Original subtitles

Oh.

It's been a busy week. The national debt topped $40 trillion.

Trump threatened to bomb Amman. And at a debate in South Carolina, Lindsey

Graham's sister, who's running to take his seat, gave a train wreck of an

answer.

I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?

Are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United

States? And if so, why or how?

I'm just going to be honest here. I'm not on national security.

I'm not that informed on national security.

But I do support the military.

Yeah, pretty bad.

And you know what? I will give Darlene Graham the same advice I'd give Liam

Hemsworth. You don't have to do this.

just because your brother did.

But I want to focus on a less covered story from this week, involving Sean

Duffy, Secretary of Transportation.

You may remember a few months back, he unveiled this weird trailer for the

Great American Road Trip, a show supposedly celebrating America's 250th

anniversary. What a beautiful family.

Hi, I'm Chester Adam, Mr. President. Chester, the President of Trump.

Taking a little trip? Yes, yes. A little trip all over.

So the motto is, to love America, it's to see America.

It's more than a road trip. It's a civic experience.

It's one of the most powerful ways to understand the vast, beautiful,

complicated place we call home.

One, two, three, road trip!

OK, lots not to like there from the generic hey-ho folk rock to Trump giving

insane grandma's new boyfriend vibes.

to the very conspicuous close-up of the Toyota logo, to the seemingly AI

-generated images of cars, which makes sense. No one's ever thought to film a

real car before.

When the Great American Road Trip was announced, they sold it pretty hard.

Duffy's wife, Fox host Rachel Campos Duffy, even claimed it was a solution to

what ails us as a nation.

I'm going to be really honest. We live in a porn hub world. This is really

wholesome, good family stuff. This is what...

families need to do is just get together. That's what our kids want from

us. Is it?

Because I think what every kid really wants is for their mom not to say the

word Pornhub on national TV.

Also, she clearly hasn't spent a lot of time on that site or she'd know families

getting together is very much its own category.

But the show quickly became controversial with people asking things

like, hey, you know gas is over $4 a gallon, right? And did you film a

reality show with your family when you were supposed to be running a cabinet

department? And who is paying for this exactly?

And the answers that Duffy gave weren't reassuring.

He says production took place in short windows over seven months.

I'm going to have to pay for this operation. I've got to go to work. Duffy

did conduct official government business paid for by taxpayers in some of the

locations where filming took place.

But he says no taxpayer money was used on his family and that the series was

funded through a nonprofit production company called Great American Road Trip,

Inc. It lists 17 sponsors on its website.

including Boeing, Toyota, Shell, Royal Caribbean Group and United Airlines.

All companies Duffy's department oversees and regulates. Yeah, that's not

great. The only worse answer to who paid for this than the American taxpayer is a

bunch of companies I oversee and regulate. Actually, I suppose an even

worse answer would be a bunch of companies I oversee and regulate and

also my close personal friend Jeffrey Epstein, but that is still pretty bad.

And this show cannot have been cheap to produce, given Toyota and Boeing alone

reportedly paid a million dollars each to help get it made. So it is no

surprise Duffy wound up having to answer questions about it in Congress, and his

defense was noticeably weak.

It is literally your job to make sure each of those companies are playing by

the rule.

So Toyota is sponsoring a show starring you, and it is your department, Mr.

Secretary. You hate America?

Don't you want to celebrate America? Mr. Secretary, it is your department that

decides whether Toyota's next recall... It's our birthday!

You sound like a fucking child!

You do get that just because it's America's birthday doesn't mean you get

to do an ethics violation, right?

Grow up, Sean!

This show was supposed to come out in June, but all the scrutiny seemed to

delay it, with Duffy at one point saying they needed to re-edit to make sure I

come into compliance with all of the ethics rules that we have in government.

Which is definitely something best done hastily after the fact.

But this Wednesday, with no warning, all six episodes were quietly dumped on

YouTube. And before I talk about the show, a bit of context about why Duffy

might have thought this was a good idea. Because he has long loved being on

camera. He was actually on The Real World Boston back in the late 90s, where

he presented himself as deeply horny. In his audition, he reportedly said he

wanted to be on the show because of his interest in cute girls.

