The Daily Zeitgeist - Weekly Zeitgeist 213 (Best of 2/14/22-2/18/22)
Episode Date: February 20, 2022The weekly round-up of the best moments from DZ's season 224 (2/14/22-2/18/22) Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informat...ion.
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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.
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 Podcast
or wherever you get your podcast.
Presented by Capital One, founding
partner of iHeart Women's Sports.
Hey, I'm Gianna Pardenti
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.
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.
Hello, the Internet, and welcome to this episode of the Weekly Zeitgeist.
These are some of our favorite segments from this week, all edited together into one nonstop
infotainment laugh-stravaganza.
So without further ado, here is the weekly zeitgeist.
It is the brilliant and hilarious Nick Vattery!
Hey, you all came in with a song. Should I have a song?
I mean, you know.
Might as well.
You post your score in the air like you just don't care.
Come on, tell me what's the word a wordle hey there it is uh wait what
happened with wordle while i was gone i heard this did it switch oh what happened something
got switched ownership yeah i lost one of my two one of the times that i got two got it in two
guesses off of my record absolute bullshit i donute bullshit. I don't know how it happened, but it's really kind of the main thing that people are talking about is that indignity that I faced.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's kind of the main news that you missed, Miles.
It's what TDZ has been about for the past couple of weeks.
Got it, got it, got it, got it, got it.
They're doing Quadril now.
You've seen Quadril?
Yeah, what's that?
Yeah, Quadril.
That's bad for me. That's because they not only not only is it for like you're playing Wordle on four grids and like that, that adds a complexity and makes it a little bit more difficult.
But then you also have like practice games that you can just like go and play like so you can just play it all day.
It's.
Yeah, I thought it is the one a day is sort of
uh good you know yes the one a day of it all yeah quartal seems life-ruining i'm gonna try
it's records to yeah it's irresponsible downright irresponsible i will not allow it. Nick, are you play Wordle?
I do. I like
to call it Words Without Friends.
Yes. I think that
a lot of these people will post their
scores on the internet, and I think
that's a little too much. What I do
is I go out and I
etch my scores into the
dirt-caked faces of the
forgotten.
That's what I do.
Yes.
If I'm going to be obnoxious about it, I'm going full throttle. Much more cursed and haunting way to share your.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I share every time I get it, get it in two guesses and act like that's just what I do every time.
Yeah.
Like that's just what I do every time.
Yeah.
And, and usually like with a cocky gift or something like the dude rolling a
strike and saying,
who do you think you are?
I am.
It's obnoxious.
It's the one place where I have cultivated my image to be the most
obnoxious piece of shit that I can imagine.
So why are people posting it in five or people are like,
I,
I'm not that good at it.
And I'm telling everybody about it.
I don't know, man.
People have their own posting needs, I guess.
People are all fucked up in their own kind of way, you see.
I don't know.
That's right.
But it's not for us to try and figure out.
I'm not a psychologist.
Exactly.
You know, I just let them make me look good. That's what I'm... Yeah, I'm going to only post if I don't a psychologist. Exactly. You know, I just let them make me look good.
That's what I'm.
Yeah, I'm going to only post if I don't get it.
There you go.
I've definitely seen that.
All right, Nick.
And that we're going to stop.
I know people like Wordle has to be so annoying to people who just like aren't into it.
Don't give a shit about it and i love
hearing about it yeah i'm so very convincing that's very convincing what is something from
your search history this is kind of embarrassing but i was looking at the last thing just now that
i searched and it was best glue for wine corks. I've been collecting
thousands of wine corks from friends and family for years and I'm trying to make a big mosaic
out of them. I like to do a lot of big paintings. Doing art is one of the ways I cope with the
really painful and difficult work that we do around the country with people who are
confined in jail cells all over the country.
And the work can be really difficult and stressful. And one of the ways I just personally cope is to making art. And I now have been asking everyone I know to collect wine corks for me. And
I have thousands and thousands of them, but I have no idea how to actually make them into anything.
So I was trying to figure out how to actually glue them together.
