The Daily Zeitgeist - Literally The Weirdest Guys (with Molly Conger) 08.20.24
Episode Date: August 20, 2024In episode 1728, Jack and Miles are joined by host of Weird Little Guys, Molly Conger, to discuss… The Democratic Presidential Campaign's Focus On Weird Little Guys, Demystifying Their Backstories..., False Flag Conspiracy Theories and more! The reaction of test audience while watching the chestburster scene in Ridley Scott's 'Alien' (1979). LISTEN: Big Dawgs by Hanumankind ft. KalmiSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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I have to like I have to turn all the way off and I tell my partner like I don't want to watch a
movie that's smart I don't want to watch a movie that's challenging or difficult for me I got a
good one for you The Union starring Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry oh America's greatest actor Mark
Wahlberg yeah America's greatest patriot America's greatest actor would have gone down a lot different
if he had been there for literally any of the horrible attacks in American history.
Yeah.
I should include some alternate histories of the terrorist events in my show where Mark
Wahlberg stopped them.
Pearl Harbor, that shit would have gone down a lot different if I had been there, bro.
I would have told him, hey, keep your head on a swivel, bro.
Keep your head on a swivel, bro. I think literally they're sending messages that they're going been there, bro. I would have told them, hey, keep your head on the swivel, bro. Keep your head on the swivel, bro. I think
literally they're sending messages
that they're going to attack, bro. But anyway, whatever.
What do I know? Yeah, if Mark Wahlberg had
been in the radio tower, he would have said
something. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Clear eyes, warm heart.
I'm Jess Casavetto, executive
producer of the hit Netflix documentary series,
Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult.
And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church.
And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed.
Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church.
Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports.
Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry.
Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese.
Every great player needs a foil.
I know I'll go down in history.
People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game.
Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports.
Listen to the making of a rivalry.
Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcast,
or wherever you get your podcast.
Presented by Elf Beauty,
founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.
Hey fam,
I'm Simone Boyce.
I'm Danielle Boyce.
I'm Danielle Robay.
And we're the hosts of The Bright Side,
the podcast from Hello Sunshine that's guaranteed to light up your day.
Check out our recent episode
with Grammy Award-winning rapper Eve
on motherhood and the music industry.
No, it's a great, amazing, beautiful thing.
There's moms in all industries,
very high- high stress industries that
have kids all across this world. Why can't it be music as well? Listen to The Bright Side from
Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated.
Crooks Everywhere unnerves the plot
to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks.
She exposed the culture of crime and corruption
that were turning her beloved country
into a mafia state.
Listen to Crooks Everywhere
starting September 25th
on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years.
I have a proposal for you.
Come up here and document my project.
All you need to do is record everything like you always do.
What was that?
That was live audio of a woman's nightmare.
Can Kay trust her sister, or is history repeating itself?
There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing.
They're just dreams.
Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm.
Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello, the internet, and welcome to season 351, episode 2 of Dear Daily Zeitgeist, a
production of iHeartRadio.
This is a podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness, and it
is Tuesday, August 20th, 24, 8224.
Which means National Accessible Air Travel Day
it's National Chocolate Pecan Pie
Day, National Radio Day
don't care about that because this is podcasting
and that's it for today
just three things
just the three on the menu
holding it down out here
pecan pie, you a fan?
oh yeah, oh fuck yeah
not even in a pie.
Like, in, like, the roasted in a bag, I could fucking dust a bag in fucking seconds.
Straight up.
There's just something so delicious about it.
I think...
Are they, like, greasy?
Is that why?
Yeah, they're, like, fatty, greasy, soft beans.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I didn't fuck with them before, but, yeah, now I'm a pecan bitch for sure.
Yeah, okay.
Okay, PB.
before but yeah now i'm a i'm a pecan bitch for sure okay okay my name is jack o'brien aka the pecan bitch aka sitting on the trash eating garbage ripping them crows into in half with
my mind on a murder and a murder on my mind that is courtesy of mplMD974467.
Of course.
That's just going off the dome.
That name just sticks in my brain.
I love when the people on the Discord use their government name.
Yeah.
Love the transparency.
I'm always worried that I'm mispronouncing
or missing something in the screen name.
MPLMDd is that like maple
doctor or something you know like is 974467 like some code that i should know or four
yeah i don't know wow or 974 what happened september 7th 1944
there's so many ways to break that down. September 44 through 1967.
Yeah.
97.
My golden era.
It's the last six of his social.
Yeah, that's what it could be at.
That shit doesn't matter anymore.
They've all been leaked.
Every single one of them.
So we can stop fucking worrying.
I'm just going to go ahead and say mine right now.
Yeah. I said mine, mine I think a couple episodes back
did you?
you're brave
I see them unredacted in court documents all the time
they're not careful
yeah right
that's all you need
yeah the shit doesn't matter anymore
whatever
we have to build a new system we haven't done it yet but we need to build a new system because everything is for free on the Internet.
Mm-hmm.
Everywhere.
Well, speaking of for free on the Internet, I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray!
Yes, he's back. the b-boy champion of north hollywood who missed my flight to paris for the olympics uh the original
b-boy gray gun in the building thank you so much for having me uh you know a lot of my moves
were premiered in ray gun's actual breakdancing battle set inspired by you
that one the human scissor uh the rub my head on the ground like a mop these are all some of my seminal
i know so specifically to the
she really did that i was like go get that ray gun go ahead go ahead make a mockery of it the
the oregon zoo had a great tiktok uh sound like my mother i saw I saw a lovely TikTok that you would enjoy. But the Oregon Zoo
took clips of her Olympic breakdancing performance. And so obviously she did the kangaroo move,
but they took each move from the performance and showed a kangaroo doing a very similar
operation and just sort of cut them together back and forth, like Ray Gunn, the kangaroo,
Ray Gunn, the kangaroo. It was beautiful. I would give the kangaroo a 10 out of 10.
It's like the end of Usual Suspects where it's all coming together and ray gun was like pulling things but
it was all just from kangaroos i mean if you think about it she should she should get extra points
for it being you know australian nationalism yeah yeah absolutely like oh my moves are mark i do
marsupial based movements uh and i think that's what people need to look at through that lens and analyze my dancing from there.
I mean, we're talking about the culture of breakdancing.
It's unique to the area where the dancing is occurring.
So in Australia, everybody does kangaroo moves.
Exactly.
That's like so...
It is a culturally bound...
Yeah.
Right, right.
You would think...
So the breakdancing community has come together to be like, leave Raygun alone.
The kangaroo community, on the other hand, are like, get her.
She's making us look fucking stupid.
Drag her.
Yeah.
So exactly.
You don't want to fuck with the kangaroo.
No.
Yeah.
That's a different cave on Twitter.
Yeah.
You don't want to ever seen him trying to drown another animal.
Yeah.
But then you also see those videos are like they videos where they're trying to fuck with a dog
and then they're like adult,
like human comes around,
like just pushes them over
and they're like,
get the fuck out of here, kangaroo.
And I always thought they could.
I mean, I hear you don't want to fight them,
but cartoons have conditioned me
to believe you do not want to box
one of these motherfuckers ever.
