of Thanksgiving here and, um, and this is somewhat auspicious. 
There's a live feed by the way of them blowing up the balloons, which if you don't want interrupted by ads every five minutes, you might want to rewind it a little bit. 
It's from the department store. 
Macy's Day Parade thing. 
Yeah. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
I'm sorry. 
Yeah. 
Well, um, I want to ask you, Manuel, actually, uh, something, something really, uh, tragic and, uh, uh, the repercussions of which we are still feeling today happened on Thanksgiving day four years ago. 
I don't know if you remember what that was. 
Oh, uh, you're going to have to give me some more than that. 
I'm not going to guess tragedies. 
It, it happened, uh, in Los Angeles. 
I'm still not going to guess it. 
You're going to have to tell me what, what it is. 
It's at an airport. 
And it was when Virgil Griffith was arrested by the FBI. 
Okay. 
Yes. 
Four years ago. 
Four years ago. 
Tomorrow. 
And, and he's still dealing with this. 
He's over in Michigan right now in the, uh, FCI Milan. 
I refuse to call it Milan or whatever the hell, however they pronounce it over there. 
But, um, tomorrow will mark four years to the day that he's been dealing with the fallout of that. 
I think that's something important to bring up. 
And, um, uh, and we should think about him and not forget about him. 
This is just for visiting, uh, uh, North Korea. 
And, uh, and, and speaking at a conference that's, that's in this country, that's the penalty that you get for that. 
And it was really a difficult time. 
I just want to add, I know, um, there were a lot of people that were worried about him and, uh, you know, what, how, what, and how to deal with this. 
Uh, his parents were involved. 
We were really, um, concerned and, and it has not been without, uh, daily challenges since then. 
Can, can you give any kind of update as to how he's doing in Michigan? 
Uh, he's doing all right. 
There's some, you know, a bunch of things going on that, um, you know, he, he, he will address with, um, I think with the community in due course, but there's some other things that, um, you know, he's having a lot of challenges. 
I'll just put it that way. 
It's not easy. 
He's, um, he's okay, but you know, this is a, a definitely a challenging time and, you know, we're really hopeful that there are, are ways to, to really expedite his release from there. 
So, um, you know, there'll be more to come over the next couple of months about Virgil and, and how he's doing and whatnot, but, uh, I'll just suffice it to say four years ago tomorrow, you know, began a saga that really changed his entire life. 
Uh, and he has been in a state of constant suffering. 
And, you know, we should point out that, um, was it on Thanksgiving or was it on the eve of Thanksgiving that he was traveling? 
Uh, I believe it was Thanksgiving. 
So he was on his way to see his family for Thanksgiving and that's when they decided would be a good time to arrest him for going to North Korea against, against Trump's, uh, edict. 
Yep. 
That's disgusting. 
Yep. 
That, and then it began, uh, just a real saga because he was in Los Angeles, he was flying to Alabama, then he had to be transferred to the Southern district of New York. 
Um, and that's not an easy transfer to make when you're in custody to go from LA to New York. 
So that in and of itself was a really trying saga for him. 
Uh, and then, uh, the next year, you know, before his trial, he had his bail revoked. 
There's a just, you know, he's been, been punished and punished and punished for this unfortunate decision of having gone to North Korea. 
But it, or rather, we should never forget that what he did there was speak. 
He talked about blockchain technology. 
His talk was entitled blockchain and peace instead of war and peace, right? 
It was blockchain and peace. 
And he talked about subjects and things that were eminently Googleable. 
So, uh, this is, uh, this has been very, very trying for him. 
Yeah. 
You know, keep in mind, I went to North Korea. 
Nothing happened to me because I went before Trump, before he said, no, nobody's allowed to go there anymore. 
Uh, which is insane, but that's how it works apparently in this country. 
And, you know, I was able to go there and talk to people and, and, and share things with them. 
I, I, I'm not an expert in blockchain, but if somebody asked me a question about it, I probably would have answered. 
Uh, people listen to the music on my MP3 recorder, I guess maybe that's, uh, um, uh, hurting somehow by doing that. 
I don't know. 
It's just so random. 
And people like Virgil, who is one of the most intelligent people you will ever meet and one of the most open and sharing people you'll ever meet. 
Uh, they are the victims and, um, and, and not being able to, uh, enjoy holidays, not being able to see his family, not being able to go on a speaking tour in this country and, and share what he knows with, with everyone, which is what he would want to do. 
Uh, it's, it's, it's such a tragedy, such, um, an outrage. 
Yeah, it, it really is. 
And again, there's going to be more to come. 
You know, Virgil is not only a dear friend of mine, but he's also a client. 
And, and I think that we have become, uh, closer through the legal representation that I provided to him and, and the help, especially after a sentencing that we, we've been able to afford to him through, through my firm. 
But it's, uh, it, it just is, it's kind of auspicious. 
I think about it every Thanksgiving that, you know, I remember you calling me and telling me about this, this whole ordeal. 
And it's, um, it's just a, I think it'll be a tough day for him tomorrow too. 
So, uh, you know, keep him, keep him in your thoughts. 
Yes. 
And we are very fortunate that you are there to help him. 
I know it means so much to him to be able to talk to you and, and, and, and help, um, uh, strategize, plan things out and just have some hope for the future. 
So, um, uh, thanks so much for providing that. 
And I, you know, hopefully we can visit him, uh, in, in, in prison, maybe we can make a Midwest field trip out of this where we go to, uh, see Ron and his phones and also see Virgil in prison. 
I, I think that sounds like a plan because, you know, he's just, he's just outside Detroit. 
He's about an hour outside Detroit now. 
So, uh, you know, we could spend a couple of nights in Detroit and, you know, paint the town red there, go see Virgil. 
And then I have no idea. 
Gila is much more familiar with the geography. 
She's going to be the tour guide. 
And the translator. 
That's right. 
The translator. 
Yeah. 
I can't understand what they're saying out there. 
I just can't. 
I'm sorry. 
They, they, they, they have the black cat and the backpack and all that. 
That's not even close to why they sound. 
Oh, no, I don't know what you were trying to do there, but that wasn't it. 
Yeah. 
That's even, I know that's wrong. 
I'll be all over the, uh, craft brewing and third wave coffee. 
So wherever we go, it's, that's my focus. 
All right. 
We have a phone call. 
I understand. 
Yeah. 
The phone is, um, occupied at present. 
All right. 
Well, let's see who's on the phone. 
Good evening. 
You're on off the hook overtime. 
Hello. 
Hello. 
Can you hear me? 
Yes, we hear you fine. 
Awesome. 
I'm just calling about the, uh, the ads on YouTube. 
I'm a New York city teacher, so I'm already annoyed by the DOE being in bed with Google with all this stuff that they're doing. 
Uh-huh. 
But what's, what's frustrating is that the teachers in my school and my wife's a teacher too, so in her school, you know, we're playing videos, um, off of YouTube during an instructional period. 
And it doesn't matter when it happens, but right in the middle of the video, you get an ad. 
You know, you, you, you got first graders, third graders, and, and, and, you know, and it's ridiculous ads that are just popping up in the middle of an instructional period with these people. 
Wow. 
I didn't even think of that. 
Yeah. 
