The Daily Zeitgeist - SpiteFest 2021, Pete Davidson Vs Mr Tobacco 12.8.20

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

In episode 774, Jack and Miles are joined by comedian and Like Mother podcast host Alison Stevenson to discuss Trump's White House exit, Kelly Loeffler's performance at the Georgia Senate debates, how... Melbourne eradicated Covid-19, some Staten Island drama, the Havana attacks, and more!FOOTNOTES: Trump mulling extravagant White House exit to upstage Biden inauguration: report Kelly Loeffler won't affirm the reality that Trump's loss wasn't rigged, but instead pivots to bashing socialism How Melbourne eradicated Covid-19 The Staten Island Bar Manager Who Flouted COVID Restrictions Hit a Sheriff’s Deputy With His Car PETE DAVIDSON RIPPED BY STATEN ISLAND LOCALS ... For Defiant Bar Jokes on 'SNL' Report Points to Microwave ‘Attack’ as Likely Source of Mystery Illnesses That Hit Diplomats and Spies Microwave Radiation 'Most Plausible' Cause Of Diplomats' Ailments, Report Says WATCH: Scuti - Skoowup (Official Video) Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. In 1982, Atari players had one game on their minds,
Starting point is 00:00:35 Sword Quest, because the company had promised 150 grand in prizes to four finalists. But the prizes disappeared, leading to one of the biggest controversies in 80s pop culture. I'm Jamie Loftus. Join me this spring for The Legend of Sword Quest. We'll follow the quest for lost treasure across four decades. Listen to The Legend of Sword Quest on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Bruce Bozzi. On my podcast, Table for Two, we have unforgettable lunch after you get your podcasts. right now so you can catch up on our conversations that are intimate and often hilarious. Listen to Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi 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
Starting point is 00:01:37 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 Hello, the internet, and welcome to season 163, episode 2 of Dread Daily Zeitgeist, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Jack O'Brien, a.k.a. Come Along and Ride on a Giuliani Voyage. Die, die, melting hair, die. I fart on the mic as I tell some lies. That is courtesy of official dickhead. And I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray. Triumphantly sitting on their behinds. Cobra drank fidgets spinning in time. The green light flashes. Base soak goes up.
Starting point is 00:02:50 Learning and churning. The news always sucks. They deftly maneuver the daily landscape. Episodes produce fast with guests that are dank. Reckless and wild with hot takes they burn. But their premise is potent as zeitgang doth learn. And then so then okay and then we're going to go.
Starting point is 00:03:05 Da-dun, da-dun, da-dun. They have the persistence. They have what we need. Jack's not alone. All alone. He's got miles high as fuck on weed. That's it, Christy. I'm a Gucci man.
Starting point is 00:03:20 Always love hearing cake. Especially for a band dork like me playing trumpet. And there weren't really bands vibing with trumpet. I decided to be like, oh, y'all don't fuck with jazz? Try saying that as a 10-year-old. This was a great song for me. Yeah. I feel like the 80s ruined brass for a little bit.
Starting point is 00:03:36 Because they just had that dramatic, sexy saxophone. Always playing as a sax solo. And now... I mean, Herb Albert and Chuck Mangione. saxophone always yeah always playing as like a sax solo and now i mean herb albert and like chuck mangione like they took trumpet into like it's catchy but you know like you're not being like oh did you see herb albert oh like i'm i'm hopping on that the second i see no no no it's it's different than jazz but hey you know we got we have cake though yeah yeah and the aquabats well we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by the hilarious the talented allison stevenson hi hello welcome back how are you doing
Starting point is 00:04:17 yeah yeah i'm good i'm good perpetually evolving i feel like it's you should you're not allowed to say that you're good even if it's like the standard thing you have to say i feel like in 2020 you're just not allowed to be like yeah sort of my god i'm so good and it was supposed to set off our electric shock callers for asking how are you what's new what's new what's new anything new anything good on TV? Well, I told you earlier, but I did just come back from the hospital a few days ago. Right, yes.
Starting point is 00:04:52 I was there for fun. Just chilling. Just get some stuff rearranged. Biologically. Organ-wise. What if my heart was like... What do you think doc no i had to get my gallbladder removed oh shit yep yep it's uh and i i the like even in your description of
Starting point is 00:05:15 i went to the er and they were like nah you're good go home which is like you know i've unfortunately had friends have told that to them and shit went horribly south when they went home. And I'm just so glad that despite that happening and you going back and another doctor like, OK, we've got to get your gallbladder out. That's your OK. Thank the Lord. Thank my Lord. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:39 I find that gallbladder removal is rarely an elective surgery. It's usually things are going bad at that point we all know i need to lose weight i was like what if i just lose like four ounces right from the gallbladder the morbid idiot side of me is do you can you ask for your extracted biological organs after the fact i did ask to go back uh-huh i asked and they said i couldn't what oh fuck you i know right oh fuck you you know i don't want to get into the financials of it but i'd imagine you know that they're going to charge insurance whoever whoever you know if you or whoever's footing the bill that's a lot of money that should come with the free trash part that comes with it i shouldn't be able to get my gallbladder in a jar or some shit would
Starting point is 00:06:29 you save it though i mean i know we asked those questions and even if they said yeah you want it you'd be like no i'm just i'm just curious i would 100 i would have saved it and the little gallstones is it small apparently yeah it's like a teeny little they like took it out of my belly button oh wow that's pretty cool i'm so ignorant about most things medical and i'm like you know i hear anything that's inside your body like so that's the size of a volleyball you know that i actually don't i don't know the answer yeah so i'm picturing this it came out of my belly button so i'm just imagining it like the size of a quarter. I think that mentally that's what I need it to be.
Starting point is 00:07:08 Or at most the thing Agent Smith pulls on, puts on Neo's belly button in the Matrix. Right, that they pull out. I was going to say, I have to imagine that was exactly how your procedure went in the back of a speeding cab. Yeah, with like some weird laser gun. Like, hold on, I've got it. I'm tracking it. We're locked on. Wow.
Starting point is 00:07:26 That sounds like a lot, especially the way I'm imagining it. So we're very happy and thankful to have you back here. People, post-op guests who are coming out of medical procedures, people who are battling COVID. So we appreciate you taking the time to even come on right now. All right. Well, let's tell the listeners what we're going to talk about, and then we'll get to know you a little bit better, Allison.
Starting point is 00:07:51 First, we're going to talk about Spitefest 2021. It's coming at you from the Trump administration. We're going to talk about Kelly Loeffler's debate performance. We're going to talk about Kelly Loeffler's debate performance. We're going to talk about how Melbourne and the state of Victoria and Australia, how they're approaching the COVID-19 pandemic. They, for the past four weeks, have had, checking my numbers here, zero new cases of COVID-19. So we'll talk about how they pulled that off uh hint it's exactly what they didn't come up with any new ideas guys they just did the damn thing uh we'll talk about staten island a bar in staten island and its relationship to one pete davidson
Starting point is 00:08:41 uh we will talk about the new release, the new report on the Havana Syndrome that is an ongoing story we like to cover. We like to talk about it anytime there's new evidence that enters the scene. You got a new angle, huh? Got a new angle.
