The Daily Zeitgeist - This (Jeff) Session’s Over, Chasing The Perfect Wave 11.8.18

Episode Date: November 8, 2018

In episode 270, Jack and Miles are joined by writer Jason Pargin to discuss Jeff Session's resignation, Rod Rosenstein leaving the Mueller probe, Trump's post-election press conference, voter demograp...hics in the context of higher education, a Breaking Bad movie, most Googled Thanksgiving foods, and more! FOOTNOTES: 1. ContraPoints2. Jeff Sessions Forced Out As Attorney General After Constant Criticism From Trump3. Trump's chaotic post-midterms press conference – video highlights4. Occupations and Their Ideologies5. I CAN TOLERATE ANYTHING EXCEPT THE OUTGROUP6. America Is Divided by Education7. Exit Polls8. Party Identification Trends, 1992-20179. The Political Divide Over Higher Education in America10. Claritas Prizm11. How unpopular is Donald Trump?12. Bryan Cranston Confirms The ‘Breaking Bad’ Movie Is Happening, And He Would ‘Absolutely’ Star In It13. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt going to trial in custody case14. What’s the most-Googled Thanksgiving recipe in your state?15. WATCH: Scientist - Taxi to baltimore Dub - 1980 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 Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.
Starting point is 00:01:03 Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the podcast from Hello Sunshine that's guaranteed to light up your day. Check out our recent episode with dancer, actress, and host of Dancing with the Stars, Julianne Hough, revealing the healing journey behind her new novel,
Starting point is 00:01:21 Everything We Never Knew. I am showing up for my younger self, and it is becoming a ripple effect energetically in my life, and that's why I feel so safe now. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports.
Starting point is 00:01:42 Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:02:04 Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Hello, the internet, and welcome to Season 56, Episode 4 of The Daily Zeitgeist, the podcast where we take a dive into America's shared consciousness. It's Thursday, November 8th, 2018. My name's Jack O'Brien, a.k.a. I hear the Zeitgeist podcast. It's second rate at best. And my name's Jack O'Brien with Miles and a guest. A little fulsome prison. And I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray.
Starting point is 00:02:39 I saw Miles Gray at the reception. A glass of wine in his hand. I knew he would make his connection. At his feet was a at Jack O'Brien. I had to add all those syllables, but thank you to Robert Coffey at Roberto Coffey. For that Rolling Stones, A. And mine was courtesy of Becca Yar at Roberto Coiffe. For that Rolling Stones, eh? And mine was courtesy of Becca Yar at Bay of Becca. We are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by an old friend of mine from back in the crack days. He's a best-selling author.
Starting point is 00:03:19 He is the executive editor. You still the executive editor over there at crack? I think so. He writes on that site as David Wong. He is Mr. Jason Pargin. Hello. What's up, man? To all of the daily zeitgeist heads out there.
Starting point is 00:03:38 What do you call your fans? Zeitgang. Zeitgang? They're gang. The zeit? The zeitgang. No, I don't like that. Let's try geistomaniacs.
Starting point is 00:03:46 Is that alright? Yeah, there we go. That's good. That's what it is from now on. Alright, Geistomaniacs. Hey. How you been, man? Fill me in on the last two years.
Starting point is 00:03:56 Go. It's all a blur. All I know is that it has lasted about 40 years, I think. The effect of time compression, because let's be honest, Trump has never not been president. Right. As far as I remember. The idea that this is the same country that elected a black man with the middle name Hussein just six years ago. Yes. That happened.
Starting point is 00:04:22 It's very weird. That feels like a whole different era. Lifetime. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Jason, we're going to get to know you a little bit better in a moment, but first we're going to tell our listeners what we're talking about. We're going to talk about, speaking of just packing a whole lot into a short period of time, the midterms are already old news because Sessions is out.
Starting point is 00:04:47 Rosenstein is off the Mueller probe. And Trump did just a, I don't know, like a two hour long touchdown dance in front of a puzzled media. We're going to talk about just midterm stuff. We're going to circle back if we can remember what happened during the midterm. And then we'll talk about Breaking Bad the movie, why every tabloid editor just came really hard, and the most Googled Thanksgiving recipes by state.
Starting point is 00:05:18 But first, Jason, we'd like to ask our guest, what is something from your search history that is revealing about who you are? The phrase, what is Post Malone? That is revealing about who you are. Because somebody on Slack asked if I had seen the scathing write-up of Post Malone in the Washington Post, and I was not sure what the relation was between the Washington Post and Post Malone and got confused. So it turns out it's a musician.
Starting point is 00:05:49 Yes. But this follows the pattern with me where the very, very first thing I read about a phenomenon is an article saying, stop paying attention to it. This is over. You can stop. Did you guys see the Washington Post? No. It was a scathing thing saying basically that Post Malone was everything wrong with music and also everything wrong with America.
Starting point is 00:06:11 Oh, wow. Because I guess he's something of a conservative or something. But anyway, yeah, it was like saying, all right, we need to stop giving this guy attention. And so I was like, all right. Yeah. Done. When he said like something about how he's not he doesn't do r&b or black music or something i was like oh okay culture vulture like go ahead
Starting point is 00:06:33 with your bad self interesting he has a lot of facial tattoos jason uh that's well see that's the thing when i googled like pictures of him it looked like a fake person the internet had made to play a prank on me for being out of touch. It's like, oh, it's this white guy with facial tattoos and he does trap music. I don't know how you would describe his genre. Acoustic trap music? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:06:58 Country trap. It's a weird sort of mixture. It's R&B, rapping, country. But ironically, he actually can sing when he's not doing his other thing. He can play guitar and sing a little bit. I thought he was completely talentless at first when White Iverson came out, his first hit. And then it turned out he— You mean my favorite song of all time?
Starting point is 00:07:17 Yeah. I'm swagging. The song that I make you play every time I enter a room? Iverson. So if I go and look on YouTube for his videos, I'm going to find at least one that has like a billion views on it, right? Oh, yeah. Literally a billion with a B. Like I'm going to find out this is the most popular musician of the decade.
Starting point is 00:07:34 At one point, he was like one of the most streamed artists for one month when he had like a couple songs out at once and people were going wild for, was it Congratulations? Yeah. Of course he was. What kind of music do you like, Jason? It's not, I don't know. I don't listen to much music because I'm never in the car because I work from home. And then when I have, I'm listening to audio, I'm listening to podcasts because they come out much, much more quickly than what. But I'm a strange person because I can't... I have trouble thinking when music is playing
Starting point is 00:08:06 so because I have multiple jobs, it's like the luxury of just being able to zone out and play music. I don't get to do it very often. Alright. But when you do, what are you blasting out your speakers? Uh, I... Let's see. On my phone,
Starting point is 00:08:22 the last thing I played was Run the Jewels 3. Oh, okay. and you just have the whole album on there but that's i think probably jack recommended that to me or i don't know got it okay there you go uh what is something that is overrated i apologize in advance if I'm out of line here, but I'm going to say Twitter as a platform for discussing important issues doesn't work. No, it's okay. We can bleep that. Let's do another take. What's another take? You are not out of line. I kind of sense that history books are actually going to talk about Twitter a lot when it looks back on this era.