It's, it's horrible. 
And, um, I mean, I, I, I let the teachers know that, you know, they don't have to go to, uh, to Google to, to, to get their videos. 
I, I introduced them to Firefox. 
Most of them never had a Firefox. 
They've heard of DuckDuckGo, uh, and I showed them how to load it up with the ad blockers. 
I never get ads. 
So. 
Which, which ad blocker, can I ask which ad blocker you use? 
I'm using, uh, a few of them. 
I know Ublock Origin is one of them. 
I got, um, Privacy Badger. 
Uh, there are a few others that, that, um, sort of, I just, I forgot what it was exactly. 
Yeah. 
Privacy Badger is really good. 
That's an EFF project, I believe. 
And there's several other. 
Um, and I usually just pick the ones that are either created by Firefox or the ones that are, are, are endorsed by them or approved by them. 
Uh-huh. 
But, but not, not on Chrome. 
Chrome doesn't offer that? 
Not much. 
Um, and even if I tried, you know, they're, you know, it's difficult to get, to find anything that's good. 
Um, we have these smart screens and they have browsers in them. 
Same thing. 
You can't, you can't even install any kind of ad block on the, on the smart screen. 
Are those, are those made by Elmo? 
Is that what? 
No, these are Smart Tech. 
Smart Tech is the company. 
Okay. 
Um, yeah, we should, we should, we should have more discussion about that, uh, teaching devices. 
I know we've had talks at Hope about such tools in the past. 
I'm wondering maybe this will come up. 
Uh, I know this is now ever present in a lot of schools, which is a good thing. 
Uh, but those of us that grew up with blackboards, chalkboards and, and, uh, dry erase, uh, that's not really what you look at when you're a student anymore. 
No, the advertising in, in, in schools is just, uh, that's so wrong. 
And I didn't even realize that was, that was, uh, an issue here. 
It happened, you know, and the thing is, I know, I, I'm trying to explain to the teachers that you can do this without ads. 
And they're looking at me like, like I'm explaining something from some, some other planet or something, because they, they, they're so, they're so like exposed to just Google and Chrome. 
They don't realize they have power to, to say no. 
And, uh, a lot of people just accept what they're told by big tech companies. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Uh, one thing I always, uh, I always stress to those in the educational sphere is there's one piece of software. 
Um, it's a piece of free software called YTDLP. 
That's YT-DLP. 
And, uh, the website for it is github.com slash YT-DLP. 
And what this is, is it's a piece of software that can, uh, load a YouTube video or videos from a lot of other sites that have embedded videos and just download a local copy. 
And, of course, that local copy you download doesn't get interrupted with ads when you play it. 
It doesn't disappear if YouTube takes the video down. 
Um, and I think it can be a very vital tool for, um, teachers and people in fields like that who are working with kids and working in, uh, situations where you don't want to be showing ads. 
I have, I have a video downloader that I also use with my Firefox and I can actually download videos and, and I, you know, I let the teachers know because sometimes our network goes down and it's like some people are like struggling to, to figure out how to do and everything. 
So I don't know. 
And then, you know, they, they don't seem to grasp the, uh, the idea of keeping a local copy, but. 
All right. 
Well, anything else, anything else, caller? 
Uh, no, that's about it. 
I'm just like, you know, it's like, I never hear much talk about like Firefox or DuckDuckGo and I, you know, and when people look at me, when I tell them DuckDuckGo, you can use DuckDuckGo. 
Oh, but the weird thing is you can't use DuckDuckGo inside the school building with the school's network. 
Um, I forgot what I would have to look at. 
Maybe I can call again the next week. 
Yeah. 
I looked into that. 
Is it blocked or something? 
It's blocked, uh, because of, um, let me see if I can find it. 
And I took a picture of it. 
I meant to bring it up and I, and I just, uh, forgot, but it's blocked. 
Um, there's some kind of thing that Firefox does, um, and where it requires some security thing and it will only, it will only, uh, connect to other websites with it or something that Google for some reason doesn't, doesn't do. 
So I'm not sure if I'm explaining it right, but, um, it could be a lot of different implementations, some schemes with, um, different types of, uh, security security certificates, TLS, or, um, um, also the, um, the, the way that, um, like ports and different kinds of encryption might be, uh, used in one browser because it's got one scheme and maybe Google has a different scheme. 
Um, uh, that was a great explanation actually. 
I think that's, I, I totally understood what you're saying. 
So yeah, that, that, that could be a possibility and an administration policy that affects that browser. 
Yeah. 
So it's like, I can use Firefox, but I can't use DuckDuckGo. 
I would have to go through Google, um, and just use Google on Firefox, but either way, you know, with the app blockers that I got on Firefox, I still don't get ads and I never sign into Google when I watch it. 
So yeah, that's, that's another, that's another, uh, uh, the thing that a lot of people don't realize they can, they don't have to sign into Google. 
They can, they can see things from, you know, independently and, uh, almost anonymously. 
I try and keep my Google used to it at the bare minimum as possible, but it's hard getting people to understand that. 
It's true. 
Well, you just have to keep, uh, trying to teach them. 
And I think you're in a good environment for that. 
Where are you calling from? 
Uh, the Bronx. 
Okay, great. 
Well, keep up what you're doing and let us know if you learn anything more. 
Okay, cool. 
All right. 
Take care. 
Bye-bye. 
802-321-4225 is our telephone number. 
That was a good call. 
That was great. 
Interesting discussion. 
I'd just like to think there's people out there figuring out ways to get around these imposing rules. 
How much more learning is going on because of this educator's efforts? 
Uh-huh. 
I wonder. 
I mean, just so much distraction and diversion in just getting the lesson in front of, uh, eyeballs. 
But this, this kind of effort keeps the focus on the lesson and keeps people imagining what the fundamentals, the things that are there for. 
So that's, that's great. 
It's really inspiring. 
Go ahead, Gila. 
Um, we do have a question from a listener who wants to know if you can say more about your trip to North Korea. 
Um, what do they want me to say? 
It was very nice. 
The specific questions are, how did Emmanuel get into North Korea? 
Can he say how he was able to go? 
Visas, et cetera. 
Airplane. 
Oh, um, okay. 
Uh, yeah, I'll tell you exactly how it worked. 
Uh, first of all, uh, we lived in a different time. 
Uh, Barack Obama was president. 
Americans were allowed to go to North Korea. 
It wasn't a big deal. 
Uh, but I also have a European passport. 
I went as a European. 
The reason I did that, uh, was because Europeans are given more freedom to, to, um, uh, stay longer and to leave the country, leave North Korea by train instead of by plane. 
And of course I wanted to leave by train and go into China, uh, visit the city of Dandong on, on, on the way back. 
Uh, we, um, uh, we all left out of, uh, Beijing. 
That's where the tourist agency was. 
And this was all completely legit. 
Everybody was, was, uh, completely allowed to do this. 
Uh, but if you, if you had gone with just Americans, your trip would have been shorter, more controlled, maybe a little bit more hostile here, you know, we were able to, um, um, to be more casual with the guides or minders as they're called, uh, and, um, and, and just see more of the small moments. 
For instance, I was in a metro station and, um, I somehow got separated from the group and I wound up alone in this weird metro station with a bunch of people who live in North Korea and, and nobody from the tour guide was around. 