And when asked by a producer how many times he'd had sex in the last six

months, he, and I'm quoting here, flashed a big smile.

and responded, three times.

Three different individuals.

Yeah. And three different times.

Adding, I'm sort of starving right now, guys. And I've got to say, I had sex

with three different women, none of whom were interested in an encore.

Says a lot more about you than I think you wanted to reveal there.

Now, on the show, Duffy got attention for annoying the fuck out of his black

castmate, Camila, who he fought with over affirmative action, complaining, he

could have gotten into a better college if I were a black male.

And at another point, compared her to Adolf Hitler while accusing her of

reverse racism. And, well, sadly, Duffy didn't find a cute girl to have his

fourth sex with in the real world house.

He did actually meet his wife soon afterward during the spin-off Road Rules

All-Stars. In fact, here they are, flirting on camera, after which the show

cuts away to this incredible confessional interview.

I'm a playful person. I'll go and just play with people in probably a sexual

way. And I think it can be perceived in the wrong way. And I think she might

take my actions as me, you know, liking her and wanting to get down with her and

maybe feel her little boobies. Well, it's official.

We found it. The worst possible answer to the question. So, how did you and mom

meet?

Also, for the record, no one over the age of six should be saying the word

boobies. After that point, you call them breasts, and then when you're 90, you

get to call them knockers without anyone correcting you. That is the deal.

Anyway, Duffy eventually ran for Congress, where he served four terms,

then became a TV pundit and co-host of a right-wing podcast with his wife,

featuring episodes like Is Wokeism the United States Cultural Revolution? And

Why Taylor Swift is the Sign of a Declining Society?

Then last year, he joined the Trump administration as Transportation

Secretary, bringing all his culture war energy to that job, including after a

deadly plane crash outside D.C., absurdly suggesting D.E.I. had played a

role, saying you can't focus on diversity, equity and inclusion when you

try to hire air... traffic controllers. And yet, somehow, with all his

responsibilities, Duffy still managed to find time to film the Great American

Road Trip. And while its marketing materials described it as a nationwide

storytelling movement that invites Americans to explore the open road and

connect with their communities, as we learned this week, that's not really

what it is at all. Because it turns out it's basically just an expensively

produced test run of a Duffy family reality show, with each episode

featuring a bare minimum about travel or America, but a ton of... of manufactured

reality TV drama around the Duffys doing stuff like planning a family party or,

over the course of several episodes, watching their daughter decide which

college she'll attend, a debate, incidentally, that Sean wades into in

exactly the way you'd expect.

If I do get it, I feel like you can't say no.

To Harvard? Yeah. Well, me and Mom can say no.

Catholicism, to us, is everything. It's the basis of our marriage, it's the

basis of our family, so...

I'm nervous about the idea of Paloma going to Harvard. My problem is we have

thought about how we raised you and how hard we've worked to, I think, raise

what is a remarkable young girl.

If I send you there, I think what happens is they have professionalized

figuring out how they can take good young girls like you and, I think,

corrupt their minds.

What the fuck are you talking about?

First, this was supposed to be a road trip. Why are we still in your kitchen?

Second, is there anything less relatable than a family whose conflict is, how do

I tell my daughter she can't go to Harvard because we did too good a job

raising her? And finally, please, don't be worried that Harvard's going to

corrupt your daughter's mind. Worry that if she goes there, like every other

Harvard grad, she's never going to shut the fuck up about it.

One of this show's writers went to Harvard, and guess how I know that?

Exactly. I don't know where any of the others went.

But if you think that moment is uncomfortable, they also go to Boston to

visit the real world house where Duffy tries to rewrite some history.

Camille and I, the house is set up for the two of us to room together.

We got along well, though. It was fun. It was good.

You called her a bitch.

I did not.

Oh, I'm sorry. You didn't?

You're saying that you didn't call Camille a bitch?

Let's go to the tape, Sean.