Watch out for the kicks
because they've got razor sharp toenails.
Oh, like me.
Like me,ails. Oh, like me. Like me.
Yeah, exactly.
Miles, we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by a journalist who's been published in places like The Guardian and Slate.
Heard of that.
You probably already follow her on Twitter at Socialist Dog Mom for her in-depth investigative work on white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and hate groups in the U.S.
Her new podcast for Cool Zone is Weird Little Guys.
Please welcome Molly Conger!
Molly!
What an intro. Glad to be here.
It was weird to do that big intro when we were just talking, so let's pretend I didn't just scream,
Molly! But anyway, Molly, what's up? Thank you for joining us.
Yeah, I'm pumped about it
the show's so good weird little guys well yeah we're gonna get into it but the timing like i'm
just curious to hear how it felt as the entire democratic party kind of coalesced around the
messaging of like what if we called these guys weird like as your podcast is about
to come out basically making that point i mean like cynically that's marketing you couldn't
engineer right that's right the seo on that it's beautiful but at the same time like you know
people are like oh you're just aping democratic messaging it's like i don't first of all this
this is my first job in you know in audio media. So maybe people don't know, but the production cycle on this show,
if we could turn around a whole show from the day Tim Waltz called him weird,
the trailer came out two days later.
Do you think the art department mocked this up yesterday?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because the podcast takes two, three hours?
Is that what we're looking at here?
And nobody could have thought of that way to describe these weird dudes.
No, I haven't been saying that for literal years.
And that's why the show is called that, right?
It's like in a meeting months ago, I was, you know, we're sort of talking about production.
The show is like a regular like work business meeting.
And I just can't help myself.
I'm always looking at a weird little guy.
So I'm, you know, interjecting, you know, how is everybody's day going?
What are we doing?
And I'm like, oh, you guys,
I just found the weirdest little guy.
And so if you wrote it down in your little notebook,
and that's why it's the name of the show.
Cause like, I'm always looking at a weird guy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The only way to, only way to describe it.
Only way to describe it.
Amazing.
All right.
We're going to get into the show,
the weird little guys, all of it.
But first we do like to get to know you a little bit better
by asking you
questions such as, Molly Conger, what is something from your search history that is revealing about
who you are? Besides your social security number. Yeah. So my search history is sort of a land of
troubling contrasts, right? Like, so in the course of writing my show and doing my research and my day to day work, the things I'm doing are disgusting and upsetting and weird.
You know, like this week I've been Googling a lot about like the Rhodesian Bush war and like war crimes in colonial Africa.
That's not fun. That's not about me.
Spoiler for this week's episode of the show.
I had to look at a lot of websites about like a particular genre of like really degrading and abusive fetish porn that was for work let's be
clear right but they're weird little guys yeah oh god this one's gross i threw up i like threw up
wow oh god well does that are you uh is that usual hey is this the first that one of the
guys has made you throw up?
It was, what I saw was not good.
It was not good.
Okay.
But in terms of things that I'm Googling them. You'll have to tune in to find out what this folks wanted to use.
Just how bad I puke.
But no, I've also recently done some in-depth research about the best kind of small hats you can get for a dog because my dogs had their birthday recently.
And this, you know, they have birthday hats.
They have cowboy hats.
They have like a little pink princess hat.
But I thought, you know, this year we need crowns.
And I don't want some flimsy piece of shit plastic dog crown.
So I really dug in and did some Googling about small princess crowns for dogs.
And I got great ones.
Made of precious metals and stones? It's made out of like cheap metal but it's better than plastic you know yeah it's durable
little fake pearls you know very they know the difference very classy you have dachshunds is
that the yeah two yeah yeah and they and they're like i've i I've had pets that I've tried to dress in the past and some just will not have it.
They are patient with the headwear?
They don't love the hats, but an outfit.
They love an outfit.
Okay, okay, right.
Once they see themselves in the mirror, they're like, worth it?
I think because they know, like, whatever is happening to me, everyone around me is loving it.
I'm being praised.
So much attention. Everyone is so into what's happening right now. Yeah, me is loving it. I'm being praised. So much attention.
Everyone is so into what's happening right now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Like a couple of years ago,
we did something I called dogtober where every day of October,
I took pictures of them in different costumes.
So I do own like 40 dog costumes.
Oh shit.
What's the weirdest one you got?
Um,
well,
the lobster is my favorite because they just look
so crazed with the little lobster antennas like right yeah because they have those long bodies
they do look like yeah i love the lobster wow i need to look that up lobster wiener dog costumes
buck looks great in his lion costume the panda bear i don't love um the purple octopus a classic yeah
yeah yeah the a lion costume is the most that my dog dearly departed finney ever communicated
that like fuck you to me like he he was so furious he was like shaking it off his head
and it was just a battle of wills.
Some dogs find it very degrading.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's just like, I think he rolled his eyes at me somehow.
Right.
And then you're like, bro, without this, you're fucking naked.
So knock it off.
You look ridiculous.
What is something, Molly, that you think is underrated?
Okay.
Wait for it.
Having a little treat I subscribe to
something I call the little treat lifestyle you know like people like oh you know we shouldn't
I should know if you can afford it and it's reasonable and the treat is available you should
always have a little treat and sometimes it's like you know an actual treat that you eat or
like a little thing that you get for yourself like i just got myself a really nice new pencil i saw that that's a japanese that's a uni oh yeah i did some googling about
japanese pencils what is that 0.5 millimeter or 0.7 oh yeah 0.5 0.5 okay just checking just
checking just checking you know i'm gonna annotate these nazi memoirs with something precise
yes yes yes as someone who grew up going to japan like for summer vacation and coming back with just
the dopest mechanical pencils like i would stunt on my classmates i'm like bro nice cheap ass
plastic bick bro look at this shit it's heavier than a fucking police baton and i'm writing with
it i mean the engineering is technically a murder weapon well you know you are you you guys are able to use like i can't use a
regular mechanical pencil without snapping that shit in half like not not in half but snapping
the the lead and you're able to use finer how many times you click in that thing like how much is the
lead out when you're like damn it i've got three inches out okay jack i don't think you understand
the engineering that goes into
the Kurutoga Elite
mechanical pencil, okay?
Oh, you got a Kurutoga Elite?
Yeah.
It comes with
diamond-infused graphite, okay?
So that's not breaking off.
Holy shit.
No way.
Is it marketed like that?
That's what it says?
Wow.
I thought it was just
my pre-rolled joints
that were diamond infused and
now we're talking about fucking pencil lead too okay yeah so i mean if you're struggling with
your with your horrible little cheap mechanical pencil try the kuru toga wow yeah yeah yeah i'll
be like i i mean i have also snapped like plastic wear in half like i just because you're just too strong i i'm incredibly strong or too much
where like i'm just thinking about something stressful and then suddenly
a thing snaps in my hand just backdoor bragging about your incredible grip strength
yeah i don't know i broke another and then the, the pencil speaking of diamonds turns into a fucking diamond in my hand.
It's crazy.
Is handwriting analysis like that forensic?
Is that an action?
Is that a pseudoscience?
It's fake,
right?
Yeah.
