The Daily Zeitgeist - Miles Gray: Amateur Astronaut, Stallone’s Nightmare Future 2.25.20
Episode Date: February 25, 2020In episode 576, Jack and Miles are joined by journalist and author Joel Stein to discuss the death of flat earth-er Mike Hughes, the Harvey Weinstein verdict, the Nevada caucuses, Sylvester Stallone's... new film, PAW Patrol, and more!FOOTNOTES: Mike Hughes: Man who wanted to prove Earth is flat dies after crashing homemade rocket Live Updates: Harvey Weinstein Is Found Guilty of Rape Nevada caucuses highlights: Sanders wins, Buttigieg campaign challenges some results Sylvester Stallone Sci Fi-Action Pic ‘Little America’ Pre-Sells To Raft Of Major Territories For AGC At EFM PAW Patrol Does Paw Patrol encourage our kids to embrace capitalism? Andrew Scheer Defends Free-Market Capitalism And 'Paw Patrol’ WATCH: Denny Laflare - Twelve Hundred Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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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.
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Listen to Señora Sex Ed on the iHeart Radio app,
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In California during the summer of 1975,
within the span of 17 days and less than 90 miles,
two women did something no other woman had done before,
try to assassinate the president of the United States.
One was the protege of Charles Manson.
26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nickname Squeaky.
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Captain's Log.
Stardate 2024.
We're floating somewhere in the cosmos, but we've lost our map.
Yeah, because you refused to ask for directions.
It's Space Gem. There are no roads.
Good point. So where are we headed?
Into the unknown, of course.
Join us on In Our Own World as we uncover hidden truths,
navigate the depths of culture, identity, and the human spirit.
With a hint of mischief.
One episode at a time.
Buckle up and listen to In Our Own World on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Trust us, it's out of this world.
Hello, the internet, and welcome to Season 122, Episode 2 of
Der Daily Zeitgeist, a production of iHeartRadio.
This is a podcast where you take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness
and say officially off the top, fuck the Koch brothers.
And fuck Fox News.
It's Tuesday, February 25th, 2020.
My name's Jack O'Brien, a.k.a. I did not even.
We'll go with Potatoes O'Brien.
I didn't even think about making it.
Way to do your homework, O'Brien.
Fucked it up.
Didn't do your literature homework.
I fucked that up, too. Bye.
We are nailing it.
I'm thrilled to be joined, as always,
by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray.
Speaking of lit, it's Miles Gray,
a.k.a. the Count of Monte Costco,
a.k.a. Kron Quixote, a.k.a. E.D. Ippis Rex,
a.k.a. Waiting for Godot, my drug dealer,
a.k.a. For Whom T. Bell ToTBellTolls, aka Atlas Nugged.
And thank you to HSTDZ, aka's, for that wonderful stream.
All the literary classics.
Oh, yeah.
Never read one of them.
Are they good?
Yeah.
Atlas Nugged is really good, actually.
Oh, yeah, I love it.
I'm a huge fan.
We're actually going to talk about that later on,
whether Atlas is nugging right now.
But first, Miles, we're going on the road with our time machine.
Yes.
To produce our Anna Hosnier.
We're leaving actually right as we say the last word on this episode.
We're traveling through space and time.
Traveling through space and time, sprinting to the airport to go to Minneapolis,
February 25th
at the parkway theater pos tonight see you there minneapolis uh chicago february 27th at sleeping
village with daniel van kirk and toronto the grand finale february 28th at the great hall
with mark little for tickets go to dailysideguys.com and yeah buy tickets we're looking forward to seeing you
I always stick the landing
I've found
get to the page and then look at it
well we are thrilled to be joined
in our third seat
by the very talented
and funny author of
In Defense of Elitism
why I'm better than You and You're Better Than
Someone Who Didn't Buy This Book. He is Mr. Joel Stein.
Oh, thank you for having me here.
Thanks for being here.
This is very exciting. I didn't come up with any AKAs for myself.
That's okay.
It was lazy.
Yeah.
Do you have any? Any nicknames you want to buy? In actual life?
Yeah.
No, I've always wanted the nickname and no one ever gave me one that stuck at all. It's
really, it doesn't speak well to my personality.
The closest was being called by your last name?
Yeah.
Yeah, not even.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Just been Joel.
I've just been Joel, which is so-
Or Mr. Stein.
Usually it's Mr. Stein, sir.
Yes.
At home.
That's just at home though.
It's just with your kids.
Yeah.
And my wife.
Yeah.
Mr. Stein, sir.
Well, Joel, it's great to have you here.
We're going to get to know you a little bit better in a moment.
First, we're going to tell our listeners a few of the things we're talking about today.
And I feel like the Zeitgeist really cooperated with having somebody who just wrote a book called In Defense of Elitism on because we are mourning the passing of the Flat Earth guy.
That's right.
Mad Mike Hughes.
So we're going to talk about that.
We're going to talk about Weinstein being found partially guilty, but sent straight
to jail, which is satisfying.
We're going to talk about Bernie Sanders win in Nevada and the maybe connected stock market
kind of going down a little bit or a lot bit.
And just generally, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that, Joel.
We're going to talk about Sylvester Stallone's new movie,
which sounds like an old man's dystopian fantasy.
We're going to talk about, you guessed it, the Paw Patrol controversy.
Paw Patrol, a kid's cartoon that, if you're lucky, you probably don't know anything about,
but is probably the piece of culture that I am most familiar with over the past two years of my life,
is Under Attack, Under Fire from the Radical Left.
Is it like a gay Teletubby thing?
No, no, from the Radical Left.
Yeah, Radical Left is kind of, yeah.
Are they saying it's pro-cop?
They're saying it's, no, they're saying it's pro-privatization of things like police service and fire service.
It's not a very solid argument based on my extensive knowledge, but it was not presented as such.
It's one of those things where the conservatives
are finding a way to kind of be like,
we're fucked.
They're coming for our Teletubbies.
Although, not Teletubbies.
I guess that was their beef.
They're coming for our Paw Patrol.
But first, Joel, we like to ask our guests,
what is something from your search history
that is revealing about who you are?
I thought I was just supposed to tell you the last thing I searched.
That's good, too.
Does that seem more honest?
That's more revealing.
It sort of is.
But the last thing I Googled was how to pronounce Vilfredo Pareto.
Okay. Which is someone, an Italian economist who came up with the idea, this essay in 1900
called The Circulation of the Elites.
And I had mentioned him on another podcast and the other person had a different pronunciation
and we got into a physical altercation.
Over it, yeah.
Who was right?
I was right.
But only probably because I said it in the audio books.
I probably had already checked.
Got it.
But I'd forgotten that.
What was the dispute over?
Pareto versus Pareto.
Pareto.
Rookie mistake. It's Pareto.
You hate to see it. Hate to see it.
What is something you think is overrated?
The gut.
The gut.
How you feel.
My whole book is about the
expertise over the gut.
So I think, you know, I just had an instinct or I just knew,
like as David Foster Wallace said,
like the thing that I most intimately know in my gut is that I am the most
important person in the exact center of the universe.
Right.
Yeah.
That's a very good point.
Yeah.
And I've heard you kind of talk about this in relation to both Trump and Bernie Sanders.
Yeah.
And like sort of the populist movement being something that appeals to the gut as opposed to the brain.