I walked up ahead of the group and I called her a bitch.

Yeah, you did.

You did call her that. Call me CVS, Sean, because I will always bring the

receipts. But maybe what's most noticeable about the Great American Road

Trip is that whatever last-minute edits were made to it seem to have cut a lot

of stuff out. A bunch of stuff from the trailer is now missing, including visits

with country musician John Rich and also Kid Rock, who, and this is true, are

apparently two completely different people.

More conspicuously, they've also removed a whole tour of a cruise ship operated

by one of the show's big sponsors, Royal Caribbean, although notably other

sponsors still get some airtime, with the show featuring the family touring a

Boeing factory in South Carolina and visiting a Waymo facility in Arizona,

where Duffy calls the company the future of transportation. But perhaps the

clunkiest moment that got left in involves what sure seems like sponsor

integration for one of the show's backers, the Electronic Payments

Coalition, a lobbying group representing credit card companies. because in one

episode when the family goes to lunch, out of nowhere, Naomi Alindo, a former

cast member on Southern Charm, turns up and suddenly steers the conversation in

a very specific direction.

See if you can spot it.

I'm getting married in July, so... Oh, congratulations.

Thank you so much. I'm a frugal person, and I want to be, like, smart with my

money. Planning a wedding and, like, a honeymoon and stuff and all that can get

so expensive, and we booked our entire honeymoon with points. Like, the entire

thing. I did, too. You did?

Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you so much.

People can come here on points, and then the more they go out to eat, they shop

where they stay, they use their cards, and they're still earning points while

being here. So, I mean, it might be girl math, but to me that sounds amazing, and

it really makes sense.

What a natural conversation.

Just a normal extended monologue about the flexibility of credit card points.

Delivered to a table of bored children who, and I know I'm projecting here,

have definitely been told that if they interrupt her or make any noise, she's

going to have to go back to the start and do the whole thing again.

And look, I don't really give a shit if Sean Duffy and his wife want to become

the next Duggars or John and Kate or Alec and Hilaria Baldwin.

What's concerning is them doing it on the back of the Department of

Transportation, because it feels ethically dubious on so many levels.

Which may be why, at this point, everyone involved in the Great American

Road Trip seems like they'd rather just sweep it under the rug. Since it came

out, the Duffies have barely promoted the show, and the Department of

Transportation hasn't posted about it at all. It is no wonder hardly anyone seems

to have watched this thing.

But even if everyone involved wants to move on and act like it never happened,

I'm not sure that the rest of us should. Because the appearance of a conflict of

interest here is not going to go away. For a start, the Department of

Transportation, right now.

has at least two open investigations into Waymo for its self-driving cars

driving around a stopped school bus and striking a child in the area of a

school. And as one expert in government ethics has said, there is every reason

not to trust Duffy to be protecting public safety when it comes to Waymo

because he's accepted this gift.

Thankfully, a government watchdog group has filed both an official complaint and

FOIA request to find out more about how all of this happened. Which is good,

because I've got to say, having watched all three hours of this god-awful show,

from gender reveals to the Duffeys renewing their vows for no clear reason,

it feels less like the country's been taken on a road trip by Sean Duffy, and

a lot more like we've all been taken for a fucking ride.

And now, this.

And now, nobody does a transition to an ad read like Ben Shapiro.

All the worst people are very, very excited about Lindsey Graham's death.

All the worst people. But listen, whenever you talk about mortality or the

passage of time, it's a big reminder that you don't have time to waste. And

it's a reality.

We just had a baby. That means we are super-duper busy.

There's no time to waste. And that's also true when it comes to your

business. We all have our own time-saving hacks for everyday life. If

you're a business owner, how can you save time hiring?

ZipRecruiter. Listen, what Mamdani is doing right here is not realistic,

obviously. It's utopian and really ugly, and it violates every basic principle of

Econ 101.

He's not interested in saving money or efficiency.

But if you're interested in saving money or doing efficiency, obviously check out

my friends at PureTalk. Coming up, the president.

Ripped on election machines. She says they're not working properly, or at

least they are vulnerable.