But I feel like the one time they're like,
yo,
this dude look,
just looking at this handwriting.
He is gripping that shit way too hard and pressing down way too.
We know that based off this light handwriting analysis And all the just sweat pouring all over,
over the page.
Oh no.
He's got a lot going on.
A lot of internal churn.
A lot of internal churn.
What's another kind of treat?
What's a,
another like how,
what's your sort of the framework to determine whether or not it's treat
time for you?
It's five space,
man.
You know,
it's,
um,
yeah.
When the opportunity for a treat arises naturally,
just go with it.
Let it happen.
Let the treat be part of your life. I was shopping at Costco recently,
and they had the Kirkland Signature brand sweatshirt
that I've been thinking about for a long time.
With the logo black on the front?
Yeah, baby.
Wow.
And they got that in a black block color tone?
Black on black.
I didn't need this.
I didn't need this.
But it was on sale and it was a treat and it was there.
And now it's mine.
And in a way impossible to detect.
To be like, we got to find someone in a Kirkland signature hoodie.
They're like, good luck, motherfucker.
That's Costco country.
Yeah, exactly. Damn, I that's Costco country. Yeah,
exactly.
Damn,
I got to get one of those.
I know.
I got this.
I got the matching sweatpants too.
Fucking rocks.
And they got a logo too?
Oh yeah.
Down the leg,
baby.
It's a sick thing.
Wow.
All the way up and down the leg.
Like one leg is consumed by the Kirk Siggy logo?
They have that one,
but I couldn't find it.
So mine just has like the small logo,
like near the head. But yeah, but I mean, I the kirkland fit yeah yeah yeah damn okay all right all right
sponsor me costco yeah see you but only as related to fashion items the kirkland fashion line yeah
yeah like now that i am a professional podcaster i just i feel so much more at home like i can't
go to office i can't go to an office. I
can't go to a job. Like I buy all my clothes at Costco. So like, thank God I'm a podcaster now.
Yeah. And you fit right in and you're, you look the part, you look the part.
When my friends talk about going into an office, I spit on the ground. I can't,
I can't even conceive of it. What would that even be like?
They're like, I don't even have clothes I can wear in public.
I'm not wearing pants right now.
No, none of us are.
I'm wearing one third of a t-shirt.
If I actually stood up, you'd see it just covers my shoulders.
Yeah, this is from the mid-chest up profession.
Yeah, it looks like someone would wear a linebacker in football in the 80s.
Oh, yeah, the little crop top.
If my belly button can't breathe, neither can I.
All right.
What is, Molly, something you think is overrated?
Oh, man.
So I am, my struggle right now, so overrated.
Wedding venues.
I am trying to plan a wedding right now.
And I don't know if you guys have spent any time in the American South.
Every wedding venue used to be a fucking plantation.
Every single one of them.
And they don't tell you.
It's not on the website.
They're not honest about it.
So I'm digging through like land use archives of the history of the building.
Like I need you to tell me.
Oh shit.
Did slaves build this?
Right.
Did slaves build this?
Because they won't tell you.
And everything is a fucking barn.
I don't want to get married in a barn.
Hey, quick question.
Yeah.
Was this the venue for unspeakable atrocities?
That will haunt my marriage from this point forward?
Professional portraits made of my entire family, like in front of the lynching tree?
That's not the vibe.
Yeah, yeah.
Wait, so have you, like, I like i'm guessing like some places have been
like and we're just an old traditional house like here in virginia and then you've actually had to
go through like old records i'm like hold on i just found the thing that basically it it bears
all truths that this was an actual plant a working plantation i mean thankfully you know doing the
research getting weird getting deep into the archives that's my wheelhouse so i'm set i'm worried about everybody else right right right
yeah i need to know the providence of these bricks okay right yeah further it's like are these
conflict bricks because we can't have that we can't have because they don't want to like they
had children make the bricks because their hands were small i'm like i don't want any part of that
right it's like how do you think they got the intricate roofing details their little They had children make the bricks because their hands were small. I'm like, I don't want any part of that.
Right.
It's like, how do you think they got the intricate roofing details in there?
Can you even see their little pinky prints there?
The nail factory that used to be here in town was like staffed by enslaved children.
Oh, wow.
Well, then, so no Blake Lively plantation wedding for you.
That's what we're getting at.
Yeah.
And I just, I don't want there to be a horse there.
I didn't invite a horse. I'm not getting married in a barn.
So then what are your options? You don't want a barn.
You don't want a plantation.
Even an incidental
horse. You're like, get that motherfucker
out of here.
There's no hay. There's no hay
in this situation, okay?
Right. But guys, overrated.
Oh, for $25,000,
you can come to our barn.
Get fucked.
No.
Sure.
No, no.
It's like, but the horses do stay.
If you want the horses out,
that's 30 grand.
Oh, no, that's extra.
That's extra, yeah.
Right, right, right, right.
Oh, my God.
No.
Yeah, I don't...
You gotta put them up in a horse hotel.
I don't envy those.
I know a few people
who are trying to get
wedding things together
and just remembering my own distress I encountered. I was like, no, no, I don't. I don't envy those. I know a few people who are trying to get wedding things together and just remembering my own distress I encountered.
I was like, no, no, I don't.
I don't miss that.
I don't miss that.
Don't miss that at all.
I'm not even going to plan my own birthday party.
Why is this my problem?
So overrated.
The entire industry.
A disaster.
Don't want to do it.
Yeah, 100%.
Is that because people used to be into the idea that it was like a plantation?
And so that's like a remnant from an older time
or it's just like everything was plantations back then so they're just like i mean it's
virginia so a lot of our large beautiful old buildings right didn't get constructed ethically
but i think that's part of it too where there was that sort of like mid 20th century fascination with antebellum Southern culture.
Right.
So that was a draw.
Yeah, right.
Exactly.
It's like, well, ignore just just focus on like the glitz and glamour of it.
And then we can have a good time.
It was a farm.
Oh, who was farming?
Farm.
Would they grow?
I don't know, like cotton or something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I think like the king was cotton or something
i don't know i can't i didn't read the whole thing but kind of murky move it along move it along
all right let's take a quick break and we're gonna come back and talk some weird little guys we'll be
right back hell yeah i've been thinking about you.
I want you back in my life.
It's too late for that.
I have a proposal for you.
Come up here and document my project.
All you need to do is record everything like you always do.
One session.
24 hours.
BPM 110.
120.
She's terrified.
Should we wake her up?
Absolutely not.
What was that?
You didn't figure it out?
I think I need to hear you say it.
That was live audio of a woman's nightmare.
This machine is approved and everything?
You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago.
We're not hurting people.
There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing.
They're just dreams.
Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm.
Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
When you think of Mexican culture, you think of avocado, mariachi, delicious cuisine, get your podcasts. of storytelling. It's a dance. It's tradition. It's culture. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask,
a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha
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Join me as we learn more about the history behind this spectacular sport from its inception in the
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This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask.
Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts.
Hi, everyone. It's me, Katie Couric. Have you heard about my newsletter called Body and Soul? Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. weights, pelvic floors, cold plunges, anti-aging. So I launched Body and Soul to share doctor-approved
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Señora Sex Ed is not your mommy sex talk.