And I finally found my way out and there they were across the street, but it was, you know, it wasn't an international incident. 
It was funny. 
It was just something that happened, a little mishap. 
You're able to actually, uh, live that kind of a life and, um, uh, experience what it's like to live in that country without, uh, being seen as, as somebody who is, um, uh, hostile. 
And, um, and that's why I wanted to do it, to see what that was like, to see what the people were like. 
And, uh, I gotta say the people as, as I found in just about everywhere I've ever been, the people are, are amazing. 
They're fine. 
And the system, yeah, I can say a lot about the system, but, um, uh, I was there to see the people and, uh, it was, it was definitely worth, unfortunately now, uh, I don't know why Trump's rule has not been rescinded. 
I guess maybe politically it would look bad or something to say, yeah, you're allowed to go to North Korea again, but people always were allowed to go there. 
And it's just sad that it's one more freedom we don't have. 
So, um, yeah, it's, uh, I'd like to go back. 
I'd like to see it again, but, uh, I, I saw it. 
That's the important thing. 
I got to do it. 
Oh, we have another phone call? 
We do. 
Okay. 
Let's, uh, see who's out there. 
Good evening. 
You're on off the hook overtime. 
Hi, Emmanuel. 
Is this really rebel? 
Yeah, of course. 
Okay. 
You know, you're slipping. 
You're number two this week. 
You're not number one. 
Hello. 
Hello. 
What's going on here? 
No, that's an artificial intelligence. 
Uh, you know, when you call rebel, um, it's kind of pointless to play artificial intelligence because it's not going to, um, uh, impress us. 
Um, I just want to know, can you find out who's visiting your website? 
Like if I go to 2600.com, can you want to find out where, who's logging in at a particular time? 
Well, again, in your case, we have a light that turns on whenever you connect. 
No, but, uh, you could, you, you could look for a particular IP in your logs and say, oh, when this IP hits this particular site, let us know. 
Um, we don't do that. 
We don't even keep logs, but, um, there are, there are certainly, um, uh, commercial sites that keep track of you. 
And, um, remember when you go there, they send cookies and all that kind of thing. 
Uh, and, uh, certainly if you're being spied upon that traffic can be, can be monitored one way or another. 
So it's, yeah, it's certainly possible. 
Definitely possible. 
But not an active process for our website. 
The, uh, traffic activity goes in and then goes away. 
There's no, uh, there's no real priority for us to look and, you know, go through all of that. 
There's plenty of sites that do do that. 
And, uh, that's sort of the discretion of how you run your website. 
But the answer is, no, it's not really something that we have meetings about. 
Like a credit card, you're applying for a credit card at a particular bank or whatever. 
They would keep logs because in case somebody, like, fordily applies for a credit card or something, they would say, oh, well, um, this IP address applied for this credit card at this time, right? 
They, they, they sometimes do that. 
Or if you're trying to change a password, you know, they'll send a confirmation email and give the IP of whoever was changing, trying to change the password. 
But of course, you know, anybody who knows what they're doing knows how to go through, you know, um, uh, virtual connections and, uh, you know, figure out ways to mask where they're actually coming from. 
So, um, right. 
But then like, if they, the IP address says, um, time one or cable, they just go to time one or cable and ask them to log it because then they would have to, um, say, well, we have many subscribers subscribe to time one or cable. 
So then they would have to. 
If they, if they had the authority, you know, uh, of, of law enforcement, they could go to a provider like time Warner or whoever and say, okay, who does this IP belong to? 
Because we know it's one of yours. 
And, and, uh, with the right legal process, they could give out the customer name and address. 
Yeah. 
It would actually be common issue of your Mac address, which is the hardware device that is connected to the network using that IP, but the hardware itself would determine and wherever that hardware address came up would be of interest to someone going further into more specifically who and, and how that traffic show what particular computer, what kind of phone was, was actually using that IP at that moment. 
It would become a piece in a larger puzzle. 
They might be, uh, painting maybe that particular laptop and hardware address appeared on a public network and then it appeared on a cell hotspot. 
And then it was in, uh, another country and then it came, it can be used beyond just an IP address. 
So there's, there's many, um, many layers of these protocols and then many different ways of identifying, um, the origins of certain activity. 
And that's just one element. 
And it could also be, uh, organized based on, um, just, uh, uh, another identifying factor or another, um, type of service that isn't used on someone's personal computer. 
I mean, I can't think of any example, but there's, there's, you know, time of day and different, uh, uh, other triggers that you could use. 
There's, there's so much information. 
A Mac address isn't going to show up in logs like IP address. 
No, no, no, no, but you, if you were interested at the IP level, you would want to start to become very specific. 
So there's always something, and, and those are also things that would be obfuscated if someone was trying to throw off detection from say us figuring out, you know, if it was some random, uh, Tor exit node or some other, um, weird service layer or site, uh, that was being employed, it would make it even harder to get to something like a hardware identifier. 
But those are all true, uh, scenarios. 
If someone was, um, interested, so motivated and actually doing the, the legwork. 
Did that answer all your questions? 
Well, actually, uh, my example is the, uh, they could get the, you could get the IP address in a log and then the IP address will say time on a cable or Verizon. 
Then you could go to time on a cable and Verizon and they'd have to get the Mac address to say, Oh, it's from Starbucks. 
Our customer at Starbucks. 
Well, sure. 
Sure. 
They would say this IP has been used by this modem's Mac address and, and so on. 
And just continue to try to figure out what kinds of, um, where and, and how certain patterns of activity and traffic came from. 
But yeah, totally. 
Right. 
So then they'd go to surveillance for that Starbucks or wherever that, that, um, that access point had a certain type of activity, accessing it for free. 
And then they could say, okay, who is this person? 
And then they have a license plate and yeah, there's lots of ways to investigate this stuff. 
Um, so if I, or if there's like a scam website that you're being scammed on a particular website or, or whatever, you could go to that website's IP address and find out where it is and where, you know, what, what kind of, if they're in this country. 
Okay. 
All right. 
So that's more specific to a scenario where as a consumer you'd want to, but the thing with websites is they're not hosted and used the same way as like a modem, which might have dynamic and a sort of rotating base of modems that are using it on the hosting side, you're talking about someone that, um, has a content up somewhere, but it may not necessarily be associated with the same hardware as the person that is the creator of that site or that maintains it. 
They could have their own modem connect to an administrative side, but the site itself is hosted elsewhere, like, um, in the cloud or with some web hosting provider. 
Their IP might tell you, um, where that site is publicly, but the owner and the maintainers of it themselves may have multiple sites that they administer that host that through the host, their own website. 
Right. 
Like if, uh, 2600.com was hosted in, uh, you know, by, uh, GoDaddy.com, you, and if your IP address just went to GoDaddy.com, if they do it, who is, and then, and you'd have to ask GoDaddy.com, oh, uh, this is the IP address, who's hosting this website, they would know, they may not tell you, but they may know, right? 
Um, yes. 
Everyone knows everything. 
Alex, do you have anything to add to this? 
Because I know you, you, you deal with this pretty much every day. 
Yeah, there's lots of ways that you can use an IP address to track somebody down or to identify an individual person. 
