Politics In Social Media? | Do you trust what you see on social media? | Biz To Biz Podcast
26 Sept 2024 · 30 min
In this episode of the Biz to Biz Podcast, hosts Justin and Allen (Allen Kopelman) engage in a free‑form, conversational riff that jumps across a wide range of cultural and political topics. They start by describing a massive, 20‑million‑card sports memorabilia collection discovered in Virginia, segue into personal nostalgia about trading cards, and then shift to the legal saga of music mogul Sean “Puff” Diddy, focusing on his $50 million bail, asset collateral, and public perception. The conversation moves to a technical highlight: a University of Missouri researcher, Maryam Salehi, who has engineered a fabric‑based filter that can remove nearly 100 % of microplastics from tap water. The hosts then critique media consolidation, using Rupert Murdoch’s succession‑style family battle at Fox News as a lens to discuss how a few corporations shape the news narrative, and lament the current state where news is often reduced to opinion. They discuss U.S. migrant relocation policies that overload small towns, expressing frustration with the humanitarian and political fallout. The dialogue turns to platform moderation, contrasting TikTok’s purported lack of censorship with Facebook/Google’s stricter controls, and how these dynamics affect payment processors like Nationwide Payment Systems, which now face 24/7 content‑monitoring mandates. Throughout, the tone remains informal, opinionated, and at times skeptical, reflecting the hosts’ personal frustrations with politics, media, and cultural trends.
Chapters
You are now watching the Biz to Biz Podcast with Allen and Justin. Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz Podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the George Costanza of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. What's up, bro?
Not much. Hectic day.
Hectic day.
George Costanza. Lots of good comedy. Yeah, he's funny. Yeah, I used to love Seinfeld.
I was young, so I didn't really— wasn't a real big fan.
And then like the later was, you know, Larry David was like the sort of side—
never watched that either.
Never watched that?
No, I was a very cavalier young man. I didn't spend my time inside the house watching TV and playing video games. I spent most of my time outside.
Okay.
Even as a young adult.
Yeah, I spent my time outside when I was a kid.
Yeah, you know, Seinfeld, that TV's never been my thing. Don't, don't— I don't believe the hype. I don't, you know, not a fan of, you know, like reality TV. No, I, I, you know, I mean, I do watch some reality TV. I like that, uh, Alone, when they're like camping in some Undisclosed location in the middle of Alaska.
The one— not the Naked and Alone.
No, Naked and Afraid, that's stupid. But Alone is like a real thing when they're like trained. Oh yeah, nature survival, right? You know, whatever they call them. Yeah, those— that's a cool show. But other than that, no, I'm not watching much. Uh, I watch podcasts.
Okay.
Go Brewers! Go Brewers!
Yeah, the Marlins, not— I think the season's coming to an end.
You know, like 10 games left, I think, 10 or 11 games. Yeah, I don't know, something like that. Brewers had like 16 games, so that was, um, Saturday, so maybe 14 games left. I know they played the Phillies yesterday, won yesterday, so let's finish strong, fellas.
Speaking of sports memorabilia, I came across this story where Some guy, for an undisclosed amount of money, bought a collection that someone amassed over 50 years that contains over 20 million sports cards and memorabilia in Virginia. Oh yeah. And it was all like stored pristinely.
Nice.
Like in plastic cases and like wrapped, like wrapped up. The guy had any like baseballs Signed football, signed pictures, and he said the collection included every Topps baseball set produced from 1954 to 2016.
Yeesh.
As well as 3 decades worth of—
dude, I would be so hyped to open up some of them boxes, bro—
of basketball and football cards. He has an estimated 10,000 Michael Jordans 6,000 Kobes and 4,000 LeBrons estimated. Where did you get this guy from? The guy in— and it's like in Virginia, and it was—
there was—
there's articles about it on the internet, on the internet. And then— and it goes beyond sports. He has autographed pictures of Marilyn Monroe. He has things from Star Wars, Star Trek.
And he's just a collector?
No, this guy bought the collection from this family.
No, that's what I'm saying. The guy from the family— the family was a bunch of collectors.
Yeah.
Or had a, like, a sports memorabilia store.