Is that kind of where you're coming from or is that?
Yeah.
The feeling that some other person or group of people are out to get you and that the system can just be fixed if
we just get rid of the bad guy instead of actual systemic fixes right and that you just feel like
something is right and you just feel like you know more than the generals that that's the stuff that
scares me right oh man the amount of missed whatever's the book of mistakes the gut has led
us to also yeah just as important yeah Paisley's important. Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that, do you think that Sanders is equally guilty as Trump or like?
No.
No. I think he's guilty, but no, not at all.
They're not in the same league.
Right.
Because, I mean, I see how his sort of villainization of the wealthy could be seen as an easy answer, but it does seem like
a lot of his proposals are fairly systemic. They're not just like-
Some of them are, but some of the systemic ones also seem like they're from the gut. Like when
he talks about putting a farmer on the Fed Board of Governors, I feel like we'd have two reasons
we wouldn't eat if he did that.
And some of his proposals, I think, are really,
like the economist he has, I think,
is very fringy and doesn't believe in the fact
that higher inflation will cause more unemployment.
And so, yes, I feel like he has some things from the gut,
some of which are that
rich people
are stealing money from poor people
kind of illegally in shady
ways compared to we just have a system
in which people are allowed
to accumulate. It happens above board.
Yeah, exactly.
What is something you think is underrated?
Underrated?
Okay, I did this story on biohacking and I now feel strongly that sleep is underrated.
Okay.
I know that sounds totally lame and Arianna Huffington-ish,
but I do think like having good solid deep sleep and good REM sleep is super important.
And we're not focusing on the things that will help us at all.
Did you not used to be a believer in sleep?
You're sort of like, I just feel like this because of other things,
maybe not because,
I only need five hours of sleep.
Or what was?
I would definitely have put sleep under nutrition
and under maybe even exercise.
And now I don't at all.
Right, right, right.
You put it above or like on the same?
I put it above.
And the simple way to think about that is like,
could you go without two days of sleep,
eating or exercise?
Right.
Yeah.
I would be a fucking wreck.
A wreck.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yet, like, if I just have to, like, get some work done, I'll stay up to, like, three
in the morning.
Yeah.
I also wonder if it has something to do with, like, the point at your life you're in.
Like, I used to be able to do all-nighters, and I no longer can even remotely do an all-nighter.
Your sleep gets worse as you get older
especially your deep sleep and your ram yeah uh also alcohol really messes up your sleep yeah
it's a bummer yeah yeah yeah it makes it like i used to think that drinking made me sleep more
soundly because i could sleep it does 17 hours but it's a crappy sleep right it's your poise
restful sleep same with like ambient like you get more sleep but it's like crappy sleep then. Right. It's not sleep. It's not restful sleep. Same with like Ambien.
Like you get more sleep, but it's like kind of just light sleep.
It's not that great restorative.
Yeah.
Wait, so what kind of biohacking were you doing for your sleep?
For the sleep part?
Yeah.
You know, I would dim the lights in my house at night.
I would sleep in a colder place, you know, keep my house colder.
I would go to sleep and wake up at the same time all seven days a week. were you doing it for a book or it's a different article for medium okay and what
what was like the wildest thing you did for the bio like that that wasn't one of the basic like
sleep you know going to bed at the same time three times a week before working out i got in a
cryo chamber. Okay.
Which got down to like negative 200 something degrees.
Oh my God.
How long did you stay in there?
Just three minutes.
Okay.
That seems too long.
That wasn't the craziest thing I did.
I'm trying to think of the craziest things I did.
This stuff called PEMF, which you lie on a bed or sit in a chair and they turn the electricity
up and it like, it feels like something the shavaran would have created but it like sends shocks throughout you that's supposed to like go to
where you need your muscles need to be healed oh huh did that work seemingly no jury's out
jury's way out right definitely hurt jury no has not come back yet okay did you feel like the cryo
thing helped because i've heard mixed things about that. You know, I'm not particularly sensitive to my body.
I didn't feel like it did anything.
Yeah.
Miles, you got to do this body hacking stuff.
Yeah, man.
Because Miles is the most sensitive to his body.
Oh, is that right?
I know, yeah.
Yeah, like whenever I feel that.
He's wearing comfy clothing.
Yeah, because I'm sensitive.
Yes.
I feel what I'm wearing.
Yeah.
Nothing less than billowy fleece robes.
And this is true about sounds and crowded environments and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. I'm like. Yeah. Nothing less than billowy fleece robes. And this is, can you, like,
this is true about sounds
and crowded environments
and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah,
yeah,
I'm like hypersensitive.
I'm pretty sensitive.
My son is that.
Yeah.
I wonder,
I mean,
but then at the same time,
I'm not necessarily like
a fitness person,
so I don't know if I would be like,
oh yeah,
man,
with the cryo shit.
Right.
I pushed out like eight more
max reps on that shit.
You used all the terms though.
Yeah.
I mean, you sound like a fitness guy. You used all the terms though. Yeah. I mean,
you sound like a fitness guy.
You sound like Arnold.
I got to,
I have a lot of toxic friends.
I got to keep up with.
Pushed out six more max reps.
Max reps.
You know what I mean?
So I'm going to go cryo now.
You said it.
In the bathroom.
Go cryo.
Go cryo.
Cryo in the bathroom.
My favorite special song.
Yeah.
And finally, English beat, what is a myth?
What's something people think is true you know to be false?
Oh, well, I run in a pretty liberal crowd,
and the myth that bothers me the most is that Trump voters are ill-informed
and voting against their own interests,
and if we just explain things to them, they'll change their mind.
Right.
No, but here's the deal.
Right.
Your factory job is gone.
All right.
Your soybean tariffs are hurting your, yeah, that's not going to work.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They know what they're doing.
People vote altruistically, right?
So like lots of really rich people who are liberals will vote for higher taxes and lots
of farmers will vote for soybean tariffs because they're voting for what they think the country
should be.
Right.
Which is sticking it to the libs and just like cultural stuff.
Why do you think?
Because for your book, you went down to a town that voted more uniformly for Trump than any other county.
Yeah, 96% of the county, the highest percentage of Trump voters in Texas.
96% of the county, the highest percentage of Trump voters in Texas. And what, like, would you say that that was an experience that revealed something to you about Trump?
Or what they're preserving?
Yeah.
I think that there's a cosmopolitan elite that I'm very proud to be part of.
And the way that, like, I connect to the globe and think about the world is so dystopic to these people.
Right. When they think about Los Angeles or any city, they think about homeless people and people
who don't know their neighbors and people who are looking at their phone all day and
only interested in their status.
And they just.
Wait, where's the lie?
Right.
Where's the lie?
No, they're not wrong.
They're not wrong at all.
But they see that as like.
But boil it, distill that down to.
They see that as the future of the country.
And they want to stop that and restore it to kind of what you still probably see in the shrinking rural parts of this country.
And it's an existential threat to them.
And they do not like Donald Trump.
But they have said to me, like, if you have a cockroach infestation and you hire an exterminator and he has his butt crack showing and he's cursing but
he gets the job done you hire him yeah right yeah famously comparing uh the diverse population to
cockroach yes that's good oh boy yeah okay i get it yeah cockroach yeah you got the roaches here
you know what i mean that was one of the times i felt uncomfortable yeah there are a couple things
said that i was like oh please don't make me write this in my book. Cause you seem like such nice people.