I, I often do that for anonymous defamers on the internet and, uh, have subpoenaed Twitter to get IP address information for people who have been engaged in massive defamation campaigns of, of various clients. 
Uh, and yeah, you can always get back to somebody. 
I mean, if people are using a VPN or if they're using Tor or a proxy, it makes it more difficult, but you'd be surprised at what VPN providers are actually, uh, logging these days. 
And even, even the ones that say that they are not engaged in logging, but yeah, it's pretty easy to deal locate an IP address. 
Everything is an assignment that comes from IANA or I A N A the internet assigned numbers authority. 
And they assign IP addresses around the world to things called ASNs or, and, and they're very easy to, um, to, to look this stuff up. 
And, uh, you know, we, we have another, uh, person joining us at the moment too. 
And, uh, trying to think this is my youngest son here. 
Do you have anything else to add to this? 
You don't know? 
Want to say hi to everybody? 
Say hi, man. 
No? 
All right. 
Well, somebody's being shy with. 
Alex, there's nobody there. 
Why are you trying to fool the listeners? 
Yeah, I, I guess so. 
You know, somebody's being a little bit shy. 
And in fact, why don't you turn the light on in the room? 
Cause we can't see you. 
You're just basically sitting there rocking in the dark and it's a little, a little distressing. 
Is it really dark on the, uh, well, we can't, we can't, you know, it's, it's basically, we don't know where you are. 
Uh, you haven't told us. 
And, uh, you keep saying these people are with you that aren't there. 
Oh, well, you know, it's what, it's what happens. 
I can't, I can't hear anybody. 
Can you, anyone hear anyone? 
No. 
I don't know what's going on yet. 
I don't know what he's talking about. 
Uh-huh. 
All right. 
You're going to yell it louder. 
Come on louder. 
Then nobody believes that you're here. 
You got to come on. 
So it's just, just yell it. 
Say hi, everybody. 
We will give you candy if you do. 
Otherwise, mommy's going to make you go to sleep if you don't say hello. 
Wow. 
And mommy's going to be very happy to hear that. 
That's the threat you're using. 
That's right. 
Come on. 
Come on. 
You got to say it loudly. 
No. 
You have no control over your kids, do you? 
Somebody's being shy now. 
All right. 
Wow. 
No, somebody's being smart now. 
I heard something, I think. 
Somebody's disobeying their parents. 
That might be, yeah. 
That's true. 
Now, I will tell you what he's doing right now, though, is that we have a terminal session up in another window here. 
Uh-huh. 
And he is using the, he loves using the SL command. 
Have you ever used the SL command? 
The SL command in what? 
In Linux. 
I don't think I've used that. 
Well, you know LS, right? 
Uh-huh. 
Of course. 
Have you accidentally pressed SL sometimes? 
Well. 
I have not done that. 
I've typed yes at the prompt by accident, and boy, that's a lot of fun. 
Yeah. 
There's a package that you can install called SL, and it's kind of funny. 
So, when you accidentally type SL, when you're typing LS, it makes a train go through the terminal session. 
And it's kind of cool. 
And so, my youngest here is in a Linux terminal, coincidentally, as we're talking. 
Oh, there you go. 
See, that's him coughing. 
That could have been anybody coughing, Alex. 
That's right. 
All right. 
Say goodnight. 
Come on. 
All right. 
Well, everyone thinks I'm nuts. 
Thanks. 
Thanks, Emmanuel. 
Agila, why do you have a look of shock on your face? 
Is there something going on? 
No. 
It's because Rob has just made a train go by on the computer. 
So, that works. 
It does work, yes. 
It's choo-chooing across the screen right now. 
Yeah. 
It's pretty cool, actually, isn't it? 
I mean, it slows you down for a second. 
You realize you're going too fast. 
Did you just install the package? 
Yeah. 
I just installed it over here. 
I was familiar, but I wanted to show Gila. 
And also, I just appreciate so much that it's an ASCII art train in the terminal window. 
ASCII art is a dying art, and I miss it. 
ASCII art has been a dying art for 30 years now, so I don't think it's going anywhere. 
That's right. 
Now, do SL-F, and you'll be amazed. 
Yeah, this is doing wonders for our listeners. 
Yeah. 
Do you want to describe what you're... 
Whoa! 
Okay. 
Okay. 
Gila, I guess you get to describe it then. 
Yes. 
Okay. 
So, it's a train, right? 
But instead of going straight across the screen, it sort of goes up and to the left and out the upper corner. 
This is so cool! 
It is. 
Now, if you tell... 
And I probably sound like I'm drunk, don't I? 
SL, I mean, there's a man page for it, too, but you can do SL-A, and you'll find that there are some people in distress on the train. 
Oh, no! 
Oh, no, they're yelling, help out the window! 
Help out the window. 
Oh, no, do we think Snidely Whiplash has tied someone to the tracks in front of them? 
Yeah, this is what we do. 
This is fabulous. 
It reminds me of a program my dad had on his computer when I was little, and the DOS prompt was Sesame, and it would play the Sesame Street song, and it would light up. 
It was like karaoke. 
It would light up the words as it played, and it was very exciting. 
Oh, it's a longer train? 
Yes, this is dash L, SL dash L. 
SL dash L makes a longer train. 
Wow, this is just amazing. 
But you have to install the package, right? 
Yeah. 
All right. 
Yeah, but it's in all the standard repositories. 
Okay. 
You know what? 
I forgot we had Rebel on the phone. 
Rebel, are you still there? 
I'm sorry about that. 
We just got sidetracked by trains again. 
Okay. 
You should have a video feed. 
Instead of the same thing on the YouTube page and the YouTube thing, you should have this video feed of, like, you know, you and Gila and Alice, you know. 
Why would we subject listeners to that? 
Well, I mean, why would we subject listeners to the same picture and, you know what I mean? 
Well, we have to put something there, but, you know, we're a radio show. 
We're not video. 
Speaking of radio, when are you going to be back on WBAI and, you know... 
How do you know we weren't there tonight? 
No, no, no. 
I'm saying back in the studio in WBAI. 
Exactly. 
How do you know we weren't in the studio tonight? 
Oh, I don't know, because, well, it doesn't... 
What do you mean? 
Do you keep track of our movements? 
What if I told you we were all there and now we're all here, you know? 
We had 10 minutes to move. 
Oh, we're taking listener phone calls again in WBAI? 
Well, we don't have to take listener phone calls to be at WBAI, do we? 
That's not the condition. 
Oh, so you're back at WBAI Studios. 
Maybe we are. 
I'm not confirming one way or another. 
Oh, okay. 
I'm not giving out personal information. 
I refuse to be tempted. 
You don't know where we are, Rebel. 
We don't know where we're broadcasting from. 
It's true. 
We're everywhere and nowhere, Rebel. 
At the same time. 
Kind of like YouTube. 
Without ads. 
Without ads. 
Without ads. 
I'd like to mention that the same companies that are doing this, like, when you go to a bank, it's all Chase Manhattan Bank now. 
And we come full circle. 
We're back to Chase Manhattan from 1991 or whatever, when you first started talking about that. 
But in 1991, you had Chemical Bank and then you got the Handelberg Bank. 