But here's what you need working properly.

Your cell phone coverage. It turns out that when you import a bunch of third

world people who are also radically Muslim, you might have a bit of a crime

problem. I know, these things are shocking. You know what's not shocking?

That it's very hot today in Florida. It's hot every day in Florida this time

of year. And this is why you need a mattress that breathes. Candace Owens,

why was she so obsessed with Charlie Kirk? What was up with that obsession?

But speaking of obsession.

I'm obsessed with balance of nature. Balance of nature products actually. I

mean, look at this.

Moving on. Our main story tonight concerns subscriptions.

The way that HBO, from the very start, made money. And while I don't need to

show you this old promo for it, I do want to.

The HBO Knockout Fall is here. With blockbuster movies like Rambo, First

Blood Part II, Jagged Edge, Silverado and Cocoon. Just call this number and

order cable TV and HBO.

You'll save 50% on installation and get this telephone alarm clock absolutely

free. It's magnificent.

What happened to this company?

Nowadays, when you sign up for HBO Max, all you get is access to this.

But HBO used to throw in alarm clock phones that doubled as weapons that you

could throw at your boyfriend during a fight, a theme song, and a cartoon mom

and dad who you can tell go absolutely feral after dark.

Those two have never met a bet they didn't wreck, shred, and moisten. And if

you are shocked by how graphically I'm discussing these innocent cartoons,

remember, this is HBO.

You pay for the filth.

Specifically, I want to talk about the fact that more and more things seem to

have shifted to a subscription model nowadays. You've probably noticed how

we've gone from buying music and movies to simply paying a monthly fee to access

them. But subscriptions have also expanded to everything, from clothing to

beauty products to cleaning services to even this.

Taco Bell now testing a taco subscription service.

It looks like it works like this.

Customers pay $5 to $10 a month for what's called a taco lover's pass.

That lets them get one of a variety of tacos every day for 30 days.

It's true. Taco Bell apparently offers something called the taco lover's pass,

which is coincidentally also what the news headline will read when people

inevitably die from eating Taco Bell every day for a month.

Subscriptions are now basically everywhere, and many of us don't even

realize how much we spend on them. As one survey found Americans paid more

than twice what they thought they did for monthly subscriptions, and nearly

half report they still pay for one that they'd forgotten about or didn't use.

And look, I am not saying that this is the biggest problem that we face in the

world right now. That's obviously a three-way tie between the war in Iran,

diarrhea lettuce, and what's happening in the donut industry. Guys, we're doing

too much. Fruit loops?

On a donut?

The option should be icing... sprinkled, and that is it. Donuts don't need a

special toppings bar. They're donuts.

They're not frozen yogurt. Now, she needs help. She needs lipstick, a push

-up bra, and as many crumbled up M&Ms as you can shovel on her. But donuts are a

natural beauty. Leave them be.

But subscriptions are a universally annoying problem, and they are something

that people do love to yell about.

There are so many hard things in life. Why is canceling a subscription one of

them? And I'm talking to you, Paramount+. I'm talking to you.

Canceling my SiriusXM almost broke my fucking brain.

In the how-to, it says, hey, how to end your subscription.

go to end subscription button but it doesn't exist then I had to chat to the

chatbot and I didn't have time to chat to the chatbot all I wanted to do was

cancel my subscription I didn't even have manners all I said is cancel my

subscription hi um please just give us a few details cancel my subscription

please let us know how can we keep you cancel my

That is just an excellent use of TikTok, because I do think we need an outlet

where we can vent about daily annoyances, especially given that

priests must be tired of hearing it by now. Do you have something you'd like to

confess, my child? Yeah, why are mobile orders that came through after in

-restaurant orders prepared first? Tell me that, God, is bullshit!

So given all that, tonight let's talk about subscriptions.

How out of hand they're getting, the tricks companies use to lock you into

them, and one simple solution that could give consumers at least some power back.

And let's start by acknowledging that certain things, like newspapers, have

long had a subscription component. But the internet has made it much easier to

apply a subscription model to basically everything. And I do mean everything.

From the Apocabox, which sends you doomsday prep supplies, to Bonebox,

which I'll let this YouTuber tell you about.

this is the bone box and it comes from skulls unlimited and yes it is what you

might think it is it is a box bones this is a 30 mystery box it does contain a

skull now they had two not human they do have two tiers it's a 30 one and here is

the skull so that is an american minx Okay, I'll be honest. I didn't think you

were talking about human skulls there until you quickly said not human and now

I'm just not so sure

But it's not just boxes of bones people subscribe to. It's also how many of us

consume media nowadays. You can get subscriptions for books and for music

and for TV and movies. And all of that is the end result of a much larger shift

that started in the late 90s, when Netflix launched its DVD rental

subscription service and companies like Salesforce pioneered a cloud-based

subscription model for software, or what we now call software as a service, with

Adobe and Microsoft soon following them. And before long...

Any product or service that could be repackaged as a subscription started

becoming one. Even appliances and devices that you used to be able to buy

and own outright started becoming smart products with a subscription component.

You can now find this model used in everything from baby alarm clocks, to

smoke alarms, to light bulbs, to even litter boxes.

Perfect for anyone who's ever thought, I wish there was a way to make it more

expensive for my cat to take a shit.

And the auto industry in particular has started leaning into subscriptions hard.

$8 a month for remote start on certain Toyotas, $20 a month for BMW's enhanced

cruise control.

Hands-free cruise control sure is nice, but are you willing to pay $75 a month

for it? So if your car payment is $600 a month, it's now $675.

General Motors expects subscriptions to bring in as much as $25 billion a year

by 2030, just under what?

Netflix earned last year.

Part of me says, though, well, you've already bought the hardware, so, you

know, just let me use it.

Yeah, GM plans to eventually rake in, from subscriptions alone, revenue

comparable to that of Netflix.

Which is shocking, given that GM, unlike Netflix, doesn't even offer you the

chance to see LA's most Botoxed realtors wearing the least practical outfits you

have ever seen. Their skin is on display, their shoes are legally stilts,

and there is simply no way for them to pee until they get home.

And sometimes you might not even realize that you're buying a product with a

subscription component until after the fact. For instance, HP now sells

printers with a subscription service called Instant Ink. And just watch the

nasty surprise that this woman got when her new printer's free trial expired.

I went to print like a packing label or something, and it just wouldn't print at

all. And I couldn't, there's no message on my computer that was explaining it.

And the reason it's not printing says, payment method needs updating.

You cannot print with the installed cartridge.

As you can see, this page is printed fine.

That's infuriating. I would be so mad if I'm trying to print something out and my

printer keeps printing out a page that says I can't print and won't print.

Maggie's printer still had ink in it when it stopped working.

It turns out that when your instant ink subscription expires, or if you cancel

it, HP remotely kills your cartridges.

Yeah, that's pretty annoying, isn't it? She understandably assumed she owned the

ink that came with her printer, but suddenly she couldn't use it. Which does

feel like a waste, although I'll tell you one purchase that she made that

definitely wasn't a waste there, and I think we all know what it is. Say it

with me, everyone.

The nails, honey, that's right. Look at the colour combo, the design, the shape,

my God, the shape.

It's like a junior stiletto with a whiff of almonds. Nails like that tell me

three things about that woman. She's got taste, she's got style, and she doesn't

fuck around.

A person with those nails does not make decisions lightly. I am positive. If she

knew signing up for that subscription would give HP remote control of her ink

cartridges, she'd have said to them what I assume she says to anyone asking her

to open a can of soda.

Sorry, that is someone else's journey, not mine.

But as irritating as that is, there's an obvious reason companies love this

model. As HP's CEO told investors, we make more money per customer when

they're in the subscription program.

And that money is consistent, recurring revenue.

But the benefits for companies don't even stop there. And subscriptions also

give them access to a shit ton of data about you. In fact, here's a former

Salesforce executive who now runs a company that helps businesses manage

their subscription services, laying out his pitch to clients.

What you really need to do is you really need to think of what is it that you're

really after.

Companies like Whirlpool or GE, they really only deal with their customers

once every seven years or so when they buy a new product.

And so these manufacturers are realizing we're in like 70% of the households in

the U.S., and we should be able to collect information about people and

understand what do they do, how often do they eat, how often do they go cooking,

how often do they use their microwave, how often do they wash their clothes,

and think about a whole different service.

Imagine instead of having a washing machine, it's a smart washing machine.

It knows how often you're using it. When you run out of detergent, detergent

simply shows up in the mail. It knows that you just had a child, so you're

going to be using it more often. It actually adjusts to your needs.

That is so unsettling to me.

No company needs to know I had a child. There is a reason that you start birth

announcements with dear family and friends and not to whom it may concern

at the Whirlpool Corporation.

And it's also just unnecessary. If you want to know if someone's had a kid,

there are way more obvious clues than them washing more clothes. How about,

are their eyes hollow? Do they look like they're taking at most two showers a

week? Do they spend the one hour a day they get to themselves watching beach

games in a catatonic state?

Does a barista getting their coffee order wrong elicit steel magnolias-level

sobs? Are they wearing a backpack in a restaurant?

Those are all easy ways to spot a new parent that crucially don't involve

spying on them through their fucking washing machine.

Now, obviously, there is a pretty simple solution for you here. Don't buy these

smart products. And if you don't want a subscription anymore, just cancel it.

But while that is easy to say, cancelling can be way harder to pull off

in practice, and for a few key reasons. First, let's admit, as a species, people

can just forget.

In fact, any time subscriptions get covered on the news, someone invariably

offers a confession like this.

Guys, this is so funny because yesterday I realized that my gym account has been

charging me twice every month for the past like four months. Well, I forgot

that I was subscribed to Apple TV. I made this list and I realized that three

or four of the services I had, I had just not used in years. One of them

being an e-fax service. Am I on national television right now that I had a fax

service?

Look, I am trying not to be judgmental here, but you didn't know you were

paying for an e-fax service for years? I think it genuinely might be less

embarrassing to admit that you wrote in Jill Stein in the 2020 election.

I would rather stand outside the Today Show and hold up a sign reading, people

were wrong about Madam Webb, than admit something like that.

But the thing is...

Sometimes it's less people forgetting they had a subscription and more of them

not realising that they'd signed up for one in the first place.

Which can be easy to do. Maybe you signed up for a bundle. So you subscribe

to, say, Lift Pink, and they threw in a year of Grubhub Plus. And you didn't

realise that after a year, Grubhub Plus automatically converts into a paid

subscription. Companies have gotten very good at making it incredibly easy to

sign up for subscriptions often by employing what are called dark patents,

which I know sounds like the title of Jeremy Renner's next album of song-like

sounds mistakes.

But it's actually a term describing companies using deceptive design choices

to manipulate you into making decisions you might not have intended.

Take Amazon Prime, which in addition to offering free shipping, also provides

access to some of the best shows that only your dad watches.

Prime has been a massive success for Amazon. It's the main driver behind the

more than $44 billion Amazon made on subscriptions last year. But a few years

back, the company got into big trouble after the FTC claimed that it had used a

variety of dark patterns to trick people into signing up for Prime, with this

reporter describing just one of them.

So originally, Amazon Prime was $99 a year. It's up to $149 a year now. But

let's show you real fast here. So, like, you put something in your cart. You go

to the payment page. You click the yellow button as you go to process your

way through the checkout.

This is the payment page. We forward one page here. What you get is when you go

to checkout, you get a pop-up. And instead of the yellow button that you

would have been clicking all the way to just kind of proceed as normal.

All of a sudden, the sign up for Amazon button is the yellow one now, and the

proceed as normal button is not.

Yeah, that's pretty sneaky.

And it is easy to see how someone could fall for that, particularly if they

speak English as a second language, or are older and a little less tech savvy,

or they can't read at all. The point is, it sure seems like Amazon was being

deliberately confusing there. In fact, a former Amazon employee literally told

reporters, quote, we have been deliberately confusing.

And not only are there internal Amazon documents stating the issue of

accidental Prime sign-ups is well documented, but in several cases, fixes

for these issues were actually proposed and considered, but because they

resulted in lower subscription growth when tested, they were shelved by

executives. Because, of course they were.

But while companies clearly go out of their way to make it incredibly easy to

subscribe, they can make cancelling a fucking nightmare.

Take LA Fitness. You can sign up for a membership there online.

But as the FTP pointed out last year, handling it was a lot harder.

The FTC says LA Fitness and its sister brands didn't just make canceling

memberships difficult, they made it nearly impossible.

The agency accuses the gym's parent companies of forcing some consumers

through a maze of red tape.

Some had to print long forms requiring long-forgotten login credentials, while

others had to show up in person and speak with a specific manager who was

often unavailable. In some cases, people were required to send certified mail

just to cancel, and even after some members contacted their banks to stop

payments, They allege the companies continue to charge them, sometimes under

new account numbers.

Yeah, that is ridiculous. Look, to be fair, gyms have made it hard to cancel

memberships for years now. It is so well known, it was literally a subplot on an

episode of Friends.

It was actually one of the more relatable scenarios that gang found

themselves in, with perhaps the least relatable being when Joey met Prince

Andrew's ex-wife Fergie and didn't ask her what she knew and when.

But nowadays, every... Everything feels like a gym membership, and companies can

use some of the same dark patterns that got you into a subscription to confuse

you when you're trying to get out of it. To give you just one example, take

HelloFresh. Until recently, here's what you had to do to cancel your

subscription. You'd go to your account page, and then have to scroll down to

the bottom, where you'd find a bolded Pause My Deliveries button, and a less

obvious Cancel one. If you hit Cancel, it took you to a page listing all the

benefits of subscribing with a bolded button to stay subscribed,

highlighted cancel button but let's say you hit cancel again at that point you'd

have to tell them why you're cancelling by clicking one of a number of reasons

you could not proceed unless you'd picked one and then it would take you to

a page offering you a fix for that complaint with again a highlighted

button to stay subscribed and an unhighlighted cancel anyway box and if

you clicked on that box it would finally cancel your subscription while also

after you've gotten used to clicking unhighlighted buttons to keep cancelling

an unhighlighted one to undo the fucking cancellation.

And look, you might be thinking, well, look, if you just pay attention and read

what you're clicking on, you should be fine. But here's the thing. Pay

attention and read are two very difficult things to ask of the entire

population all the time.

And companies are banking on that. And it is by no means just HelloFresh. In

fact, in the same lawsuit where the FTC accused Amazon of tricking people into

signing up for Prime, it pointed out just how hard they made it for you to

undo that mistake.

It also claims Amazon made it very difficult to navigate cancelling a Prime

subscription. With a four-page, six-click and 15-option process, the FTC

says Amazon called Iliad after the nearly 16,000-line ancient poem.

Yeah, that's pretty telling, isn't it? You don't name something the Iliad

because it's easy to get through.

You do that because it's a dense slog that makes you want to kill yourself.

If you wanted a literary shorthand for something easy to get through and

obvious to figure out, you'd name it The Da Vinci Code, remember?

The answer to the riddle is Apple. Don't worry, that's only a spoiler if you're a

complete idiot.

Amazon! Ultimately settled that case for $2.5 billion and had to make changes to

its process. Though it still denies it ever tried to deceive Prime members. And

sure. But again, Amazon is not alone.

Uber, Match, Vonage and Shutterstock have all faced similar lawsuits. And

some companies will go even further to trap you in subscriptions.

Adobe. for instance, have made it a practice to charge a hefty early

termination fee to end subscriptions. But as the FTC put it, they hid the

relevant details in fine print and behind optional text boxes and

hyperlinks, and they...

definitely knew what they were doing, given in internal emails one employee

wrote there'd be absolutely no way to kill off that early termination fee or

talk about it more obviously without taking a big business hit. And that the

fee was a bit like heroin for a Toby.