Starting point is 00:09:07 Because I think that that platform, obviously not by design, they just thought, well, you know, you limit the length of the messages. That'll be good for people with phones who don't like to type a lot with their thumbs. But it's like, no, actually, it was the perfect machine for encouraging really bad takes and like the most like it encourages you to be like be dismissive and to oversimplify yeah and the fact that trump like took to it like a fish to water like that's just it's amazing how i don't know it was like the perfect platform for the era it's the perfect platform for spreading like false outrage like something where everyone's mad about something that didn't even occur it's almost i think there will be much written in the future about how the medium of these platforms altered
Starting point is 00:09:57 the tone of these platforms like just that character limit does so much. Yeah. This is one of my special greatest hits, things that I bring up on this podcast a lot. But the guy who invented the loudspeaker blamed himself for the rise of Nazis. But I feel like if he existed today, he'd be like, loudspeakers are changing the world. Right, right. This is why you need to get with loudspeakers and our angel investors uh yeah but they all say up front that they want to change the world in like a vague sort of do-goody feel-goody way but then when they actually change the world they seem entirely unprepared as companies and as people to take uh responsibility for that because they just look at like the immediate thing it can do where it's like communication,
Starting point is 00:10:47 connecting people. And then they don't see the fallout of that, which is like, oh, you're organizing like radical hate ideology and things like that. I'm sure the same thing with people who got down with fire the first time. They're like, oh, this is warm. I like this. And like, oh, shit, we burned the whole fucking village down. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:11:03 And what is something you think is underrated youtube as a place to discuss important issues now this i was not expecting well yeah because youtube has a bad reputation both because the comments on youtube tend to be just an utter sewer also because there's so much publicity about like all of the Nazis on YouTube. Yeah. But the thing that I think the world, like Jack, you vividly remember meetings we had at Cracked where people were telling us, if a video is more than three minutes long, nobody's going to watch. Yeah, I do remember that. And now you go on YouTube and the big thing is these long form reviews, two hours long,
Starting point is 00:11:44 two and a half hours long, digging into some subject. So where, you know, whereas I think that like Twitter encourages like the worst possible way. If you know where to look on YouTube, you can find like fantastic videos doing deep dives into stuff that I don't think would have been possible anywhere. Like a stuff that never would have made it on TV. But, I mean, we can list channels that I like in the footnotes. There's one called ContraPoints. ContraPoints? Yeah, it's a trans woman who has a philosophy degree, and she digs into all sorts of stuff
Starting point is 00:12:19 like Jordan Peterson and incels and, like, where these things come from and the mindset. And it's done from a very, like like a sympathetic, thoughtful point of view. And she's a genius, but it's also hilarious. But and we could or Cody Johnston has now taken his show independent, though he was doing Uncracked. Yeah. But there's a lot of that. You know, these are long form shows. They'll be 45 minutes or an hour, and they will dig into a subject.
Starting point is 00:12:45 They will link their sources in the description. They will go point by point and break down a subject. They will take the stuff that the Nazis put out there, and they will break it down point by point. It's the exact opposite of Twitter. Again, if you know where to look. There's plenty of garbage. Again, if you know where to look. There's plenty of garbage.
Starting point is 00:13:10 But the point is, on Twitter, there's like no such thing as good in-depth political content because it's kind of not possible. On YouTube, if you know where to look, it's more thoughtful than probably any other platform. Yeah. It's almost like it's a new genre of film or video that exists on YouTube, the sort of explainer video. And I've seen it used to brilliant effect. I've also seen it used to make people not believe that 9-11 happened. Yeah, or I mean it's a very easy way to get radicalized too, I think, on either end. But I think, you know, to the genre thing, the people who really made YouTube what it was
Starting point is 00:13:41 were people who just didn't, who weren't using the same sort of like rules of making video or film or TV. And I think, yeah, that just sort of gave way to this whole other genre of video, I guess. But yeah, there's so much good stuff on there. There's also a lot of bad stuff. I know they're in the process of trying to figure out how they limit a lot of the sort of shitty,
Starting point is 00:14:02 problematic, racist channels that are out there. But, you know, it's like anything. It cuts both ways. Yeah. But, I mean, a YouTube that was curated by really smart people and also fact-checked would be an amazing platform. Yeah. But this is where, like, the place to criticize YouTube is in their algorithm
Starting point is 00:14:23 that wants to, because their whole thing is in total minutes of watch time. So they want to deliver you directly into another video. So it's extremely easy to be watching, okay, here's a video about video games, or it's criticizing something in a game. But guess what? This game critic is something of an alt-right personality. So it takes you directly into his next video, which is about cultural Marxism, which because of the way their playlists, it's just an algorithm, right? Like all they know is people who watched this also tended to watch this, and it's very agnostic that way. So you're like four videos away from an outright, like actual Nazi with a swastika on the channel,
Starting point is 00:15:06 just by following the trail from, you know, God of War sucked to this game shouldn't have had black people in it to the great replacement theory in Europe and how white genocide, like you're not that far away at any given moment. That's the part they haven't solved, but that's the whole thing. There's no humans behind it for the most part. It's just a series of algorithms, and it's like, hey, as long as you're watching, who cares if you're a 12-year-old kid who literally is now watching a two-hour-long video on why all non-white races must be exterminated? Because you started a half hour ago watching something about Minecraft. Right. Right. Yeah. And you say they haven't solved it yet as though it's a thing
Starting point is 00:15:53 they're trying to solve, but that's not at all clear to me. No, I think, yeah, as long as they can get people with like mouth agape, K-hole watching habits, that's all they want. And finally, Jason, what's a myth? What's something people think is true that you know to be false? The thing that has been out there for the last three years now, or however long we've been in the Trump era, going back to when he first announced, is the idea that everything that is happening now is new and uncharted territory. Okay, give an example of something where you see people kind of misunderstanding this. This goes back to kind of Twitter as a platform, because there the tone
Starting point is 00:16:32 very much has been America was born in 1776, we had freedom for 230 years or whatever, and then fascists took over the government. It is really hard because there's so much more attention now, and we'll get into, like, they had massive turnout in Tuesday's elections. Like, there's so much more attention now, you know, politics has taken over the culture that you've got lots and lots of people who are getting into politics for the very first time. Right. Some of them just because they're young, like they're just now old enough to be aware. And for people like that, it's really, really hard to tell the difference between this is something unique to Trump, which some of this is, versus this is just kind of the patterns, the rhythm of how things work in America.