Does anybody call it Chase Manhattan anymore? 
No. 
And you had, in Chicago, you had, in the Chicago area, you had Bank One. 
In the Los Angeles and San Diego area, in California, you had Washington, New York. 
Now it's all Chase. 
Every bank is Chase now. 
That's true. 
There are a lot of chases. 
There's no question about that. 
But, you know, I've been in some places where there are no chases. 
It's very hard to track one down. 
I think Seattle is one of those places where maybe there's, like, one or two chases. 
Is that right, Kyle? 
Not very many. 
Yeah, they have a few. 
But there's some real empty areas. 
I think downtown corridor and stuff. 
Yeah, Chase Deserts. 
Yeah. 
But they're not everywhere, but I guess they probably will be soon. 
It's not as big as it is in New York. 
Anyway, Rebel, please wrap it up so we can have room for somebody else. 
And everything's a mattress firm. 
Like, you know, like, you said, like, sleepies. 
What? 
Is that a bank now? 
Mattress firm? 
Like, a mattress firm. 
Like, if you wanted mattress and bedding and stuff. 
Right. 
A bedding store. 
You used to go to Sleepy's. 
Or, like, on the West Coast, like, in California, you'd go to Sleepy's. 
Or, like, in Michigan, you'd go to... 
Honestly. 
Yeah, so this company's selling mattresses. 
Is that really something new? 
Yeah, everything's a mattress firm now. 
Well, I don't know if everything is a mattress firm. 
That seems like a real broad generalization. 
And, you know, you can find... 
If you go to Michigan, it's a mattress firm. 
In California, it's a mattress firm. 
Yeah, they have mattresses in all the states, I understand. 
Even some countries have them. 
I'm not sure what point you're trying to prove here. 
The store mattress firm. 
It's a bit of a bit of a store. 
The store you... 
Remember Sleepy's? 
The mattress store? 
Yeah, it's still around, I think, isn't it? 
No, it's mattress firm now. 
I think he's saying they got bought up and it's all the same company that owns them. 
I don't know. 
Somehow that doesn't bother me. 
I don't know who's typing. 
I'm muting you guys because people are typing loudly. 
Are you trained in California? 
It's now a mattress firm. 
And, let's see, what else? 
And everything's a Windham now. 
All the hotels are Windham hotels. 
Like, you go to, like, Super 8 and... 
Rebel. 
This is one of the pitfalls of capitalism. 
It's consolidation. 
Because it tends towards monopolistic behavior. 
And that's when the fallacy of a free marketplace disintegrates. 
And we have to come to terms with the crushing realization that we have not built the system we thought it was, but we have told ourselves it is something other than what it is functionally. 
If you can get past that, you can accept some of these aspects of the various sectors of the economy that we operate in. 
Or you can go to a socialist meeting and overthrow the whole thing. 
You know? 
Your choice. 
I'm just looking at the chat. 
I'm looking at the chat now and somebody said that in Nashville, a listener from Nashville saying, I don't know if he's from Nashville, but he's saying, one of the tallest buildings is Chase. 
It used to be the Bank of the South or something like that. 
Now it's Chase. 
You know? 
Yeah. 
I'm not surprised. 
Banks take over other banks. 
That does happen. 
And there's no more savings banks. 
You know, like, all the savings that are becoming sat-landars. 
Well, you don't want to give people the wrong impression. 
They need to spend money. 
So, you start saying save and everything falls apart. 
Yeah, but savings banks, you know, there's no more savings banks. 
The independent savings bank is now a sat-landar. 
And now the Ridgewood Savings Bank is going to become a sat-landar. 
That's a Spanish company. 
I don't know what he's saying. 
I don't even know that company. 
It's a Spanish company. 
It is. 
And their ATMs are not very friendly or universal. 
You know, fine. 
The bad ATMs and taking over everything. 
They've been traveling. 
That's like the one bank that's just totally useless to try to exchange money. 
I'm sure there's other useless banks. 
Yeah. 
And they're coming here to be useless. 
Okay. 
All right. 
So, any other observations? 
No, no other. 
We're out of time, almost. 
But I want to get another call in. 
Rebel, thank you for calling. 
And we will take all these issues under advisement. 
All right? 
Okay. 
See you next time. 
All right. 
So, 802-321-4225 is our phone number for anybody else out there. 
You know, we've lost all the people in Skype land. 
They're just playing trains over the screen here. 
And I can't hear anything except the typing. 
Are they there? 
We thought you liked trains. 
Not replacing humans. 
I never went that far. 
Interrupted train feed in terms of commercial. 
They're just doing rebels' call here. 
You don't even have to, like, roll it back. 
It's just uninterrupted. 
No commercial. 
Oh, look. 
I see them. 
They're in little tiny squares. 
Do you see that? 
They're all in little tiny squares. 
I can barely see them. 
They're showing us their screen. 
And I'm going to answer this. 
Answer their damn phone. 
There's a phone call coming in. 
Answer the phone. 
And if you guys can get the stupid train off the screen, that would be great. 
Because this is a local, as in New York, call. 
We can't cue you if we can't see you. 
And let us take this phone call. 
Good evening. 
You're on off the hook. 
Go ahead. 
Overtime, rather. 
What? 
Yeah, I just wanted to ask a quick question. 
Go ahead. 
I just wanted to know, as far as the... 
Please turn down your audio. 
It's confusing everybody. 
Oh, yeah. 
I'm sorry. 
I'm driving. 
I was just going to ask a quick question. 
Be careful. 
Yeah. 
You have these events. 
What do you call the events you do in the summertime? 
They're called... 
Well, it's not every year. 
It's every two years. 
It's called Hackers on Planet Earth or HOPE conferences. 
HOPE conference. 
Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. 
Do you know when the next one is going to be? 
We do. 
We do. 
It's July... 
Was it July 12th through the 14th? 
Anybody have a magazine handy? 
We haven't done the official announcing yet with the call for participation. 
That is coming very soon. 
But it's July of next year, St. 
John's University in Queens, and it's going to be awesome. 
Oh, the same place. 
The same place it was the last time. 
Same place, but a totally different way of using the space. 
So we're constantly making adjustments and improvements and things like that. 
We've learned a lot, and we're expanding, and it's going to be really interesting. 
Okay. 
That's all I really wanted to know. 
Thank you. 
Okay. 
Look forward to seeing you there. 
Okay. 
And I think we have time for one more phone call, if there is one more phone call out there. 
Oh, look, our people are back. 
We can see them again. 
Welcome. 
Yes, we're back and just mentioning that Hope is from July 12th to 14th next year, 2024. 
And if you want to know more about some of our other events, you can find info and past pages for them at hope.net. 
Um, yeah, the new one isn't on there yet because we've been so busy, but it will be on there very, very soon. 
We promise. 
The next conference is called Hope XV. 
Um, and that means 15. 
The site itself is organized, um, with Roman numerals on the subdomain. 
So if you do, uh, I.hope.net, you'll go to the first hope. 
One. 
Yes. 
Yeah. 
And, uh, XV.hope.net will go to the current one. 
Uh, eventually. 
This is all there now, but it will, it is in production. 
Now there's a lot of activity behind the scenes. 
So do you know, hope XV is the sequel to hope X, which was the 10th conference. 
I heard that come up. 
Someone pointed that out. 
Yeah. 
And I think that's really neat. 
It is neat. 
You would think that it was a sequel to 14, uh, which was a new hope last, last year. 
Sure. 
But no, it's not. 
It's a sequel to hope X. 
I think it's like, that's why it's called hope XV. 
Almost as though it was the last time the conference had a Roman numeral in the title. 
You know, you might be right about that. 
You might be right about that. 
That's something. 
Uh-huh. 
Do you know only one hope conference had the year in it? 
And that was hope 2020. 
And that was the virtual one. 
There's all kinds of facts that we can, we can share and we'll be doing that. 
So I'm so glad that that caller asked and, uh, thank you for listening while you're on the road. 
Impressive with, uh, cellular and, uh, data. 
You can, you can hear us, uh, on the channel 2600 while you drive even. 
Gila then, Alex. 
Um, speaking of facts about hope, did want to mention that frequent listener and caller Tim in Connecticut says St. 
John's was a very good venue. 
A plus would go again. 
Uh, so we're looking forward to seeing you next July, Tim. 
You know, and if Ron from Wisconsin wants to come with a semi filled with phones, there is room at St. 
John's to do just that. 
So this is the kind of, um, uh, potential that we have in a space like that. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
Well, I just, I just wanted to, uh, push back a little bit because I think that there were other hopes that technically had dates in the title. 
There was H2K and then there was H2K2. 
Those aren't dates. 
Those aren't dates. 
That's like the millennia. 
It depends on how you have a narrow definition. 
They're eras. 
Yeah. 
That's, you know, nobody walked around saying, oh, we're, this is 2K, you know, they said, hey, what year is this? 
2020. 
If you asked in 2000, what year is it? 
Nobody said 2K. 
You find me, somebody did that and I'll agree with you. 
And the same thing goes for H2K2. 
Sure. 
Which was a sequel to H2K, but then we're nevermind that. 
That's right. 
Yeah. 
Those are both good conferences though. 
I thought they were references to the Y2K bug. 
Oh, they were sort of, yeah. 
A good natured ribbing of that. 
Cause we were still afraid at the time that something would happen. 
The phone line is still open. 
It's still open, but not for long because we're going to get, we have to, we have to, uh, you know, make food for tomorrow. 
Well, I'm not going to lie. 
Um, we have snacks. 
Yeah. 
The festivities have already started. 
That's the kind of holiday. 
For me, they haven't, where are the snacks? 
I haven't gotten any snacks. 
It's the kind of holiday that, um, us Americans are having over here. 
You keep leaving the room every five minutes and I hear like music and chatter in the other room. 
Is there something going on there? 
Cause I'm kind of like barricaded in here. 
Um, yeah, no, well maybe a little, but just don't look at that. 
No, I see silhouettes of people dancing in the distance. 
Forget all about that. 
What the hell do you have going on in there? 
It'll be there when, when we're finished talking to the people. 
Well, when I'm finished talking to the people, apparently I'm, my job is to stay here and just be a blabbermouth for the entire night. 
Okay, fine. 
Go, go have your party. 
Well, and as others are surely, uh, getting ready to socialize and, uh, be festive. 
We don't want to keep you from that either. 
Of course. 
Also there's tons of travel. 
I'm sure there's people that want to be kept from arguing with their relatives. 
Maybe you're going to get a phone call in early, uh, to talk to loved ones because you can't make it. 
We, uh, we want to allow you all of that time. 
It's not purely our own selfishness, but rather selflessness. 
Rob, go ahead. 
Well, while we're on the subject of Thanksgiving and, uh, such things, I, I just want to say, I think I speak for all of us here at Off the Hook that we're so grateful to all of you out there who continue to invite us into your ears and your homes and, uh, and pay attention to what we do and who keep supporting us at, uh, give to WBAI.org, uh, Tuesday of next week, I believe it's called Giving Tuesday because, uh, folks are encouraged to, uh, donate what they can after the madness of the big holiday shopping days. 
Uh, it certainly is. 
So, uh, for those of you who don't know when I'm not doing this, I am a nonprofit development professional, uh, Giving Tuesday has existed for about the last 11 years because after the orgy of consumption on Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and all of that, take a minute, give back, give to, well, give to anybody really, but we on this program are going to encourage you to give to WBAI. 
Um, and yeah, as long as we're talking about stuff we're thankful for, by the way, um, I do want to say that having the, uh, the chat, having this new community opening up of people talking to each other and talking to us and getting in on the show, um, I love it. 
I know we had been, um, a little skittish about doing this, but I think it's worked out really, really well, and I appreciate this opportunity that we have to interact with listeners from literally around the world. 
People are now chiming in, telling us what hope conferences they've gone to. 
Um, we've got someone who attended H2K2. 
Oh, wow. 
And, uh, 2018. 
And, um, it's, it's wonderful to watch people reacting to what's going on in real time. 
Um, and also, you know, rebel chiming in with emergency interruptions, but Hey, it's a, it's a big world. 
We all make it go around. 
He hasn't done an emergency interruption in a while. 
I don't think you can still do those. 
Uh, he definitely will chime in the chat and say he has an emergency interruption. 
Yeah, but not in real life. 
The way those used to work, you'd be on the phone and well, not necessarily rebel, but somebody let's, let's say you were on the phone and, uh, people calling, we get a busy signal because call waiting didn't exist back then. 
So they'd call the operator, they dial zero and say, operator, can you, first of all, can you verify? 
That's what the phrase was, verify this busy signal. 
They would call the busy signal and they would tell you if the phone was off the hook or if there was conversation going on, because what the operator would hear would be garbled conversation. 
They couldn't make out the words, but they could tell it was conversation and not simply a phone off the hook. 
People would do that all the time. 
They were concerned that they hadn't been able to reach somebody for a while. 
And then for an additional fee, you could have what's known as an emergency interrupt. 
That's where the operator, and we have a few of these in old radio shows, the operator would actually burst into the phone call in progress and say, I have an emergency call from so-and-so, will you release the line? 
And if you say yes, uh, you hang up and then your phone rings and you say, what gives? 
You just interrupted my phone call to the person who called, or you could say, no, I refuse to do that. 
And she would tell the person trying to interrupt your phone call, uh, that's not going to work. 
Try something else. 
Okay. 
Emmanuel, I have to tell you something. 
Go ahead. 
You have just clarified a moment in my favorite movie for me. 
So thank you. 
What favorite movie is this? 
Um, all right. 
I believe in complete transparency. 
My favorite movie is 1985's St. 
Elmo's Fire. 
And there is a moment where one of the characters who has got a girl he's got a crush on and he's trying to talk to her. 
So he's like, I want you to make an emergency breakthrough on the line. 
Do you hear me? 
And, um, well, now that makes a lot more sense. 
So thank you. 
Glad to clear that up. 
Yes, Alex. 
I have been meaning to watch St. 
Elmo's Fire. 
That's so funny that that's your, your favorite movie. 
I didn't know that, but I love the song St. 
Elmo's Fire. 
It's a fantastic song. 
We sang it in chorus in the first grade. 
Wow. 
Oh, it's amazing. 
Well, you know, we could all get together and watch it virtually at the same time over Thanksgiving. 
That sounds like fun. 
It does, actually. 
Yeah, I know. 
We have a phone call call? 
Um, yeah, there is one call. 
Okay. 
Our last call. 
Our last call. 
And we always have just one call. 
We only have one phone line. 
And good evening. 
You're on Off The Hook Overtime. 
Go ahead. 
Hey, this SL is, uh, pretty cute. 
The SL command that, uh, yeah, the inverse of LS. 
Awesome. 
Love it. 
This is Johnny Fusion. 
Just wishing you guys a happy holiday. 
Hey, you too. 
And I did get my article sent off to the, to the, to the article's email. 
Oh, awesome. 
Great. 
That's, that's, that's wonderful. 
It's in the slush pile. 
Okay. 
It'll be, it'll be processed in due time. 
And, yes, the lead, the lead is being created, uh, as we speak, I'm sure. 
Yeah. 
We do typeset in the old fashioned way. 
Yeah. 
Slow and easy. 
Do you really? 
Um, what do you think? 
I don't think so. 
Well, okay. 
Well, we're just going to have to be mysterious about that. 
We like the mystique. 
Uh-huh. 
Keeps them guessing. 
But there's no reason why we couldn't, if we wanted to. 
We handcraft every character. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
You know, but about this, this little text graphics thing, you know, it just, it reminds me of a lot of the whimsy in computing that's kind of gone away when, um, when it's become more ubiquitous, right? 
When it was more niche, it was like stuff like this all the time. 
Like my daddy was a phone freak and I inherited the genes. 
Oh, wow. 
And he worked, he worked in computers, you know, in the sixties and seventies. 
And in the seventies, he had a printout of the Star Trek Enterprise done on like a teletype or a line printer made just with the ASCII characters, you know, on that fan-fold paper hung up in our home, you know, took like five sheets of fan-fold paper for a big banner of the Starship Enterprise. 
By the way, uh, on many of those Linux systems, there is a banner command where you can make those things if anybody's interested. 
Won't print out .matrix unless you have a .matrix printer somehow hooked up, but it's still there. 
Yeah. 
But you know, who has, who has fan-fold printer printer paper anymore? 
Probably Ron in Wisconsin. 
I would bet. 
Oh, maybe. 
He was so cool. 
What'd you think of the conversation we had with him? 
Well, I came in late, but what I caught was really interesting, you know, just like, I mean, it's, I mean, telephony is like the basis of the hacker community really when you get into it, you know, because like phone freaks were our predecessors. 
Oh, they're still very much around, though. 
They're just, uh, you know, playing with different things. 
Yeah, I mean, I built what the red box in the 90s that you printed plans of, uh, like I think it was around 93. 
About that. 
It sounds about right. 
It was called the quarter. 
Yes, I do remember the quarter. 
Yeah, it was called the quarter because what a red box did was emulate the sound of a quarter going into a pay phone, and, uh, that's all you needed to do to convince the pay phone that you had deposited a quarter. 
It wasn't a very good system. 
Yeah, that was fun. 
Like, I built it on a breadboard, and I always meant to put it in a dumb box, but I literally just took a breadboard to a pay phone with a nine-volt battery hanging off of it and a little button hanging off of it. 
Tried it out. 
The first phone I tried didn't work. 
And the operator came on the line, so I just got in my car and drove away. 
Yeah, that's always funny when the operator comes on and says, oh, I need you to put in a real quarter this time. 
And, um, yeah, in fact, there, there are, when we release the voicemail recordings or the voice BBS recordings, which we're going to do, we've been promising to do that, you're going to hear a bunch of those where, uh, people are attempting to red box because they're leaving a message and their time runs out because you didn't get very much time. 
You got like a minute or maybe two minutes and then you had to like put more money into the pay phone and people would hold up red boxes and you'd hear the operator come on and say, yeah, I'm not falling for that again. 
Yeah. 
Cause I mean, I remember when I was buying the parts for it, like someone had come in before to buy parts for it and I had actually seen that, but I hadn't gotten the magazine yet. 
And so, um, so I'm buying the DCMF encoders and the guy says, do you want some colorburst crystals for those? 
And I'm like, no, actually I want some 6.5 megahertz crystals. 
Oh, and they know what that means. 
Yeah. 
And that's exactly what he did. 
He goes, oh, I know what you're going to do with this really loud to the whole store. 
It's 6.5536 megahertz. 
Okay. 
I'm like, yeah, but it was a little, but it was like a little mom and pop electronic shop with like all this surplus and stuff like that. 
It wasn't a radio shack who would narc on you back in the day. 
Rob, did you have something? 
Oh yeah. 
Just, uh, I, I have one of those 6.5536 crystals that I still have from back then. 
Um, it's glued to a shelf by my desk here just as a, as a nostalgia piece. 
And every so often I explain to people what we used to do with those. 
It's a, it's very fond memories. 
Also my favorite, uh, response from a snarky operator was, uh, someone I knew once played a very bad recording of the tones, a very poor quality recording from a cassette, um, into the pay phone and got back an answer like, uh, what did you record that by the train tracks while the train was going by? 
Try again. 
Alex, go ahead. 
I remember the, my favorite place to get the crystals from was, uh, 1-800-DIGI-KEY. 
Oh yeah. 
You'll get, uh, you know, cause I wonder what, I wonder whatever happened to them. 
I doubt they still exist. 
I'm sure. 
Digi-KEY? 
They're still around. 
I buy, I buy components from them. 
Oh, digi-KEY is serious. 
Well, try, try buying that from them now. 
See if you can still do that. 
That would be something. 
It really, really would. 
You know, I, um, yeah, I've, I've been playing around with, um, uh, the Flipper Zero firmware recently. 
And I, I can't remember which one I had installed, but I was, uh... 
Did your kid lock you out of your car with that? 
Not yet. 
Not yet. 
But... 
Well, it's coming soon. 
Believe me. 
I know. 
Trust me. 
I do. 
And, uh, but I was, I was so pleasantly surprised to see that, uh, there, when I updated the firmware, one of the applications that was installed along with this updated firmware, I think it was, what was it called? 
Roguemaster, I think was the firmware I installed. 
Uh, it came with a blue box and red box emulator, which is very cool. 
I mean, the, the tones were definitely way, way off, but yeah, but it was just kind of cool to play with it and, you know, and you can show your kids the tones and explain to them the significance of those tones that they, you know, they'll, they'll just never hear. 
They're all, they're all gone now. 
So sad. 
Well, who knows? 
There might, like, uh, when I had that discussion with Bill Squire about analog versus digital, and I was like saying, you know, all the phone switches are going digital now and the old analog freaking doesn't work anymore. 
And he was, he was, he was insistent. 
No, there'll always be a third world country with outdated phone tech that you can get to and get out on lines and stuff. 
So this is 30 years later. 
So who knows? 
But there, there really is something to be said for all of that, that, that interest and the functioning part of it, that it exists. 
There are, there are ways of doing it and there are new generations of people that are getting into it, uh, as our guest was talking about, it's the, the, um, progeny of a lot of the, the leaders of some of the, uh, antique and collectible groups. 