Um,
all right,
let's talk about,
uh,
yeah,
I'll,
I'll be interested to hear your,
your thoughts on the flat earth group.
Uh,
so I'm against them.
Okay.
Okay.
Ah,
man.
Wow.
Didn't see it coming.
Huh?
Uh,
no.
So there's a guy by the name of Mad Mike Hughes
who was trying to prove that the Earth was flat by going into space.
It seems like there has to be an easier way to do that.
Well, a lot of the other experiments they try end up proving that the Earth is round,
and then they're like, well, nah, it can't be that one then.
Okay, got it.
Like in that Netflix documentary, famously,
they did an experiment where
they were sending a laser across like a distance that was just enough that you would be able to
detect the curvature of the earth uh-huh and sure enough that laser was pointing like at an angle
right because of the curvature of the earth and they're like nah man this um this can't be it
let's check it again right like nah man it're like, no, man, it's right.
And then it's like, back to the drawing board.
So I guess for Mad Mike Hughes, he was like, I'm going to make a steam-powered rocket and go as high as I can, and then I'll be able to see from up there.
That's the deal.
I can see the ice wall from here or whatever he believed he would see from up there.
Or he could just get on one of those cruises that goes around the world.
Right.
Well, in those ones, there's other things about like those cruises are ran by like,
you know, the global cabal of like firmament deniers who want you to believe that the earth
is round.
So like the cruise ships will never actually get to a place where you would be able to
see what they believe is the edge of the earth.
But how do they think you get back to where you started?
Did they turned around?
They think they turned around at some point?
They think they turned around.
Oh, yeah.
It's a hoax.
Man.
Australia is a country where people fly to.
But it's a hoax.
But it's a hoax.
Australia is...
Australia is not real?
Australia is not real.
It's actors.
You know what?
I spent a month there, and I think they may be right.
I've got some evidence.
It seemed a little too close to the Western U.S.
It just seemed like I hadn't gone that far.
Right.
And sometimes they would slip out of their accent just accidentally.
Yeah, it was like a little too cowboy.
Come on, this is fake, guys.
Yeah.
So this guy, right, he took on Saturday, he went up in his rocket.
There's a video of it, and it's just pretty sad.
It goes up.
There was supposed to be a chute that deployed for him to safely return and the chute just i think deployed incorrectly no it deployed right
away like as oh as it was taking off like the initial plume of whatever was propelling him
upward was like had a torn up parachute mixed in with it like as it cleared and then it just came
right back down yeah and this sort of proves my theory that rockets don't exist.
There you go.
They don't really work.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The thing was, he was recording, he was doing a new TV series called Homemade Astronauts
on what, in this article, describes the US science channel.
Which isn't a thing.
I don't know which one that is.
Yeah, again, a myth.
I think they meant, because it's from the Independent in the UK,
the Science Channel here in the US.
Is there a Science Channel?
Yeah.
Okay.
So what they said in their statement is,
our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends during this difficult time.
It was always his dream to do this launch, and Science Channel was there to chronicle his journey.
But that's tough.
I mean, the guy, that's such a weird state.
Like, you were making a show.
Is this like a real channel that I'd get if I had a cable box?
Yeah.
Really?
And so they were okay with this?
That's not good.
That's a weird statement to have for, we basically captured and we'll probably be exploiting this man's tragic death for our show.
Homemade astronauts.
Yeah.
Even the name is like dangerous.
Knife catchers. Yeah, right. Science channel. It's Astronauts. Yeah. Even the name is dangerous. Knife Catchers.
Yeah, right.
Science channel.
It's like, whoa.
Check out the new spinoff, Baby Knife Catchers.
So, yeah, that is an interesting statement from them.
Holy shit.
Do lots of people die on reality TV shows,
like ice road truckers?
Are people dying all the time on TV?
On Deadliest Catch, very early on, there was someone passed away and that was like big news they went overboard
i think so something like that on camera i don't know if it's on camera during production
okay someone like one of the crew people i don't have a crew but like or people on the boats did
but i don't not that like i know that it's like a dangerous path like that reality i mean reality
being on a reality show ruins your life in another way.
Yeah.
Not in a physical way,
but it sometimes doesn't like I tried out for the real world London and I got
to the final,
like when they fly you to New York and interview you and I've interviewed the
guy who got my place instead of me and it didn't affect his life that much.
Like no one remembers that he was on it.
Oh really?
Yeah.
It rarely comes up.
It's interesting.
That cast was a little bit hard to remember
when I think about it. Especially the guy who was kind of like me.
Yeah, I like how you said it.
I met the guy. In my mind, you've been
stalking him just to confine him
and be like, hey, motherfucker,
remember me? You're like, what?
Did he look
somewhat similar to you?
Were they casting to a type? Yes, they were casting to a type. Did you guys get similar to you? Were they casting to a type?
Yes, they were casting to a type.
Did you guys get along really famously?
I only called him recently for something I was working on,
so I never met him.
So he's a playwright.
And yeah, they cast him instead of me
because John Murray, when I interviewed him later,
told me that he was afraid I'd never get laid.
Wow.
Did he really?
Yep.
Wow.
Cutting. No, but tell me what never get laid. Wow. Did he really? Yep. Wow. Cutting.
No, but tell me what you really thought.
Correct.
Yeah.
Even with the help of a TV show.
Which one was it?
It was the Real World London.
No, but which guy on the cast?
Was this, oh, I'm blanking on his name.
See, this proves my point.
Mike, Jay, Neil?
Jay.
Jay.
Which Jay's last name?
Jay Frank from Portland, Oregon. Yeah, that's the guy. Okay, fantastic. Mike, Jay, Neil? Jay. Jay. What's Jay's last name? Jay Frank from Portland, Oregon?
Yeah, that's the guy.
Okay, fantastic.
Yeah, this was a, when I look through, I'm like, I don't really remember many of the
people from this.
I remember Jacinda.
Yeah, I remember that.
Didn't somebody get their tongue almost bitten off in real world London?
Oh.
I'm thinking about a different one.
Forrester.
Forrester.
But in making out with someone?
I think so. The most notable event of the season occurs when a cast member and singer one. Forrester. Forrester. But making out with someone? I think so.
The most notable event of the season occurs when a cast member and singer,
Neil Forrester, kisses a male heckler during a performance
who then bites the tip of Forrester's tongue off.
Yeah.
I remember that being.
Wait, so he forced a kiss on a heckler and the heckler bit his tongue off?
Yeah.
That's how when you break it was going to happen.
There it was.
There it was.
There it was.
I was just, it would be so interesting
if you went and like
looked at this person's life
and it was like one of those
longitudinal studies
of identical twins
where it's like
they have like all the same things,
like all the same interests.
Oh, right.
It's like I have three kids
and their names are the same
as your kids' names too.
If real world casting was like that.
But you know, I think this is,
I think my theory with the real world
not ruining your life is,
I feel like those early people,
like the first five seasons,
they got away pretty scot-free.
It was somewhere between a social experiment
and what we have now.
Miami, around the Miami cast,
I felt like the temperature
started to get turned up on the real world
where we saw like a lot lot more interesting, darker shit going on.
Our characters were a little bit more-
So you think it affected their lives more or they were just already messed up and continued
Well, I'm curious about Ruthie from Hawaii who was struggling with her drinking on the
show and even remember afterwards people saying that lifestyle was only contributing worse
to her alcoholism.