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We're breaking the stigma and silence around sex and sexuality in Latinx communities.
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It was December 2019 when the story blew up.
In Green Bay, Wisconsin, former Packers star Kabir Bajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation.
KGB explaining what he believes led to the arrest of his friends at a children's Christmas play.
A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian, now cut off from his family and connected to a strange arrest.
I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite.
I got swept up in Kabir's journey, but this was only the beginning.
In a story about faith and football,
the search for meaning away from the gridiron and the consequences for everyone involved.
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And we're back we're back and yeah so just to kind of give people an introduction although everybody should just go listen to
episode zero where you do a beautiful job of giving an introduction to the premise of the
show but one of the ideas is that these people who you know
organize the uh unite the right rally in charlottesville stage domestic terrorism storm
the capital on january 6th they are associated with these big ideas and huge historical trends
but ultimately they often turn out to be just some guy you compare it to the end
of a Scooby-Doo episode, except Scooby-Doo doesn't have the courage or runtime to then like spend
an hour digging into the weird backstories of the people under the masks. But you do.
You tell us what the fuck is going on with these people. And it's it's endlessly entertaining.
Is there an example that you use to explain the premise of your show to someone who asks like what your podcast is about?
Oh, man, they should have should prepare me better for this marketing.
Right.
No, but like you said, the idea is that they're all just these kind of sad little freaks.
And they they want us to believe that they're all just these kind of sad little freaks and they they want us to believe
that they're like the second coming of hitler right that they're mighty and powerful and
impressive and and you should be very scared of them and that is a compliment that gets like
thrown around or like people are like this person might be the second coming of hitler
like and that's good that's what he wants he wants you to think like oh it's this powerful monster and i'm not saying
that like the things that they did are not serious right like you know the end of an episode of scooby
doo when they unmask the you know the caretaker who's been haunting the mansion like he still did
what they think the monster did he's not a monster he's just the weird old caretaker, right? Right.
No, so I mean, I don't want to spoil any future episodes, but for the two episodes that are out now, you know, the first one was an exploration of Kevin Strome. He was a member of the neo-Nazi group National Alliance.
And, you know, he thinks of himself as this sort of learned intellectual of race science and race purity.
And he makes this little show every week since the 90s.
And he's a pedophile.
Right, right.
He has been to prison for child porn.
And his commitment to racial purity is so extreme that he won't let the foods on his plate intermingle because that's too much like race mixing.
Oh, wait.
Yeah, okay.
Right.
Yeah.
Like you can't put gravy on mashed potatoes because
that's miscegenation of flavors yeah so they're freaks i do the normal thing i put in a little
teacup and i and i sip it while i have a one bite after i fully swallowed the mashed potatoes but i
mean like to your point right like whenever we hear about these like violent plots or these groups
that have like you know acted out like all kinds of wild violence in physical space.
Like we create this image in our mind of like some fucking master criminal,
like with no soul that if like we saw on the street,
we would immediately be like,
Oh my God,
run in the opposite direction.
This person is fucking scary and they're dangerous.
And like,
clearly it's clear that all these guys are like not even close to being some
kind of cloaked Marvel supervillain.
And like, we would run in the opposite direction if we saw them on the street
because they're literal just fucking creeps what do you think is like the like obviously there's a
power to demystifying our sort of like reflexive tendency to be like oh this person because like
what they're into is so odious and dangerous that they themselves must be dangerous but like it's clear that you've you find there's a way to sort of by taking the curtain back we're
able to just sort of reckon with these kinds of characters or you know and not characters human
beings and like a much more objective but while also being like look these aren't the kinds of
people who are like absolute like these masterminds that we do need to fear.
Is that sort of part of it?
I know at one point you said it's not about,
it's about understanding the creeps,
like in every facet of our lives that they do exist, right?
And I think, you know, on a broader social level,
just, you know, emotionally understanding
that this isn't some sort of amorphous ontological evil
is empowering, right?
Because like you can't fight a monster
that's disempowering it feels like well this is just this is something we can't change there there
are monsters in the world and it's just a guy it's just a guy who's afraid to talk to women
right it's a guy who got a free sex doll head because he complained to the fucking
customer support and you're like oh okay huh that's
weird but he's making bombs too yeah well yeah he is right like he knows how to make a pipe bomb but
like he's fucking a used sex doll right right you're like oh yeah not now it's now it's giving
me the creeps in a completely different way, for sure.
Yeah.
The episode about the Civil War reenactment false flag is so wild. But before we get into the details of that, I do just want to talk about this idea of weirdness, because it has become the focus for the Democrats in the presidential campaign.
And it happened as you're preparing to launch a show focused on the weirdness of right wing fascists, their policies, their personalities.
What was it that made you focus in on weirdness?
Like based on the content, it feels like it just naturally took you in that direction.
But first of all,
what was it like to have that emerge as like a central Democrat talking point? And do you have
an opinion on like how they're doing with regards to calling it out? Yeah, I mean, I think arriving
at the idea that, you know, talking about these guys in the context of their idiosyncrasies and
their weirdness,
the fact that they're out of step with the world arose naturally for me, right? Like I'm researching
these guys in the context of domestic terrorism and trying to understand that. And something I
keep coming across is like everything about the way they engage with the world is weird, right?
Like it's not just their ideas about race, their ideas about the Jews or their
ideas about how political power should be achieved mainly through violence. That's not separate from
the fact that they're just weird on a personal level. These things are intertwined. Like they
have all these ideas about, you know, whether women should be able to vote because they just
have weird ideas about how the world works. And so that was sort of a natural progression for me and i think you know separately the democrats
have recently arrived at the same place that like their weird personal lives and the weird
shit they want to do to your personal life are obviously related yeah it feels like for the
longest time like prior to this like we were using very like academic terms
to like accurately describe like their ideologies so it's like well they're these are ethno-nationalist
these are proto-fascist but like you know what i mean like it does in a way it clearly identifies
like where their you know political might help like where their ideologies lie in terms of like
a political spectrum but the weird sort of cuts through that to not only
be like, well, it is weird to already be so like, and like, like, the race mixing is terrible. It's
like, what are you a fucking Civil War ghost? Like, what the fuck are we talking about? But
the weirdness, it does sort of, in a way, help sort of cut through, I think, a lot of these,
like sort of very academic terms that are used to accurately describe them and really sort of
remind people of
like maybe what is sort of what we consider normal for the most part in terms of like it's not being
obsessed with people's genitals it's not being obsessed with like children's genitals it's not
being obsessed with like you know miscegenation or whatever these things are that that these are
all like all of these things that they believe are weird are actually normal. And now it's it is actually them now that has crossed over into this space. So I feel like that
was sort of like the one thing that I was like, oh, I think it's it's able to connect in a much
easier way for people because much more conversational, but it does feel like a little
bit. I'm sure you're a bit frustrated as someone who's been reporting on this for a long time,
not to be not necessarily that it's like the democrats but that that the warnings about being like these people are dangerous wasn't sort of
enough until it's like oh wait they're weird we're getting a ratings bump from being interested in
this like yeah you know better late than never i'm not complaining sure it's a weird coincidence
but i think the reason it cuts to the quick so badly for them the reason it's like so shockingly hurtful to them to be called weird is because their whole ethos is that we are the
arbiters of what is acceptable and what is normal and we want to return to this 1950s norman rockwell
painting of imagined american life and that's what's normal and so you're the ones that are
weird for you know continuing to move forward in a society that progresses with time. And so saying like, actually, that's not normal. You're the weird one. You're the weird one. It undercuts their belief about, you know, their reason to exist.
personal lives so often fall completely out of line with that ethos that they claim to like i they or it's in line with it but it's just like a weird when you first encounter they're like
well all i care about is families and then you see like the strange directions it spins off into
and then you look at their personal lives it's i don't know i guess i guess it's unexpected at
first and then it's like totally expected once you take the time to think about it i mean like
the it's you know spoiler for this week's episode but like you know these guys who want to talk
about you know traditional white values and western civilization and you know restructuring
society so so that we have you know traditional western values one of the guys in this terror
cell was making degrading hardcore pornography.