Starting point is 00:08:59 Not really, actually, but still very foggy, but we'll talk about it. All of that, plenty more, but first, Allison, we'd like to ask our guest, what's something from your search history that's revealing about who you are? I recently Googled if hamsters can chew on Palo Santo. Like for them to, if it's safe for them to gnaw on a piece of Palo Santo? If it's safe for them to not on a piece of palo santo toy yeah that is the most like silver lake google thing i've ever heard in my life i think if you don't
Starting point is 00:09:33 know what palo santo is like it's if you've ever if wherever you're in the country if you have some crunchy friends who are like seemingly just lighting a shard of wood on fire and being like the vibe in here is so great uh super producer nick stump famously kept his control room just just piping with uh the palo santo smoke so yeah is it safe though there's negative energy it's a sage apparently palo santo is canceled though is what i've heard palo santo is canceled like Saint Paolo? The person themselves? I think like white people like myself who are like
Starting point is 00:10:10 can I hamster chew on it? Have fun with you I feel like you'll take it back Take it back Don't let them have it, we're taking it back What does it smell like when it's burning? Like is it patchouli-ish? What are we looking at here
Starting point is 00:10:25 smells pretty damn good i think it smells better than sage i prefer it over sage for sure okay yeah yeah any like place where they're selling crystals is like that's like patchouli gave way to sage which gave way to palo santo right now so you know go to your local crystal shop if you don't know that's it probably smell like palo santo in there so you know go to your local crystal shop if you don't know that's it probably smell like palo santo in there okay i will do that the second uh that i'm gonna make a beeline for that the second this uh lockdown is lifted or like musicians especially love it i think that's why nick had it too because i've never been like with vibey musicians who if you were playing with them or in a session or like a rehearsal where they were just
Starting point is 00:11:05 like let me just get the palo going a little bit just like vibe it out like that's why it's such a silver lake thing in my mind because like so many rehearsal spaces just smell like right weed like uh paps and you know palo santo allison how are you uh enjoying your palo santo are you like lighting a is it just like a stick that you light always it's literally it's like do i have it on me no it's literally just like a stick yeah yeah it's the most uninteresting thing to see smoke comes out you know it's very basic it smells really good clears negative negative energy if you're into that stuff but i have a pet hamster and he needed a new chew toy and i was like i'm you know post-recovery surgery mode and i'm like
Starting point is 00:11:53 well i have palo santo like could i give him that here take that leave me alone yeah like give you something to entertain yourself with but i ultimately decided not to even though i couldn't find a straight answer on palo santo specifically it seemed like it might be too risky of a wood for a hamster what'd you pivot to i ended up just waiting and i i ended up just waiting and asked my sister to go to petco for me and she got there you go pencil shaped wood shoe things ah yeah should have experimented with the Palo Santo maybe it would have changed the whole vibe of the hamster so our hamster chew toys just just wood is that kind of the fancy idea I could talk about hamsters forever so don't get me started but it's they are very finicky
Starting point is 00:12:47 fragile creatures and i don't understand why we sell them to like five-year-olds like that's right not okay they are actually very high maintenance animals and even like the type of wood they chew is important because some wood is poisonous to them another wood isn't because some wood is poisonous to them another wood isn't like i think like pine is bad for them like stuff like that yeah they can choke on some and not on others or like some are like poison i don't know basically so yeah it matters what kind of wood do they chew for the record you know allison is on her stenographer's keyboard right now. Just taking all that typing you hear is that. Transcribing everything. The minutes of this episode.
Starting point is 00:13:29 Allison, what is something you think is underrated? I have to think about this because I really don't. Okay. Is anybody fucking with Pluto TV? I've seen mention of Pluto TV in a couple couple places i know the words as a sequence it's like the app for your you know your roku device or whatever your whatever that shit's called i don't know was that a streaming device yeah uh-huh yeah uh and it's like it's you can watch channels but all the channels are really specific and it's kind of amazing like there's a channel
Starting point is 00:14:05 that's just playing uh mtv's the challenge oh really just non-stop 24 yeah there's random ass channels that just play like one show or like a genre kind of fun it's fun to also like have channels again where you're like searching through things right and going up and down so when you go to the channel for the challenge it's just you enter at a place where whatever like rotation they're on like
Starting point is 00:14:35 everybody's watching it at the same time you have no choice in the matter I feel like that's kind of how Peacock is too on certain channels I feel like that's gotta be is too on certain channels yeah i feel like that's gotta be like a thing that's coming is just back to linear stuff that people can all enjoy together oh hell yeah it's too sick of having to make decisions yeah exactly yes i'm like even like
Starting point is 00:15:01 dvr is fucking me up like even being like oh shit it's sunday i'm gonna go turn this on like i've completely like cauterized that sensation out of my soul of like being like thing being tied to a day obviously because of the pandemic like linear time is also a bit wonky at the moment uh but i just feel like yeah like trying to even select anything is like the Cheesecake Factory menu, you know, exponent 10 of overwhelming feelings of too much variety. Yeah. Cheesecake Factory-ization of America. Yeah. And look at him now, begging for that PPP money.
Starting point is 00:15:41 I have a nervous breakdown every time i get to the cheesecake factory that's why again i'll say it again chicken littles don't even show me the just don't show me the fucking menu i want chicken littles let's go that's it yeah it's like they're chicken tenders but it has mashed potatoes so first time i ordered on a date i was like see i ain't no kid say fries and chicken tenders these chicken chicken littles with mashed potato and a little weird corn cob stuck in it. But they've named their chicken tenders after the character from the cartoon who thought the sky was falling.
Starting point is 00:16:16 Just to give it a personal kick so you know who you're eating. When we're at, look, people know, other factory goons, as we call ourselves, when we pull up to the factory, to the fac, we know what time it is we're just there for the food we don't look too much into the names like chief like uh what are they all unionized or not yet not yet i mean there's a lot of a lot of interesting takes on unit unionizing within the fact gang um but we'll see uh allison what's something you think is overrated
Starting point is 00:16:46 i mean i'm i really could not think of anything i want i was like okay maybe since i'm going on this pluto thing we're talking about like i could say netflix because personally i'm sick of netflix i can't find anything to watch anymore that's interesting to me they took away a lot of the stuff I liked would they take away? they took away Frasier that's it that's the only thing I watch
Starting point is 00:17:15 where's Frasier at now? you know what luckily Frasier is on Hulu oh shit okay so I'm just like I'm very ready to be done with Netflix unless they want to give me a fucking show or something in which case i'm loving it and it's actually underrated form of i'm the joke not netflix all right yeah oh yeah i don't it's it is like netflix is almost now just
Starting point is 00:17:40 is like almost like what hbo became where it's not so much about like what's on there but the thing that only they make right where i'm like oh shit right that's only on netflix versus before you're like oh put netflix on it's got everything now i'm like fuck that like i don't even like my queue anymore or like my list that i've put together i'm like i don't think i've touched my queue in like three years it's just just stuff that I was interested in when I was a child. Literally from six years ago, the follow-up documentary to the Brazilian film City of God, like the 10-year anniversary retrospective documentary, like talking to the child actors from it. I was like, oh, this shit's dope. And that was in 2014 that I put that in the queue yeah have
Starting point is 00:18:25 not watched it yeah i've got that orson welles documentary and the new orson welles like the color of the wind or whatever uh at the top of my thing and i feel like stuff you put to the queue is things that you're like i should watch this exactly it's aspirational but that's a a black and white movie by orson welles that people were like it's pretty good if you're orson welles completist is a real uh it's a real stopper apparently for me every time i see it i just like get a little anxious and move on um i uh we have those we have those pieces of content but yeah my cue is that documentary the family which like i know like i'm not going to be surprised by anything i see in it so i'm like whatever if i get to it i get to it uh and then black godfather because my grandpa used to hang out with that dude and my
Starting point is 00:19:16 grandpa my dad was like you should check that out man there's a bunch of uh just now that the top 10 lists year-end lists are coming out it seems like a lot of the now that the top 10 lists, year-end lists are coming out, it seems like a lot of the movies that people are putting on their top 10 list are just like documentaries that I've never heard of. Oh, really? Yeah, a bunch of like wild documentaries came out this year because nobody was like, we've got to wait until the box office comes back for these.
Starting point is 00:19:42 Yeah. Streaming is sort of their natural environment. So maybe we can do some Doc Rex later. Yeah, man. Tiger King, bro. Yeah, that's one. Number one with a bullet. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:19:56 That was when the nation was most united. Yeah, it was like the early days of the pandemic when we were just like, this is fun. Well, it's that part of the cartoon where the character goes off the cliff and gravity hasn't kicked in yet. And you're like, ha ha, wow. Look at the views from up here. Yeah, seriously.
Starting point is 00:20:16 And you're like, oh, no, no, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. 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
Starting point is 00:20:42 24 hours BPM 110 120 she's terrified Like you always do. One session. 24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that?
Starting point is 00:20:55 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.
Starting point is 00:21:14 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. of rebels into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? I mean, the Boone County rebels will stay the Boone County rebels with the image of the biscuits. It's right here in black and white in print. They lying.
Starting point is 00:21:54 An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch is a leader. You choose hills that you want to die on. Why would we want to be the losing team? I just take all the other stuff out of it. Segregation academies. When civil rights said that we need to integrate public schools, these charter schools were exempt from that. Bigger than a flag or mascot.
Starting point is 00:22:18 You have to be ready for serious backlash. Listen to Rebel Spirit 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.
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Starting point is 00:23:13 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. podcast is an intergenerational conversation between latinas from gen x to gen z we're covering everything from body image to representation in film and television we even interview iconic latinas like puerto rican actress ana ortiz i felt in control of my own physical body and my own self i was on birth control i had sort of had my first sexual experience. If you're in your señora era or know someone who is, then this is the show for you.
Starting point is 00:24:11 We're your hosts, Diosa and Mala, and you might recognize us from our flagship podcast, Locatora Radio. We're so excited for you to hear our brand new podcast, Señora Sex Ed. Listen to Señora Sex Ed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And we're back. And we've been, since the election results seemed to solidify around a Biden victory, seemed to solidify around a Biden victory. We have been wondering what his inauguration is going to look like and particularly what the president, the current president, the former president, the lame duck,
Starting point is 00:24:56 President Trump is going to be doing at that time. It's pretty unheard of for the president not to be there handing power over. and yet it's impossible to imagine him doing that nope despite what even lindsey graham has been saying like because you know lindsey graham's even you know he's got to play the part of just sycophant but also like trying to like wink at like a reality-based people in the political world like but i get what's going on too but just just i'm kind of going through it right now so just bear with me um he was saying quote
Starting point is 00:25:30 if biden winds up winning yeah i think he should attend like doing the same thing like yeah if he ends up he is what he did wind up winning by like over eight million votes now and counting and quote he said uh quote i just think it's good for the country it'd be good for him okay let's see cut to what we were speculating from the beginning about what will happen if donald trump loses it's called to fuck out of here i'm gonna do my own counter programming on the exact same day because i'm spiteful and petty and i have nothing else going on for me and that's where we're at. The rumors are flying now.
Starting point is 00:26:12 Quote, the tentative plan would involve Trump departing on Marine One before flying to his primary residence of Florida for a 2024 campaign rally. Jesus. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Exactly. He was never going to be there. He was always going to do his own fucking thing and completely ignore what's happening in D.C. Then when they reached out, I think Axios reached out to the White House to be like, OK, what's going on? We're hearing a lot about this. This is what this is from the White House spokesman, Judd Deere, saying, quote, anonymous sources who claim to know what the president is or is not considering have no idea. When President Trump has an announcement about his plans for January 20th, he will let you know, which to me just says, yeah, yeah, he's doing that shit, except he'll get mad if any
Starting point is 00:26:56 of us leak it before he can put that shit on Twitter and then see the likes come in because that's kind of his whole thing now. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I mean, this could be the beginning of sort of what we had speculated might happen, which is like Trump is the shadow president who's just there undermining everything
Starting point is 00:27:16 that the actual administration does the entire time and is basically, for all intents and purposes, like giving marching orders to the you know chunk of the country who still supports him and thinks he got robbed it's not as big of a chunk as we think it is right yeah it's going down for sure going down so well yeah you can only stay so angry at things you can't prove for a while like i get like the people who lost their manufacturing jobs and still have that energy for immigrants not that i say it's reasonable or rational but like you can at least point to data in your life and say i'm still unemployed my existence is not what
Starting point is 00:27:56 i think it could be i have this anger to now be redirected into xenophobia whereas like this shit there's nothing aside from like unless you're purely we're just on that train of like this can't be happening it's hard to to look every day and be like well there really isn't shit for me to sink my teeth into like from right from a place that's really gonna inspire sincere outrage um aside from just taking an l in the culture war yeah for this to be happening around the whole like nexium like buzz or whatever when that whole like it just it felt so much like wow this is a cult like this is how people in cults think where no matter what you throw at them that's like fact it's just like now i'm sorry my
Starting point is 00:28:39 leader says opposite yeah yeah it's i think it's it's also like those scenes in like cult films where like the cult like it starts off as like this non-cult thing but as it starts turning into the cult like they start shedding the like reasonable people who are like oh i don't know like i think okay y'all do that and they're like see the non-believers are gone and then it's like accelerating and i think we're in that stage now where it they're shedding people like not that they're going against the trump campaign but they're less people, not that they're going against the Trump campaign, but they're less inspired by what the programming is when they
Starting point is 00:29:09 tune in. Right. NBC will presumably be covering this instead of the inauguration. If we learned anything from the actual 2020 presidential campaign.
Starting point is 00:29:26 Do you think he's... mean i know that sure he says 2024 to like keep the momentum up but like we've seen like he what he already raised like 180 million off the backs of his stop the steel nonsense where three-fourths of the money donated can go to whatever the fuck he wants i get stipulated in those donations so i don't know if this is truly to that he has the energy or he just knows this is the best way. This is the best marketing ploy to get more asses in the seats for whatever is going to happen on January 20th. Energy doesn't seem to be the thing that's going to stop him.
Starting point is 00:29:59 He seems like, you know, the thing that makes him so toxic as a human being is also the thing that drives him, which is the gaping, sucking wound where other people have souls. That's the thing that is just driving him. Just a vacuum. Yeah, just so much pain that he is not acknowledging.
Starting point is 00:30:22 And that apparently works works as like a internal combustion engine of just grief and like all the human feelings that the rest of us have that he is not acknowledging and are just like being disintegrated uh maybe we just need like the ghost of his dad to be like look i'm proud of you look i fucked up kid i could have done it differently i totally would have man i should have been there for you and i wasn't and i it eats me up in hell every day it does but you know what buddy we'll be together in about 14 hours so um yeah i don't know it's it's it's almost like he's using the arrogance as the steam to power his dreams yeah um as one kanye west once said but yeah it is i don't he definitely needs the cheers and as long as that's
Starting point is 00:31:13 going he'll just say whatever he has to but there was a i think it's in the new republic or mother jones like they were pointing out like one theme about a lot of his speeches throughout the last four years was how he would always lament about his old life right how good it used to be publicly yeah and like how he was just like you know maybe i should just go back you know i had a lot of good stuff there like i don't know why i do this like if maybe at some level of that thinking will also overtake him where it's like he likes the optics of the confrontation but deep down doesn't he just want to like swing his golf club all day and just yell at a tv and not have to lead yeah at the same time like he i think that's part of his narrative right the central like myth that they're trying to build around his presidency that like he didn't need to do this and he like actually didn't want to be successful i was having so much fun. But in terms of the things that
Starting point is 00:32:06 feed his poisonous soul, I feel like you can't beat the public attention that he's gotten. No human has gobbled up the sheer mass of
Starting point is 00:32:22 attention and human willpower and thinking that he has and that is like the ultimate execution of a narcissist right like of a narcissist fantasy is to be the center of attention like i i feel like that's probably gonna prove to be a pretty toxic um or pretty like attractive uh potion for him to just give up cold turkey do you think he can jump the shark so to speak i mean his like attempt at you know like like any any uh operation that is about staying relevant or keeping interest of people that are watching like there'll always be that moment like oh okay you did all you didn't have to do all that but it's so weird to think because his whole presidency is oh you didn't have your you shouldn't be doing any of
Starting point is 00:33:10 this um but i don't know if there's like a moment where it becomes a little too much for everyone involved i think i think he'll definitely have trouble like unifying the message and all the attention around himself like he did when he was the president. It's still wild. Every time I think about the fact that he was the president still is the president. It's pretty wild.
Starting point is 00:33:35 That was a big part of the unprecedented fusion machine of what drove his rise. He releases a song with Lil Pump. Yeah. That could be going for sure hey where my hoes at all right thank you just track a biting distract um i mean to be fair like with the way the liberal media is like joe biding have some pretty good ghost writers right trump would only have little pump. I mean, would Weezy sign up for the clapback?
Starting point is 00:34:08 Because he's already been like, ugh, sorry. Because when people are speculating about that was a difference, like Weezy must have got a check since he posed and everything. Oh, yeah. I think basically all of them got checks.
Starting point is 00:34:28 That was part of the strategy which is just like the most condescending shitty strategy sell your soul to another soulless peddler right let's talk about kelly leffler is that how you pronounce it oh yeah yeah so she had a debate over the weekend that was i actually didn't watch it i just saw the sort of ripples from it on social media i think most people did yeah yeah but it's it seems like it was just a a great uh performance of being just out of touch with reality yeah i mean this georgia these runoff races are again the focal point of american politics because if democrats win both then they can control the senate you know then you have kamala harris being the the tie-breaking vote as mike pence was um this last administration so everyone's like oh fuck what's going on there you know john ossoff and and david purdue is one
Starting point is 00:35:25 of the races where purdue has been just thoroughly fucked up in like the debates before while ossoff has done really cool things to let progressives down by being like i'm not really here to defund the police or medicare for really anyone but uh vote ossoff um so you know you have that going on and david purdue has now just declined to debate at all like ossoff goes up against an empty podium now when they have debates kelly leffler on the other hand she's she's got her head in the in the wall street clouds or something but because she still is debating rafael warnock in their race and i I just want to let you know, like for people who don't, who follow, like we,
Starting point is 00:36:06 you hear us say the name, you know, Kelly Loeffler is under serious scrutiny right now for all of the stocks, like millions of dollars worth of stocks. She dumped when she caught wind of the pandemic hitting, like she was briefed on it and she goes around and suddenly like sell, sell, sell,
Starting point is 00:36:23 sell, like, you know, and got the jump on any other traders. And just to keep another thing in mind, she's also, I think, the wealthiest senator ever. And her husband is the chairman of the fucking New York Stock Exchange. This is the fucking group that we're dealing with when we talk about Kelly Loeffler. So the absolute fucking rot that is you know the representatives in our government are just these corporate wealth hoarders who want to put a mask on and pretending they're a working
Starting point is 00:36:50 person be like i'm fighting for you so this debate i don't think anyone thought she was gonna have do much of anything impressive because she's been on the stop the steal nonsense etc etc so this one was just sort of like one of those moments where you just see like a person who i don't know like she just took a handful of greed pills before she went on the stage because her performance has no soul um and she lies so casually um like like in a time when the fucking stakes could not be higher for her constituents or anyone in this country right now. So let's start off with this first moment where she's just there. They're asking her, hey, what do you think?
Starting point is 00:37:35 You think Trump lost? And she pivots into socialism bad. Senator, do you believe the election was rigged? Look, Greg, it's very clear that there were issues in this election. was rigged. Look, Greg, it's very clear that there were issues in this election. There are 250 investigations open, including an investigation into one of my opponent's organizations, you know, for voter fraud. And we have to make sure that Georgians trust this process because of what's at stake in this election. You know, the promise that Chuck Schumer made was to fundamentally change America. And I'm making sure that we don't go down the road of socialism.
Starting point is 00:38:08 Okay, so again, did the president lose? Socialism. But also, you kind of winked there because you said everything's at stake, meaning that Trump isn't president, and if you lose the Senate, then the libs will be drinking your tears, so to speak. So, you know, that's one way to put it. Moving on in the debate, what's kind of cool is that they get to ask each other questions like rather than have a moderator do like there are moderators that ask questions, but also they can ask just pointed debate questions to each other. other so rafael warnock you know a fucking a pastor who by the way kelly leffler has been to his church and sat with him on like mlk day and things like that while she also was like he's a radical blah blah blah okay check yourself kelly um he asks her just sort of fundamentally like yo where are your priorities at and again really not great answer from her you dumped millions of
Starting point is 00:39:03 dollars of stock uh in order to protect your own investments. And then weeks later, when there came an opportunity to give ordinary Georgians an extra $600 of relief, you said you saw no need and called it counterproductive. Why do you think it's counterproductive to help ordinary Georgians in the middle of a pandemic? productive to help ordinary Georgians in the middle of a pandemic? Well, thank you for that question because I've been completely exonerated. Those are lies perpetrated by the left-wing media and Democrats to distract from their radical agenda. Since I got to the Senate, I've worked hard to deliver relief to Georgians during this pandemic. Okay, so she goes on and just waffles, but I've never seen seen that's not true
Starting point is 00:39:45 right that she's been exonerated at all i don't know where that even came from aside from literally just saying that out loud david purdue is also running ads saying he's been completely exonerated it's like dude you're under investigation yeah like there's not there's nothing even remotely resembling exoneration for you so again very casually oh no like just i don't know what this is like what's the indication is here like you get to a certain point where like you just know like it doesn't matter what i say i just have to go up and if i don't get too fired up i'll just lie and then everything's all good the dead eyes are are noteworthy we're actually sharing your screen and why i'm watching it and there there's just a like and a smile though on top of it right she has this like tight-lipped smile when he's asking the question and then she goes into the answer and like nothing changes from the nose
Starting point is 00:40:46 up it's just the eyes are like lifeless yeah cause it's like Quint when he's talking about the USS Indianapolis going down dull lifeless eyes like a doll's eyes uh yeah it's
Starting point is 00:41:01 I don't know speaking of a doll's eyes i do have to say she looks like they put a like extra large doll's hair on a extra medium person's like body her head like it's it's not like her hair looks amazing it's like very long and luscious, but it's just weird. It's like mis-sized. It's like they- Her wig jumped to the shark. Her wig is-
Starting point is 00:41:34 Because it's very Real Housewives slash Big Little Lies kind of hair where it's like, wigs? Yeah. And then lastly, she has another moment where she where she again we're talking about accusations of fucking insider trading yes okay where someone is using their proximity to the decision-making apparatuses apparatuses in this country to benefit themselves by using this knowledge not to warn the constituents but to warn her fucking stock portfolio managers how to get her money right. So one of the moderators asked a very fair question. Just straight up, you know, should fucking sitting people in Congress be allowed to trade stocks?
Starting point is 00:42:15 Senator, should members of Congress be barred from trading stocks? Look, what's at stake here in this election is the american dream that's what's under attack when they attack me for a lie a left-wing media lie conspired with the democrats spy this is an attack on every single georgian who gets up every day to work hard to provide a better life for their family who wants to live the american dream wow that's what the fuck that's an attack on the american dream her brain also like skips a couple sentences and just like there's like a internal edit in the middle of that where like she just goes from one sentence to the next without any like it's like halfway through one
Starting point is 00:43:05 sentence she just moves to the next one it's very uh uncanny yeah but that is very trumpy yeah it's what all the republicans people now are taking notes from trump and they're like oh shit turns out we don't actually we don't have to directly answer questions right yeah because i think at the end of the day it's like version of reality hey guys white is right don't worry about me i'm white don't worry about me if just if i'm making money don't worry about me what's rafael warnock up to the pastor of a church oh god what what could he be doing yeah the it's it's this whole thing of also this like parasocial relationship to the billionaire class like this fucked up class solidarity where they always disingenuously be like, I mean, they're trying to take my right to fucking skull fuck the stock market and, you know, fuck over working people. That's an attack against y'all, too.
Starting point is 00:44:00 I don't know if you get that. Poor people. They're coming for you too if i can't fucking pillage and just take what you know just completely manipulate my stocks with the information i have that's an attack on you too y'all so come on pull up for me yeah it's it's an attack on our ability to wake up and work and uh her her decision to not react with policy to protect the people who she's supposed to be governing but instead to react with uh you know protecting her own financial position is an attack pointing that out as an attack on uh can you imagine like any other situation like
Starting point is 00:44:43 you got caught cheating like in a relationship and they're like oh you see that's it see no we're not doing that right now because what you're doing is attacking the core values of this country which is the freedom of choice okay and i chose to sleep with that other person now if we're gonna go there i mean we might have this is a constitutional argument now like and that's sort of the same disingenuous place they speak from all the time and are almost like they treat decency as absurdity and right like that's the thing now and they are in a way they've they've effectively communicated that sentiment to a large group of people so i want to talk about because i mean like you were mentioning up top, she was one of, you know, at the time when Trump was saying, we know it's airborne, it's very scary, it's
Starting point is 00:45:33 going to be like one of the biggest, you know, security problems that we faced as a country in like decades. When he was acknowledging that he knew that while saying to the public, it's not as big a deal, she was getting that same information that it was going to be a massive health concern, not doing anything, and selling off her stocks
Starting point is 00:45:57 to reflect the information that she, or to prove that she knew what was actually happening in reality. So that is how U u.s politicians uh the people who are responsible for governing our state states are uh governing i think that's a good sample of like how how you know broadly uh just the kind of intellectual corruption of the two parties that run America have affected the people and made it difficult to contain this virus. Do as I say, not as I do. Right. So Australia has a counterfactual, a counterpoint to that example in Victoria, which is where the city Melbourne
Starting point is 00:46:47 is located. And they were, during the second wave, they were the hardest hit state. Its case numbers were dwarfing those in every other state, including New South Wales, which is where sydney is um and so their policymakers decided to they they listened to a a bunch of experts who came up with this idea to uh what they were calling go for zero which is just like it's just sorry to interrupt i get aroused when i hear saying and they're listening to experts yeah yeah like fuck. Like, fuck, really? Wow. That's so hot. You know, you fucking acknowledge what you don't know.
Starting point is 00:47:30 So straight into my veins. They were like, we tried flattening the curve. We tried slowing the spread. We feel like those, you know, because you're trying to just muster public support around a thing that's sort of diffuse and ill-defined. We're going to do this thing called Go for Zero. This involved a stage four lockdown where most businesses were closed, there was a nightly curfew, residents were ordered to stay within five kilometers of their home for all of August and into um with the explicit goal of eventually uh reaching zero new cases now again this is not some you know place that is known for just being obedient and
Starting point is 00:48:17 this is australia you know they they're pretty rough and tumble folks descendants of convicts right they're all they don't fuck with it's not like they're just not. They're all descendants of convicts. Right. They don't fuck with... It's not like they're just... Not like they're all about the rules. Like a lot of former English colonies, some of us don't know how to act sometimes. Right. They wake up and salute the queen every morning.
Starting point is 00:48:38 This is Australia. And so they set this goal. They established underlying components that were needed and provided strong social support. So they expanded testing, including random pooled testing and testing for workers in essential industries, 24-hour turnarounds for test results, contact tracing, mandatory isolation.
Starting point is 00:49:00 Oh, command me, Lord. Most importantly, they made it easier for businesses and workers by providing subsidies to businesses to keep people employed by increasing their unemployment benefits and the experts uh said a system that relies on self-isolation in which people are unable or refuse to self-isolate cannot succeed so they enacted policies that made it so you had to isolate and do the things that were necessary to improve public safety. And for four weeks now, they haven't seen a single new case of coronavirus. For four weeks.
Starting point is 00:49:42 They did the very difficult thing. And it's not complicated. It is difficult. It's hard. They had to make sacrifices. But the government stepped up and was like, okay, we're going to cover the costs to your businesses, to you personally. We're going to cover those costs for the next two months so that thereafter we can get back to something approximating normal life. And now they're down at zero. Now they're, you know, talking, making decisions like, well, if a case if a single case pops up, will we still have normal Christmas like, you know, shopping and the things that uh you would expect there to be in any capitalist society but they are starting from a place of zero new cases in the last four weeks and yeah i just think i mean the u.s government is actively choosing not to do
Starting point is 00:50:39 the difficult things it would require to stop the pandemic. Like that's what that story tells me. They're not providing the economic safety net. They're not setting a goal for all Americans to follow, AKA leadership. This would definitely be more challenging in the U.S. since Australia is more politically homogenous, but the U.S. just isn't even trying. They're not even like beginning the process. Yeah, because these solutions are just run diametrically opposed to how the American system has operated, which is sort of like, yeah, we help people sometimes.
Starting point is 00:51:15 Like, let's be real, man. There's enough money here to be extracted out of wherever that you should be able to bootstrap it the fuck up the whole time. to bootstrap it the fuck up the whole time and this idea that like you have to come through and provide yes that's how you eliminate the need for people to even like have the reason to go outside like even like if you were debating someone if someone's like well hey oh man get back in your house and they say well i gotta get out here and work man i have no fucking choice what do you want me to fucking do like yeah not eat or get evicted no like i have to be out here then you would be like okay bet so then what i have to be out here then you would be like okay bet so then what i have to do is figure out how you i can eliminate those pressures for
Starting point is 00:51:50 you so then all i have to be is like oh is it that hard to stay at home your rent is paid for i'm subsidizing your income all you gotta do is stay the fuck at home until this shit blows over but we don't have that here it's just like hey man if you can god bless stay at home and if you can't god bless man because it's rough out there and there's no there's no um we just don't have like that real like duty to our citizens that most countries do in general and what would be tough about implementing this now is people would be like well we already had a lockdown right why would we do this again? It didn't work the first time.
Starting point is 00:52:26 But it's like Australia did like a legit lockdown where we did like a half-assed lockdown. Right. But that's not going to get through to most people now at this point. No. I mean, I think the only way you could is if you really did bolster, like every... Give us money. Yeah. Every other country got the picture it's like
Starting point is 00:52:46 right give them money stop the suck of bills and debts and things like that that unfortunately is like the heartbeat of america which is sort of like hey man your debts are calling so you better get out of bed take that away and more people can focus on like oh right oh wow damn like it's like that they're actually paying me to stay home right maybe i don't they're gonna get they're gonna get used to it though that's we we have to fight communism slope so much to the point that we can't even let people survive a pandemic uh by helping them pay for their life while we do a lockdown uh because that that will be they have it too good yeah yeah it's definitely a very deep problem uh in the american psyche collectively
Starting point is 00:53:35 uh but it's the media it's the politicians like how the media covers the politicians and how the politicians lead uh that really is preventing this from happening and even like when at the beginning we were saying when looking at like the really shitty you know when we were comparing other countries lockdown situations to our own very early on and we're like why are they reopening because like even we're not economists but you'd think the best version of a reopening situation is one in which you can reopen because you have it under control. And being like any business owner, like, dude, I can't just open up at 25% with only like 15% of the consumers out there. Like the version that's best for me is you get this shit in order and we can somewhat have some kind of same safety and movement that we did prior
Starting point is 00:54:26 obviously with some you know edits here and there but you think that at that point you can just tell the money it's it's gonna run smoother if you eliminate this and just go through the halting of everything for for the interim but right whatever gotta keep the money going yeah even if it's worse for the long run. That's the thing that seems like a real difference between America now and America when it was supposedly great, like during World War II, where they would do rations and make sacrifices in the short run for long-term benefit. And now it seems like the government and the populace aren't like really down with them but we'll see uh all right let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about pete davidson
Starting point is 00:55:15 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.
Starting point is 00:55:47 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.
Starting point is 00:56:04 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. Hi everyone, it's me, Katie Couric. If you follow me on social media, you know I love to cook or at least try, especially alongside some of my favorite chefs and foodies like Benny Blanco, Jake Cohen, Lighty Hoyt, Alison Roman, and of course serving up recipes that will make your mouth water. Think a candied bacon Bloody Mary, tacos with cabbage slaw, curry cauliflower with almonds and mint,
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Starting point is 00:57:51 We'll talk about life, love, laughter, and why you should never argue with your co-pilot. Especially when she's always right. Right, and if we hit turbulence, just blame it on Mercury retrograde. Or Emily's questionable space piloting skills. Hey, join us on In Our Own World for cosmic conversations cosmic conversations stellar laughs and super corny dad jokes listen to in our own world as a part of the my cultura podcast network available on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts and don't worry we promise to avoid any black holes most of the time hello everyone i am. I am Lacey Lamar. And I'm Amber Ruffin,
Starting point is 00:58:27 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
Starting point is 00:58:36 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.
Starting point is 00:58:50 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?
Starting point is 00:59:09 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. And we're back and let's talk about staten island yeah our victoria our melbourne uh staten island s-i-n-y yeah yeah you know there's there's a bar there that's been getting a lot of attention and this just comes off the heels of what we were just talking about with australia like before we get into like laughing at like businesses that are staying open in the midst of a pandemic i think it's always important to point out that you know the thwarting of these restrictions would would be a natural response for anyone when the government gives small businesses fucking no financial recourses whatsoever to stay afloat you're like well then what do i yes people are going to try and stay open because they have to get money i get that so i just i'm always thinking of that
Starting point is 01:00:14 in the back of my mind is that we just have this barbaric way of handling the whole situation yeah but miles see the thing is that uh the state of new york is only one of the largest economies on the planet. So there's no way they could fund the businesses staying closed. Wall Street's over there. Like Victoria, the financial center of the globe. Right. Victoria, Australia. So, yeah. I mean, it's just so funny, too, because for all these businesses that are staying open,
Starting point is 01:00:43 they're just one idea away from embracing socialism. Because rather than being like, let me infect people with my business, it should be subsidize our lost revenue like you did for the fucking airlines. Why the fuck does a corporation get the day off? And I have to almost die every night. Right. It's just, it's just one. If you were just like at the railway,
Starting point is 01:01:07 you just have to pull the fucking thing to get the train to go the fucking other way. You know, the energy is still there. It's just going to the wrong fucking station. Uh, when it should be like, give us our fucking money rather than like,
Starting point is 01:01:18 let me kill. So anyway, this pub, uh, it's called max public House in Staten Island. They've been the focal point of a lot of these like pandemic things. They declared themselves like an autonomous zone at a certain point to be like, we are therefore like sovereign businesses who don't abide by the laws of the land. And the manager of this place was arrested again on Sunday night for opening and serving and like being cheeky and just being like, no, I'm just people are coming in and I'm taking donations.
Starting point is 01:01:56 And that's what was going on, even though the donation is resembles the menu pricing. So this guy was arrested. He was also like when he was when they were attempting the arrest, he almost fucking like he hit a cop with his car and was like trying to flee it was very intense and pete davidson has like talked about it on weekend update like just being like look at these cry babies you know like what the fuck is that like doing his whole thing like talking shit about it right and after this like arrest apparently this so there is a fucking press conference with a lawyer who came out just who goes by the name mr tobacco and he wanted to address all the hateration he's seeing from 30 rock uh he knows who we know who he's talking about to come at pete davidson even like evokes his dead father at a certain point i'm just gonna play just check out again imagine what
Starting point is 01:02:47 a cd guy who's proclaiming to be a lawyer who doesn't want to be named first of all who wants to just be known as mr tobacco uh is caping for these people in this culture war battle that you have mega millionaires who are on the national spotlight like the folks on saturday night live um and instead of making fun of their friends and the local business owners who will who are on the national spotlight, like the folks on Saturday Night Live. And instead of making fun of their friends and the local business owners who are broke and crushed and bankrupt, instead of coming down here as fellow Staten Islanders and standing up for them and bringing a positive light to this thing, what they want to do is go on national TV
Starting point is 01:03:20 and try to humiliate the little man when he's down. And to me, that's quite disgusting. And as I mentioned before, my dad was a member of the NYPD. The king of Staten Island's dad was a proud fireman and a great friend of mine. And I saw Staten Islanders heavily come out and support him, his mom, his family, and everyone else in a time of need after 9-11 when I cried for his father. So when I hear stuff like this, it hits me emotionally when I think, wow, if you came out of your perch in your affluent neighborhood and came down here and told the liberal left this is a good thing because it's about our freedom and liberty, we probably wouldn't be standing here today talking about a political prisoner who was the victim of, in my view, a political ambush.
Starting point is 01:04:08 Mr. Tobacco, please. Mr. Tobacco. Hey, Mr. Tobacco. Wow. He had the thing where you just had enough drinks to get a good performance out, but you had a quarter sip too many where you start slurring a little bit like if right if you drink you know be like you have a drink bro right just to see you know we saw his his father there and i'm getting a little emotional like the cadence was a little like right could be great acting could be a little bit of little rum uh before going out there yeah yeah
Starting point is 01:04:44 with this idea of like again we're seeing the thing where he's like these businesses are being crushed by who by right right from what what is the situation in which that allowed for the crush because on some level they do know that people are being adversely affected but it's like get the fucking connect the next dot you fuck it's not pete davidson laughing at you it's that the fucking government has absolutely turned their back on people that's what it is right he he immediately catches it as like a question of liberty and that but yeah that's frustrating it's again we're just trying to how do we go that next step because Because it, yes, you're so caught up in this language of freedom or Liberty,
Starting point is 01:05:26 but there it's absolutely an, like, it's too abstract that the government would have any hand in ensuring their wellbeing as American citizens. I mean, you know, we've talked before about how in other countries they view the apotheosis of America as the gangster because they just you know strong-armed
Starting point is 01:05:46 people get get the money they need and this dude definitely uh is giving off mobbed up vibes uh yeah hundred percent and i think americans like there there's a big portion of america that would rather be corrupt than like socialist for i mean may whether that's true or whether that's just like part of the like central myth of america i feel like the the idea that you know mr tobacco is more american than uh somebody who's trying to unionize. Truly. And it's just like, yeah, because all of our stories aren't about helping each other or helping others. All the stories of America and history about kicking someone's ass. Right.
Starting point is 01:06:35 Who fucking wants it? The fucking Brits, bro? I'll kick your ass. The fucking slavers, bro? You get your ass kicked. The Nazis, you're fucking donevers bro you get your ass kicked the nazis you're fucking done bro like it's never like who needs it like uh people who are handy capable like do we need to like actually subsidize better lives for them the working poor the invisible homeless like it's never it's just about ass
Starting point is 01:07:01 kicking it's never about fucking embracing so So yeah, it totally makes sense that we're always just defaulting like, well, who's winning? Right. Like, well, here's the deal. We're all losing, actually. So how about that? Yeah. All right. And let's do a quick update on the Havana Syndrome.
Starting point is 01:07:20 Shout out to Zeitgang. I can't name all of the people who forwarded this article to me, but every time a new development happens, it gets brought to my attention. I appreciate y'all. So the New York Times, a bunch of mainstream media outlets, NPR, wrote about this new report from 19 experts that was commissioned by the State Department,
Starting point is 01:07:43 and they're interpreting it as a pretty firm declaration that the Havana syndrome was the result of a malicious attack with directed microwaves. The report itself doesn't really say that. They basically say that that is possible and the most likely scenario, while also making room for the possibility that it's psychosomatic. The symptoms are, you know, the things that their interpretation of the report, because I haven't read all like 60 pages of the report, but the thing that their interpretation of the report leaves out
Starting point is 01:08:21 is like how diffuse the symptoms are. There's like this diplomat in china who supposedly experienced the same thing but he like heard marbles dropping on the floor above him whereas all the people in cuba heard like a high-pitched wine uh it's so which can you give me like a quick um summary of what this is oh yeah sorry so i just like launched into this assume all right so what marbles it's a really good point thank you allison so the vanna syndrome is basically a bunch of diplomats in havana from 2016 to 2018 started like hearing weird noises and then suffering symptoms of like uh nausea uh confusion forgetfulness some of them like lost their balance
Starting point is 01:09:16 for like prolonged periods and they speculated that they were the victims of a targeted attack. And it started spreading. There were like 40 of them in the Havana location. This led to the Trump administration pulling diplomats out of Cuba. A lot of them are also CIA agents who are undercover as diplomats. But basically, the weapons that they described in the first place are not possible via physics like there's no way to do a sound wave thing like and not only that but like scientists like don't think that you could cause the problems that they're uh describing with sound waves and the more that people have reported
Starting point is 01:10:06 on it the more there's a very plausible case that it is in fact like psychosomatic um and that basically you know they were in new environments for instance they recorded the sound that they thought was making it that was coming from the weapon and biologists were like that's actually just a type of cricket that's only in cuba that you've never heard before so they were hearing weird sounds feeling weird ways um and the question is whether like the actual physical symptoms were psychosomatic or whether they were caused by what uh the state department is now speculating are microwave weapons and they're pretty clearly uh connecting it to russia they're like russia has experimented with these before um but nobody like a lot of countries have have experimented with trying to create microwave weapons that are untraceable like these appear to
Starting point is 01:11:05 be and can be targeted like this and people like don't even get beyond the initial testing phase it's just not a thing that scientists think is feasible um so the new york times uh so here's a here's a quote from the new New York Times article. They say, though couched in careful scientific language, the new report reveals strong evidence that the incidents were the result of a malicious attack. It attributes the illness to directed and pulsed rather than continuous energy, implying that the victim's exposure was targeted and not the result of more common sources of microwave energy, such as cell phones. But that's like a very specific interpretation
Starting point is 01:11:51 of the events. They basically went looking for an imaginary weapon that could possibly explain these symptoms and came up with these microwave weapons. Again, that no U..s scientist is aware of yeah they don't exist so i think that we probably underestimate how uh open the new york times and like our national media are to being influenced by government, either propaganda or the CIA, like false information being planted by the CIA,
Starting point is 01:12:29 even in stories that don't involve the CIA and the story directly involves the CIA. So I get the sense that that's what's happening here is that the CIA and the State Department are like leaning on your New York Times and NPRs to kind of take this very specific interpretation, make it seem like, okay, so nobody was imagining anything. It's a very, I think the whole way it's being covered severely underrates like the strangeness and physical reality of the placebo effect and you know the possibility that psychosomatic illnesses are real they actually have manifestations
Starting point is 01:13:14 in the body it's not nobody's making anything up they're experiencing the symptoms it's just the cause of the symptoms is not some outside like laser beam. It's in fact, the fact that they had heard there was an outside laser beam that was targeting them, heard a weird noise and we're experiencing a lot of symptoms that come along with like aging, like,
Starting point is 01:13:38 you know, forgetfulness and less energy and, um, loss of equilibrium. Those are all things that happen with aging. So I don't like in reading this, I am no more convinced that it is an actual like a sci-fi weapon that we don't know about.
Starting point is 01:13:58 I think that version is very interesting. And like, I hope to find evidence that really suggests that that is what's happening here i just like haven't seen it in any of the reporting on on the examinations and then the other option i think is equally interesting and is being discounted as like just i think people like one of the most overlooked mysteries in our day to day lives is the power of the human mind to cause physical changes in the body.
Starting point is 01:14:31 Like the placebo effect is something that all scientists have to acknowledge that like the color of a pill you take before bedtime affects how your body goes to sleep. The ability of placebos to affect someone's recovery from surgery like that it changes our body in ways that like doesn't seem like it should be possible and it's also like a limit of the scientific method because like anything that is regards the human mind like that is limited by the heisenberg principle of like being able to observe it by observing it you're changing how it actually functions and so it's like the
Starting point is 01:15:12 the idea that this central scientific mystery could cause like a world war is like kind of uh just as big a mind fuck as the idea that russia has like some secret sci-fi weapon that they're hiding from us um or just is there anything to that like the the way they're even contextualizing it is like complete like sort of eliminated the possibilities that it could be like because they're just very myopically looking at like certain well they so they made it made the possibility of uh psychosomatic um psychological like causes possible in their early days and like that's always been something that's being considered but the people who suffered it are really like rail against that and are really pissed and feel like they're being abandoned like there's a whole movement of people who retired because of these injuries
Starting point is 01:16:06 and are like, you're leaving us out to dry. You're calling us crazy. And that's not what that means in any case. And yeah, there's just, it's a very complicated, again, like the, anytime you are dealing with a illness with a psychological cause, like just the suggestion of that is kind of puts you in this mind fuck quandary of like,
Starting point is 01:16:31 well, by saying that that's the cause, then that affects the psyche of the person for whom that is true. And therefore, you know, it just like keeps going down this weird reflexive rabbit hole that is kind of impossible to deal with so it's like this fissure in the scientific method like that we are seeing like kind of open up a little bit and get more attention to the point that it could cause heightened tensions with
Starting point is 01:17:01 russia which is always scary so maybe they just need some palo santo i think that might be where we're at i think yeah yeah the cia uh is notoriously uh underutilized as palo santo and other uh smudging and no jack energy clearing no jack cia flooded the streets of silver lake with palo s, man. You don't know. You don't know. You can subdue these hipsters, bro. That's right. Trying to keep us distracted.
Starting point is 01:17:30 Yeah. Trying to keep everybody holding crystals and not looking at socialism. You know what I mean? Yeah. Looking at social media. Yeah, and not socialism. Yeah. Anyway, shout out to Natalie Scher,
Starting point is 01:17:46 who continues to be very interesting to read on this subject. And yeah, if anybody has interesting, you know, I've read the straightforward like mainstream media articles, but if you're seeing people who have interesting takes or other interpretations or pieces of evidence that I'm missing that point to it, having a physical origin, like,
Starting point is 01:18:07 please hit me up on social. Cause this is not a thing where I'm like, I've made up my mind. I think no matter what is going on, this is so interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Fellow Havana truthers.
Starting point is 01:18:20 Yeah. Yeah. Holler. The Havana nights, but with a Kenyan. Yeah. Yeah. Bang. yeah yeah bang that would that would be an nba team right now in an alternate history uh alison where uh can people find you and follow you and what's a tweet or some other work of social media you've been enjoying i can be found
Starting point is 01:18:42 on twitter at just about glad and also if you have an audible subscription you can listen to my audible original like mother starring me and suzy esmond oh nice what is suzy esmond wow yeah it's pretty uh yeah it's intimidating that's not your mom right she not oh in real life yeah i was like did i miss something is allison's mom suzy esmond allison using the stage name mom can you do a podcast with me allison esmond to the podcast no she plays my mom though which is a the show. That's very cool. Yeah, check it out.
Starting point is 01:19:27 Man, I love Susie. It's cool to work with her? Yeah, very cool. She's very funny. Yeah, I can only imagine. And, okay, here's a funny tweet that I liked from Nick Nemiroff. At Nick Nemiroff, he wrote, If you live in Seattle, please shop local and buy from Amazon. Nice solving the world.
Starting point is 01:19:51 One tweet at a time. Uh, miles where can people find you and what's tweet you've been enjoying? Uh, Twitter, Instagram at miles of gray. Also other podcasts for 20 day fiance and Twitter. I haven't,
Starting point is 01:20:04 nothing. I haven't been on social media recently, so unfortunately, I will defer to you. Yeah, yeah. All right, a couple of tweets I've been enjoying. Jason Narducci, that can't be his real name, split single band, Narducci, retweeted a headline that we actually didn't talk about on today's episode. Giuliani berates reporters for questioning election claims,
Starting point is 01:20:30 saying, I know crimes, I can smell them. And Jason said, not anymore. Because he has COVID. Garmer4 at Fourth Dog tweeted, I keep thinking about this, and it's a screen cap of a post on rphysics on Reddit that says, what to do if
Starting point is 01:20:52 I have theories? And then in the comments, I contacted a college and they ignored me. Yo, university, I got theories. UCLA. Yo, I got, hold on, hey, can I. What the fuck? Yo, I got... Hold on.
Starting point is 01:21:05 Hey, can I talk to you locally? Yo, I got theories, man, about some physics shit that could upend everything we know. And then Ben Acker tweeted, there should be a part between dreams and wake up where your brain has to explain what it was going for. That is... A notes session. A notes session session with your subconscious a little sweaty brain
Starting point is 01:21:28 tell me why were you fighting underwater why were you and your bully fighting underwater 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. We're at The Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook fan page
Starting point is 01:21:46 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? Oh, yeah. It's a bit of scutty, isn't it? On the new
Starting point is 01:22:02 track called Scoop. So, yeah. We'll go right out on that one as well in it school whoop yeah this is a track but from scutty s-c-u-t-i or scutty uh if you're really hitting it with that twang uh and the track is called school whoop s-k-o-o-w-u-p uh but it's just like it's like very laid back uh like lond from this like female MC who's just dope. I don't know. I was just listening to the track and I just like, you know how sometimes like rappers are just like, they're very like minimal with their lyricism.
Starting point is 01:22:35 And I don't even mean that euphemistically, like there doesn't need to be a lot of wordplay. Like it's almost like, okay, your swag is just kind of like describe shit in a rhyming way. This is what I like about Scuddy and the vibe here on this track. So, yes. School whoop, indeed. All right. We're going to ride out on that.
Starting point is 01:22:52 The Daily Zeitgeist is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That is going to do it for this morning. We're back this afternoon to tell you what's trending and we'll talk to you all then. Bye. 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.
Starting point is 01:24:03 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. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. In 1982, Atari players had one game on their minds, Sword Quest, because the company had promised $150,000 in prizes to four finalists, but the prizes disappeared, leading to one of the biggest controversies in 80s pop culture. I'm Jamie Loftus. Join me this spring for The Legend of Sword Quest. We'll follow the quest for lost treasure across four decades. Listen to The Legend of Sword Quest on the iHeartRadio app,
Starting point is 01:24:42 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Bruce Bozzi. On my podcast, Table for Two, we have unforgettable lunch after unforgettable lunch with the best guests you could possibly ask for. People like Matt Bomer, Emma Roberts, and Colin Jost. Did you say a Caesar salad with lobster? Yeah. Whoa. Our second season is airing right now, so you can catch up on our conversations
Starting point is 01:25:06 that are intimate and often hilarious. Listen to Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi 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.
Starting point is 01:25:26 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.

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