Starting point is 00:17:26 So, for instance, the thing with the midterms, the opposing party gaining a bunch of seats after the other party won the White House, that always happens. Like, this is just a cycle. It happened with Obama, it happened with Clinton. In many ways, lots of the things that look weird to us are just kind of part of patterns that play out in the same way that if we have a really strong economy for the next two years, Trump will be a strong favor to be reelected. Trump has done, if it happens, it's not due to America is now under the thrall of an authoritarian, it's just due to the fact that we tend to re-elect the guy when the economy is strong,
Starting point is 00:18:16 because most people don't pay super close attention to politics. That's what's easy to get lost in with all the apocalyptic talk on Twitter, is that for the most part, everyday life kind of looks the same for most people. Yeah. And I do think there are some things that are new in the Trump era. But I mean, yeah. And, you know, America just whether the economy is good or not, America tends to reelect the person who's in office when they run a second time. Or even like when Hillary was running, it's like, oh, like we were going to do two terms of a Democrat and go into another administration of Democrats. That was already, that was a little bit of an uphill battle too. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:18:54 Yeah. Very rare. Yeah. We usually change parties after that. And that's why like Trump, you know, and we had this discussion two years ago, Jack, but you know, Trump underperformed generic Republican. Like, you know, a lot of people hated Hillary. Like, I think that if, let's say, Marco Rubio had come out of the primaries, I think he actually beats Hillary much easier than Trump did.
Starting point is 00:19:19 Right. But a lot of Trump's vote was, yeah, it was just them voting generic Republican. But a lot of Trump's vote was, yeah, it was just them voting generic Republican. Like, that's the thing, is when you follow the stuff every day, it's very easy to get, like, you have a memory of all these hundreds and hundreds of scandals. But I think you'd be very surprised if you grabbed a random person off the street and said, well, what do you think about this Michael Cohen stuff? They would be like who right yeah or what do you think about that new york times op-ed from that trump insider it's like what what the hell are you talking about right well all right let's get on to stories that are truly unprecedented and prove that the world is crumbling around us so sessions has been
Starting point is 00:20:02 fired or you know asked to step down essentially rosen Rosenstein is would step in. But, of course, these are different times. So Trump wanted somebody who was literally someone who may have written an op-ed about how the Mueller probe is bullshit. And he found it in the form of Matt Whitaker, who was Jeff Sessions' former chief of staff and avid CrossFit guy and football player. So, yeah, I mean, in a way, Trump may have found his little attack dog for now. But when he he basically wrote an op ed just like I think months or weeks before joining the DOJ. And he wrote in his op ed about the Mueller investigation, just to have an idea of what where this guy is coming from. the Mueller investigation, just to have an idea of where this guy is coming from. He said,
Starting point is 00:21:07 Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's letter appointing special counsel Robert Mueller does not give Mueller broad, far-reaching powers in this investigation. It does. And then he goes on to say, it is only authorized to investigate matters that involve any potential links to and coordination between two entities, the Trump campaign and the Russian government. And you're like, no, okay. Well, that seems like a good resume for someone who is supposed to shield him from the Democrats essentially now. But isn't that something that Mueller kind of insulated himself against
Starting point is 00:21:33 by kind of sending all the investigations into Trump's sort of fraudulent financial practices to the South of New York? Yeah, the Southern District. Yeah, I mean, he's definitely diversifying the ways that Trump can be gotten, you know, because for this exact reason, because I think they knew if it gets too hot, it'll probably activate, what is it, Wednesday Night Massacre or whatever you want to call it? Right.
Starting point is 00:21:57 Yeah. Wednesday Afternoon Massacre. But it's funny, when you go through his tweets, he has some fucking weird just things. He would tweet stuff like Manu Raju tweeted something that said, Lindsey Graham also says he's drafting legislation to insulate the special counsel from White House pressure. And then Matt Whitaker's response, this would be a mistake. Cannot have anyone unaccountable in executive branch already protected enough. Then talking about Paul Manafort when the FBI raided his home.
Starting point is 00:22:22 Do we want our government to, quote, intimidate us? Hmm. FBI's Manafort raid included a dozen agents designed to intimidate. And he goes on. I mean, this guy is reading from the script that Trump would want if he's going to be the person looking over the Mueller investigation. And I just want to say he does love Dave Matthews because he did tweet. This was back January 31st of 2010. Dave Matthews is the Jimmy Buffett of our time.
Starting point is 00:22:49 Wait, are those words of support? I don't know. Right. I mean, you have to establish a universe of bad taste in music to assume that that was a compliment. Right. music to assume that that was a compliment. Right. But I feel like someone would probably, like, you'd have to be pretty savvy to use Jimmy Buffett as a slanderer.
Starting point is 00:23:10 I feel, because he looks like the kind of guy who would be stoked to go to Margaritaville. Right. Okay. Yeah, no, that totally. Post Malone is the Jimmy Buffett of rap. And yeah, I mean, we still don't know what Matt Whitaker is going to do as AG, if he's going to totally can the probe, if he's just going to try and hamstring it in as many ways as possible to just have the appearance of this investigation going on. But I mean, yeah, there's really no way to know because we don't, we've never had to deal with this before.
Starting point is 00:23:39 Right. What happens if he does, like, just say, shit can the Mueller probe? happens if he does like just say shit can the muller probe like do we know what what would happen or or if he says okay the muller probe like whatever the um investigation is we don't want that report going out to people like and then the house subpoenas that document then we just don't know what happens after that? No, because this is a political process, not a legal process. Trump is not going to go to jail. They're not going to arrest Trump. What you're talking about is, for instance, impeachment, it goes through the House, which it could because it's controlled by Democrats, but then you need two-thirds of the Senate. Well, that wouldn't happen unless they decided it was advantageous.
Starting point is 00:24:26 Like if they thought whoever they put in instead of Trump had like a really better chance of winning in 2020 than Trump did, then they may do it. But it's a political decision. And that's the way it should be. It's generally been agreed upon that you don't want your president to be marched out of the White House in handcuffs, because that's how it works in like banana republics, where it's like we just invent a reason to arrest the president. So in general, the whole idea is like, well, you can remove him from office and then he can face whatever consequences. Or if you find him guilty of something after he leaves office, if he loses the election, you could prosecute him because then he's just a private citizen. But between now and
Starting point is 00:25:10 2020, this is a political process. This is about how the Democrats want to do this to try to damage him politically. This is about the House holding hearings on TV. It's all about affecting the vote in 2020. I don't think anything's going to happen that would remove him from office unless Trump decided that quitting the job, resigning in a very grandstanding way, and then at that same press conference announcing the launch of Trump TV. If he decided that that was like the ultimate viral advertising for his new venture, like I was too honest for America, like the deep state ultimately had to get rid of me, but I'm going to now devote myself to taking down the deep state.
Starting point is 00:25:57 Like if he judged that it was to his advantage to step down, then he would do it. But otherwise, we're all talking about setting up 2020. This is all political. Right. So I mean, I guess we'll see how it goes. Just keep our eye on it. Keep your good eye on it. If I can offer a prediction, I think if the economy goes in the tank in the next two years, and it could, we're due for a recession, but obviously no one knows when recessions are going to show up or else. Any day now.
Starting point is 00:26:28 You'd be super rich if you magically knew exactly when they were going to arrive. But if, for instance, you get a downturn six months from now, you get bad jobs reports, the stock market goes in the tank, I can easily see Trump come 2019 announcing he's not going to run for reelection because he's already accomplished everything that can be accomplished as a president. He has already saved America. He has already, he wants to go out on top as the best president ever. Like if he sensed he was going to lose, I don't think he would go through with it.
Starting point is 00:27:03 And I think he has instincts for that. But I think if he sensed that there's going to be like a humiliating defeat in 2020, I think he would bail out rather than suffer through it. Because then he can do it on his own terms and say, look, America, I've already accomplished more in my four years than every president combined prior to me. Honestly, at this point, I've accomplished too much, but I'm going to return to my businesses because they're suffering without me, without my genius. He would find some face-saving way to not run again. Although the one thing that I think he thought he was going to lose in humiliating fashion ahead of the 2016 election, like a lot of people in the media thought so i i just wonder if
Starting point is 00:27:47 he's going to be too fooled by his own success to ever truly believe that he's out of it and in a upcoming race but it'll be maybe but i think the whole rigged election thing was going to be the basis upon which he was going to launch his new TV show or book or whatever. This is why the system is rigged against regular folk like you and me. Right. Yep. Regular bankrupt people like you and me. Can I point out that Jeff Sessions, his sad, undated resignation letter that he clearly had written like a year ago and just had in his desk for the day. That's
Starting point is 00:28:26 the one thing to remember from this. Robert Mueller and another 7 billion people on earth knew this day was coming, mainly because Trump every 48 hours would go on Twitter and say, I'm going to fire Jeff Sessions soon. What a worthless piece of crap. So this is not, no, Mueller, everyone knew this was coming. He took many steps to insulate himself. This would be much more ominous if the Democrats had not just won the House. Because see, the House has investigation powers, oversight powers, subpoena powers. Like if Trump had him fire Mueller tomorrow, the House could subpoena every document Mueller's report. They could have Mueller on national TV testifying in January.
Starting point is 00:29:14 So this does nothing other than what Trump wanted it to do, which was to take the midterms off the headlines. There's no reason it had to be done today other than to take over the news cycle. Yeah. Well, when you watch, did you see his press conference, the post-midterms meltdown that he had, where you could kind of tell that it seemed that he realized he might be in a new era right now, just the way he was responding to some questions about whether it was his rhetoric or what he might do with other policy things. There was an era about him where he really just felt like he looked like just cheap Kroger brand mobster talking a bunch of shit. But I think that is Trump's comfort zone, in my opinion.
Starting point is 00:29:55 I think he likes conflict for conflict's sake. And I think that's why he's the man for this era is because we were just a psychopathically bored society. And he was the one who came along and just made it all interesting and like the worst possible way. But, you know, that goes back to Twitter. It goes back to social media and the way it highlights conflict and that only outrage bubbles to the surface, well, that's Trump's, like, he's from the world of reality TV, the world of, I'm not here to make friends. Like, that's his whole thing, is he loves that tone. That's how he lives his life. He likes, you know, and that's how he ran his businesses. He likes people to be
Starting point is 00:30:42 fighting. He feels like it's productive. I mean, that's why he's a lousy politician. He's not good at getting legislation pushed through. He's not good at crafting legislation that will survive the courts or anything like that. Right, or isn't self-defeating. Yeah, well, unless your goal is to be a media figure, and you're just using the presidency as a tool to expand your profile on the media landscape, in which case he's a master at it. He knows exactly how to take over a news cycle, maybe better than anybody in the world. Right. I like to think of all these maneuvers of the president firing his attorney general while he's being investigated
Starting point is 00:31:26 for you know colluding with russia as just the you know equivalent of a real housewife like stage whispering something shitty about someone else and that person over here just like completely staged like set up conflicts from reality TV. Because it's true. He's just like a reality TV producer. He's not comfortable unless there's some manner of conflict that he's involved in going on on camera. I mean, in profiles of him, I think there was that New York Times profile of him
Starting point is 00:31:59 during his first year where they said he gets really uncomfortable when he's not in the headlines for a day. Yeah. And has to figure out like, what do I do? What do I do? What do I do?
Starting point is 00:32:09 Yeah. How do I piss people off? Just eat a burrito real weird. That's right. That worked, worked for us. All right. We're going to take a quick break.
Starting point is 00:32:18 We'll be right back. 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?
Starting point is 00:32:42 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.
Starting point is 00:33:03 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. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere,
Starting point is 00:33:47 a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you.
Starting point is 00:34:19 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.
Starting point is 00:34:36 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare.
Starting point is 00:34:50 This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm.
Starting point is 00:35:10 Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the Biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? The Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels with the image of the Biscuits.
Starting point is 00:35:40 It's right here in black and white in the prints. A lion. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch. As a leader, you choose hills that you want to die on. Why would we want to be the losing team? I'd just take all the other stuff out of it. On 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. You have to be ready for serious backlash.