Well, it seems like they started drinking a lot more on the show yeah i don't know hey like there was actual i remember the first season there was actual boredom where they were like sitting around
and like shooting pool and being like there's really nothing to do because they don't let you
watch tv so they're like something's gonna happen because you're not allowed to watch TV.
You're not allowed to do anything besides interact with each other.
And so I think what a lot of our instincts are when we're forced to be in socially uncomfortable situations is to drink.
And if they just provide you with a place and an environment to drink in, maybe it's not the best.
and an environment to drink in, maybe it's not the best.
I mean, I think Ruthie's doing well because she's posting really great travel pics.
Hell yeah.
Okay, so she's definitely been to Mallorca in Spain.
That seems right.
Yeah.
All right, let's take a quick break.
We'll be right back.
When you think of Mexican culture, you think of avocado, mariachi, delicious cuisine, and of course, lucha libre.
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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.
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. You mix homesteading with guns and church and a little bit of the spice of conspiracy theories that we liked.
Voila! You got straight away.
I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible.
Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello, everyone. I am Lacey Lamar. And I'm Amber Ruffin, a wherever you get your podcasts. Well, you were right. And you should tune in today for new fun segments like Sister Court and listening to Lacey's steamy DMs.
We've got new and exciting guests like Michael Beach. That's my husband.
Daphne Spring, Daniel Thrasher, Peppermint, Morgan J. and more.
You got to watch us. No, you mean you have to listen to us.
I mean, you can still watch us, but you got to listen. Like if you're watching us, you have to tell us. Like if you're out the window, you have to say, hey, I'm watching you
outside of the window. Just, just, you know what? Listen to the Amber and Lacey, Lacey and Amber
show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast.
As the U.S. elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever.
But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows,
that we're surprisingly more united than most people think.
We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics,
and that we need to do better and that we can do better.
With the help of Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki.
It's really tragic. If cynicism were a pill, it'd be a poison.
We'll see that our fellow humans, even those we disagree with,
are more generous than we assume.
My assumption, my feeling, my hunch is that a lot
of us are actually looking for a way to disagree and still be in relationships with each other.
All that on the Happiness Lab. Listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And we're back.
And Harvey Weinstein was found partially guilty.
Guilty, definitely convicted.
But a couple of the charges that would have put him in jail for up to life did not.
He was not found guilty of those.
What is life for Harvey Weinstein at this point?
Right.
Well, so that's the thing is as of now, it's between 50 or 5 and 30 years,
and he's what, 60?
67, I think.
67.
So, I mean, if it's towards the upper end of that.
But it's not been a healthy 67.
Right.
Yeah, that's also a good point.
Not looking great.
And they took him straight to jail.
His attorney was like, well, let's leave him out while he waits sentencing.
And they were not having that.
The judge sent him to jail right away, which is-
He's in jail right now.
Yeah.
So, I mean, we were talking in past episodes that legal scholars were saying that this
was a daring case for the prosecution to bring because it relied on a lot of different factors
and things that wouldn't normally get prosecuted in court just because of how these sorts of cases usually go.
And so I think this has to be, you know, seen generally as just a win and shouts out to the women.
Definitely a landmark.
Stepped forward.
Case.
Yeah.
And especially, I mean, his defense was sort of just sort of like this.
I mean, some of these women were using him, actually.
Right.
So, yeah, like you can tell when you sort of get in these,
why a lot of these sort of cases are harder to prosecute,
especially when you have someone who like has high-powered lawyers
who are able to be as slippery as like, no, he was the one being used,
your honor, and everything was consensual.
And if they didn't like it, then why would they keep talking to him?
Right.
And then just sort of narrowly just defended on that, those grounds but yeah um he will i guess so it's
up to 25 you said or 30 is the most i thought it was up to 30 wow five to up to 30 right so i mean
the the low end is inexcusable but there's also a case case that's coming up in LA that might add time onto that.
So we'll see how that goes. All right. In the Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders had
definitely his most convincing win yet in this Democratic primary in Nevada. People
are saying that Nevada's demographically looks a lot like the country in
terms of diversity. And a lot of Democratic strategists are now, you can kind of feel them
getting their mind around the fact that like this might be the guy. It's a huge win. Yeah,
it's a it's the first time someone had the popular vote in the first three early
state primaries too,
I think.
Right.
Yeah.
I went to the caucuses one year,
I think the first year.
The Nevada caucuses.
Yeah.
I went to the Bellagio.
Oh really?
Yeah.
And it's supposed to be this caucus like Iowa where people discuss and they
go to different parts of the room.
I walked into the,
this big ballroom and Hillary Clinton had just walked by me it was Clinton versus Obama
and she had walked by me and then suddenly I asked her question and the
press showed up and I show up in this ballroom and this everyone's wearing
their Union shirts and the this Union leader gets on stage and he's like
everyone for Hillary and everyone raised their hand and he's like, everyone for Hillary? And everyone raised their hand.
And he's like, great, we're done.
It's like five seconds the whole thing lasted.
And it's the first time I was like,
unions are way more powerful than I thought.
And Bernie didn't have their support and he killed nevertheless.
Yeah, that was, I think, surprised some people.
Although I think heading into the weekend,
people were starting to get a sense
that he was going to run away with it.
But at first, when the culinary union went against him,
people were starting to think that he might be in trouble
or that Elizabeth Warren might be able to use
some of the momentum from just murdering Bloomberg
on the last debate. That's the thing about murdering someone on the last debate.
That's the thing about murdering someone in a debate.
Or Pete and Amy Klobuchar, it's a murder-suicide pact.
Everyone hates you for doing it, and you destroy the other person.
Well, I think maybe for the Pete and Amy one.
That one seemed like it was just they couldn't help themselves.
Pete and Amy, they were just going at it. It was real. Yeah. A lot of the tweets that were funnier were being like, I was like,
they were definitely in a relationship that we revealed it right there. Um, yeah. And I think
just even with like the whole, as you were saying, like, as the results were coming in and even at
like 60%, like it became clear what the outcomes were, chris matthews again had to go on a i guess maginot line comparison of the germans breaching
uh like with like comparing this campaign to that and again if you were like here we go what's what's
he up to now yeah uh and yeah a lot of people have been like resigned to apologize to.
Holy shit. What the fuck was that? Do we think he's doing this on purpose at this point?
And I think he I think he believed his sentiment around an emerging what he in his mind.
He's labeled a capital S socialist is like genuinely frightening to him as like a person.
Right. Because I've never seen him go completely like, like viscerally,
like,
and you never know what's next.
Like beheadings in central park.
It's like,
really?
That's an out loud thing.
Yeah.
He definitely seems shaky when he's doing it.
Yeah.
Well,
I don't follow Chris Matthews,
Chris Matthews from hardball.
Yeah,
no,
I know I've been on hardball and I,
uh,
but he is anti Bernie.
Cause he thinks Bernie will lose the nomination,
or he just hates Bernie?
He's afraid of Bernie as a president, or he's afraid of Bernie as a nominee?
The last two things that have gotten him hot water have been comparisons to, like,
that there will be public executions as a result of socialism.
Literally.
Yeah.
Well, he said that he remembers a time in the Cold War.
Like, he's, like, saying it in this way.