I don't know, the guy kept it all. Like, you see that there's a few pictures that they took and it just shows everything in like plastic.
This kind of hurts me a lot because, you know, my— one of my daughter's moms.
Yeah.
When her and I, uh, went different ways, right, I had stored my childhood collection of sports trading cards.
Yeah.
She gave them away.
Uh-oh.
So she says.
No.
So as an adult, at one point when my kids are gone from the house and I have like my little office area, I'll slowly start like trying to get some of my favorite stuff that I remember, like the Bo Jackson baseball card when he had the football pads and the a baseball bat like this, some, you know, some Andre Dawson stuff and a few other, you know, stuff that was like real. It wasn't, I wasn't so mad about like her giving it away or whatever she did with it. It was just the fact like there was so many memories inside of those pages. Like, you know, like sitting on a stoop trading baseball cards with your neighbor and shit. Like there was no internet. You know what I mean? Like that was like, If you made a bet like, yo, I bet you at recess I get 5 hits, and if I don't, I'm gonna give you the Scottie Pippen, you know, right, whatever rookie card. That was like, you know, the currency for us kids and shit. And, you know, that, that definitely is a trauma as an adult. So one day I'm, I'm gonna go into a, you know, sports memorabilia shop and buy some stuff there that I wanna replace, but yeah.
Yeah, so the guy had like all kinds of different things like Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig. He had cards dating back to 1909.
I had some Sandy Koufax in there. I had some Hank Aaron's.
Now I wonder how he got this. He had hundreds of—
Mickey Mantle.
They found hundreds of signed balls, bats, rolled up sheets of uncut cards, and game-used catching gear. Used by Hall of Famer Bill Dickey. Yeah, that's crazy.
I've heard of Bill Dickey.
No, I'm just saying, it's like a massive collection.
Virginia, it's a grimy place.
And then this guy's gonna—
and where did he get some from, like the mountains?
I don't know, it's in a small town. We'll post a link to the article.
I'm gonna have to check that out.
It's pretty cool.
That's, that's interesting.
Yeah, man, it's cool because like I have, I have a lot of stuff from the Miami Dolphins Some of it I have from when I was a kid. But then a few years ago, there was the anniversary of— I don't remember which one of the undefeated season. There was a guy who— well, that was in— undefeated season was '72-'73 when they went 17-0. But there was like an anniversary. I don't remember, 40th anniversary or 50th anniversary, whatever it was. And there was a big— there was a guy who was a huge collector of Miami Dolphins down here, and he was selling off his, um, all the mem— his family was selling off all the memorabilia. And at the end, there was a lot left over that didn't get auctioned off, so it was like a secondary auction. And I went in there and got like a whole slew of stuff.
But, you know, like Larry Zonka helmet, I got Well, speaking of stuff being sold off.
Yeah.
You know, the diddler.
Oh, yeah. Well, he's in big trouble.
He got arrested. Well, he turned himself in. He didn't get arrested.
Well, he's been on the run now.
No, he wasn't on the run.
Well, he was sort of on the run.
He was not. He's been cooperating with the feds this whole time.
Okay.
The whole time. He was not on the run. On the media, they made it seem like he was hiding from someone, but dude was just on the beach, whatever. Anyway, so they picked him up at a hotel in NY last night.
Um, in New York. Yeah, yeah, he turned himself in.
Exactly.
So no, get not guilty.
But the reason why I brought that up is because he put his Miami house and his mom's Miami house as collateral for his $50 million bail.
Wow, that's crazy.
So I don't know, he's probably— his son and his, you know, like all of his, his people, the people on— you had to come and sign off on it this morning at court. So I'm assuming that they're gonna give them bail. To me, they weren't gonna do it because he's a flight risk. If I'm Puff and all of this shit is true, yeah, I don't give up nothing about these two houses. Moms, I got you this other house in Harlem that you've already owned for many, many years, and I'm out. The feds could keep the two houses. Like, it doesn't matter. Like, he goes somewhere and he's, you know, he can't be extradited, who cares? Puff— I'm sure Puff has a serious war chest stashed in multiple locations throughout the United States, throughout the world.