Starting point is 00:36:11 Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And we're back. And I wanted to talk about college education because I was listening to a report on my drive into work today where somebody was using that as an explanation. They were saying like college educated voters were, you know, X more likely X percentage points more likely to vote for Democrats. And when you break it out by white voters who don't have a college education versus white voters who do have a college education, it's even more stark. And this reminded me of something that Jason, you and I talked about on an old episode of The Cracked Podcast, this idea of America having a class system that we as Americans don't really recognize in terms of how it operates in our day-to-day lives. And one of the interesting sort of recontextualizations that I took away from that discussion on class was this book talked about how universities and colleges
Starting point is 00:37:27 are actually more about socializing you to act in accordance with your class in America, like the upper class in America, the gentry class in America. That's the main thing you learn at college more so than, you know, whatever your major is. It gives you friends. It gives you a friend group that is in that upper class. It teaches you what your beliefs are supposed to be. And so, I mean, viewed from that perspective, it kind of makes sense that college degrees are so starkly defining what side of the country you vote on or what party you vote for. And just to the point that it's almost like different classes just perceive things in
Starting point is 00:38:17 completely different ways. They'll see the same press conference and perceive it in completely different ways. Right. Well, I think in our, you know, entering the workforce now, if you want a job that could actually sustain a family and all that, you almost certainly need a college degree to get that kind of employment too. And I think also that could be one of the reasons why there's such a, I don't know, the animosity towards education and things like that, too, because if it does become the sort of marker of classes, then you would be like, well, those are the fancy college people. Well, I might not have a degree and have a sort of cynical viewpoint of that. Right. And when you listen to NPR talk about, that's what I was listening to,
Starting point is 00:39:00 and NPR was talking about like, well these college-educated voters versus not college-educated, and they were using it. I mean, it would have totally changed the context of what they were talking about if they said college-socialized as opposed to, but they were focused. The emphasis is always on the educated because I think they want it to be, they're talking to the people who went to college. They want you to think, well, I'm the more educated person. And by being smarter, I therefore am making the right decision. And these poor dumb saps just don't know how to vote for what's best for them. And, you know, I think, you know, Jason, you've spoken to the fact that people who, you know, you grew up with, you've spoken to the fact that people who you grew up with who are part of Trump country are not any dumber and in fact a lot smarter than a lot of the people you've met since coming to our world, but it's just sort of different class conventions that we adopt. Yeah, and even now,
Starting point is 00:40:03 without recapping that whole episode we did, it's, when you say class, most people listening to this think you're purely talking about income, because in America that's usually the only way we talk about it. You're middle class, lower class, upper class, and what that discussion was about, and we've got links we can throw in for the people that want to do further reading on it, is that it's almost more like a map of different classes, because the whole deal, the reason Trump appeals to certain classes is that he is worth a billion dollars, but he has the mannerisms and the tastes and the point of view of someone from a completely different, what we would consider like a working class. Right. He has the accent,
Starting point is 00:40:46 he is involved in WWE wrestling, which is more of like seen as, it's more associated with the working class. Whereas, you know, and an example of it being divorced from money on the other side is think about a college professor. A college professor does not make good money. They are meal to meal, but college professors, or at least a lot of college professors, but they are part of that upper class. They have the correct values. They carry around the correct NPR tote bag. So this is something that's very apparent in other countries. Other countries are very aware of it, that there's money, but you don't get to just earn your way to a higher class. It's all about what you've been socialized and what you've grown up around. And I think just
Starting point is 00:41:40 America has a real blind spot when it comes to how just class-oriented our society is. And a lot of the things that you hear in the mainstream media and on the left when discussing parts of rural America really ring a little more kind of, leave a bad taste in your mouth if you are paying attention to sort of class dynamics. And it's not that hard to see in other parts of, especially in pop culture, because when I wrote the big article about this that suddenly became a much bigger deal after Trump won, my example I used, the touchstone was like the Hunger Games. Because when you watch that movie, the hero is a rustic rural hunter living in like a shack who hunts for food and works with her hands and she's kind of dirty or whatever.
Starting point is 00:42:38 And then the evil people live in this fancy city. They wear ridiculous, gaudy clothes. They're very pretentious, you know, they put on airs. And without having to be told, we automatically hate those people, and we automatically like Katniss, because she's salt of the earth. She's tough. It's more masculine values, right, because she's a hunter. Where in the city, in the capital, it's all of these prissy guys and their sequined clothes. So even among the rest of us, like that code for the snooty upper class versus the salt of the earth heroes, it rings true. You know, that's Luke Skywalker living on the desert planet, you know, farming humidity or whatever the hell they did. Yeah, humidity farmer.
Starting point is 00:43:26 Moisture. Yeah, they're humidity farmers. Yeah, moisture. Yeah, and then whereas like Darth Vader, they lived on the state-of-the-art Death Star, and that automatically, that code says urban versus rural. Right. Rural is the good guys, urban is the people who are out of touch, wealthy. Well, that's all it is. It's the way they see everything that's symbolized in like
Starting point is 00:43:49 urban people, the education level, the income level, the people talking about, oh, have you seen Hamilton yet? Oh, you've got to go. Oh, it's amazing. It was like the rest, the other 98% of America who do not have access to Hamilton in any capacity got real sick of seeing sitcom episodes where all of the characters are trying to get Hamilton tickets. Like you get these signals that like they're living on a different planet and it's a different planet where they're detached from real problems, you know? And again, that's obviously us on this podcast think that's unfair, And it's a different planet where they're detached from real problems. And again, that's obviously us on this podcast think that's unfair.
Starting point is 00:44:34 But it shouldn't be that hard to grasp because it turns up in pop culture everywhere. Yeah, that idea though too that we live in these separate almost planets within a country. I could kind of see that sort of being amplified when I was looking at how a lot of the QAnon people were so disheartened by the results of the midterms because they were promised a red wave by Q. And they were fully invested like, oh, okay, this is our time. And when that didn't happen, they became so disheartened. And the talk just became like, oh, man, when are the Moabs going to be dropped on their city? oh man, one of the Moab's going to be dropped on their city. Like this idea that like the military needs to come in, that there's this view that there are all these people who are, you know, part of, I guess, support this deep state or whatever force they're diametrically opposed to is, you know, exists in this other part that is like so well-defined
Starting point is 00:45:18 that you could just drop bombs on it or send the military in as if it's like this other, we're like a, I don't know, a rogue army or something that's just like gallivanting around the country. Yeah. Another thing I was just thinking about is that, you know, when you look at the endowments of these universities, Harvard University has a $38 billion endowment.
Starting point is 00:45:39 Yale has a $26 billion endowment. Stanford, $22 billion. Princeton, $22 billion. These are universities that still charge people hundreds of thousands of dollars for a four-year education. Why would they do that? They don't need the money. You're gatekeeping. It's gatekeeping to a certain extent. It's insane. It came up in this Supreme Court case about affirmative action, and it was just kind of, I hadn't really thought about it in a while. But the know that might seem like willfully naive to
Starting point is 00:46:25 think that America isn't meritocracy, but it's just colleges, I feel like are very complicit in this whole thing, in this whole divide. Yeah. Well, I think again, like, you know, with Harvard or the Ivy leagues to even go to one already puts you in another class, another culture of people. And I think the more you can, the more obstacles there are to attain that, that's how they protect that class of people. And I think just with, even when you look at education, it's increasingly harder and harder to be a, not a, to not have a lot of like cash at your disposal and still try and
Starting point is 00:47:02 get a college education without, you know, having to work multiple jobs at once or rely on like, you know, predatory loans or something. It's just, yeah, it's just sort of set up in a way that's really just kind of making it harder for people to sort of move into that. Right. By design. And this is something that it's a subject that you rarely hear discussed, which is the idea that you have classes that specifically are built to keep other people out of that class, out of that social class. It's a subject we don't like to talk about much at all. We love to talk about economic class. Like that's, you know, we love to talk about race.
Starting point is 00:47:40 Right. But the idea of like social classes and how much of a role it plays in terms of what opportunities are available to you, it's almost like the people who are most invested in that have the power to make us not discuss it. It is not a conspiracy theory. You look at the schools that members of Congress went to or that CEOs went to. Yeah, there's entire sections of the economy or of society where which school you went to and which fraternity you're a member of is everything. That's part of what gets you in the door. I remember when Trump was determining who his final list of Supreme Court nominees were going to be, that they distinguished Amy Coney Barrett as being different because she went to Notre Dame and didn't go to Yale. It was seen as weird to have not gone to one college, to Yale. They were like, and she's very different.
Starting point is 00:48:42 In addition to being a woman. She didn't go to Yale as opposed to every other member on the list. But Trump might want more of a Yale guy. It's like, what the fuck are you talking about? That's insane.