And it's like, that's not the world
you're talking about building.
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, from your perspective,
from looking at all these people for years
and even this latest episode
with the Civil War reenactor,
is it that they're just,
that they're sort of repressing some dimension of who
they are and that's that's manifesting then in like this like externalized hatred of people that
like might intersect with their own like weird interests or feelings or how do you sort of look
at these people sort of through the prism of like what they're espousing but also the context of
like their personal lives like how like how do those things those things interact like in terms of like how you've looked
at these people? Oh, that's a question for a psychologist. I mean, sometimes these manifestations
are like a desire to control. Like a lot of fascists, they want to control society just the
way they want to control their wife or their children. And so for a lot of pedophiles, it's
about the exertion of control over a powerless victim and that's kind of what they want to do to society but i don't know i don't think the
cognitive dissonance matters to them at all like you know you see a lot of white supremacists with
latino wives like that cognitive dissonance is irrelevant to them right so like there's no
making sense of it as a psychological drive it just the rules don't apply to me i'm just gonna do this to society yeah because psychology is like not a thing it's not even like a series of concepts
in their head they're just like yeah this is what i do they're like my shadow self the fuck are you
talking about i mean maybe we can like necromancer freud and get him to take a look at this like for
years i had this nazi cyber stalker who would send me these messages that were like really graphically about like sexual fantasies involving feces yeah and it's like that that
doesn't involve me right right maybe you should talk talk to sigmund freud about that like you're
stuck in the anal development stage or something i don't know so mixed bag yeah it's i mean but i feel like
historians like or at least the history channel like kind of does it with hitler right like hitler
behind closed doors is not this amorphous ontological evil right he's driven by very strange demons and a lot of scatological,
you know,
shit.
And then,
but then I feel like,
I don't know.
I,
it popped into my head when you were talking about Richard Spencer,
like when he first came on the scene years ago and it felt like the
mainstream media was like into him,
you know?
Yeah.
They're like,
Oh,
finally,
like a handsome,
well-spoken nazi and a guy
yeah we can put on tv right because he looks normal yeah they want a nazi that is like central
casting of a fascist in a non-comedy movie but when you look at them, it's just Dr. Strange loves all the way down.
Right.
Just time after time.
It's like, nah, they have like weird suppressed urges and repressed ideas that are like bursting out of them in these strange ways.
But it does.
Yeah.
The real Richard Spencer is the Richardencer in that leaked audio from the
evening of unite the rights like the rally got canceled they didn't get to give their speeches
because there was a terrorist event and he was so mad that he didn't get to give his speech he's like
purple in the face screaming about how like they don't get to do this to me they don't get to do
this to me and he starts busting out racial slurs that you would have to look up in a dictionary
like i think he called someone an octoroon or something like.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Wow.
Taking it all the way back.
But just like that sort of petulant, childish rage.
Like you could put a suit and tie on a Nazi, but he's still just an angry little guy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
I mean, because I think so many of these people have like very similar, like similar themes in their lives, which are they're operating in this bizarre parallel reality.
But when they're like forced to reconcile their perceived world and the one they actually live in, they just go deeper into the into the void.
Because it's just that like that record, like that sort of dissonance is like too much. It's like, no, no, no. And now they like sort of increasingly become more hell bent on bringing their fantasy world
to life, like upon the rest of us.
And it's like when they inevitably fail and realize they don't have the power or means
to create the world, they typically will just resort to violence or destruction.
Because if I can't make something, then I can destroy it.
And either way, like, I think there's just that feeling of powerlessness that has to be addressed in either direction.
And this sort of construction of this alternate reality just keeps coming up,
sort of a recurring theme in these stories that I'm telling. Like, I think this got left out of
episode one, but after Kevin Strome was arrested for possession of child pornography,
so he was the webmaster for a neo-Nazi group. So he knew how to use the internet, right? He was an internet guy from the 90s, so early internet adopter. And he made a website that convincingly looked like an actual local news outlet. And he peppered in real local news stories, stuff about the weather, stuff about local goings-on. But every third article on this fake newspaper website was about how well actually kevin strome
isn't a pervert in other news yeah like what like this guy wrote a lot of kevin strome content on
this that's it's like i mean it's the exact same thing like even with the the civil war reenactor
guy like also creating fake news articles like that.
But he was such a boomer.
He's like cutting and pasting shit onto physical paper and then Xeroxing it and be like,
you seen this article?
And it's like,
what?
Sharing it with like a teenager.
He's working with.
Yeah.
He's like,
okay,
man,
I don't know why you're showing this to me.
Yeah,
man.
Snipers got a bunch of people.
It's like, what newspapers? That doesn't matter, man. I don't know why you're showing this to me. Yeah, man. Snipers got a bunch of people. It's like,
what newspapers?
That doesn't matter,
man.
It happened.
It happened.
They got to you too,
huh?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it,
but it is like this very weird.
And then like,
even like this,
the sex doll thing,
like it's a,
like,
there's this about creating,
like insulating themselves truly in like this world of half truths or total fabrications to kind of like
yeah i don't know it's very they want they want to live in a cigarette ad from a 1955 issue of
good housekeeping like the world you're imagining was never real like you not only can you not go
back to it it was never real like that one was on quaaludes right. She's so high. That mom serving that turkey,
like that turkey is raw in the middle.
Yeah, 100%.
She is out of her mind.
Yeah, let's take a quick break and we'll come back.
And I just want to talk a few of the details
about the subjects of your first couple episodes
because they are absolute bangers.
We'll be right back.
they are absolute bangers. One session, 24 hours.
BPM 110, 120.
She's terrified.
Should we wake her up?
Absolutely not.
What was that?
You didn't figure it out?
I think I need to hear you say it.
That was live audio of a woman's nightmare.
This machine is approved and everything?
You're allowed to be doing this?
We passed the review board a year ago.
We're not hurting people.
There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing.
They're just dreams.
Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm.
Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello, everyone.
I am Lacey Lamar.
And I'm Amber Ruffin, a better Lacey Lamar.
Boo.
Okay, everybody, we have exciting news to share.
We're back with season two of the Amber and Lacey,
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Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura podcast network.
Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts and we're back we're back so i i want to talk about the civil war reenact reenactment
bomb threat which was allegedly perpetrated by antifa which i always hear antifa used as this like
buzzword on the right and then like fox news stories it's the boogeyman yes they're they
love it as a boogeyman but i had never seen like any of the details of what they think antifa is doing and so this story is of a civil war reenactor group that's being threatened
and it's like not even the biggest one in the area but it's being like repeatedly threatened
and told like they have to stop or they're gonna like all be murdered and it's signed antifa like
with this like logo that you could.
Unofficial Antifa letterhead.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Unofficial Antifa letterhead.
They've got stationary.
Yeah.
Yeah,
absolutely.
Absolutely.
And the letters are very threatening,
but they also have this juvenile tone of like make believe that reminded me of
this story.
It was very early days of this show
during Hurricane Harvey in Houston,
where there were all these Facebook posts
that were from the, quote, Harvey loot crew,
like hashtag Harvey loot crew.
And it would be like a picture of a store
that had been, you know,
all the stuff was off the shelves.
And it says,
we out here corpus christi
at the quickie store you know where cash and beer gone but munchies left hashtag hurricane harvey
hashtag hurricane uh hashtag harvey loot crew and it's like we just immediately were like oh that's
these are like weird white people trying to write a character that they find scary and you get the
sense in these letters the same thing like there's so much weird content like some of us have dogs
and we will even throw their feces at you is like one of the things from one of the letters it's
just not how i would make a threat we are antifa and we throw pee at people and it's like right what oh yeah one of us is a rapist like
yeah exactly it's like we've got a rapist also on the team it's like what what are what is this
like the fucking weird goon squad but yeah that is the version of like this organization i guess
they're trying to present to people but i don't so eventually the it's revealed that this is in fact not Antifa,
but it has because this audience that they're aiming at is so gullible and willing to believe
anything. This feels like a danger that could get worse and worse as our inability to distinguish false information kind of grows more and more.
Did the fact that this wasn't Antifa, do you think that that like penetrated at all? Like that,
I'm sure maybe the specific group that was being targeted eventually realized it was like one of
their own. But like in terms of the stories that are reported on Fox News, I'm sure like they most of the people who watch Fox News think Antifa planted a bomb at a Civil War reenactment.
Right. And I think the average Fox News viewer, even when confronted with the truthful resolution to the story, would say, well, yeah, but Antifa would do that.
Right.
Like it says a lot about Antifa that I believed it.
Like, but that's not what
happened that's not what happened at all but i think you know for for gerald the subject of that
story he was a confederate reenactor he is i could say comfortably a racist like i read all of his
reddit posts like he is personally a racist right and so when he wanted to frighten his former friends, who he knew were mostly also racists, he was like, what's the scariest thing to us?
What can I say to them that will be so scary?
Like, oh, we're being targeted for our beliefs.
Right.
Yeah.
We're being targeted by these left wing, like scary monster people just because we love history so much and also saying the N word.
Right.
Yeah.
That was a big
argument was that like he wanted to be able to use the n-word he was like that's just what it
would have been at the time and we should be able to and the fact that they're not letting us is
actually the real discrimination it's ruining everything and like his the other confederate
reenactors were like i don't know man, man. Like even they were like, we're not really helping us here.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
And I think just even the weird part too, or like that you pointed out, like the Battle
of Cedar Creek, like that was a union victory too.
It's like, wouldn't they be targeting a Confederate victory if it was truly about this like ideological
attack?
Or like a battle that anyone's heard of.
Like I've never heard of the
battle of cedar creek and i live here right right right right right but yeah it's just
there there's this fascinating part where you just go through like his trip advisor reviews
like so as he's doing all this stuff he's taking trips to europe treats little treats little treats
yeah he does loves europeves Europe, huh?
Going to the finest dining establishments
in Europe, like Burger King,
Five Guys, McDonald's,
I think. And then just, like,
leaving negative reviews for
Nazi museums for being, like,
two-piece-y. Yeah.
And that's the interesting thing about Gerald, right?
It's like, you know, a lot of these guys are Nazis.
Gerald's not.
Like, he has an interest in World War II history as, like, you know, a boomer American watching the History Channel.
So, like, his problem with the Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam wasn't, like, that he loves Nazis.
He just, like, wanted to see more atrocities.
Yeah.
Right.
He just thought that the museum didn't show him enough atrocities.
Right.
Could have been
more atrocity memorabilia there but like one star i wanted i wanted to see more gore yeah right yeah
yeah yeah truly it but i guess that's what's like so interesting too is like on some level right and
this is something you talk about like when i'm like well this guy's just a fucking weirdo he's
leaving like one aggro reviews about burger king
or like the nazi museum but he loves the louvre in paris that like in a way it feels disarming
because you're like this what the fuck does what's this fucking guy gonna do but at the same time
it's not so just you're not so dismissive of these people that you're like these aren't people aren't
dangerous but it's also being like just understand where these people are operating from it's not necessarily like because they have these like
weird interests or just have these like weird proclivities doesn't mean that they aren't
presenting a similar threat but i think it does help melt away this idea that it's like
you know fucking thanos or some shit right like he's a silly little guy who got a poshmark account
so he could buy women's
panties for his sex doll and he reviews the dunkin donuts in his neighborhood once a month like
he's definitely a weird little guy yeah but he did build an operational bomb that would have killed a
bunch of children in the like gifts like the um the tent where the bomb was was where you buy like
souvenirs and stuff like there were kids around like if the bomb had gone off like it would have
killed children right so like what he did was was violent and frightening and evil
and like this campaign of terror against these people who wouldn't let him do civil war reenactment
anymore like it's real and it's frightening and you should take it seriously but like
he's not a criminal mastermind yeah right he's a guy who pretends to be a cop on reddit because
it makes him feel powerful right yeah that's what's like so not like infuriating but you know like we
obviously the threat of like domestic terror and the like you know white nationalist violence is
it was real and super scary but like there's also something kind of maddening when you're like and
it's this fucking guy that's like we deserve a better enemy here. Yeah. Or like that you are causing so
much, you're sowing so much chaos from your place of being so dissatisfied and unhappy and whatever
sociopathic, you know, psychopathic tendencies you have. But like, there's just some, there's,
I don't know, like it, like every time I'm having a reckoning with like the actual, what they're, what they're trying to act out and who they are as people. And you're like, dude, this is, this is the last person who probably roll up to you and try and say something to your face in public. Yet they are still, I don't know, I think that's where, like, the internet truly, like, begins to embolden people because they can have this one version that they present through their like digital avatar of themselves while
also being like and then the real world version is like yeah like i'm shout out to sex doll queens
dot com's customer service department for being really understanding that my sex doll was damaged
and you know patrice is very responsive yeah that was the last that was his last post before being
arrested yeah like before the fbi like raided his house and took him away.
He was just posting on a sex doll forum.
Right.
Being like, Patrice fucking rocks.
Thank you so much, Patrice, for all of your kind customer service.
Yeah.
And there are plenty of them.
I love monthly reviews of his local Dunkin' Donuts.
That's so wild.
He loves it.
It's high quality.