Like, I remember a time when we were afraid of socialism and
I thought that maybe there would be
a socialist would win and
there would be people marching to Central Park
and assassinated.
And then Chris Hayes was like, wait, but he hasn't
said anything remotely close
relating to that. And he goes, I don't know,
but has he? We don't know.
It was just like, what?
Chris Hayes tried to give him like a, hey, you want to readjust there?
And he didn't.
And then again, when it became clear that he won, it was like, yeah.
And he's like, I remember when Churchill got the call
that they've broken through.
And it was just like, whoa, okay.
It is interesting to see MSNBC because I think people,
if people have a general left-right dichotomy, MSNBC is the left to Fox News is right.
Right. But MSNBC seems to be having the hardest time dealing with this leftist candidate.
Really? Yeah. Yeah. So like a lot of I mean, Chris Janssen become a story.
Chris Janssen, who's another one of their anchors or correspondents.
She was in Vegas during the, uh, caucuses in Nevada.
And at one point she was like, yep. And, uh, we're looking in here. Uh, when you look in the room,
uh, it's, yeah, it's, it's pretty clear, uh, that especially with some of these Latino voters,
there's a lot of support for Bernie Sanders. She like sighed like audibly. It was weird.
Right. Like it was, I don't know.
And again, I think because they've been really, uh, between like, who's a Chuck Todd, even with
his like digital Brown shirts comment that he made. Yeah. There's been a lot where people have
just been kind of noticing how they're very focused on sort of pointing out whatever the
absolute bad shit is or how can they like vilify
right versus being like that's why there's also a lot of opinion pieces coming out too from other
political writers who are sort of like okay so that was unequivocal like what happened in nevada
like people need to actually begin figuring out what they're going to do here because like
just sort of like dragging your feet about this is not going to help if you're truly about if
you're even narrowly about we have to defeat Trump.
Yeah. So what is it going to be?
Yeah. And I mean, it's, you know, when Trump was sort of surging through the Republican primaries, I think Fox News initially had sort of a partially, you know, never Trumper stance where they were like well is this guy really good and
you know that was probably born out of fox news being more closely aligned with the republican
party than they were with right anybody in trump's orbit and then once trump became the official
you know republican nominee it's just interesting Trump, you know, just went into that role and became like the party guy and just he didn't change really what he was doing. But the party, I guess, changed to meet him there. Yeah, I guess the party just adopted him as their guy.
The voters did.
Yeah. Right.
After the voters did.
I guess that's right. I feel like it was the RNC was
when you started having
the Republican Party
just kind of coming around and being like,
well, he's our guy. We got to go
with it and telling Ted Cruz to fuck
off for not coming around. So, I don't know. he's our guy. We got to go with it and telling Ted Cruz to fuck off for not coming around.
So I don't know.
It's very interesting.
And then, I mean, we're recording this Monday morning
and the Dow Jones is in kind of a downward spiral.
It's sad.
It's really.
I mean, think of,
think of the people,
think of the portfolios,
the portfolio.
Uh,
but I,
I do wonder like if this is connected,
I mean the,
like Trump got in,
he gave the,
gave companies a huge tax break.
Like is,
you know,
Bernie would presumably do something not that?
I think this is pretty coronavirus related.
You think this is coronavirus related?
I think people have issued some reports of their losses
and people are freaking out.
Yeah, that makes sense.
I mean, because it's not just our stock market.
Although of course our president
affects all the stock markets,
but it's hang saying.
Because like Fox News is like,
I don't know, is it Bernie? Fox News is like, I don't know.
Is it Bernie?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Were they?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was like on Fox Business.
Yeah.
Because I'm sure, again, they know what the economy being like the only argument that
Trump could have or like on paper, like, yeah, I guess that's not in technically negative
space.
Yeah.
Like that.
That's what they can hold on to.
But yeah, I mean, also, too, when think about the amount of, I was talking to a couple of people I know who work at a pretty large multinational like garment
company and their, their company is in utter chaos right now because of like, because of
coronavirus. Yeah. The, all the distribution chains are like messed up. They have people
stationed all over the world who are also like trying to be like, I don't want to be here. I
want to come back there. There's a lot.
But can we blame Bernie for the coronavirus?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that's the question we all need to be asking ourselves.
No, but Bernie can blame the globalization.
Both he and Trump can both blame globalization and that we've become so dependent on each
other that we can't function as soon as China fails, that we have to become more
self-sufficient.
I mean, they're both in that way against trade, against TPP, against NAFTA, against
globalization.
So I mean, that's where I get upset as the pro-elitist.
Right.
Is that you think that globalization is...
I mean, just from a sort of politically, like a strategic perspective, do you think that Sanders has the best shot of winning against Trump?
Or do you think that?
No.
No?
No, I mean, I don't know.
I mean, I don't know anything.
I'm not going to predict.
I'm not in that business.
I'm barely trying to figure out what happened like four years ago.
Right, right. But I would say from looking at Jeremy Corbyn getting trounced by the hated Boris Johnson,
who that's one factor.
And I think the 2018 elections where the important purple states were won by very conservative
Democrats.
Right.
And just how much Americans are freaked out by the word and notion of socialism in any
form.
Yeah. Not Democrats, but like independents.
Especially low information voters in the important states.
I don't know if the Corbyn, it's a one-to-one comparison to Corbyn between like their perception
within the country and sort of their base.
But I think to the point of-
It's pretty close.
It's like some very liberal backbencher who had been around for a long time kind of-
Yeah, but I think there's a lot more the people who i at least from looking at a lot of like the people
who are voting in nevada to like the amount of people who even identified as conservatives and
independents who he got i was i was really surprised by that because i wasn't sure i was
curious to see what that sort of sliver became um but yeah i there i think with a lot of the strategies that they're applying, especially
like with their ground game, is very different in trying to reach as many people. So it's going to
be interesting to see how it works. I'm less afraid of the sort of like McGovern effect thing
that many people are talking about, because at the end of the day, I think the people who are
scared of the sort of socialism tag tend to be the older voters because that's where you see like over 65,
like he's underwater, like no one is even getting near him.
But they vote.
Yeah, they vote too.
Young people need to get out and vote if they want that to not matter.
Those are the dynamics though at play though too, because now you have a generation where
like for me as a millennial, like I grew up seeing Gen Xers and boomers be like, oh, cool.
You go to college and like you can own a fucking house.
Yeah.
And then I'm like, what the fuck happened?
Like, when I got out in 2007, I'm like, the opportunities are completely different.
Yet I'm looking for an explanation as to how I can prosper in a similar way.
And I'm unwilling to accept sort of like, I don't know, man.
We got to like, there are other ways to figure it out. But you moved to Los Angeles. You're not in
Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Oh, yeah. You're in Los Angeles. You're not in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.
Absolutely. And I think and I think the but I think the reason why it's catching on,
though, is maybe people not might not be able to articulate in the exact same way.
But there is a feeling of like, I think it's supposed to be different than this.
Right.
I just feel that those people who feel that way in election after election
around the world seem to vote for like the far right autocrat,
like whether it's Australia or England,
like I haven't seen a place where the far left guy beats the far right guy.
Well,
I think it'll be,
it's,
it'll be,
it'll be an experiment because if that happens,
I don't want an experiment. Like this is not the time for experiments. I think it'll be an experiment because if that happens, we haven't had it. I don't want an experiment.
This is not the time for experiments.
I think because, you know, but when we run like sort of through the middle candidates, it doesn't – it's been not great.
Like it seems like the energy that people have at least going into an election or at least a change election would be something that's a little bit – that offers a bit of a different vision than what the sort of straight
up the middle john kerry hillary clinton sort of yeah yeah and even like obama had had the allure
of a progressive but then had to tack back to center my suspicion is that america after the
economic crisis it was like a lot of people became certain like the fix is in because we had obama running
as the crisis was unfolding he was kind of uh going out there with more of a socialist message
of you know leaning socialist not like i'm gonna forgive the banks it was like you know i'm a man
of the people and then once he got into office he just like kind of acquiesced to what the kind of financial interests wanted.
And I just think that there are people who are like, there's this narrative, like the mainstream media narrative that's out there.
And the Democratic Party is part of that.
And like the never Trump or Republicans are part of that.
And I just don't trust it anymore. And I think that's where
like a lot of the populist energy is coming from is that there was this financial crisis that never
really got properly. Like it was just like, yeah, yeah, we just, I think that's a hard sell to most
Americans in a booming economy. It's 10, it's 12 years ago. I just don't know. What's a booming
economy to somebody in a state like Wisconsin or Pennsylvania who can't support even to be a single parent and you can't do it with one job?
I don't think that's been a reality for 30 years.
Yeah, but I think that's where I think we're reaching a tipping point where now it was easy to sort of rhetorically or use different kinds know, rhetorical things to distract people from that versus now be like,
well,
no,
what the fuck is going on?
I think the revolution that's happening in India,
Europe here is not an economic one.
I just don't.
I think people are upset about the,
the way the country has changed on a non economic basis.
I think people are freaked out about
changes that no one in this room thinks is weird. Like when I went to Miami, Texas,
like I don't think trans rights are new. I don't think gay marriage is new. I don't think,
you know, I don't, but things happen so quickly and it's not being processed by people
in rural areas and they've got a lot of power in our system
but on the other side of that if you were on the left that wouldn't be obscure to you but there's
still there what's that where's that momentum coming from like i guess in that world of the
cities are becoming bigger and stronger right yeah and i think people are freaking out about
about that and i don't think telling them that they're going to not pay for college is going to have any resonance other than, screw you, I paid for my kid's college.
Well, yeah, that's the one thing you always hear back from people who have paid.
But I think that's where if you're going to give that person insurance who doesn't work, I have a job.
I'm scraping by and I earned my insurance.
I don't know.
I just –
Yeah, but –
There's something you heard from the culinary union, though, where people were like,
why would you vote for Sanders when your union gives you this great insurance?
And that's what they're saying.
Sanders would take away your insurance.
And they were like, yeah, but I might lose my job.
Then what?
Well, and also this choice, though, too.
Like, let's be real.
The people who are putting together these insurance plans are the stakeholders themselves. So that's
not in their business interest to offer people good health insurance. So I think that's another
myth though, to say like, well, there's this choice, but like there's who's, who is offering
people like actually dignified sort of, uh, truly like humane healthcare where it's like, what's going on? What do you
need? And the next question is like, well, what plan are you on? Because then that's the second
thing we got to, and that's, I think that's the sort of gridlock or the log jam that people are
trying to address because then it's not humane. Now it's like, there's a, you know, there's a
caste system within what kind of medical care you can get. Yeah. And I think, you know, I think obviously the fact that there's all these new
forms of media that are not like going through the same process, they're not the same outlets
that people have been using for decades at least is also affecting this. And, you know,
also affecting this and you know from a bad perspective facebook causing uh deadly riots in countries in like in india i think there was one but i also think that people you know like back
in the 90s msnbc was where you would go to find out like what the democratic take was like what
who democrats would vote for and now it feels like there's plenty of
other ways to interact and communicate on that front oh so just not from like a singular source
yeah yeah and i mean just yeah facebook obviously is not where we want people to be getting their
information from but i do think that just give mark zuckerberg some rules well but that's what
we saw with in the 2016 election is that was more influential than anyone was
giving it credit for in the run-up to the election, was people being influenced by the
fact that there are these more democratically determined forms of communication than what
has happened in the past.
forms of communication than what has happened in the past. And that can be, you know, a bad thing,
obviously, but I think it can also be partially explaining why there's populist movement on the left too. All right. Well, the marathon continues. It does. Let's take another break. We'll be right
back. 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. You mix homesteading with guns and church and a little bit of the spice of conspiracy
theories that we liked. Voila! You got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea,
but worse, if that's possible. Listen to Spiraled 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, Lacey and Amber show
on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network.
You thought you had fun last season?
Well, you were right.
And you should tune in today for new fun segments
like Sister Court and listening to Lacey's steamy DMs. We've got new and exciting guests like
Michael Beach. That's my husband. Daphne Spring, Daniel Thrasher, Peppermint, Morgan J. and more.
You got to watch us. No, you mean you have to listen to us. I mean, you can still watch us,
but you got to listen. Like if you're watching us, you have to tell us.
Like, if you're out the window, you have to say, hey, I'm watching you outside of the window.
Just, you know what?
Listen to the Amber and Lacey, Lacey and Amber show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network 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, and of course, lucha libre.
It doesn't get more Mexican than this.
Lucha libre is known globally because it is much more than just a sport and much more than just entertainment.
Lucha libre is a type 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 Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar,
the emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Join me as we learn more about the history behind
this spectacular sport from its inception in the United States to how it became a global symbol of Mexican culture.
We'll learn more about some of the most iconic heroes in the ring.
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.
Suda Podcast Network, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts.
I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast.
As the U.S. elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever.
But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows, that we're surprisingly more united than most people think.
We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics, and that we need to do better and that we can do better.
With the help of Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki.
It's really tragic. If cynicism were a pill, it'd be a poison.
We'll see that our fellow humans, even those we disagree with, are more generous than we assume. My assumption, my feeling, my hunch is that a lot of us are actually looking for a way to
disagree and still be in a relationship with each other.
All that on the Happiness Lab.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
And we're back.
And let's talk about Sylvester Stallone's new film.
I've said before on this show that I think he's, you know, in the 80s, he was one of America's leading propagandists, if not America's leading propagandist.
He had Rocky IV and Rambo II came out in the same year and were like two and three at the box office for the year.
And it was like Rambo goes back and wins the Vietnam War and Rocky wins the Cold War for America.
Done and done, left and right.
And he's continued to try and do that in the modern era with kind of to less effect.
He had Rambo 5, 6 come out. Was that the one with the narco trafficker subplot?
Yeah, it was basically an argument for the wall type thing.
Oh, I interviewed him for that.
Oh, really?
Which year was this?
This was the last two years.
No, no. The one before. The Rambo before that. The one before, yeah. I interviewed him for that oh really which year was this this was like the last year no no the one before the one before that yeah where that was also
dealing with oh but what and that one was just sort of like everyone was like
dude it's one of the most violent yes ever right yeah that like the hook not
even like the narrative it's like I don't know man people's heads are just I
don't remember what it was about but yeah it was super violent. Yeah. So the last Rambo movie had weird things
about the Mexican border and did not do very well
and was critically panned.
But he's back with another movie.
With Little America.
About where we're headed.
He's slowly been getting some more distribution deals going
for this film.
So this is what Little America is about.
Wait, it's called Little America?
Wait till you hear why.
Much like the Apple.
Oh, wow.
The Kumail Nanjiani show is called Little America.
So set in a dystopian future where America has become bankrupt and turned into a war zone,
Stallone will play a former army ranger hired by an Asian billionaire to find his daughters. With the highly
skilled sister of the missing woman
along for the ride, Sly's
Ranger must navigate the dark underbelly
of Little America,
a walled-off city within
a city in Hong Kong
where many Americans have fled.
No. Wow.
Wow. There are layers
to that cake. This is what i was talking about with the the far
right thinking that america is a dystopia now yeah uh yeah city within us and like that's the
kind of thing where they're saying like pretty soon we're gonna go into these other countries
yeah there's gonna be a little america where they talk shit about our food like we do theirs. Oh no, my nightmare. Yeah.
I'm curious to see what these sets look like.
Right.
Like if there's like... Everything about this trailer.
Wait, did you get a hamburger here?
Hey, what do you mean?
Wait, there's a little America in Osaka
that I've been to.
Oh, really?
Yeah, they have little places like that.
Yeah, yeah.
And there's like Ameyoko in Tokyo
that was more of like a former black market where like
GIs were trading stuff during the end of the war.
Yeah.
And there's like, yeah, that, but this is the little, the one in Osaka is literally
like American flags and, you know, the hamburger restaurants.
And it's like a little, little weird, you know, anime version of America.
Huh?
I hope that's-
The dystopian one where it's refugee Americans.
That's different. Right. Like hope that's the dystopian one where it's refugee Americans. That's different.
Like, what do they do? Like,
get around and, like, sing Nickelback by the fire?
Little America. Damn it.
Can you name a Nickelback song? Oh, yeah.
Really? Miles goes deep with
Nickelback. Oh, yeah. Give me the hit.
Oh, man. From underneath
the trees, we watch
the skies, confusing watch the skies.
Confusing stars for satellites.
I never dreamed that you'd be mine.
But here we are.
We're here tonight.
Anyway.
Wow.
And that's like a deep cut.
That's not one of theirs. Oh, it is?
Okay.
I mean, look.
Yeah, you could do it.
I never made it as a wise man.
Yeah, that's the only one I know.
But I like the other one.
I mean, that's If No One one cared is what that one was about.
Okay.
Wow.
So, you know, when I'm the great bard of Little America,
being like, tell us another one, man.
Oh, yeah, gather around.
Right.
Chad was really on one with this one, huh?
Wait, is his name Chad really?
Chad Kroger.
That's awesome.
Also, he's Canadian.
Yeah.
But the great irony of Little America is we're still like, they're like, that's Canadian.
I'm like, kill that.
That must never, never be revealed.
Yeah.
Well, speaking of American culture, that is actually Canadian, Paw Patrol.
Oh, that's Canadian as well?
Yeah.
Good for them.
Yeah.
So it's a kid's cartoon set in Thunder Bay, a world where adults are usually like the
adults are incredibly incompetent and they're often rescued by a small boy named Ryder and
a bunch of dogs, Chase, Marshall, Sky, and Rubble.
Rubble?
Rubble.
Yeah.
He's the construction guy who knocks things down
and builds them back up.
Total badass.
Right, right.
He's the Chad.
So each dog has a set of skills.
The firefighter dog is the comic relief,
but he's not very funny, guys.
You'd be surprised how unfunny he is.
I would never think of the firefighter as the funny one.
Yeah, well.
I would have given the Rubble the Joey Tribbiani kind of tree.
Right.
Yeah, Rubble.
And Rubble's a bulldog who has like an underbite
and is kind of like goofy.
But yeah, they give Marshall all the quips.
I think because Marshall's the-
But he's the Chandler of the group? Marshall's the fire dog. Yeah, I think he's the Chandler. And he quips, I think, because he's the Chandler of the group.
Marshall's the fire dog. Yeah, I think he's the Chandler.
And he's also, I think, the kid's favorite because he's a firefighter.
Yeah. And he has like a like thing that comes out of his backpack that squirts.
That's like a fire hose. So pretty. Yeah, you do have that, actually.
It's called a camelback. Right.
It's called a camelback.
Right.
But so earlier in the month, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation posted an online interview with a criminology professor, Liam Kennedy, who had just published an article all about Paw Patrol criticizing the show's problematic neoliberal messaging.
Basically, his argument is that the show implies that business is a reasonable alternative to government.
Uh, the mayor is useless.
I mean, like most of the problems come from the mayor just not being able to do anything.
Right.
They're constantly just like, you know, rescuing her from a corner she got stuck in because
she didn't turn around or something.
Um, they are, yeah. a corner she got stuck in because she didn't turn around or something.
They are, yeah, and they're essentially, so his argument is that they're essentially a private corporation that they-
Are they paid, the Paw Patrol?
That's the thing.
You never see them paid.
All dark money, huh?
So it's a pretty weak argument because it's not like-
They may be volunteers.
Right.
Either way, they're paramilitary.
Right.
Okay, right.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah.
That's right.
Either way, they're paramilitary.
Right.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
But it's not like you see other government-provided services failing. Where they're like, hey, municipal fire department, fuck off, because Paw Patrol is here.
You blew it again, municipal fire department.
It's just basically Paw Patrol is the only entity in Thunder Bay that is solving problems for the community.
Where's the Gat Patrol?
The what? The Gat Patrol. The Gat Patrol?
Yeah. Isn't that something in
99 Problems that I don't understand?
Oh, wow.
I don't know what that is, but I like it.
That is good.
There are cats and they're all evil, so
I'd say that is the more
problematic messaging. All the cats are
bad. I mean, I think he's just
means he has shooters.
Oh, right, right. Any shooters are part of it.
If they're on Gap Patrol, that means... Okay, got it.
They're ready. They're ready.
So I am on the side
of the Canadian criminologist here.
I haven't seen Paw Patrol,
and I assume he hasn't either.
But I'm going to say, in my neighborhood, this thing happened where these guys started coming from this company called ACS.
Okay, so they came like door to door.
What's ACS?
So it's a paramilitary organization.
Yeah, basically.
Oh, is it that like wannabe cop guys in like Chargers?
It's like in Grosse Pointe Point Blank where the guy is like
They're all over Hollywood
aren't they?
Yeah.
That's where I live.
So they come door to door
and my wife keeps mentioning
like our neighbors
are doing it
and it's not that expensive
and if enough of us do it
there'll be 24 hour surveillance
and these guys in cars
I'm like
who are these guys in cars?
They have guns.
Retired cops.
They do have guns.
They seem a little young
for retired cops.
They have guns. I'm like they have guns? Like everyone cops. They do have guns. They seem a little young for retired cops. They have guns.
I'm like, they have guns?
Everyone in our neighborhood is against guns.
We're going to hire people with guns who aren't even cops?
Yeah, but they're really good at Call of Duty.
Right.
And she's like, well, there's just been more crime.
Like, there is no crime in our neighborhood.
Right.
And so sure enough, one day I come home and there's a guy in a uniform at our table.
Oh, yeah.
There's forms being signed.
And now I'm a member of the say yes thing.
Wow.
So I'm hiring my own Paw Patrol.
And then not long after we've hired Paw Patrol, there's some flashlights on our deck at like 2 a.m.
And my wife wakes me up and she's like, what's that?
And I'm like, oh, it's just helicopter lights which it was obviously
not true and by the way even if it was that's worse right yeah yeah so i go to the deck and
the flashlights disappear and she's like and i have like a choice where i could either go outside
or i could call acs right i definitely called acs okay so um the next thing i know the cops come to
this is in my book actually the cops come to my door and I look out my window and they seem like laughing.
So I open the door and they are, now they're dead serious and annoyed.
And they're like, your next door neighbor has a different paramilitary paw patrol service.
And they were hot and they came by to, he's on vacation.
So they were checking his yard with flashlights which triggered your paramilitary
paw patrol and they could have shot at each other yeah we could have all we could have all died and
our houses would have been left to like just for bernie to give yeah um so so i'm against i think
the paw patrol is nothing but trouble yeah i don't know why it's legal you know these
cops yeah well that's where we're headed, baby.
You know, like, hey, man, why don't we take that off your hands, city?
It's South Africa.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
And I do think that generally, you know, it's an impressionable audience.
I don't think they're fully grasping the messaging here.
But, you know, one day it could trickle down into uh into their thinking on other things and i didn't mention i'm sorry that the people at acs uh are they're all dogs
they're all dogs armed dogs which is yeah and a and a 12 year old uh yeah he's the manager
he runs a thing yeah he runs a tight ship um Yeah. So anyways, this is causing Fox News to be like, oh, we can't have children's cartoons anymore.
And they're really mad.
And they're claiming it's a CBC report when it's actually the CBC interviewing a guy who said a thing being totally tongue-in-cheek.
Not just a guy, Liam Harper.
Right.
Liam Kennedy, i'm sorry
yeah it's close uh so yeah it's it's becoming uh sort of a thing just over some pause man
yeah you know what i mean not to be a conspiracy theorist but is he a kennedy
it could be yeah you never know yeah thought so i haven't looked into that check and fucking mate
well joel it's been a pleasure having you, man.
I'm exhausted.
How do you guys do this every day?
Coffee.
Cold brew.
A lot of coffee.
Costco cold brew.
Got it.
Where can people find you, follow you?
Right here, apparently.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There you go.
You're on social media.
You're on Twitter.
People can follow you there.
You're a great follow.
You also are an author and you have a book that people should go buy.
Yeah.
Buy a couple.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I highly recommend it.
It doesn't work that well until you get a couple of them.
Yeah.
The book doesn't work.
Yeah.
I got to read two of them.
There we go.
There's the words.
Yeah.
Is there a tweet or some other work of social media that you've been enjoying?
I did.
I liked something I thought was really smart that Virginia Heffernan tweeted, and I wrote it down for you guys.
Virtue signaling is standard snoozy hypocrisy, but vice signaling, Trump's hideous shakedown of Ukraine and New York,
bar-fixing Stone's case, and all the running with the devil, is white-collar Ozzy Osbourne.
The bar fix has got to be the DC equivalent
of biting off the head of a bat.
I love the idea of vice signaling.
I think it's a big thing Trump's doing.
Oh, shit.
Yeah.
Let them know.
Miles, where can people find you?
Twitter, Instagram, at Miles of Grey,
and on my other podcast, 420 Day Fiance,
discussing the seminal TV show,
90 day fiance with Sophia Alexandra. Uh, a tweet I like is from at major trans celeb. It says,
I don't need a kombucha company to have an origin story, which is, I feel like anytime you lift the
label of anything with kombucha on it, it starts off with some whimsical thing about like, it all started.
Or kombucha can be traced back.
Is it in the garage or where does a kombucha company start?
It all depends which company you're looking at, man.
Yeah, just on the floor.
Don't come from a booch, man.
All the runoff.
A tweet I've been enjoying,
at Drill tweeted, if a four-year-old child
tried to accidentally shoot me, I would simply
disarm it by using a complete arm latch into
tactical 100% body roll
and then
you can find me on twitter
you can find us on twitter
we're at the daily zeitgeist
on instagram we have a facebook
fan page and a website
dailyzeitgeist.com where we post our episodes
and our footnotes. We link
off to the information that we talked about in today's
episode, as well as the song we
ride out on miles.
What are we riding out on today?
This is from producer Denny LaFleur.
We had one of the tracks maybe
two weeks ago, but this is another one called
1200. Again, if you like
the sample-based hip-hop
instrumentals,
you know, freestyle to this one in your car and freak your kids out.
Let them know, yeah, dad used to be in a rap group.
Okay?
Dad used to be in a really sick rap group.
We all used to be in rap groups.
Maybe that's our thing, our Lance Armstrong for our generation when we revert to something to feel magical again.
I'm like, my dad's back in his rapper phase.
Yeah.
We were trying to figure out what, like, I'm like, my dad's back in his rapper phase. Yeah. We were trying to
figure out what the way that
people who are
of a certain age
now dress in all Lance Armstrong
gear and go biking with their friends.
Do you not know?
Have you not seen that? Middle-aged bike cruise?
Have you seen This Is 40?
Yes. No, I'm in that Paul Rudd demo.
Oh, are you? you don't mean literally lance
armstrong outfits you mean just cycling gear yeah just like way professional like you're like
you're sir you're not even fit enough i've i've been to the lance armstrong bike cycling store
in austin where you can get the the yellow thing yeah mellow johnny's yeah as as in mayo john
but i didn't buy um, we were trying to figure out
what the next thing for millennials is.
The millennial version.
Oh, the equivalent.
That's the Gen X version.
Right, that's the Gen X.
Yeah, like when you're trying to recapture it.
It's a crisis outfit.
It's a crisis outfit, man.
It's like, oh, boy.
It's like there's a pack of people
in the midst of a crisis.
Right.
Wait, did you come up with something for millennials?
We couldn't think of it.
We're just trying to rack our brain.
I felt like I had thought of something a long time ago,
but I know we're all going to have that thing.
Yeah.
We're thinking like Kanye outfits, like Kanye clothing.
Like your Yeezys?
Right.
Or just wearing like oversized sweats.
It has to be a little expensive.
Right.
And the good thing about that this is 40 cycling thing is that when you hit the age that I am,
you do have this crisis of body.
Yeah.
And the cycling thing is such a great way in.
Yeah.
So I think, yeah, with millennials, like, fuck trying to exercise.
Just wear a bag of your sweatshirts.
Right.
Exactly.
It's probably some kind of a deal.
Hide it all.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, we're going to ride out on that.
The Daily Zeitgeist is a production of iHeartRadio.
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you listen to your favorite shows.
That is going to do it for this morning.
We will be back this afternoon to tell you what is trending.
And then back tomorrow with more podcasts.
And we will see you tonight, Minneapolis.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye. Bye. 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.
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There's so much beauty in Mexican culture, like mariachis, delicious cuisine, and even lucha libre.
Join us for the new podcast, Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre.
And I'm your host, Santos Escobar,
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Santos!
Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask
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Do you ever wonder where your favorite foods come from?
Like, what's the history behind bacon-wrapped hot dogs?
Hi, I'm Eva Longoria.
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Our podcast, Hungry for History, is back.
And this season, we're taking an even bigger bite
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Seeing that the most popular cocktail is the margarita,
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Listen to Hungry for History on the iHeartRadio app,
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