Starting point is 00:48:52 What does that mean to you? But those are the optics to someone like that who is just like, oh, this is a, it's a signal to him. Right. Okay, Yale equals this thing
Starting point is 00:49:00 and it's like sort of a myopic view of what people can accomplish. And Trump's relationship to class has always been very complicated. He was a Queens guy who always wanted to like break into the island of Manhattan. And, you know, he claims to hate the New York Times, but he always wanted the New York Times to write about him. And, you know, so there's also some degree of, you know, aspiration, even I think probably embedded in him, even now that he's the president of the United States. We're going to link off to, Jason included in our doc, something called
Starting point is 00:49:35 Clarita's Prism, which is a list marketers created of the 68 different classes in America as defined by marketers. So yeah, you can get real specific and particular. But these are the sorts of things that people who sell us stuff know about us that we don't think about ourselves. Right. They're like, are you a money and brains person or a winner circle kind of person? You're like, oh, this is getting very nuanced. Oh, no. Oh, you can find yourself on the list.
Starting point is 00:50:05 Oh, yeah. Because no one likes to think of themselves as just a type. Right. But yeah, to these marketing firms, trust me, they can take one look at the type of shoes you wear. They can take a look at where you ate lunch. And it's like, ah, you are a whatever, whatever their cutesy name for. Just one other real quick statistic that I've seen kind of thrown around
Starting point is 00:50:28 about how the midterms went down is that if you want to look at just overall the mood of the nation, then the House vote is probably the best way to do that since there are House elections everywhere in the country. And it's not one personality that is defining how an entire state votes, but it's a bunch of different individual opportunities for people to vote in line with their values. Democrats won the House popular vote by more than any party has won the House popular vote in many years.
Starting point is 00:51:14 I think since 2008 was the last time. But it's like more than these legendary red wave elections like 1994 when Newt Gingrich like took the House away from the Democrats. And it's more than the 2010 election that was supposedly this huge referendum on Obama. And the numbers aren't final yet, but they're thinking it's going to be in that range where it would have been a wave election were it not for these institutional things like gerrymandering and also just the a bad luck of the draw when it came to senate seats yeah yeah so i don't know i i guess i'm
Starting point is 00:51:53 curious why because i do see a lot of mainstream media covering this as though you know why did the blue wave fail to materialize and it's like like, yeah, I mean, that's definitely a way of interpreting it. It's also, you know, the people voted in record number, and it was a pretty strong directionally in terms of, like, where people, how people moved. Yeah, well, a lot of the coverage has sort of been like letting the perfect become the enemy of the good in terms of how they look at the race. Because it's like, well, it wasn't a total blowout meltdown. So therefore it was shitty.
Starting point is 00:52:32 Yeah, it's all expectations. Yeah, 100%. And I think, you know, that's where you also let people know, like, this was a really good year for all kinds of progressive candidates, for women, LGBTQ, people of color. Like there were many gains being made in that department. And I think there's, you know, we can also take a second to say this was a hard-fought midterm. And despite a lot of the voter suppression or gerrymandering
Starting point is 00:52:57 and a lot of the other things they would do up against, that there was a, you can look at this in a very positive way and not get too down because the Senate stayed red. Right. You can just get down because you're paying attention to the WWE villain press conference that went down today. Get down about that instead. And I think the fact that the media skews a little bit liberal, I think, helps us along because they take it so hard. Like, they're so much harder. Like, they declare every little Republican victory is, like, massive.
Starting point is 00:53:31 And even if Democrats—I mean, Democrats flipped six or seven governors so far. I know some are still out at the time this is being recorded. Like, that's huge. Like, you have state legislatures that have flipped, and that helps dictate, like, voting policy, all sorts of things. There were profound things that happened, like a lot of the state-level measures, and there was, like, 500,000 people gained health care because of states that now will expand Medicaid because, like, you know, because you flipped the governor or because, you know because it was a ballot measure.
Starting point is 00:54:07 There was a lot that happened, but I think it's similar to 2016 where the media acted like, again, the whole concept of the fascist takeover of the government as if Trump just swept into power just overwhelmingly when, again, it was 90,000 votes across three states. He lost a popular vote. If you replay that election 10 times, Trump probably wins three times and Hillary probably wins seven. But it's like, oh my gosh, there are now two eras in America, pre-Trump and after Trump. We've lost the country. It's like, yeah, but see, here we are two years later and the supposed authoritarian fascist who utterly took over the government now cannot pass a single bill. He now cannot pass any legislation. He's
Starting point is 00:54:57 going to be harassed on, or I say harassed, like he's going to be investigated in very humiliating ways every week. His taxes are going to become public, like, two months from now. He will hate that. Like, he already, I don't think, enjoys being president all that much. Like, he's going to hate this. Right. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:55:18 This is not going to be fun for him, I don't think. No, no. Not with a little thing called oversight. Right. Yeah. And that's because that's built into the system. That's why we have midterms. This system is built so that one madman cannot take it over. The system is broken on purpose to make that not happen. That's why we haven't had one party maintain both branches of government for four consecutive years since 1968. We elect one.
Starting point is 00:55:50 After two years, we get so disgusted, we throw them out and put the other party in. It's checks and balances. This is the system working. If he outrages the country for two years, then guess what? He loses a bunch of his power. This is how it's supposed to work. Right. Although, yeah, I'm worried about how the Senate ends up looking years from now as people begin just moving to the same 15 states. Right. And then I think we already have... That's a lot of the debate I've seen spring up from the elections. We're basically talking about, all right, what are we going to do about the Senate
Starting point is 00:56:24 now? Because you have places like Wyoming who have the fraction of the population of something like a California, yet they're still getting the two Senate votes. And where do we go? But I think that's something the Democrats are going to have to ask themselves if they can ever fully control Congress. Right. It's not totally clear how that's going to be changed. I hadn't realized before the 1994 red wave that wasn't even as big as the Democrats' victory yesterday, probably, that people just assumed that Democrats would never lose the House. Like that was just an assumption. It was taught in political science classes. Like the Democrats are permanently in control of the House and the Republicans might get the Senate here and there, but it's never going to change. And like Mike Peska, the host of the GIST podcast on Slate, was talking about how in 1994 he took a political science class where they taught that the Democrats will never lose the House. So, you know, stuff that seems structural and insurmountable one year can always flip with a, you know, very charismatic person like Newt Gingrich coming to power.
Starting point is 00:57:50 Well, in 2008, when Obama got elected, there were plenty of articles about how, okay, well, now is this the end of the Republican Party forever? Because clearly now it's a more diverse country. We're only getting more diverse, right? And so clearly the party that's based on all of the coded racial stuff and immigration and being tough on crime and all that, that's all over. So it's like any time you try to project 100 years into the future, and this even goes to the Supreme Court. You know, it's like, I completely understand the fear of, like, a conservative court for the next 40 years, but one of these steadfast liberals was a Reagan appointee. Like, you know, like Kennedy was appointed by Reagan and then Souter was appointed by, was it Bush senior? Like these were appointed by Republicans and then they became liberals after they sat on the court. This is not as straightforward as you think. These guys tend to lean leftward as they get older in many cases, or in some cases,
Starting point is 00:58:45 lean leftward as they get older in many cases, or in some cases, they're not just partisan hacks. They are actually trying to do what they're following the Constitution. It's not strictly, you know, we talk about Republican Supreme Court justices. That historically actually hasn't necessarily worked that way. Right. We will see with Kavanaugh because he, on one hand, does seem to be the most, I don't know, his hearing was the most partisan that we've ever seen a Supreme Court justice. Oh, yeah. All right. We're going to take another quick break and we'll be right back with some lighter stuff. 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.