Update.
But I mean, I guess, do you see that as another version of trying to at least exert some form of power?
Because then it's through my review, from my eyes, I'm doing one over, getting one over on this place that I felt wronged by.
So it's always like they're kind of look, it feels like it really goes hand in hand right like to i do think for him
specifically it is this sort of manifestation of the idea that like this world exists for me and
it should meet my needs and it should be the way that i think it should be and when it's not that's
you know a sign of a culture in decline like they put pickles on my whopper even though i said no
and that's because society is in decline.
We no longer have traditional
Western values or something.
Right, right, right.
Oof.
Yeah.
Pickles and onions.
Only in Europe can they get that order right
on the Whopper.
He says no pickles, no onions.
And every fucking time
in the United States,
his Burger King gets it wrong.
Meanwhile, Kevin,
is that his name? Kevin Rome? Kevin Strome. Strome disappears into the bathroom for hours at a time to take a bath and
eat pickles. So I actually, so his second ex-wife, second ex-wife? No, his first, his first, his
first wife, after they got divorced, she wrote a memoir and it's been out of
print for 20 years you can't buy it so i found a used copy of it on the internet and i was so
excited and it came and so i read this you know this woman's memoir of her time being married to
this famous nazi and you know she's been through a lot respect to her not well written a little
deranged but just the the little kernels of like day-to-day life of being married to this man.
Worth the 20 bucks.
Worth the 20 bucks they spent on it, especially because it was signed.
So when you buy a used book, you never know what you're getting.
It says, you know, like, in decent condition, there's markings inside.
And so I get it.
It is the copy she gave to the woman who mentored her during her conversion to catholicism
wow is she in the book the person she like like wrote this to like inscribe the message to i don't
know if she's in there by name but there is you know sort of a lot of discussion of like as she's
leaving kevin because the national alliance is um they have what's called the Cosmotheist Church. It's just like a made up,
like white people religion
that doesn't involve God or Jesus.
I don't know, it's a tax thing.
So as she's leaving National Alliance,
she's leaving Cosmotheism,
she's leaving Kevin,
she starts seeing apparitions of the Virgin Mary.
So she converts to Catholicism
and like just an incredible,
an incredible memoir.
And so the pickle thing was in there.
Yeah.
Hours at a time, just eating pickles in the bathtub.
Like I can kind of get behind that.
Like you have three children and you're just going to be in there for five hours eating a whole jar of pickles.
Right.
And also, how big is that jar of pickles for five hours?
Or what's your eating?
You're going to swell up.
Yeah. You savor every bite of a pickle. So it takes you five. I mean, I could eat a jar of pickles, I think, in like 20 minutes easily.
I don't think your kidneys would enjoy that experience.
Well, you know, the doctors, that's their opinion. But like I heard from my friend molly i need a treat i have you need a
treat like you heard from your friend jack do your own research okay don't just trust the doctors
what do you you know look what do you know what do you oh sorry you're a specialist in renal issues
i don't know what that means man but my sides hurt real bad in the back whenever i eat my pickies
help um i'm curious like molly is there what is sort of like a, I guess a, a takeaway that
you come with take or a takeaway that you arrive at after looking at these people?
Because, you know, you've studied like really horrific shit and a lot of these events that
have been at the hands of these types of people.
But like, what, what, like, what's the experience for you when you're like, of course, they're
a weird little guy.
Is it more to not necessarily again, because it's not to sort of mitigate or minimize the threat that these people pose.
But what is the sort of message that you come away with from realizing time after time these people have such a similar kind of way of being?
I think as I've been doing nothing but writing for weeks now, kind of going insane, becoming my own weird little guy, what seems most important to me to take away from trying to tell these sort of brief biographical arcs of individuals is that they are weird, but they are not aberrations.
They are not one-off random mutations of the human mind.
But I think in recent years, we see like, oh, there's a groiper who works for your congressman.
What a strange aberration.
This is unprecedented.
No, it's not.
It's super precedented.
And so trying to situate these things in historical context for the last hundred years or so like i don't know my plan is to sort of bounce back and forth between like a guy who just went to prison recently sort of this modern
weird guy and then reach back and talk about a guy from the 70s or the 80s and sort of the nazi group
that would grow to become what's giving us today's weird guys right so like right marjorie taylor
green hiring some weird little nazi from
the internet is not unusual if you know that there was a scandal in the 40s where some congressmen
were so congressmen can send free mail they don't have to pay postage on stuff they send to their
constituents that you know the franking system there's a whole perk of the job that's why a lot
of them get into it free mail free mail maybe stamps are expensive but there was the scandal
in the 40s where they were using their franking privileges
so they would go on the House floor
when nothing else was really happening. It was like not
an important big day for bills
and they would give a speech that was Nazi propaganda.
So then it's in the congressional record
and then you can mail Nazi propaganda
to all of your constituents
for free. Wow. Wow.
Because there was a weird
little fucking Nazi working for a congressman
like this is not unprecedented we've always been like this right it's online now yeah and now like
we're then it sort of makes it more about like what do we do about these like these things these
shadow creatures that have appeared on the north it's like no it's like whack-a-mole but like with
the weirdos and no we gotta get a fourth clan act ulysses s grant did not go far enough right exactly jesus well molly conger i can't wait to listen to the next episode
and just yeah you know future episodes i particularly the the little crumb the little
nugget you gave us on timothy mcveigh and the song bad company He comes up a couple different places. But yeah, the obsessive way he only listened to that song is terrifying.
It's like one of the strangest instances of human behavior
where you just kind of have to be like, huh, how interesting.
And like, maybe it doesn't even mean anything, right?
Like, we all have our idiosyncrasies.
And once you commit a major act of domestic terror, they all look suspect in retrospect.
But who knows?
Maybe they just really love Bad Company by the band Bad Company from their album Bad Company.
Bad Company.
Maybe he just loves like those.
He's like, I call that a trifecta, man.
If you've got a titular track with the band name and it's on the album, that's fucking beautiful.
I don't know what the bass is like in a Sherman tank.
Maybe it just felt good.
Yeah.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, exactly.
The other people who were in there with him must have.
I can't imagine.
Although I can kind of imagine.
My kids are currently really into...
Do you know who Perry Grip is?
He's from the band the nerf herders
it's like children music wait nerf herders isn't children's music they did the buffy theme song
okay well yeah he does children's music he does i mean i guess you have to have a it's a cat a
post-buffy career flushing a toilet it's a cat and they're singing to that they're listening to that
repeatedly as like over this weekend as i was like about the Timothy McVeigh thing from your show.
Don't think about Timothy McVeigh in front of the children.
Kind of fucked me up a little bit.
Like, Dad, what's wrong?
It's a cat.
Plushing the toilet.
It's a cat.
Just thinking about Elohim City.
Yeah.
That's right.
Well, Molly Conger, what a pleasure having you on the show where can people find you follow you
hear you all that good stuff oh gosh my show's on cool zone media it's on the iheart radio network
and you can subscribe subscribe to it wherever you get your podcasts and i really hope that you
will do that maybe leave me a review that's not weird i'm getting getting a lot of like race
science reviews yeah i saw that yeah, yeah. We need the reviews.