Which isn't good.

Describing anything as a bit like heroin is bad.

Even if it is something harmless. If you described your boyfriend's obsession

with basketball player Luka Doncic as a bit like heroin...

I'd tell you to dump him and I'd tell him to get a real personality. And that

is me being polite. Because if you asked me after I'd had a few Cosmos, I'd tell

you to stop choosing men that ignore you like your father. But we all know you're

not ready to hear that.

And while Adobe and other companies will rationalise all of this with just giving

customers greater flexibility and convenience, it is clear people are fed

up with this.

Frustration with subscriptions may be the one remaining thing that actually

unifies all of us across party lines, which is incredible.

As it seems, we can't even agree on simple things nowadays, like Super Bowl

performers or which Pokemon would be the most delicious.

And I know what you're thinking.

I know what you're thinking.

Gyarados or a Magikarp, something like that, maybe Psyduck. But the very fact

that you're not even open to ditto is why this is such a point of discussion.

So what can we do here? Well, there's stuff that you can do on a personal

level. You can check your bank accounts for recurring charges on iPhones. If you

go into settings, tap your name and then subscriptions, you can see everything

you subscribe to via the App Store. There's actually a similar feature on

Android. Also, try not to sign up for any free trials without setting a

reminder to cancel them. And if you've been paying for an e-fax service for

years, just throw your phone into a river. You can't be trusted with it

anymore.

But it shouldn't just be on individuals to have to fight all this bullshit. And

there's actually a policy solution that would fix a bunch of what you've seen

tonight. And it was pushed by Biden's head of the FTC, Lina Khan. It's called

Click to Cancel. And when you hear it described, it sounds pretty reasonable.

Under this new click to cancel rule, canceling must be quick and easy. So if

you signed up online, there needs to be a click to cancel option.

So if you signed up in person, the FTC will require the option to cancel over

the phone.

or online now the ftc also says companies must make information easy to

find before obtaining your billing information and consumers must be

informed of what they're agreeing to before signing up right that sounds

pretty good doesn't it and it's kind of shocking that we even needed the

government to require that If Starbucks announced a new company policy to

display bagels are not to be used for anything other than eating, I'd have a

lot of questions about why that wasn't already a rule to start with.

But unfortunately, last summer, just days before Clinton Council was supposed

to take effect, it was voided by one of the most conservative federal courts on

procedural grounds. And while Trump's FTC has hinted they might draft their

own rule, we'll see what that looks like, or if it even happens.

And I should say, some states have enacted their own protections.

California was one of the first to do that, and just this year, both Virginia

and Louisiana passed their own versions of Click to Cancel. Meanwhile, New York

City has a version taking effect here in October. In fact, if you live somewhere

without good protections and are struggling to cancel a subscription...

One thing some people have said works is simply changing your location to

California, as that can apparently sometimes force the service to offer you

a click-to-cancel option. But obviously, pretend to live in California should not

be the system here.

And for the last time, I do know subscriptions are not the most pressing

issue in the world right now, because that would be war, poop, and pick-me

-donuts. Remember, we all agreed on that.

But it is frustrating that there is a tantalisingly easy fix to a ubiquitous

problem within reach, and we can't seem to have it.

It's honestly incredibly rare that we end up discussing a story on this show

where the solution is simply, there should just be a button for that.

But when it comes to subscriptions, we could actually have one of those buttons

that you could push once, and it would fix your problem, and it would instantly

improve people's lives more than I'm comfortable admitting right now.

So I'd argue companies should give us that fucking button. And if they won't,

they should be forced to.

And look, that is me being polite.

Because if you ask me after a couple of Cosmos, I'd say they should try

redirecting all the energy they put into developing labyrinthine systems to trap

their customers into making products or services people actually want to keep

buying. But we all know they're not ready for that conversation.

And now, this.

And now, highlights from over the years of the Iowa State Fair's Husband Calling

Contest.

That's our show. Thanks so much for watching. We're off in the next few

weeks, back September 20th. Good night!