‘The Light Switch' Episode 4: Risk and rewards from the Angola Prison Rodeo
While the rest of the state is deep into its unofficial festival season, about 75 incarcerated men take part in a rodeo that's not your traditional apple pie, bucking broncos and fancy horses event.
Its critics describe it more like a sordid gladiator exhibition from peak Roman Empire times. They say this exploitation of inmates reflects outdated views on incarceration in Louisiana, a state where more than 1,000 of every 100,000 residents are behind bars according to the Promise of Justice Initiative.
But the rodeo also has its supporters – and some of the most ardent are the inmates who are part of the show. Reporter Piper Hutchinson attended the event last month and heard why they see the rodeo as a key part of positive prison culture. Read more about her visit to 'The Wildest Show in the South.'
There are two ways to listen to 'The Light Switch' …
Spotify (listen below on the embedded player or use this link)
Apple (listen with the embedded player or use this link)
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2 hours ago
- CBS News
Steve Wozniak on fighting internet scams
At the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, the exhibits chart how technology got to where it is today. And there could be no better guide to this history than Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple. In 1976, Wozniak built the Apple 1, and from that he and Steve Jobs built a company. "Incredible times," said Wozniak. "Just came on down wanting to build a neat product." Wozniak was the inventor, Jobs was the master salesman; and when Wozniak created the Apple II, Jobs had something new to sell: the first personal computer to display color. "That was the machine that really made personal computers go, because it was so fun," Wozniak said. "So many breakthroughs in there that are just so far out-of-the-box." I asked, "You helped start the computer revolution that brought us where we are today – good or bad?" "Well, it was good," Wozniak replied, "until the internet came and it offered new business models, you know, ways to have power over other people and control a lot of customers. That's when some of the bad started happening." And some of that "bad" has happened to Steve Wozniak, when a scam on YouTube was using his image to steal bitcoin. Wozniak's wife, Janet, learned of it from one of the victims. "I got an email on our web server, and it said, 'When are you gonna send me my money?' And I wrote back and I said, 'What are you talking about?'" The scammers had taken video of Wozniak talking about bitcoin. "And then, they put a nice frame around it with a Bitcoin address, [saying] that if you sent him any amount of bitcoin, he would send you double that back," said Janet. "Of course it's fraud." "Some people said they lost their life savings," said Steve. You might think that YouTube, owned by Google, would be quick to take down a fraudulent video using the image of Apple's co-founder, but you'd be wrong. "We never got to YouTube; our lawyer has gotten to their lawyer, that's all," said Steve. Brian Danitz, Wozniak's lawyer, said, "We've asked YouTube over and over, and it keeps happening." So, Wozniak sued YouTube on behalf of some of those who lost money in the bitcoin scam. Jennifer Marion is one of those scammed. "I sent in 0.9 bitcoin, worth $59,000 at the time," she said. Expecting to get more than $100,000 back, Marion said, "I got back nothing." I asked, "You didn't think this is too good to be true? Doubling your money in minutes?" "You know, in retrospect it seems so obvious that this must be a scam," Marion said, "but in that moment, I was just comfortable at home, was on YouTube, a well-known platform. I was watching a video from a verified business. And in that moment, I viewed it like a business transaction. Like, if I was in a physical Google store and the Google store representative told me, 'There's a representative from a company over there,' and they said, 'Okay, we're doing a special, 50% off if you're buying cash,' I kind of viewed it like that. 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