We need the normal,
the normies out there reviewing.
Some one-star.
The show's been doing amazing.
Some one-star reviews
from guys who think
I'm being unfair to white men,
which, yes,
I hope to continue to do that.
Right.
I've got some cool weird guys
coming up,
but you can find me on Twitter
at Socialist Dog Mom,
and that's kind of it.
Oh, I occasionally host episodes of It Could Happen Here, also a Cool Zone show. Yeah, I'm just out
here online. Out here. Is there a work of media that you've been enjoying, a tweet or otherwise?
Oh, man. No, I've only been consuming newspaper articles from the 1960s. Oh, I recently read some congressional testimony from 1985.
Very intriguing.
You'll have to wait two weeks to hear about that on my show, though.
So, no, the media I'm consuming is not normal, and I would not recommend it.
Stay away. Stay away.
Miles, where can people find you?
Is there a work of media you've been enjoying?
Yeah, find me on uh twitter instagram
at miles of gray you can find jack and i on the basketball podcast miles and jack i'm at boosties
uh you can also find me on the latest episode of black people of paramore uh where i'm on there
talking about rat beefs and just i've it's been a while i haven't really had a an ability to really
get through all of my feelings with different rat beef.
So this is a perfect opportunity for that.
Check out that episode, the latest episode of Black People Love Paramore.
Is there more than one beef going on right now?
I think we're just talking generally.
We're going through some of them from Big E to Jay-Z and Nas to NWA and Ice Cube, all that, up to Kendrick Lamar.
I'm worried that Kendrick is overshadowing some other current beef.
Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
It's yeah, the Kendrick Lamar.
I don't know.
The beef, though, definitely took over my mind as someone who's from Los Angeles.
I definitely spent a lot of time talking about that.
But anyway, check me out there.
I don't have a work of social media because i've been i was i was out taking a break
so i don't like to look at the social media that often to give myself a bit of a brain reset but
you know what i did watch uh i've just been watching that that that show presumed innocent
that jake gyllenhaal show which is wild yeah it's again you watched it all right this is like the
fourth recommendation i'm like i'm on the last episode of it. And it's, it's pretty good. I would say the one thing was like, I was, I was amazed that it's just wild to see how many actors like who aren't from America that are playing Americans all the time. Like, like one of the like the one of the black characters who plays the DA is like from England. The judge who's a black woman is like from Switzerland. Ruth Nega, who is plays Gyllenhaal's wife.
She's Irish.
I was like,
Ruth Nega is Irish.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm surprised that's not in Trump's 2024 platform,
right?
Like bring back American jobs.
These are,
these are black jobs.
These are the black jobs I'm talking about.
Look,
look at even the nothing safe,
even for them,
they were doing it.
The Australians were
taking the white people jobs
and now the black people
acting jobs are all gone.
They're all gone.
So yeah,
I've just been watching that
and it's Peter Sarsgaard
will always make,
I will always be suspicious
of Peter Sarsgaard
whenever I see him
on the screen.
So there's that.
He's got a very unnerving
presence.
He could play.
Yeah,
because he's got like,
like some of the characters
in the bio. He's got like Malkovich energy. You know what I, because he's got like some of the characters in the
biofans.
He's got like
Malkovich energy.
You know what I mean?
There's some
villainous looking
Skarsgårds.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, yeah,
that's the only part.
Skarsgård, that guy.
Not the Skarsgårds,
the famed
Scandinavian acting
family.
Yeah, the one that's
married to Maggie
Gyllenhaal or was
married to Maggie.
I can't remember what.
Or Skarguard, the thing
that you put on a
cut to make sure that it doesn't get scarred yeah the seo is all fucked up for them yeah yeah
that's for sure you can find me on twitter at jack underscore o'brien somebody retweeted the
reaction of test audiences while watching the chestburster scene in ridley scott's alien
and everybody's like oh gross like gross. Like screaming. And then
Robert Evans from Cool Zone
zoomed in on this one guy.
This guy with the beard and long hair
who's just got this facial expression
that's like, yeah, man.
All right.
And he just tweeted, hell yeah, brother.
This is from the 80s
test audiences? 79.
79. Wow. I just feel like receiving that even knowing it's going to happen you're gonna react but yeah he's made of stronger stuff
stronger yeah yeah or just like a bunch of 70s ditchweed yeah yeah yeah yeah it's like yeah it's
like the the movie version of like when you're listening
to music and you're like damn this is like kind of that a band you know like when you hear a band
you didn't know you were trying to hear and you're like all right like yeah yeah that's the facial
expression this yeah chest burst i finally feel seen it awoke something in him yeah anyways we
will link off to that in the footnotes. The Daily Zeitgeist is a
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
Wait, no, I didn't do the thing.
Anyways, you can find me on
Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien. You can find
us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist. We're at
The Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have
a Facebook fan page and a website, Daily
Zeitgeist.com, where we post our episodes
and our footnotes.
We link off to the information that we talked about
in today's episode.
What was the song we think you might enjoy?
Miles, did you hear any music
while you were off that you think the people
might enjoy? I did.
I mean, I'm a bit behind
on the trends. This music video
was doing big numbers
on YouTube.
It's by this rapper from Kerala india uh who goes by
hanuman kind uh the track is called big dogs awgs that's how they spell big dogs but the video is
dope uh the beat instrumental is fucking it's it's fuego it's fire it's crazy uh the rapping you know it's it's fine the
production and the visuals were so good i you know the the rapping i could go either way on
but i think it's a track worth listening to because it's just like just check the video
out it's super fun it's big dogs by hanuman kind i know i'm late or at least probably younger people
in your life would be like dude you're so fucking late. Guess what? Dude, that's 10 days old. What is wrong with you? Oh my god,
dude, are you dead?
Yeah.
Alright, we'll link off to the video on the footnotes.
The Daily Zeitgeist is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. That's going to
do it for us this morning.
Back this afternoon to tell you what is
trending, and we will talk to
y'all then bye bye bye i'm jess casavetto executive producer of the hit netflix documentary series
dancing for the devil the 7m tiktok cult and i'm cleo gray former member of 7m films and
shekinah church and we're the host of the new podcast,
Forgive Me For I Have Followed.
Together, we'll be diving even deeper
into the unbelievable stories
behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church.
Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Keri Champion,
and this is season four of Naked Sports.
Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry.
Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese.
Every great player needs a foil.
I know I'll go down in history.
People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game.
Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports.
Listen to the making of a rivalry.
Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.
Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce.
I'm Danielle Robay.
And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the podcast from Hello Sunshine that's guaranteed to light up your day.
Check out our recent episode with Grammy award-winning rapper, Eve,
on motherhood and the music industry.
No, it's a great, amazing, beautiful thing.
There's moms in all industries,
very high stress industries
that have kids all across this world.
Why can't it be music as well?
Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state.
Listen to Crooks Everywhere starting September 25th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years.
I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.
All you need to do is record everything like you always do.
What was that?
That was live audio of a woman's nightmare.
Can Kay trust her sister, or is history repeating itself?
There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing.
They're just dreams.
Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from blumhouse television iheart radio and realm
listen to dream sequence on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts