The Daily Zeitgeist - Teachers’ Unions Caused Pandemic? Immortal Preppy Style 10.27.22
Episode Date: October 27, 2022In episode 1360, Jack and Miles are joined by host of Articles of Interest, Avery Trufelman, to discuss…. Student Performance Scores Are Down, Blame the Teachers’ Unions? Maybe The Police Are A Ba...d Idea Pt 2: DNA Mugshots Are Racist BS, Sprezzatura/Menswear and more! Student Performance Scores Are Down, Blame the Teachers’ Unions? School Closures Were a Failed Policy Maybe The Police Are A Bad Idea Pt 2: DNA Mugshots Are Racist BS Edmonton police use DNA phenotyping as ‘last resort’ in hopes of identifying sexual assault suspect Edmonton police issue apology for controversial use of DNA phenotyping Building a Face, and a Case, on DNA NYPD still using controversial DNA lab for investigations more than a year after City Hall said ties were cut Sprezzatura/Menswear LISTEN: Penelope Freestyle by Baby FatherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult.
And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church.
And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me for I Have Followed.
Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church.
Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk
Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just
starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to
for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do,
like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour.
If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation,
then I think it sort of eases us a little bit.
Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports.
Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry,
Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese.
People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game.
Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball.
And on this new season, we'll cover all things sports and culture.
Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network,
iHeartRadio apps,
or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke.
I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making
of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go
down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game.
Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports.
Listen to the making of a rivalry, Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.
Hello, the internet, and welcome to Season 260, episode four of Dirt Daily's Eye Geist
Day, production of iHeartRadio.
This is a podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness, and it's
Thursday, October 27th, 2022.
What does that mean, Myles?
National Civics Day.
Wow, we could really do with that.
National Civics Day day considering most people
have no idea how anything works in our country national black cat day shout out to my black cat
berkey and also national american beer day yeah man people don't adopt the thing is they don't
people don't adopt black cats out of superstition and i think in general like like just literally
anti-blackness like the i don't know about the black cat and what
it evokes and whatever culture i was raised in but yeah when the only reason i have two like a black
cat oh anyway i have two cats because when we went to adopt a cat they were like this is a bonded
pair and then we were like well we can't split them up so it turns out it's actually just as easy
having two cats at least in my does the black cat start feeling themselves like more and more as Halloween approaches?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
When Black Panther came out, she was feeling it.
I was like, you know, it's a big time for black cats right now.
Yeah, I was like, run this building.
Don't do you.
Do you.
Well, my name is Jack O'Brien, a.k.a.
I hopped off the plane at LAX with a dream in my card again.
Welcome to the land of fame excess.
Whoa, am I going to fit in?
Jumped in the cab.
Here I am for the first time.
Look to my right and I see the Hollywood sign.
This is all so crazy.
Everybody's tearing at their insides.
My thighs are literate and my hands sound like citrus.
Mrs. Kinter thanks me for eating her son.
Then my friend turned on the lights and put the T like citrus. Mrs. Kinter thanks me for eating her son.
Then my friend turned on the lights and put the Teletubbies on.
Put the Teletubbies on.
Put the Teletubbies on.
So I put my hands up.
They're playing my show.
The butterflies fly away.
Okay.
Ha ha.
Oh, yeah.
Moving my hips like, yeah. I got my hands up. They're playing my show. Some woke
baby saved my life today. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jack O'Brien's gonna be okay. That is courtesy of
Mr. Lex Lugy, Mr. Lugubrius in reference to my theory that Teletubbies seem so trippy because Baby Mind and Tripping Mind
are same.
But yeah, I appreciate
that it just opened with
the straightforward lyrics
of that song
for a little while. Because I like to
look at the look in Miles' eyes when he's like,
is he just going to sing the fucking party
in the USA? I'm like, he's floating,
y'all. He's floating.
Anyways, I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr.
Miles Gray.
Mr.
Miles Gray, who loves limp fries, a.k.a.
I wish it was a little bit softer.
I wish it was a dollar.
I wish I had a fry who would limp.
I will call her.
I wish I had a rabbit in a fat in a vat with a Merlot and challah.
OK, look'm i'm yeah
i mean i don't drink a lot of merlot but you know shout out shout out holla you know love the little
braided bread but i definitely like a limp fry shout out lacaroni on the discord again oh and
also who was it somebody on twitter hit me up and went to uh what was it dicks in seattle i was like
hey i got the fries and i was was like, you're looking good.
Looking good.
That was Scott.
Shout out, Scott.
I see you.
Nice and soft.
Dude, those fries at Dick's Drive-In in Seattle.
Perfect, perfect fries.
Mushy as hell.
They got a little bit of external crunch, but inside, soft.
Soft.
Softer than Drake.
Mashed potatoes.
Well, Miles, we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by a brilliant and talented podcaster who you know from 99% Invisible and her spinoff fashion podcast, Articles of Interest, which just dropped the first episode of season two.
It's Avery Truffleman!
Avery!
Hi.
I wish I had, I don't have a song.
I wish I had, these were so impressive. I wish I had. I don't have a song. I wish these were so impressive.
I like I like just really humiliating myself when we have an esteemed guest on.
So this lined up perfectly with just a long song.
I just have to say, Miles, I feel like what you really like is poutine, like what you were describing.
Like mushy, mushy fry. Like with the I was like that. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
mushy fry like with the i was like that oh yeah oh yeah cusp poutine exactly and see but the thing is with poutine it's the gravy that that brings it to the sogginess it's like i like when they
come out the fryer like i'm like wow you did that you did that with the soft fry but again it's a
very divisive opinion that's a that's an important, yes. Yes, a lot of even past guests, Karama Donkwa was tweeting me.
She's like, what is wrong with you?
Lost a lot of people.
She goes hard for the crispies.
Not going to lie, you lost a lot of people with that one.
Yeah, I mean, look, I saw the download numbers.
Look, I saw my follower count drop.
I get it.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah.
Our listenership was cut in half.
It's dangerous to have opinions these days.
I know, I'm just talking about fried potato sticks.
Right.
All right, Avery, we're going to get to know you a little bit better in a moment.
First, we're going to tell our listeners a couple of the things that we're talking about today.
We're going to talk about student performance scores are down, which is to be expected.
And I think we all can agree, right? That the reason
is teachers unions. Thank you. So we'll talk about that when I check in with why police are
a bad idea, maybe. We are going to talk about your podcast and your menswear, your suits episode,
Avery. Sprezzatura, but then how that kind of ties into a sneaker culture
oh yeah curious to hear what your thoughts on that and then your new season which is all about
preppy or i guess not ivy culture yeah it's like it's a whole discussion if preppy and ivy are the
same thing and if anyone even uses either of those words anymore, but we'll get into it. Yeah. Yeah. Just A.C. Slater and say by the bell, I think.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And my sister used it like when she, you know, she was into like she wore cross colors and was like taught me very early on.
She was like, you look like a prep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was when I was like.
The derogatory.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was like, well, that's, I will not allow that.
I will not.
Just because I have this flannel with my fleece vest layered look.
Oh.
I did have my hair like parted to the side.
I looked like one of the bad guys from Caddyshack.
Incredible.
Yeah.
Incredible.
Timely reference.
Yeah, exactly.
All that.
Plenty more.
But first, Avery, we like to ask our guests,
what is something from your search history?
So last night I was researching the humors.
You know, humorism?
It was like this, yeah,
like this theory of how health worked before germ theory,
because a friend of mine gave blood.
And then she was like, I suddenly felt so much better i was like whoa that's weird it's like bloodletting used to be the way that that
doctors cured everything and i was like oh what's that called again oh it's called humorism and it's
like you have these four you've like phlegm and two kinds of bile and blood and they all need to
be in balance and so it was like a totally like
flat earther kind of thing i was like maybe humorism is real just like looking into the
history of of humorism and trying to remember what that was all about but it is kind of fascinating
yeah it's like a superstitious form of medicine that you'd think would have some crazy resurgence
right now yeah it did seem like at the time, they thought everything was caused
by there being too much blood in your body.
They were just like, you're too plump.
You need to let that blood out.
Listen, maybe there's something to it.
Yeah, but then we went all the way in the other direction
and nothing, no bad things are caused by that.
Maybe we need to take another look.
It also strikes me as very unprofitable.
Like that form of medicine. Yeah, that form of medicine yeah that form of
medicine isn't gonna make anyone money so i could also hey what do i take doc i'll just bleed a
little bit yeah yeah i don't buy anything yeah i can buy these leeches yeah leeches i guess are
the safe way to do it the other humors that are that are trickier though with like the phlegm and
the bile like what do you do with those i don't know i just found myself very curious about the the four
the four humors yeah this like when i do the google image search of the quadrants i'm like
i'm like just looking at this and being like that was explaining health oh it's metal as hell it's
so you'd think it would be like oh hey i'm like an infj and i'm phlegmatic think it would be like, oh, hey, I'm like an INFJ and I'm phlegmatic.
Like one of those like new agey revivals that we have now.
Exactly.
It's like you have an overrepresentation of fire and earth within your system.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, it was a time when surgeon and barber were the same job.
It was just person who had sharp things at things in the room that they worked in.
And not afraid to use them.
Yeah.
What is something you think is overrated?
Okay, here's my hot take.
Like, The Daily, the podcast.
I love it as a show.
It's great.
But I recently went out of the country for the first time since
COVID. And I was like, oh, right.
I only listened to the Daily
all the time. And so much
of that news was really American.
Not exclusively, but very, very American.
And then suddenly when I was in Europe,
everyone was so aware of
so much international news.
I was like, man, I gotta
branch out.
It's a great resource,
but it is not enough.
We need more daily newscasts.
What about, wait, what?
There's glaciers in Pakistan that are,
what, you're about Michael Avenatti?
He's going to jail.
He was Stormy Daniels' lawyer.
Right, right, right, right.
That's what we really need to be worried about.
100%. Yeah. I that that just goes for podcasts
with the word daily in in the title in general i mean you know not not all not all not all i mean
we'll occasionally swing the focus to international things yeah but it's it's a delicate balance of
i mean it's hard we're such a big country you know and then you also have to be aware of like
everything going on in this country you can't be too i mean it's like. We're such a big country, you know? And then you also have to be aware of like everything going on in this country.
You can't be too micro-focused. I mean, it's like, I can either talk about, we can talk about what's going on with Giselle
and Tom Brady, or we can talk about union.
I don't know.
What's the balance?
I don't know how you do it.
I don't know.
I'm in awe.
I don't know how.
When in doubt, choose Tom Brady.
That's always, that's the shorthand for American culture.
Tom, terrific.
Isn't he like friends with DeSantis now or something?
Like they're.
No, no, no.
Wouldn't he be friends with.
Yeah.
Like they, they're, they're buddies.
They, they text.
Everyone's a milkshake duck.
I hate it.
Yeah.
What is, what's something you think is underrated?
Well,
then this is the,
the,
the part two is like the BBC after being abroad and being like,
wow,
I don't know anything about what's going on in the world.
I have supplemented my daily American podcasts with the BBC.
It's like,
oh,
great.
This is actually a really great way,
even though they just ended their Arab service,
which is,
which is sad.
But otherwise it's like a relatively good way to get an idea of what's
going on in the world. So I love the BBC Global News. And kind of calming. The accents are calming.
The accents. Do they have a good podcast, the BBC? Oh my God, the BBC Global News is actually
incredible. They update it frequently, like multiple times a day from all over the world,
just because they're so sprawling and massive and they have journalists everywhere and they're just
filing all these reports all the time.
It's great.
We update multiple times a day
and we don't have journalists anywhere.
It's so impressive.
We just got broiled on the Canadian press.
All multiple updates, underrated.
Yeah.
All right, I'm going to check it out.
I haven't been listening to the daily but i'm
gonna i'm gonna give give the bbc global news a shot we'll we'll see we'll see what this bb
whether there's anything to this bbc i've heard them before yeah right i discovered the the the
british broadcasting service yeah goes to europe once. Have you heard about the BBC?
Oh my God, I'm the worst
American ever.
BCC, I think.
No, no, no.
That's the email thing.
Oh my God.
What is it called?
What is it called?
BBC.
That was one of Pharrell's brands.
Let's take a quick break.
We'll be right back.
I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult.
And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church.
And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two
decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high control groups and interview
dancers, church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine.
Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new, chilling firsthand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives. Forgive Me For
I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these
types of abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio
app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente.
And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden.
We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.
When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions.
Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed?
Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your
work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do,
like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get
the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies.
Yeah, I think a lot about that quote.
What is it like you miss 100% of the shots you never take?
Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself.
Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep.
Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
In a galaxy
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No, babe, that's taken.
We're in our own world, remember?
Right. In our own world,
we're two space cadets and totally
normal humans. Sure, totally normal
humans. Embark on a journey across the stars
discovering the wonders of the universe
one episode at a time.
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, 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 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And don't worry, we promise to avoid any black holes.
Most of the time.
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This show is la plática like you've never heard it before.
We're breaking the stigma and silence around sex and sexuality in Latinx communities.
This 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.
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I had sort of had my first sexual experience. If you're in your señora era
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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
And we're back.
And we're starting to get some scores in.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress dropped their performance review of our educational system.
And it's the first one since the pandemic.
And the results are not great.
Nope.
Not great.
Nope.
Nope.
Nope.
Pretty, pretty, pretty big drops.
They said the survey of fourth and eighth graders found that math scores fell in nearly every state.
No state showed significant improvements in reading,
and the lowest performing students saw the largest declines in achievement.
And there's a lot of takes flying out there from,
it wasn't really that bad that these kids,
the scores dropped to,
we need the teachers unions to be absolutely obliterated
because they had way too much influence in doing this and they were wrong.
They're not scientists, BS, but it is clear the performance went down and many studies show this consistently.
And sadly, it also shows that the lower income areas were the hardest hit.
Again, which causes more concern for increased inequality down the road because these are like vital years for someone's education,
especially in like subjects like math and things like that. This is from this Atlantic article.
They also say districts with fully remote instruction saw declines in test scores up to three times greater than districts that had in-person instruction for the majority of the
school year. And the declines, again, were particularly stark for lower achieving and
minority students. Yeah. I mean, my experience with online school, my kids are much younger than fourth to eighth
grade, but it, you know, if I were working in a job where I was not able to like be there with
like, like have one eye on what they were doing, like that it would have been absolutely impossible.
And I think doubly so when, if they were at an age where they don't believe
everything i tell them like you know like once you get to fourth to eighth grade like they're like
yeah okay like they're doing what they think they need to to get away with lying or at least i'll
speak for myself from fourth to eighth grade i'm just doing what i think i can get oh yeah i was machiavelli
up in that yeah so like of course of course this is gonna be the case i mean you know i think around
the world you know we saw a lot of countries kept their schools open and were pointing to things
that like the studies were showing kids weren't necessarily the biggest threat vector in terms of
transmission and kids weren't getting as seriously ill as adults.
And, you know, many of the critics of the closures like point to this and like are like,
but look, every every other place saw like they knew that it was low and we still had to keep the schools closed.
But school closures were mostly welcomed by parents.
Like it wasn't a huge like like a lot of polling showed that this wasn't as divisive as an
issue as it as it was, although many parents were talking about like how difficult it would be to manage remote learning and working remotely during the pandemic 100%.
at a much higher rate, accepting of school closures and waiting for absolute safety before putting their kids in school. Because I think just in general, I think they were seeing firsthand
how much more like how brutal COVID can be while trying to earn a living in a dangerous setting. So,
you know, everyone's calculus is different. I think that the one the one thing that should
be pointed out, though, is that a lot of this isn't permanent. And Mississippi students have completely recovered in their reading scores.
And a study in Ohio found that the current pace of recovery in reading would pretty much eliminate the state's learning loss.
Younger elementary school kids tended to have made up ground much quicker in the last year, but older students are recovering a little more slowly.
are recovering a little more slowly.
And again, in, you know, race or family income are also very predictive of, you know,
what that recovery is going to look like.
Yeah, I mean, so we're in the midst of like a sprint
to bounce back from this, to get the students caught up,
like with all this missed learning and people's responses,
the teachers have it too good.
Like that's how we're going to solve this,
is by not giving teachers the protections they need.
It doesn't quite work out in my brain.
I also think we should all have to take these tests
because I bet we're all...
That's a good point.
I think my math scores have also fallen since the pandemic.
I think we're all spiritually and mentally fucked up still from the pandemic. I think it was bad for all of us. And yeah, we're like we probably need to have a little bit of, I don't know, patience with ourselves. And also, yeah, I mean, the thing that I always thought when we were talking about this over the pandemic was like, yeah, but kids are like way more resilient than the rest of us.
So they'll probably be OK in the long run.
But yeah, I do feel like the mental health thing is like the X factor.
You know, my friends who are teachers were like, I'm spending so much time, you know, like fourth to eighth grade.
You're like starting to have existential crises, you know, be like, who am I as like someone separate from my parents?
And my teacher friends were like, I'm spending so much of my time just like talking to kids about how they're doing and like regulating that because they also don't have each other and like their parents are busy.
And so, yeah, I hope once they can like.
Regain some sense of stability, it will allow for bounce back, but it's really sad.
Ability, it will allow for bounce back.
But it's really sad.
I mean, I think that, you know, again, it was a very complex situation, especially in the early stages when we knew very little. And the binary seemed to be stay alive or go to school.
And that was basically what that was sort of what the discussion was centered around.
And I mean, yeah, when you look at the data, it has to be said that school closures for those extended periods may not have been the best move,
especially when you consider that like that it was widening the gap between rich and poor kids.
But, you know, rather than just going all in and being like, and this is like, you know, this Daily Beast thing, this person's like, look, when the Republicans take power, it was like, wait, hold on.
What? They're like, and I'm not for sham investigations, but they absolutely need to talk to like they need to get the heads of the teachers unions up there to explain what the heck is going on like that is the that direction that energy is completely misdirected in my opinion but you know i think the biggest thing too is
rather than just comparing yourselves like well look what happened in these like in in western
europe or this place or this that place the u.s is not like other countries you know we're
exceptional in some good ways and also in some terrifying fucking ways. And you look at how many people died and how little government
seemed to care about the preciousness of like human life. That wouldn't inspire confidence
in me as a teacher or someone having to work in the pandemic when the message being reflected
back to me is you will die and that's fine. And if you die, who gives a shit? Like, that's a fucked up. That's a fucked
up environment to operate in. And again, union busting is not the answer here. But I think like
anything, right? In America, we don't have this thing where we go through something, we learn
something, and then we go back and be like, this is what we learned. And this is how it will inform
future decision making. Because we just we tend to not do that and i think that's
not a good pattern for our country because it just undermines people's faith in certain institutions
when we can't be like we'll hey dude hey guess what we learned something from that fucking
pandemic here's what we're learning here's what we can how we can apply these things
but yeah it's just hard to find the right way to navigate a fucking
pandemic when half the country thinks keeping people safe is a genocide right the also is it
settled science that this was the the wrong move to keep like schools closed and i think it's just
saying when you're when you're putting it all together, that the what the what the transmission was like in a school and what the actual like potential threat to the safety to the students was, was, I guess, for people who want to really lean into it feels overblown.
But again, I don't think it's necessarily something where I don't think it's it's incorrect to consider the safety of people and making the best decision based off of that.
I think the bigger issue is we had so much noise coming from certain parts of our economy about getting back to normal that it completely muddied people's ability to actually look at the situation and then figure out what the best way to solve that is.
Right. And if, you know, teachers were at risk so i mean yeah teachers were dying
that yeah teachers were dying and like what message like human like what kind of message
does that send to young growing humans that like we're like yeah but we got to keep those test
scores up so that you can compete in the global economy. Like, I don't know, like even in retrospect,
like knowing that the spread wasn't that bad with kids, it still was bad for like kids could spread
it to teachers. And right. We didn't know about transmission at all. Right. And like parents.
And yeah, totally. Yeah. That's why I think, you know, I again, it's just more about seeing
that when, again, other countries are doing it's just more about seeing that when again other
countries are doing it and i guess looking at those results that people are immediately just
like well fuck and the and the fucking scores went down but again i don't think a lot of the
criticisms are necessarily that genuine because like the underpinnings of it typically end up on
some version of like well you teachers unions have
too much power or like some other weird end goal which isn't necessarily the health and safety of
every person in the country it's more like look what it did to business look what it did to that
and then like it's where this one abed in the daily beast is truly being like well you know
good luck liberals you just gave all the people who are like school choice
advocates all the ammo they need right so like this i think this study is being weaponized in
some ways and other people are just sort of objectively being like yeah the score is dipped
they're tending to recover here are some this was the fallout of it but again i think more than like
what happened here with the school closures,
the biggest indictment is more about how generally as a country we fucking handled the pandemic and getting focused on this, I think give like sort of excuses every other failure.
And maybe you have to like have more protections in place when you don't have a functional health
care system, you know, like maybe like the people who are have a union looking out for them are going to be a little bit more cautious when they know that if they do get covid and have to go to the hospital, it could bankrupt them.
Yeah, like that.
What about that?
Right.
So maybe what about a good a good argument or even to the or even for the people
who are like well you know adults are the ones that are going to get sick well then why are the
fucking bars open right yeah those bounce back if you're if you're fucking that concerned
then up like be consistent with that yeah you know what i mean like rather than being like
it's just going to be adults also why isn't isn't Chili's open? Like, huh? That doesn't that doesn't paint you as like, again, it comes back to. Yeah, it comes back to the bias against anything that's not profitable and schools are not profitable in the short term. just to see people's response to this shows like as a country like we're completely losing our grip
on being humane yes you know like they're this woman was arrested in arizona recently because
she was feeding the needy in a park and the laws don't allow you to serve food in a charitable
nature like we're criminalizing shit like that and also having like these wild takes where they're
like the teachers unions have way too much power because teachers were dying and they were looking out for their the workers involved in this union. But just using like these scores to sort of completely say that this is a this is a failure. And if they want better wages, well, the unions really screwed them over because now they look like they don't know what they're doing.
Now they look like they don't know what they're doing.
Right.
It was a difficult situation.
You know, the teachers, like we got the results we got.
And it's just America is not great at dealing with difficult situations, it would seem, at this point in our evolution.
Also, any sort of like woulda, coulda, shoulda about COVID feels ridiculous to be like, we shouldn't have been wiping down surfaces.
That didn't do anything.
It's like, well, okay. We didn't know. And all those times they were like, don't wear a mask.
You know what I mean? We were throwing spaghetti at the wall. We had no idea. Like, yeah, there's a lot of things we should have done. A lot of things we should have done differently. I don't
know. It's funny in retrospect that I was disinfecting my Cheerios boxes when I got them home from the grocery store.
And but I'm I'm also like not calling for the heads of the of the people who suggested that it could be spread by, you know, particles on Cheerio boxes because we just didn't know.
And everyone was freaking out, understandably.
Right.
And it did kill a million people yes and again try operating in
good faith like and what's the best interest for your own health or your community's health
when you you have millions of people who would just be like why are you wearing a mask why are
you doing this let me get in your shit like we're that's what i'm saying like i think for people who
want to make a really easy comparison it's like well, well, they didn't do that in like South Korea or whatever. It's like we're not we're not dealing with the same shit.
Because we understand that as, you know, just a concept rather than our version, which is like a salute.
The people who are whose only financial recourse is to go buy groceries for people with more money. Right. All right. Let's let's move on to maybe the police are a bad fucking idea.
Part two recurring segment we have.
So a couple of weeks back, the Edmonton police released a composite of a suspect
in a 2019 sexual assault,
a black man who, or a black male, I will say,
who judging from the image,
presumably escaped on the Polar Express
because the image they released
makes him look 12 years old.
And uncanny, like it's not a first like it like you say
like polar express you're like are you a computer animated character it's a computer animated 12
year old what yes and so what they did was they used dna phenotyping which is the process of
predicting a physical appearance and ancestry from unidentified DNA evidence. This is not a set.
There is not a settled science around this. The cops bought the composite from a company called
Paraben Nano Labs, which sounds very official. They routinely provide this service to law
enforcement. And the Edmonton police claim this tactic was taken because the public needs to get this person off the streets, even though they admitted that the
composite was not 100 percent accurate. Turns out that's a massive understatement. Less than a week
later, the Edmonton police issued an apology over the use of DNA phenotyping after a massive
backlash for its broad characterization of just a black man, again, could be a black child,
which experts expressed concern would lead to mass surveillance of any black man approximately five foot four.
Oh, my God. DNA phenotyping sounds like phrenology or something.
That is like arcane. That is wild.
Especially the couple that would like like and this is who did
it whoa whoa face is so specific but it so it's like a police sketch but it's not it's based on
kind of less than a police sketch which racist sketches are already you know very very problematic
but one geneticist called the quote science of extracting facial profiles from
dna quote dangerous snake oil while one taxpayer complained the government is wasting money on
racist astrology for cops oh my god yes 100 we always hear that the problem with algorithms
is human bias and this is like the visual manifestation of like using science to dress up human bias that's so scary that's and yeah to be like oh it's heritage
and and history to manufacture it also gives dna evidence a bad name by being, and from this DNA, we will conjure this image of like a composite that a computer made.
But yeah, the company that provides the service, Paraben, also does DNA matching.
But this specific service is called Snapshot, was first released in 2014.
And a lot of people in the field of DNA research were skeptical of Snapshot and continue to be. For one thing, the company's science has yet to be published in any peer-reviewed literature. So that's one of those things that we generally look for in our science.
snapshot it sounds too like cute and ineffective you know it's like snapchat or like a snap judge it's like that's not right you weren't even trying snapshot yeah hey this will take off yeah
yeah it does feel focus grouped yes it feels like it came out of like mattel like mattel's like
focus grouping like for coming up with the name of a Snapshot Barbie is our new...
Or like a fucked up kid's toy.
It's like, put two drops of blood in the receptacle container, wait 15 minutes, and then it'll reveal your new image.
Like with Snapshot.
That's like the BuzzFeed personality test of the future.
Totally.
In like Gattaca world.
We'll just be dropping our blood.
Give us your blood and we'll figure it out.
Yeah.
See what Looney Tunes character we are by dropping our blood into a vial. Oh my God. I could totally see it. in like datica world we'll just give us your blood and we'll figure it out yeah see what cartoon what
looney tunes character we are by dropping our blood into a vial oh my god i could totally see
it don't even answer questions anymore a version of the future where like you know the 23 and me
goes down a path where you're like spit in a cup and then like they do all sorts of fun
like personality tests yeah exactly like that it like, have you tried a balayage?
Does not like hair dye job like that would really look good for you.
Like what?
Given your ancestry.
Right.
Yeah.
I don't have a hair.
You're looking at me.
You're telling me I should get balayage?
What the fuck you mean?
Right.
But there's basically no way to know how they're accomplishing what they say they are.
Their response to the criticism is we're not in the business to write papers.
The results speak for themselves.
The results are fucked up, my man.
And they're bad.
A geneticist whose work Parabin admits they partly based their technique on
suspects that Parabin is just generating a bunch of generic faces
and then using the DNA info to tweak these faces
and fill in the blanks.
It's Theranos.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, it really is very similar to Theranos.
Wasn't that kind of what they did?
Yeah.
Wait, now it's kind of delicious.
I'm like, this is like the takedown is making itself.
Right, right?
Yeah, so that would explain why the composite
looks so broad and just yeah or just be like what the like it land that you say that it really does
feel like a create a player function in a sports game when it's like here are the 17 like eight
faces you can then fuck if you can fuck with from there right because this one is like how like it's a like this
fucking mugshot looks like a fucking 13 year old 12 year old well that's so this is what's wild
okay so from the dna testing that they're doing they can't even determine a person's age using
dna so they chose the age of you know right. And like, that's a point that we discussed recently, like with regards to the L.A. City Council's like racist comments. It's interesting that they chose to spread a picture of a black child when they couldn't possibly know the age like the othering and targeting of black children is like real and it's a cultural sickness
that i feel like comes from the dissonance that occurs in the brain of a person whose
cultural conditioning tells them to be racist against black people but whose humanity tells
them that these are fucking children and to like to help smooth over that dissonance dissonance they like grasp for
anything they can to like find something that others black children like right the science of
it right yeah like and yeah i don't know the in terms of skin color one expert estimated the
scientists would only be able to predict someone's skin color using DNA with 25% accuracy.
Wow, they went all in on his complexion, too.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But this is in Canada, right?
Yeah, this is in Canada.
But this is also, so the cops in Edmonton apologized for using the tech.
It doesn't mean they'll necessarily stop.
Thompson Edmonton apologized for using the tech.
It doesn't mean they'll necessarily stop.
And in 2020, the NYPD announced that they'd no longer use Snapshot in their investigations.
But then more than a year later, it turned out that they had maintained a relationship with the company.
I knew I was like, I had a sinking feeling.
I was like, cool, this is going to work. Cool, cool, cool.
Where's the NYPD and all this?
Cool, cool, cool.
Some American police unit is going to be like,
all right, we got this new technology.
Seems pretty legit.
I'll play this.
This was from five years ago.
This is from a local news broadcast in Denver
when they're heralding the arrival of DNA phenotyping.
You attend putting a face on crime.
What if you could see what a suspect looks like
just from the DNA left behind? So it sounds like sci-fi, but Aurora police are some of the first
in the country to use this cutting-edge technology to try to catch the bad guys. But Denver 7's
Jacqueline Allen found some question whether the science is ready. Private companies say they can
use your DNA to make predictions about what you look like, your skin color, eye color, painting a
digital picture of your face.
But some researchers are concerned about how accurate that is.
So we tried it ourselves.
So they go on.
But again, like the binary here is like new technology to catch the bad guy.
Bad guy.
Exactly.
But then they got to level that off.
And some people who actually know what the fuck they're talking about are like not so
fucking quick right yeah it just shows again like it's this always there's going there's always like
the side that's like yes spend more money so i have to do less work to actually catch somebody
like hey buddy your face looks like this racist fucking ai algorithm face so it was you right um or that then i'll actually
have to use dna to match that but and then on the other side of just people trying to say this is
fucking dangerous it's pseudoscience yeah i mean just think about who has like these companies
are like when you read the history of these companies they get like hundreds of millions
of dollars of cash infusions from you know venture capital firms and who where is the
money on the other side of that you know who's balancing that out by looking out for
people who are getting wrongly convicted it's like public defenders and shit, you know, like people who are, you know, not not making any money. And then, you know, also, it would be interesting to look at the sourcing of that local news story because they got to try the DNA evidence like company that they were reporting on.
So also just the political ramifications of like circulating pictures of people nebula.
Like, yeah, I was just thinking I like met someone recently who was like, oh, yeah, I really hope Donald Trump runs again.
I don't really agree with him on anything but like crime. We have to close the border. You know, he's like these
illegals. They're like causing he's like, what did he say? He was like, my wife got mugged the
other day. I was like, how do you know it was an illegal immigrant? And he was like, you don't.
And this guy was an immigrant. You know, he was like, you don't know it wasn't an illegal
immigrant. You know, it just plays into like this larger political paranoia that we're so so it's like for some people it's
their number one voting issue above everything else is like am i safe is my family safe against
like these other these other people so that's so to imagine just like more imagery more faces
right more more images put up on tv of like, this is maybe probably a danger.
People with this like ethnic background.
Like that's terrifying.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, people are definitely going through mean world syndrome of just having that just put right back in their face. about the proliferation of like ring cameras and home surveillance and all this other stuff and
like fucking next door app and shit like that just feeds and feeds and feeds your like if you have
if your your cognitive bias is bias is aimed towards what the fuck's going on out there
everything's so fucking unsafe there's no shortage of ways to fucking freak yourself out there's no
fucking like you could turn on any fucking channel, look at any app, whatever.
There's something to reinforce that.
And yeah, it's it's becoming a really effective tool.
And it's the entire it's one of the biggest things Republicans are running on now.
It's like crime wave.
That's not there.
Yeah.
There's money in the fear.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Let's take a quick break.
We'll come back.
We'll talk about menswear.
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podcast and we're back and yeah i just i I just checked out your podcast, Articles of Interest, Avery.
Thanks.
And the menswear, the suits episode, which kind of dove into menswear, was super fascinating.
It got at this idea that I've always been aware of, but I hadn't really heard people kind of put words to it.
But this idea that I guess it's called sprezzatura
see i'm a man so i have to like say it like i don't even give a shit about it oh but you love
yelling things in other languages that's true that's true that's kind of my thing but so you
you actually get at this while talking to this like i guess self self-described menswear like nerd in in this store
that is like menswear like the highest level of menswear dandiest menswear store in modern
america and it calls itself the armory which i thought was it still has to like slather itself
in like violence and like traditional masculinity but like it is where you get your weapons and by
that we mean kerchiefs and yeah exactly arm up boys yeah it's a pocket square not a kerchief
but hearing you talk about it made me realize that like since yeah i guess it's since as you
outline like since the like courts where royals and like high society women and men were all dressed in jewels and lace and wigs. Since that time, and you talk about the one person who kind of created this advent, but the one central thing in men's fashion is that men need to look great while appearing not to care.
Yes.
Appearing not to try, which I thought was such an interesting insight.
like appearing not to try,
which I thought was such an interesting insight.
Men have to appear like they don't care about fashion and like they are up to way more important things.
And this is so true.
You know, it's interesting.
Like this was also especially true.
This wasn't in the episode,
but it's actually in this season of Articles of Interest,
which is all about preppy clothes.
Right.
And that starts with the history of Brooks Brothers, which was one of the earliest ready to wear manufacturers.
It was one of the first places you could go and not have to get fitted for a tailor to make you a custom suit.
You could go and just buy something off the rack like Brooks Brothers is one of the first places to do that. And that was huge in America
in like the early days of the American democratic experiment, because it was this like democratic
way of dressing, like poorer people who thought they'd never own a suit or who only wore second
hand things could now like buy a ready to wear suit at a much lower price point. And something that was so interesting about that
is like it created this idea that because you could just buy clothes off the rack, men, there
were no ready-made clothes for women. There were like only ready-made clothes for men. You don't
get ready-made clothes for women until like the 19th century. And so it created or until the late
19th century. And so it created this idea that like, oh, men don't have to care because there are these companies that will care for them.
Meanwhile, women had to like keep up and sew their own clothes and keep up with fashion journals themselves.
And it was this whole thing was like, well, men have to care about politics and economics and women largely weren't allowed to. And so, you know, created this idea that it's like foolish or silly to care about
what you wear when it's something that we obviously all have to do. So there's this culture in menswear
where even if you do buy a really expensive, whatever, sport coat, whatever dandy thing you
like, you're supposed to leave it like unbuttoned or like a little ruffled or like the collar a
little bedraggled. You don't want to look look too too buttoned up or like you care too much
yeah this reminded me of the harry styles conversation because that like that seems to
be the person who is the most you know fashion forward yeah you know i icon in in the modern world and for a long time he stuck to this
like he would wear these very like attention-grabbing like just openly beautiful
articles of clothing but it like he wore it in a way that it seemed like they were just like
thrown at him and whatever happened to stick was like part of the outfit was just like they're well draped and and that still like tends to be tends to be the case
with timothy chalamet will go like his thing will be like shirtless under a beautiful suit jacket or
you know but then then i think i think you know when styles wore that like silk shirt and jewelry to the met gala and he like he
actually looked like he had bathed that day yeah right like his hair was combed his jewelry was in
place he looked like he had yeah taken a shower like he had done his nails and like that really
because i had not fully i've been like well he's worn stuff like that before, right? But it was that he wasn't putting the sprezzatura into it. It was like kind of openly, you know, a presentation of like beauty out and out.
Totally.
Seemed like it, you know, it really made an impact. Everybody like kind of lost their mind over it, even though it was, though it was not that different from some of the stuff he's worn before.
And I mean, there's a really interesting conversation to be had there also about whiteness and who gets to look disheveled and like they don't care.
And it's really interesting.
Interesting. I really realized this in this season about preppy clothes, where in the early days of preppy in the 1920s, 1930s on the campus of Princeton, these guys have extreme sprezzatura. They have holes. That's why they have the patches on their elbows because their sweaters are pilling. Their khakis have rough edges. They look kind of gross in some ways like a la early chalamet but then when you get to sort of the evolution of like you know by the 90s
when you have the low heads and the origins of street style and like hip-hop infused tommy
hill figure that's all about looking like fresh and looking clean but it's
arguably a lot of the same clothes just worn in like really different styles and a lot of it has
to do with like the culture around who is wearing it if there is a culture where like sprezzatura
is considered you know cool or not right yeah and i think this also ties into sneaker culture yes like that's the one place where
men are allowed to like focus their inner aesthetic like i think in at least in some culture i was
actually at a child's birthday party yeah i was invited i didn't just like show up walking my dog
judging all the fashion babies just judging everyone all the children's outfits yes it was on the the west side of los angeles which is a totally different
world than kind of further further east and like i had jordan's on and every other dad had like
the same they all looked very preppy it was like and i couldn't tell if it was like this this style of clothing had really
like come back in a in a strong way just on the west side of la or if i that was just but yeah
they all had like kind of loafers or you know canvas like bringing that east coast shit yeah
it was funny because i was just in dc and i was in georgetown and i i was like i was looking
at that prep style it dead in its fucking eye and i was like every dude is wearing a fucking
patterned shirt with a fleece vest over it like i'm not lying like there's like a crew of five
dudes everybody had flannel shirt fleece vest khakis some kind of like boat adjacent shoe and
i was like this is it was like freaking me out.
I was like, is this a bit?
But it just felt like uniform.
I mean, the question is, Miles, do you think that's like a resurgence?
Do you think that's like a new thing?
Or do you think it's something that's never gone away?
I don't, I think it's like, because to me, it looks like how my parents would dress kids
in like the late 80s you know they're like
you should look like a little yuppie you know like and that's swag and then i think then like
in the 90s we all got grungy and shit and had our like you know punk or emo or hip-hop phase or
whatever and then i think i don't know if for whatever reason i think now it's like i think
just people are really back to just being able to signal their wealth or socioeconomic status to what they wear even if it's not really
like their style it's like well when i wear this people know i'm probably an ivy type dude or you
know like i have a good job because i'm i'm wearing the uniform of a person that does that
totally yeah you you get to talk to like there's i
forget the name of the company but there's like a company that all of the fashion houses and all of
the like clothing manufacturers consult to be like okay here's what we're doing two years from now
and it it raises like a really interesting chicken and the egg thing but yeah there are these like
trend forecasting companies i feel like after
the pandemic there's been so much conversation around like what's a trend what's in trend right
now you guys it's like barbie core it's clown core it's norm core like all these cores you know
they're all these trends right now and i feel like it's just because we're sort of re-acclimating and
trying to like understand each other again right and. And yeah, so it got me thinking about this company
called WGSN that most,
like most major fashion houses consults
to be like, what is going to be,
what is going to be in?
And so I talked to them about trends
and how there are so many trends now.
And my personal theory for why preppy,
and no one uses that word.
Even when I talked to the CEO of Brooks Brothers, he was like, we don't use that word even when i talked to the ceo of brooks
brothers he was like we don't use that word and then you look at their website and it's like
tennis sweaters worn over you know it's like the same clothes but now we call them classics or we
call them basic or you know you go to uniclo and it's like preppy clothes those are just classics
and i think why they're having a moment now you know it's arguable whether they're
like having a moment or they never went away but it's because they're like a way out from trends
people who are like you know what i can't keep up with all these trends i'm just gonna dress like
in a classic a classic way that i don't have to think about that's that's like right like oh so
we're back to being like i don't have the men men. I don't have the band. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. It's a new version of that.
Right. Now, fuck it. I will wear my fucking pattern flannel with my fleece vest.
And look, no shade if you dress like that. I don't give a shit.
I think there's a way to do it well. Yeah.
Yeah. But yeah, I think when I look at it, too, I don't get as overwhelmed.
Like I because I used to be super up on streetwear from college on.
And then, like, I started, like, having to be in up on street wear from college on. And then like, I started like having to be in
the real world and I'm like, Oh, wait, okay. I don't have money to wear all wear this shit all
the time. But I think it just more forced me into a place of like, well, my, what is my own style?
And I'm just being like, I'm still, I'm still 15 years old in the San Fernando Valley. So I will
wear basketball shorts, sweatpants, t-shirts, hoodies, and just the, that's, that's kind of what, that's kind of my zone.
Like I don't, and it's not that I don't, I'm necessarily saying like, I don't have the time
to fucking figure that shit out. I'm like, that's just kind of where I landed in terms of what my
personal style is. No, it means you thought it, that's like a incredible thing. It just means,
you know, who you are and you know what you like. And I think a lot of people haven't
done that work.
Right. If you're...
Yeah. If you just want to dress in a generally
manageable, acceptable, culturally
acceptable way that literally
opens doors for you.
Preppy clothes are like a tool.
100%. Yeah. It's like code
switching of clothing. I'm wearing
the uniform. And it's open to anyone. It's like the keys to the kingdom and you can just have them. It's the code switching of clothing. Yeah. Exactly. I'm wearing the uniform. And like, it's open to anyone.
It's like the keys to the kingdom.
And like, you can just have them.
It's kind of amazing.
It is kind of like, yeah.
Because it's sort of like what a MAGA hat does.
Like, if you're at a rally, like, you're like, guess what?
Just because I wore this hat and they had no idea.
Yeah.
It doesn't mean anything.
Because I had the fucking hat on.
Right.
They did not really analyze more than like, got the hat.
All right.
Good with me.
Exactly.
I remember once i yeah i
like did coverage at a trump rally and i was like fuck it bro i'm a person i'm gonna wear a red hat
and everybody was like hey what's up fella like wait it didn't even say anything on it no it was
a red hat because that was just my thing of being like so smart this is i think just the way i'd be
able to navigate these people yeah uh somebody who's navigated white culture pretty frequently
i'm like this might work and it did and I think like you're saying, especially for people who are
in situations where you're going to be just a snap judgment is going to be made on your appearance.
You show up in the clothing of whatever their world is. And without thinking like, well,
all the markers are there of person who is if the same socioeconomic bracket or culture.
One hundred percent. And I have to say, like, when I did this research,
I've been working on this for months now.
I really thought I would be going to Kennebunkport
to, like, interview people named Muffy periodically.
I was about to use that word.
Thank you.
Muffy.
Muffy?
Yeah.
Muffy.
I actually interviewed someone who was like,
yeah, I dated a girl named Pussy.
Like, preppy names are the best.
Wow.
But really, I ended up interviewing almost like mostly New Yorkers, mostly Black and Jewish New Yorkers.
And the story is like Black and Jewish and very Japanese.
It is only a small percentage of it that is actually like waspy.
It is a really fascinating story of how like so many different
groups have taken on different versions of this look and actually made it their own and and now
i love it like knowing the whole history i'm like this is the coolest sort of all-american story
there in in the first episode of the new season you talk about this book that was sort of a like sociological study of ivy league culture in
the mid-century that was done wasn't it like a japanese author had like come through to like
take photographs and because it was just it's not the sort of thing that you would do if you
were living in the moment but because it was this like sociological thing it like really
captured all the weird little sort of shrugged off gestures and styles and and kind of made it
very influential right yeah yeah yeah it was like no one would think at the time that the book was
written to be like isn't it so amazing they're wearing loafers without socks but you know these
this this japanese author was, this is so interesting.
Like, look at what's going on here.
And so this book called Take Ivy, which in later episodes will be revealed, is like a pun.
It's a wordplay on the Dave Brubeck song Take Five became like the Bible for this look.
Wow. like the bible for this look well that then had a huge moment in the early aughts and like j crew
jenna lyons era like i saw it take ivy for sale at a j crew around that time there was like this
huge preppy revival you know like right andre 3000 you know backpack rap vampire
weekend
gossip girl
there was this like
preppy moment
that I think
our time
now
is referencing
because like
recent nostalgia
is also in
yep totally
and it's time
it's a 20 year cycle
but take Ivy
was a huge part of it
this like
relic from 1965
still
and you look at it
I'm like
like when I look at the
images i'm like is this a j crew or like early abercrombie look book right exactly exactly or
amelie on door like it looks so i mean it looks one must admit it looks good like they look good
yeah yeah i mean like it's it's a vibe it's a vibe it's a particular look yeah right but don't but pay attention to your
sneakers people like you can still you can still dress preppy and not wear the not wear the kill
shots like they're jay crew sells like two types of sneakers this is the nike kill shot and the
stan smiths and like those were the only sneakers that i saw at that birthday party that's well now people now people rock the
alexander mcqueen version of the stan smiths that had like the thicker one they're like these are
actually 600 versions of a simple shoe i'm like they still look they look identical the sole is
just thicker fine good for you you have spent more money but that is not style and that's another
interesting part too about fashion is so many people now just equate the fucking price with some level of like aesthetic viability or uniqueness
when it's like this shit is so it's a fucking illusion and you just have just have chunky
looking Stan Smith's on have you covered rep culture at all like people who are doing like
replicas of like expensive sneakers, getting them from the factories,
people working at the factories?
Well, I haven't done it with sneakers,
but I did do a whole episode where I interviewed
the icon himself, Dapper Dan.
And Dapper Dan most famously stole,
yeah, basically stole the Gucci logo
and the Louis Vuitton logo like the 80s and 90s and
would just print really high quality like amazing leather outfit like he was the first one to make
jumpsuits like leather gucci printed jumpsuits like they weren't doing that like that the whole
reason you see people wearing like designer jumpsuits is because they were incredible, high-quality knockoffs.
And then the whole saga is like,
Gucci started copying Dapper Dan.
So it's like, who's ripping off who?
And now it's kind of a happy story
because now Gucci kind of bought Dapper Dan
and he works within them.
So it's sort of a happy ending.
But Dapper Dan said this beautiful thing to me
that I think about all the time.
He said, these symbols don't just represent brands.
Like the interlocking Gs represent like prosperity
and wellness and like health in a weird way
to like have these symbols.
They're almost like the ancient scarab or the ankh you
know they're like powerful symbols that everyone should have access to and honestly like i have a
i have a pen pal who's incarcerated and the very first letter he sent me has like gucci logos all
around the letter and it's like that that's the power of this stuff. It's not it's like not even about the brand anymore. It's just like a symbol that means so much more. And it has nothing to do with like the quality of the leather or anything. So I'm like, ever since then, I'm like all about knockoffs. I think they're they're fantastic, albeit like tricky terrain for designers to navigate. But so much innovation comes from it. It's really interesting.
Yeah.
And it just also,
I think it forces a conversation about like what make,
like what's the important part?
Is it the visual aesthetic?
Is it the design of something?
Or is it if I put it under a fucking
like microscope,
is the stitching right?
Because that's how a real thing is made.
And it's like, well, am I doing it?
Are you dressing because
you like the way it looks? Are you dressed because it's purely like a symbol of your wealth or a signal of that and
it's it's always funny especially in sneaker culture you hear people like i would never wear
fucking fake jordans or whatever and again it shows how some people have just ascribed like
well that the real thing has value and that's the thing I'm going for. And if I don't want the cheap thing, because that means you're you don't have what it takes to earn like the real thing. But the pursuit of that is fucking dumb, too. Like, who gives a shit if you can afford the real thing? Like, that's dumb as fuck. There's nothing objectively cool about that. It's just a way to differentiate. And I think it kind of blows the pursuit of like these high-end items and what they actually really mean and i love how frustrated people get
especially when like celebrity is like like chad johnson he's like i don't i don't buy real shit
at all ever he's like why would i waste my money yeah yeah the rep sneakers subreddit is like one
large exploration of like you know materialism in the philosophical sense and like the ship of
theseus thought experiment it's so it's so interesting all right avery we could we could
talk to you for hours about this stuff we'll have to be back on yeah but where can people find you
follow you hear you all that good stuff well check out articles of interest wherever you get your podcasts it's called articles of interest and i'm on twitter my last name is truffleman
and that's my handle t-r-u-f-e-l-m-a-n those are the places i i live but thank you so much this
was so fascinating i'm like i have so many more thoughts on sneaker culture yeah but yeah thank
you and is there a tweet or some other work of social media you've been
enjoying um i've been really enjoying the meme about like the spirit halloween costumes that
everyone is sharing of just like what is it what is the meme like the only costume
uh and there was one recently with like i don't know the this episode of spongebob squarepants
where he makes doodle bob. Do you know this episode?
Yeah.
That's my favorite,
where it's like an image of Doodle Bob.
It's like the only Halloween costume.
I love that meme.
That's amazing.
Miles, where can people find you?
What's a tweet you've been enjoying?
Find me on Twitter and Instagram
at Miles of Grey.
Check Jack and I out
on our basketball podcast,
official NBA basketball podcast official nba basketball
podcast somehow they let us keep saying our dumb ideas out loud and it's an nba product it's called
miles and jack got mad boosties uh it's a fantastic show uh check in this week uh just
always fantastic guests new episode just dropped today uh and also i, I'm always with Sophia Alexandra talking 90 day fiance over at 420 day fiance. Now, let's see some tweets that I like. First one, past guest Paula Vegan Allen at Paula Vegan Allen tweeted, Dear Kanye, if I was your mother. fucking shit got me and then another one from uh at soma kazima uh tweeting nah they clapping back
now and uh posted a video of these girls on tiktok doing like pov influencers trying indian food for
the first time and it's just so it's just so good because everyone's like oh my god the tweet said
nah they clapping back now and this is so good because if you've ever seen these videos of like white people trying Indian food for the first time,
it has the exact same vibe of it being so exoticized.
Like, oh, what's this?
And I'm just going to play the first couple seconds because it's genius.
Hi, guys.
They're big ass snails.
We just came back from the shops and we got Indian food.
Actually, this is Pakistani food, but I heard they were similar.
Pakistan?
Yeah, Pakistan?
We didn't know what to get, but we got chicken tikka masala
because the manager said it was good.
Also, he said
a tip is to eat it with yogurt
and then we have some garlic naan.
It's a bit dry.
It's a bit dry. I just love their fucking paper, like, big-ass fingernails.
Incredible.
These girls are killing it.
So, yeah, shout-out to that TikTok girl.
Amazing.
That's great.
Some tweets I've been enjoying.
Logan Dean, GhostboyDetective, tweeted,
Big Pharma should periodically release quaaludes for a limited time,
like narcotics, McRibs. oh my god somebody tweeted oh uh cool boobs tweeted m at cool
boobs tweeted was just reminded of the staples logo reveal and i guess this is a historical
document but it's like you just kind of have to watch it.
But they take the L that has like the little bent down staple.
And then it like slowly like everything else disappears.
They zoom in on that L.
And then the L slowly like gets an erection.
So that it looks like a staple.
I remember this.
And then there's like a giant explosion.
It's very strange. I highly recommend
you go check it out. Also, the Staples
logo was cool. I don't know why they messed with
it. It was good. It was obviously a staple.
It was cute. And then
somebody tweeted a picture.
I think a Photoshop. It's Spirit
Halloween costume. Conservative
guy scared of cities.
And it's just a conservative looking dude
with like a helicopter on his t-shirt that says like hold the line and a flag on his shirt and it says
saw that thing on the news too many of those people there can't park ford super duty not scared bro
this is just a good uh well done 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, 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 a song that we think you might enjoy, Miles.
What song do we think people might enjoy?
Man, time for some experimental hip-hop from england this is just a group i don't know they're
called baby father but if you know dean blunt this is a project dean blunt is working on and
this track is called penelope freestyle the beat is just like the second i started playing it i was
like oh this instrumental is interesting and i always always like any experimental hip-hop, so check this one out.
Fantastic track, Penelope Freestyle
by Babyfather.
Alright, we will link off to that in the footnotes.
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listen to your favorite shows. That is going to do it for
us this morning, back this afternoon to
tell you what is trending, and we will talk to you all
then. Bye. Bye.
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Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.
I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports.
Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry.
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People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game.
Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball.
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