Yeah, you got to go somewhere like Morocco or Brazil.
Where's Russell Simmons? He's like in I don't know where he is.
Russell Simmons. What's he on the run for?
Same shit. Sexual assault.
Oh, all kinds of— they all go to Morocco.
No, he's in somewhere else where they do like yoga and shit.
Like yoga?
Yeah, he's got his own— where did Russell Simmons go, man? He went to Bali.
Bali.
He's in Bali and he can't be extradited because there's no extradition from Bali to the United States of America. And he built a whole resort. Yeah, like a spa resort. And it's like crazy amount of money to come per night. So I mean, does— I don't know, like, is Puff a piece of shit? Absolutely. Does he deserve to go to jail? Absolutely.
Oh, he's not gonna go to jail?
Absolutely not. Will he end up dead somewhere on a boat, maybe in Italy? Very likely.
He could get Jeffrey Epstein.
That's what they're saying. A lot of people are saying like he's the Jeffrey Epstein of the music industry, which is terrible.
Like, dude, like, oh my God, look at that lady who is Jeffrey Epstein's like cohort, Giselle Maxwell. Nothing happened.
The Jones dude who came out and like put all these charges against Puff, man, like, if you're making this shit up or like just some random— like, it can't be made up though, right?
Like, if at this point, like, if the If there's an indictment, yeah, they must have some evidence.
There's got to be some. And you know, these people ain't playing. So no, but he's not going to jail.
Listen, I don't know why he turned himself in. He says he's not guilty. He didn't have to. He could have just went off to some country and stayed there.
Well, I mean, he is trying to save face in some regard. He's talking about one of the richest, you know, African Americans in the United States of America, bro.
Yeah.
Like he's a music mogul. He's a cultural icon. You know what I'm saying? He's just that, he was that guy. Like it's unfortunate that this shit has come to light. Like, you know, as a person that's been, you know, involved in the culture, you kind of always looked at Puff after Big got killed, kind of like shady. So, you know, you didn't really like Puff. No one really liked the shiny suits and the shit. Not, you know, like the way he did Shine. It was just a lot of shit, but whatever. Puff, for your kid's sake, man, you know, hold your head, bro. It sucks. Whatever.
Well, we'll see what happens because now that they arrested him, now all the dirt's gonna come out into the news.
Well, it's already out there. I shared, uh, something on Twitter from one of those guys who does like those deep dives. And yeah, yeah, he Puff's a piece of shit.
I know they said some stuff about it.
But on a lighter note, man, during, I don't know, like last week or something, I meant to ask you, did you hear about like the dude at the University of Missouri who has created the filter that's going to remove like almost 100% of microplastics from people's tap water?
No.
Yeah, I wrote his name down. Maryam Salehi, uh, developed a fabric-like filter to remove forever plastics and chemicals from people's tap water.
Well, that's definitely needed.
Yeah, that's going to be so cool, dude. He says it's just gonna be— instead of, you know, like those old filters. Yeah, like people don't even realize that they need to take them off sometimes because they're like stones and just shit that comes through the, you know, your pipes. But yeah, so it's just, you just screw it on there just like the filter that's already here.
Yeah, I'm sure they'll have something going in your refrigerator too to get, catch all that stuff.
Well, for people who have the money to have refrigerators with water.
I don't know. Yeah, I'm just saying, like, you know, ice makers and all that stuff.
Yeah, I don't have any of that.
Sorry.
Well, you know, every one day maybe. Okay.
No, the—
it's—
that's, that's definitely needed. I mean, listen, it's surprising, like, how much, how much stuff is in our water.
Imagine how Flint could use that, like, 30 years ago.
Well, you don't even hear about the water up there anymore.
No, it's a media blackout.
Yeah, they don't want to talk about it.
Again, I'm leading myself all into all the stuff that I was going to talk about. So, okay, so do you watch the show Succession?
Yes.
Amazing show, right?
Yes.
Do you know what's happening like in the real world of the media right now?
The real world of the media? Yeah. What's happening in the real world of the media is we're in a— we have—
no, I'm not— relax. What? I'm talking about the guy, Rupert Murdoch.
Now what's going on with Rupert Murdoch?
You know who he is? Yes.
The head of Fox.
He owns Fox. Right. Well, he owns News Corp.
Right.
Which Fox News is a subsidiary of. Right, right. So like, News Corp is the, the Wizard of Oz to me, right? So this guy, yeah, he's got a bunch of kids. Okay, just like in Succession. And when he was ready to kick the bucket or whatever, retire, all four of his eldest children were supposed to take over the company. Okay, just, it's literally like playbook out of Succession. Right. Well, the other 3 younger people don't agree with his ideology and his elder, older, you know, one of the older kids, Lucian or whatever is, I think that Lachlan.
Okay.
Another name that reminded me of the movie, of the TV series Succession, Lachlan.
Okay.
Right. He shares the same piece of shit ideology as his dad.
Okay.
So he's gonna take over Fox News instead of the rest of the kids. And there's a very big problem with that, I guess. Like, the kids are not happy, the— there's lawyers and attorneys. So it's like literally the, the TV series Succession in real life. And I was blown away to even know that that was like— that, that, that was great. I never heard of this guy.
He kind of got pushed. I mean, they've pushed a lot of people out of Fox News. And other stuff. The problem we have with the news today is that we have only a few companies and they're controlling the narrative.
Well, he's one of those guys, man.
I get that.
He controls all of it. Well, he's the— he owns it, man.
He's the puppet master.
Exactly, dude. And the fact that he's like saying, nah, man, you guys can't have this company, you're going to ruin it. Because he's afraid of them telling the truth or not agreeing with—
oh, look what happened to Elon Musk, right? He's telling— letting all the truth come out on X. The president or whatever, the, the guy who took over in Brazil, right, who didn't— he didn't win the election, he just took over, right? They kicked him out, but he just kept in power, and he shut off X down in Brazil. So you can't get on X in Brazil. No, but that's like, you know, and that's happened. That's like the same thing in like China, Russia, and other countries. They have a full blackout on the American media and other media from outside of their country. Unless those people have, you know, VPNs and things like that, they're not getting on to the—
It's conspiracy. You see what Hillary Clinton said?
What did she say, man?
That crazy ass lady, man. She is batshit nuts. She said that people need to go to get arrested for saying stuff online that isn't true.
Well, she can't say that. They, they came out and they— listen, there's a whole bunch of stuff I'm not going to get into, but I went to look it up myself, okay? And I saw city council meetings for that particular town., and they were talking about all different stuff going on, which is crazy that it's going on in the United States. Okay.
I don't know if you're talking about eating pets, bro. It's absolutely false.
I'm not talking about eating pets.
Donald Trump is also batshit crazy. Okay.
That, that particular town, I was watching their city council meeting. So as part of the city council meeting, The people that live in the town were complaining that a town of about, what, 56,000 people, and basically the current administration dropped off over 20,000 people in their town.
So I was listening to NPR with one of the people who like are, I don't know what her status is in the government.
Okay.
But she was saying how the Haitian community, or specifically, not Haitian, but she was talking, she was talking about Haitians, but actually was specifically the Haitian community has been such a resource for the city of Springfield because they filled the jobs that no one was doing. And with any, like any surge of population, there has been problems. But the— for the way that the media has been making these people like come off to be is gross, and they should be ashamed of themselves.
Well, the problem—
well, nothing. They should be ashamed for the fact that you're talking about some people, some humans coming to a pla— to come into America and they're eating cats and dogs, bro. Well, that's, that's just disrespectful. We don't know whether that—
we don't know whether that's true or not.
It's not true, bro. Like, what the hell? Like, come on, man. It's like believing the fact that the Asian Americans are killing the cats to make your chicken egg foo young and shit, bro. I mean, come on, man. Like, it's not funny to me. It's really not.
I'm not laughing.
I'm just saying it's not funny.
What I'm saying is, is the one— the problem is, is that they don't even have housing for all these people, and they just drop them off in these towns, and not just there. There's places in Alabama.
Oh, I know, to each other. DeSantis did it to someone else. He dropped them people off in Martha's Vineyard. Like, come on, bro. Like, you could— this, this whole game of like Democrats versus Republicans is just bullshit, and it's all a fuck to keep us distracted from what's really going on, bro. And it's all division, division, division. We're talking about Haitian people eating cats and dogs on national television, bro, and it's being broadcasted to millions across America. How dis— like, the fact that he has the audacity to think that that was okay to do and he's running for president, bro, that is sickening, man. That's sickening, bro. Like, I'm 44 years old and I'm like in this place, like, I'm— it sucks, bro. Like, this is scary as shit. And you— I don't mean to sound like this, but the older people like you are looking around like, oh well, I'm not looking at like, oh well, I'm just telling you, I watched the—
you can go on YouTube and you can go look up that city and you can go look at their city council meeting and you can see exactly what they're talking about. Now, I'm not— I will say that they had one person that got up there and complained about some missing pet, but there was people and they had evidence of people whatever, if it was the Haitian people or whoever the people are going into their park where they had a lake and they were taking, killing the ducks. Oh well, I'm just saying.
So what, so what, what's the, what's the difference of a little boy going to kill a raccoon or a squirrel in his backyard? The difference is that these people don't have food. He ain't killing— they're not killing it just to kill it. They're killing it, skinning it, and about to cook it for their family. I see absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I'm just saying there's a problem with just dropping off 20,000 people in a town of 56,000 people.
I don't know. That's—
well, I don't see where the people that—
they didn't have a problem with it. The people that I was listening to, the people who are like, that are actually working, yes, of course, out of the 20,000 there's going to be some bad apples, bro. In, in Florida, there's 20,000 bad apples in, in, in a 10-mile radius.
No, I get it.
So like, the, the whole— the way that they, that they're going about this immigration thing is nasty. It's nasty work. I don't agree with it. I don't— of course, the open door policy with just anyone and anyone, anyone, just like anyone coming in, like, of course that's spooky when there's people who are coming into America and they're like, yeah, I was with some guys from my country and I was like, we know that they were bad guys because we're from there, but you know, they got into America, no problem. So like, of course that's spooky, but like, bro, like America was founded on that.
I get, I get the whole thing, like people want to come here, but I just think like it's gone way too far at this point.
What are you gonna do about Well, whatever.
We'll find out in November.
Scary.
We'll find out.
I am terrified. I don't know who to vote for. I don't want to vote for either one of them.
Well, you know, my dad—
I definitely ain't voting for Donald Trump's crazy ass.
My dad used to say when you—
No, no, no, no. Lesser of both evils bullshit. I've been hearing that since I was a kid too.
Well, I'm not going to vote for communism.
And I'm not going to vote for racism.
Okay, I don't think that he's racist.
Oh, come on, man.
I don't think so.
Whatever, let's not turn—
not based on history.
Yeah, I don't want to turn this into a political podcast. We already wasted enough time talking about these douchers. But yeah, man, I thought that was cool, that, uh, about the, the, the, the guy doing that in America with the, uh, drinking water the removing the forever plastics. But well, speaking of the another, I guess this is, let's just finish it out with this because that's all I got. But TikTok started their war with Congress about, you know, them being banned in America.
So, well, TikTok's wide open now. You go on TikTok that they have that it's not being censored at all. Literally, there is zero censorship going on on TikTok.
There's—
people are talking about anything and everything.
What's wrong with that?
Nothing. I'm just letting you say it's not censored.
Are you talking about X or are you talking about TikTok?
TikTok. You go on there, there is videos about anything. They don't care.
When was it not like that?
Um, for a while they were not really— they were knocking— they were not like When I'm saying this, well, you got to talk politically. They were not like putting a lot, let's give, giving a lot, letting a lot of political videos get out there. Now it doesn't matter which side it is. They don't care. They're just letting it all go. Like it's just wide open. You want to talk about eating dogs and cats? You want to talk about this, that? You want to talk about people trying to shoot?
That's how you're supposed to— no, no, freedom of speech. Oh yeah, journalism.
If you post any of that stuff that's on TikTok on Facebook, you'll be shut off.
You'll be banned from Facebook.