Starting point is 00:59:36 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
Starting point is 01:00:00 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. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who, on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.
Starting point is 01:00:41 My name is Manuel Delia. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 01:01:16 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
Starting point is 01:01:32 BPM 110 120 She's terrified Should we wake her up? Absolutely not What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it.
Starting point is 01:01:46 That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller
Starting point is 01:02:06 from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts It was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin former Packers star Kabir
Starting point is 01:02:22 Bajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation. KGB explaining what he believes led to the arrest of his friends at a children's Christmas play. A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian, now cut off from his family and connected to a strange arrest. I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. I got swept up in Kabir's journey, but this was only the beginning. In a story about faith and football, the search for meaning away from the gridiron, and the consequences for everyone involved.
Starting point is 01:02:57 You mix homesteading with guns and church, and then a little bit of the spice of conspiracy theories that we liked. Voila! You got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And a couple quick things here.
Starting point is 01:03:26 Miles. Yes. Breaking Bad. Breaking news. Breaking news about Breaking Bad. There may be a movie. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if we need a Breaking Bad movie,
Starting point is 01:03:36 but I like Better Call Saul, so I like that universe. But, yeah, the rumors, now that the rumors are grumbling, that Vince Gilligan has been working on a feature-length script titled greenbrier uh which would center possibly around jesse pinkman's character and i mean it looks i mean a lot of people reporting on it like okay this is definitely moving somewhere and then brian cranson was recently asked when he was on the dan patrick show and he was like hey i haven't read a script but he's like but if if it's happening and Vince asked me he's like I'm I'm there I'm Heisenberg-ing it up this is something that fans always go crazy about I
Starting point is 01:04:15 even went crazy about the fact that there is now a Deadwood movie that is in production because I that specifically was a TV show that just kind of left on an open plot point. And I'm excited to see how they close it up. And I just loved that show. But TV shows that the creators of that TV show then expand it into a movie. What is the successful precedent for that? I have no way. Like there's the X-Files movies that were
Starting point is 01:04:46 not great. What else? They even managed to fuck up the Simpsons movie. It wasn't bad, but it was just an hour and a half length episode of the Simpsons. I'll love anything. It made money.
Starting point is 01:05:02 South Park. South Park's movie was probably my favorite example of this succeeding. Well, I mean, and also I feel like the Star Trek films were able to kind of take their people you saw on TV and then put them into a movie and it wasn't that jarring.
Starting point is 01:05:18 That's the example that I was looking for and that is probably what they are thinking. They're like, it's the next Star Trek. We're going to Star Trek this. Spin it out. You're it out you're gonna star trek break okay well i mean because when you look at the other films too that have like been based off shows they're never really the original cast like there's like a bewitched movie or like the flintstones but it's nicole kidman right exactly where they're just like okay let's take that ip and then turn it up like times 100 with superstars yeah yeah so I don't know.
Starting point is 01:05:45 I'm interested in a Breaking Bad movie. Yeah, look, why not? You know, look, if I got a reason to bust out my old sweet blue prop meth, take it to a movie theater, why not? I'd say it's props when the police ask. Also, I think from like the creator's point of view, I think this is always less about the story they want to tell and more just Vince Gilligan would like to work with Aaron Paul again.
Starting point is 01:06:09 Right. And he's got that crew in Albuquerque he likes working with. I think a lot of it's just like... And of course, AMC will be behind whatever the hell he wants to make. Let's get the band together. So I think it starts because like when they made the decision to make Better Call Saul, like he at the first thought it was going to be like a half hour wacky sitcom where it's like every week they would have a new wacky case. And they later decided, oh, no, that's the worst idea anyone's ever had. But like the vision for the show wasn't anywhere. All they knew was like, we'd love to work with Bob Odenkirk.
Starting point is 01:06:43 We would love to, you know, keep this crew together, keep filming here, you know, keep this creative team together. And then you kind of come up with the story after that. I think from the audience's point of view, you always assume it's all about, you know, there's more to the story to tell. But in reality, that's often the last thing. Right. They're like, wait, so what the fuck are we going to do here? Yeah, it's literally that. You get the band back together. It's like, all right, let's sit down, get in the meeting room, and we'll have fun.
Starting point is 01:07:10 We'll come up with something. It'll be fine. It'll turn out that that was all a dream that Heisenberg was having, the part where he died. He'll sit up in bed sweaty. I'm like, oh, thank God. That was just a dream. Now to go back to cooking meth. I'm going to oh, thank God. That was just a dream. Could you imagine? Now to go back to cooking meth. My theory has always been that Vince Gilligan's idea was to try and escape.
Starting point is 01:07:33 Like because Bryan Cranston was so good as Walter White and he was like really attached to the character i think better call saul was like his chance to like go back and work on that show without the attachment of brian cranston's attachment to that character because i think the end of the series breaking bad like went off in a weird direction that wasn't true to like how they had written it and directed it up to that point um so i just wonder if that relationship was too complicated for Vince Gilligan to navigate. And so he, you know, if you see interviews with Bryan Cranston towards the end of the show, he's like talking about Walter White, like with pride as, as like someone whose decisions he's validating. And I said, I don't know. It's, it's a long convoluted theory, but I'll be interested to see what they do with this.
Starting point is 01:08:26 We're not going to spend too much time on the Pitt-Joe Lee divorce other than to say that you'll be hearing a lot of it because it is coming up on December 4th. And man, the tabloids will do anything to talk about that couple. I know. They've spent the last, what, I think eight months just making stuff up every week to keep them on the cover. Literally photoshopping their faces onto other people's bodies to get a story. But Miles, let's go out on this Thanksgiving recipes by State.
Starting point is 01:08:58 Yes. You know, over on the Takeout food blog I love to check out, they apparently got a map from a company called Satellite Internet, and they're like a service provider. And they sort of, I think, trawled the data they had of people on their network and then put that up against Google Trends to see what the top searched recipe was for Thanksgiving by state. And when you look at it, it's, I mean, it seems pretty par for the course. I think people in California don't know how to make turkey, so they're going to Google turkey. Right.
Starting point is 01:09:27 Because we've had examples from the takeout of maps where each different state had a different top search result, and it was too good to be true. This one actually seems like it's true because half of the states are just searching turkey. But then there's some interesting ones. Like Jason, you are currently in Tennessee, so that's sweet potato, but you are from Illinois and their number one searched term is Popeye's Cajun Turkey. I love that.