There's people that we've seen, um, with their own families that are, they're bringing up in, in the whole telephone museum world, uh, people that have worked for the telephone company and, and hobbied on the weekends and, and shared their knowledge and their love and passion for it. 
It's hard. 
I, I know some of the museums have volunteers. 
I got really involved in, in, um, my local museum took every opportunity I could to help out and volunteer because I got close to a lot of the equipment. 
I got to hear some of the stories and, and the knowledge through the, the telephone pioneers and through my local museum. 
And that was so priceless and so cool because a lot of my friends were, were involved there. 
People, you meet people, you, um, you have an interaction with an, an, an, a way of interacting without having, uh, become an outside plant technician or something where you, um, may have never gotten interested in, in the, the pioneers or some of the volunteerism side of the telephone company. 
It's a great way if you don't end up as with a, as a career. 
And I think the hard part is that those organizations don't have a lot of funding, the, um, projects and the things that we might get excited about. 
They don't fit in like creating a business model or something like that, but there are ideas, there are ways of being better organized collectively. 
And I, I see bits and pieces of it. 
Um, and just in the conversation tonight, I was thinking about like, what if there was a bar or a club that had 40 phones there that all worked and on some system or, you know, ways we can integrate them into new technology that also have functionality and fit in a world that has forgotten about them otherwise. 
But it takes a lot of money, it takes a lot of effort to build something that's not going to go away and, and people start things and then life happens. 
Those kinds of things disrupt any kind of, it makes it, it's why it's so rare that we find places that have, uh, sort of the old and new and the, the functionality we're dreaming of and, and, and all of that. 
But, but to get the shared interests together, to get people talking and phones are a great way to connect people. 
Um, there must be a way I think going forward that some of these ideas and the passion can, can have a home, can have a way of forming a way of, um, of persisting in an era that has all but forgotten about it. 
And it, it takes time. 
It takes listening to the wisdom that's there, connecting different groups. 
But I'm, I'm so passionate. 
I'm really excited for what's possible. 
And we've talked about different ways of supporting some of these ideas and, and mostly just being inspired and having imagination for what could be done with old technology like this and sharing it with other people and building or building something around that. 
I'm, I really am, um, inspired and just hopeful that we'll hear about new stories and new groups and new, um, exciting places that are using this stuff in cool, playful ways. 
Because we're, we're sort of, we're suffering from abundance. 
There's all this stuff and it requires some tinkering and energy, power to function. 
And how do we make that work in the world that has abandoned it? 
And that's a, I think an interesting, uh, question coming away from this that I'm going to be wrestling with as we approach hope and, and talk about different displays and ways of getting people to be excited about it. 
You know, I think museums are a good thing because a lot of museums have, you know, like these living history reenactors and we're getting on along in the decades that we could have like historical reenactors doing phone tech, like phone operators, switchboard operators, you know, demonstrating how calls used to be made. 
And even maybe even like freaker reenactors, you know, like someone demonstrating the skills, like someone sets up an analog switch. 
Like I saw one video on YouTube of some telephone museum where they started off on like a plug board and they call to this switch, to this more modern switch, to this other modern switch to a cell phone. 
Wow. 
That's awesome. 
You know, so like, it was, it was just like, they did all these stops with, uh, using old tech, like, like using like 1920s tech all the way connecting to a modern device. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Yeah, we used to, we had a great demonstration at, uh, the old banker fairs, uh, when, when they were, uh, when they were in Queens and we would, uh, have the 2600 phone booth connected to a desk phone that we had on the table. 
Um, and, uh, you could connect the two and have conversations between the two. 
And it was a lot of fun. 
And it was, it was at one of those that, uh, the bond between those who were phone freaks and those who were working at the phone company, um, and the shared enthusiasm for the technology was made apparent because I remember an older gentleman coming up to the table, seeing the bell truck and, and the phone booth and everything and coming up and going, I used to work for the phone company. 
And I got to tell him, yeah, I used to work against the phone company. 
It's very nice to meet you, sir. 
And we had a great handshake and, you know, a laugh and it was great. 
Guys, so we've been going on for a very long time and I think we're about ready to go. 
Gila, I know you had one more thing to say. 
Go ahead. 
I do. 
Yes, we did have a, something pointed out from a listener. 
Uh, MK says that there's an Android app called ToneDeaf. 
That's T-O-N-E-D-E-F, uh, that creates phone tones, um, all kinds of phone tones, apparently. 
So, uh, people who are Android folks, you should check out the app ToneDeaf in the app store. 
And yeah, uh, J-Craft, a, a phone, a club with phone booths would in fact be dope. 
Um, I think about, you know, Cabaret, um, when people had all the, you can make blue box tones. 
Very exciting. 
Uh, Rob has just opened up the app right here. 
Uh, you can blue box, you can red box. 
Oh, that's a, that's a quarter. 
Uh, we're. 
That's 2,600 Hertz. 
That's, uh, some MF tones there. 
And there's also, uh, just regular touch tone phones. 
Well, that's, that's boring. 
Not necessarily. 
You know, I had a book that tells you how to play TV theme songs on phones. 
Okay. 
Yeah. 
You can play songs on phones. 
I guess that's, that's fun. 
But, uh, yeah, the real power was MF tones, 2600 Hertz and, and quarters. 
Um, also apparently we're hearing that the, uh, best crystal frequency for a red box was 6.49 megahertz. 
Um, so if anybody wants to take issue or exception with that, that's totally fine. 
But, um, yeah, to 6.49, the better the, the, the match was to the tone. 
Yeah. 
The crystals that were sold though, were not that, that specific frequency, right? 
That's right. 
Yeah. 
But you wanted to try to get a crystal that was as close to 6.49 megahertz as you possibly could. 
This has been such a lovely evening. 
Everybody has a phone theme. 
Thanksgiving. 
I don't want to go to a telephone bar. 
Uh, yeah. 
You know, that used to be a place in the city. 
That's the best thing in the world. 
Uh-huh. 
Well, this place is going to turn into a telephone bar pretty quickly here. 
All right. 
Hey, Johnny, have a great Thanksgiving. 
Good hearing from you. 
We'll hear from you hopefully next week. 
All right. 
Talk to you then. 
All right. 
Take care. 
Enjoy your holiday. 
Bye-bye. 
And, uh, that goes for all our listeners, all our callers. 
Uh, please enjoy the holiday. 
And, um, uh, I guess, you know, let's be patient with all the crap going on around us. 
And, um, uh, it'll, it'll be fun. 
It'll be nice. 
It'll be, uh, what you make it. 
Right? 
Yeah. 
As everything is. 
Uh, FunSucks again, that's it. 
The app is called ToneDeaf. 
T-O-N-E-D-E-F. 
It's an Android-only app. 
Um. 
Okay. 
I don't know what to tell you guys if you can't find it, but thanks for hanging in with us, everybody. 
We really appreciate it. 
Email address, O-T-H at 2600.com. 
Love to hear from you. 
Uh, and, uh, I believe we're back on BAI next Wednesday, 7 p.m. 
Overtime next Wednesday, 8 p.m. 
here on YouTube. 
So, um, thank you everybody for calling in, for, uh, showing support, for, uh, contributing in various ways. 
And I'll see you guys later. 
Good night.