No, I'm just saying, like, it's just wide open. The only two places—
Facebook is for people like Hillary.
I understand that. The only thing being discussed, discussed place where things are basically put out in the open is either on X or on TikTok. Now they want to get rid of TikTok because they think the Chinese are trying to manipulate people in American society.
Well, he was— from what I read, the only thing that I read about it is that the United States has got their— the government is afraid that the owner of TikTok can give data to the Chinese government and that the Chinese government already has leverage on him. So on who? The owner of TikTok.
Oh, well, whatever it is, it's—
they could like basically saying they could pressure him to like give them data I mean, I don't know what kind of data that they're going to be pulling.
They know they can know what videos you're looking at and what's your algorithm and all that. But I'm just saying, it's just ridiculous. TikTok's been around now for quite a long time. None of you know, listen, the biggest problem we have in the business that we operate, Nationwide Payment System, content. Content is a huge problem with everything that You know, every merchant, like businesses that deal with content, is under a microscope from the credit card companies right now.
Yeah.
Anything to do with content.
Yeah.
And it's a, and it's a big problem. And it's a big—
why is it a problem?
Because content has to be monitored 24/7. And it's not TikTok. They're not monitoring their content.
I mean, but why does it have to be monitored?
Because they don't want people to have hate speech. They don't want people to have access to nudity that are underage. Child trafficking, uh, human trafficking, all kinds of crazy stuff that can go on on the internet. And it's— and it's a huge—
I was just wondering, like, what you're saying.
No, no, I'm just saying it's a huge problem. And a lot of businesses that are involved in content creation are having issues now because they're not— the Visa and MasterCard put out new rules for that. You can do a whole podcast and talk about that, but that's beside the point. But the whole thing is, is You know, content that's out on the internet now is out of control. It's completely out of control. Whether you're right, you're left, you're in the middle, you're up, you're down, I don't care what it is.
I don't know, I can't— I don't really— I disagree with it being out of control, bro. No, totally.
I think it's out of control.
When I first— when the internet first got introduced and I, like, I was a young man. Yeah, shit was way worse than what's around now.
Oh, that's true. But what I'm talking about is that these companies like Facebook, Google, whatever, Microsoft.
Well, you're not showing nothing on Facebook and you're not seeing nothing on Instagram.
No, no, but what I'm talking about is—
or Google—
what I'm talking about is those companies control the narrative of what you see from a news standpoint. That's my problem. And even on TV, you have—
I don't think—
how does Google—
everything is doesn't control the media. Google, you can see whatever you want to see.
No, you can't.
Yes, you can.
Go Google a news story that you, that you want to go look at, and then you're gonna, you're not gonna find both sides.
It's bullshit.
Doesn't matter, it's still news.
You know what?
So news is no longer news. News is just opinion. Okay, so no, it's not. It's news.
Well, you tell us opinion, bro. News is news.
No, it's not.
A plane crashing Across the street is news. Donald Trump talking about immigrants isn't news.
That's, that's his opinion.
Exactly.
Okay, but so I'm just saying other people— Hillary Clinton's giving her opinion.
So that's all that you see on news, but what I'm— no facts.
That's what I'm talking about. We don't get news, we get opinion. It's a problem. We need news, not opinion. So tell us what you think about news and opinions.
OJ.
And, uh, you know, hey, that's the pod.
And there we go. Fight the power, man.
Check out the story about 20 million sports cards found in Virginia, and we'll post a link to it. It's a pretty cool story. Peace out. Carpe diem.
More from Allen


How B2B Companies Can Turn YouTube Into a Lead Generation Machine | Featuring Samu Kovacs


Dre Baldwin on Discipline, Leadership, AI & Business Success | The Mindset Every Entrepreneur Needs


Marketing, AI & Personal Branding: What Every Business Needs to Know with Jaki Kackert


Stop Being Your Customer’s Bank: Smarter B2B Payment Strategies That Improve Cash Flow


Stop Being Your Customer’s Bank: Smarter B2B Payment Strategies That Improve Cash Flow


How High School Teens Are Fighting AI Scams & Deepfakes | The Biz To Biz Podcast