Starting point is 01:09:59 Yeah, they're also, what is that? North Carolina was also looking at it. Yeah, there's three different states that have specifically Popeye's Cajun Turkey. Is that a thing? Where would that have come up also what is that north carolina was also looking at it yeah there's three different states that have specifically popeyes cajun turkey is that a thing where where would that have come up that that many people would be like do they serve that on thanksgiving oh no yeah it's illinois virginia my bad sorry i'm sorry to north carolina yeah illinois and virginia were like the top two popeyes and then maryland is that the yeah i think so yeah i don't I don't know. It must be that good.
Starting point is 01:10:26 Yeah, because I don't see any other restaurant-type recipe on here. It's weird that that specific one, that's the one that jumps out as the most confusing church term. I mean, it sounds good. If Popeye's was serving a Cajun turkey, I'd certainly try it. In Connecticut, it's just Thanksgiving desserts. Just that broadly. Louisiana, also Popeye Cajun chicken. No, it's just Thanksgiving desserts. Just that broadly. Louisiana, also Popeye's Cajun chicken. No, they're cornbread dressing.
Starting point is 01:10:49 Oh, are they? Yeah. Yeah, that's the boot-shaped one. Sorry, it's Mississippi that is Popeye's Cajun chicken. These maps always test our ability to identify states based on the shape. Green bean casserole in Texas sounds good. Well, it's also the Midwest is pretty uniform in green bean casserole being their dish. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:11:08 For some reason, Utah is Jell-O. Wasn't somebody saying in our mentions that Jell-O is really big in Utah? I think just in general, yeah. Jell-O as an ingredient. Yeah, it's just been used all over the place. And Alaska, pumpkin cheesecake. Okay. All right, Alaska. Doing something used all over the place. And Alaska pumpkin cheesecake. Okay. All right, Alaska.
Starting point is 01:11:26 Doing something different. I like it. Jason, anything that you're really looking forward to? I don't like sweet potatoes. I like just all of the butter and the sugar that you put on them. Right. Like the sweet potatoes are kind of just a vessel to hold the butter and the sugar together. Like it could literally be anything. It could be a piece of fish and I'd probably get the same experience out of it.
Starting point is 01:11:49 So I like the way they make sweet potato. If you just hand me a sweet potato that you've baked from the grocery store, yeah, no, I'm not going to eat that. So I'm saying that because I want to clarify when I say I like sweet potatoes, I like the stuff that you use to hide the taste of the sweet potatoes oh so you're a big butter guy yeah kind of like the same way i enjoy coffee it's like yeah it's it's coffee with with a half pound of sugar in it right right so yeah my mom makes a sweet potato casserole that is just the it has this crust on the top of it that is like pecan. And it's like a dozen glazed donuts worth of sugar in every serving.
Starting point is 01:12:32 Yeah, in every bite. It's just like rock solid, but it's real good. Anyways, Jason, it's been great being on a podcast with you again, man. Where can people find you, follow you? I'm on The Crank Podcast, not every single episode, but they're always good. The episodes that I'm not on, some would say, are actually better than the ones I'm on. If you want to read, if somebody wants to read my books, the novel that made me, put me on the map as an author is $2.99 this whole month. John dies at the end on Kindle as they've got it on sale. And then there's sequels to it if you like
Starting point is 01:13:15 that, but they will all cost you more because that's how we get you. Awesome. And is there a tweet that you have been enjoying? Yeah, really anything from the Joel Dongstein Twitter account. Joel Dongstein? Yeah, that is a bot that takes televangelist Joel Osteen tweets, you know who he is, famous pastor, and it simply, the bot automatically replaces the word God with the words your dick to strangely inspirational effect. So here's an example. And again, this is taking something Joel Osteen tweeted, and then it automatically posts to
Starting point is 01:14:00 this account as, the real victory is not when your dick does everything you want or takes away every frustration. The real victory is when those things happen, but you are at peace. You know your dick is still in control. Another example, sometimes we forget the good things. We remember the hurts, the disappointments, the mistakes. But look where you are now. If it had not been for the goodness of your dick, you wouldn't be here. Tell him. Tell him.
Starting point is 01:14:33 So true. And that, I find those oddly inspiring every day. I don't know why, but it's like, yeah, that's right. And so every day it's some, because, you know joel osteen he's he's got some intern tweeting out this general greeting card stuff but for some reason when it becomes look you need to stop worrying about what other people want from you and you need to start worrying about what your dick wants right it's like yeah that's right i should uh They have not been sued yet. I don't know if this is actually if the Joel Osteen Corporation would be able to take this down. I'm sure someday they will.
Starting point is 01:15:11 But as of right now, it's my favorite Twitter. See, this is what Twitter does well. Twitter, bad for discussing politics. For like two sentence jokes, it's magic. Yes. Yes. I'm getting a lot of meaning out of this account, actually. I mean, the Bible, in a way, is just an inspirational book for toxic masculinity, especially if you read it like this.
Starting point is 01:15:35 There you go. Miles, where can people find you? Oh, find me on Twitter and Instagram at MilesOfGrey. And a tweet I like was actually brought to my attention by one of the zyke yang this one was from uh robert hernandez jr on instagram i see you you know we were talking about flow states yesterday and the onion posted something it's just a guy on his couch just like housing a bunch of pistachios and it says pistachio eating man achieves flow state. Because, yeah, in a way, man, when you get the rhythm going on those pistachios, you can vanish into thin air. Yes.
Starting point is 01:16:13 I like to tweet from Neil Brennan where he said, America downgraded from extremely racist to very racist. Neil Brennan's a funny dude. 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
Starting point is 01:16:38 as well as the song we write out on. You can also find that information in the show notes. Miles, what song are we gonna write out on oh man you know with legal smeagol kind of having to pack his bags you know farewell to you my man oh just yes jeff sessions uh sorry it was just you know it puts us in a very weird space we don't know what's going on and uh super producer nick and i were talking about dub music at lunch and we were just he was talking about scientists and he put us onto a track for today this is from uh the artist scientist called taxi to baltimore and it's uh yo look if you like
Starting point is 01:17:13 that dub you just need that deep head nod and your feet coming in on the three uh strap on your headphones for 30 seconds all right we're gonna ride out on. We will be back tomorrow because it is a daily podcast. We'll talk to you again soon. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you. Got my sister Sandy And my little brother Greg Yeah, yeah Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist
Starting point is 01:18:17 who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere
Starting point is 01:18:35 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine 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.
Starting point is 01:19:00 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. Hey, fam, I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay.
Starting point is 01:19:20 And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the podcast from Hello Sunshine that's guaranteed to light up your day. Check out our recent episode with dancer, actress, and host of Dancing with the Stars, Julianne Hough, revealing the healing journey behind her new novel, Everything We Never Knew. I am showing up for my younger self, and it is becoming a ripple effect energetically in my life, and that's why I feel so safe now. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports.
Starting point is 01:20:11 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 Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.

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