What do you think? I mean, what are we talking here? Like you'd paint each one and sort of mosaic it out or you're trying to use the natural graphics on the cork to inform how you get your image or, you know, walk me through this process. some poem that I like or some aspect of the work that, that we do. So yeah,
it's maybe not the best use of my time,
but I think the consensus seems to be glue gun.
Okay.
Oh,
okay.
All right.
There we go.
Glue gun.
When in doubt,
it does feel like the glue gun is always,
is always a good option.
Like,
is there anything that a glue gun does not glue?
Like does not work on is,
is my question.
I mean, something that you need to guarantee like structural integrity of you know like crafting i'm sure it's fine but do you you
know do you repair a baby's high chair you know with a glue gun i don't know about that one i do
but i mean that's just me just because i'm i'm wild with a glue gun do you remember when you're
old enough to use a glue gun? That felt like the first
driver's license you get as a child
where it's like, man, you can't fuck with this glue gun
because that metal tip will burn the shit out of you.
And then at a certain point, it's like
you are acknowledged as a child who
is responsible enough to use a glue gun
and I felt that was a, I don't know,
a big turning point for me.
I keep that thing on me, man.
That glue gun, I got it holstered,
ready to go at all times. You never know when you might need to make a cool little doll out
of corn husks or something. Yeah, exactly. So can you speak a little bit about the work that you do,
like what you were actually out in LA doing? Yeah, we are civil rights lawyers and advocates
and storytellers and experts
about the criminal punishment system in this country.
And the bulk of our work over the last few years
has been suing cities and counties and states
and judges and prosecutors, sheriffs, police
over sort of the rampant unconstitutional conduct
that they engage in every single day all over the
country. So for example, as you and I are talking right now, there are 400 to 500,000 people,
depending on how you count, in cages in this country solely because they can't afford to pay
a cash payment to get out. These are people who are presumptively innocent. They're awaiting trial.
They're supposed to be presumed innocent. And because their families don't have enough cash to keep them with their kids in their
schools and their homes and their families and their jobs and their churches and their community,
they're stuck in a cage. And so we have filed lawsuits all over the country. Last year,
I argued a case that we brought in California that struck down the money bail system in California,
as we know it, on behalf of our client, Kenneth Humphrey. And so we've been doing a lot of work with people who've been directly harmed by the prison and jail system in California, as we know it, on behalf of our client, Kenneth Humphrey. And so we've been doing a lot of work with people who've been directly harmed by the
prison and jail system in California, advocates, public defenders, organizers, crime survivors,
and others to try to figure out how to reshape the pretrial system in California.
And we do similar work all over the country, basically trying to resensitize our society
to the extraordinary and senseless
violence that the criminal punishment bureaucracy just inflicts on people with absolutely no
evidence that it does any good or makes anyone any safer.
Right.
And that seems to be the biggest thing that whether it's like overtly being debated or
subconsciously being debated, that seems to be the thing that many people are having a
reckoning with, especially in California, is the idea of like, I just feel like maybe we just need to be cruel to
people. So I read less stories about shoplifting or that, you know, there's no acknowledgement,
you know, of like the work that it takes to try and go up against something like the prison
industrial complex and, you know, what that entails. Well, a really basic thing that a lot
of people just don't seem to understand
is that if police and prisons and prosecutors
made people safer,
then the US would have the safest society
in the history of the world.
I mean, we cage people at rates
that are five to 10 times every other comparable country.
We cage black people at a rate six times
out of South Africa at the height of apartheid.
So if human caging and punishment and police and surveillance and batons and tasers and guns,
if all that stuff made people safer, we would have an extraordinarily safe society. And yet
we spend by far the most money on armed government bureaucrats of any country in the world.
money on armed government bureaucrats of any country in the world. And those armed government bureaucrats specifically target very poor people in communities all over this country. And they
have a terrible track record of improving public safety. And so I think it's a really important
thing to keep pointing out to people that essentially every other society in the world
has figured out ways of having lower levels of violence with lower expenditures on things like handcuffs cages and prosecutors
and cops right yeah because i think in our way of thinking it's like well what's the problem all
right spend money on it rather than taking a little bit of a wider view like well what's driving
crime because that's the one thing i always see absent with a lot of reporting around things like crime rates going up. It's like crime's up, man. It's out of control. And we got to get rid of these DAs. And it's never, I've yet to read like a, or hear a real sincere analysis of what crime even is in this country. And I think that's a huge blind spot.
I think a lot of people have as well in the discourse.
There's a lot of powerful people
who also are making a lot of money
who want you asking questions like,
well, shouldn't we just be having,
shouldn't we just be spending more money
on more technology for cops
and more stuff for prosecutors and more prison beds?
And that'll help the union,
the correction officers union, right?
What they don't want you asking are things like, should we pay attention to the research
that shows that like having a stable place to live and having health care, mental health
treatment, having good schools, having less inequality, having less starvation and poverty,
those are actually the things that are correlated with violence and harm.
But they don't want you asking those questions because that solution to so-called violent crime would actually
require deep investments in changing the levels of inequality in our society.
That's not something that most of the powerful politicians who control these narratives are
actually interested in doing.
Right.
What is, what's something you think is overrated?
Okay, I say this ever since I was a baby, I've been a night owl.
I am genetically wired as a nocturnal creature.
I think being an early bird is overrated, overvalued.
I think, yes, it's easier to sort of succeed in society if you like.
Look at me.
If I'd actually gotten any sleep, I could say that properly.
It's easier to succeed in society if you're like an early riser.
I do get up.
I'm exhausted all the time.
But there's something to be said.
I am so fun.
I was so fun at a slumber party.
I am so fun from the hours from like 11 to 3.
Like there's something, there's a magic witching hour.
And it's not something you choose.
It's just in your blood.
And like I think there's a real arrogance.
To like just genetic early risers.
Right.
That's what I'm saying.
Yeah.
I kind of feel the same.
I can be like dead the whole day.
And then suddenly like find a burst of
energy like at 10 p.m that's right because it's fun then it's a fun time then because it's still
okay wait so is it fun because you're like everyone's asleep except us yeah or is it that
you're like i love sleep so fuck the morning i think i think i'm in my best spirits late at night. I have the most, I'm like,
my creative juices are going the most.
I feel happiest.
I think I feel like kind of mischievous.
Like it's when I'm at my best.
And I think the world like doesn't value that.
Right.
And you go help all those people who gave,
uh,
entrusted you with their secrets that's right
hide the body i gotta go i gotta go deal with the body some evidence i gotta go exactly i've got
i've got all my ammonia in my car i've got to go to different sites yeah damn that sounds that
sounds like you got some experience well i always say this because i had like a soot explosion at my house from a fireplace.
And so I went like late at night to Home Depot.
I was told like ammonia was going to help get it off of the walls and stuff.
And the guy, it was like just me at 11 p.m.
Like the Eagle Rock Home Depot.
And the guy, I was like, hey, do you know where the ammonia is?
The guy that worked there, he looked like he was like 18. He looked at me
and he goes, just make sure you use
enough to knock them out.
I was like, what? And then I
added up. I was like, whoa.
And I started
laughing. I was like, what if I was here
for that? And he goes, Hank, I didn't see anything.
Yeah, I didn't see anything.
I was like, oh my God, that guy's the vault.
That guy's the vault. Yeah. That's the sort
of fun interaction you don't have when you go
into Home Depot in the morning. Thank you.
They're not going to be like fun and flirty and
be like, ah, we're both serial killers.
They're going to be like,
over there, just like, leave me alone.
Yeah, you know those fun, flirty serial
killer interactions. Yeah, journal entry
that night, Here's journal.
I finally met her.
She understands me.
This blonde woman with a high-pitched voice.
Finally.
I felt like Neil, the one.
Here she is.
She finally came looking for the ammonia.
She's also a murderer.
Yeah.
The downside of that is that the only other people you find buying ammonia in the middle of the night at Home Depot are probably using it to clean up a mess.
A mess.
Everyone's cleaning up a mess of some kind.
Can I just say one more interaction I had at the Home Depot?
So then I checked out.
This is what you get at midnight at the Home Depot.
I was checking out.
And the moment I was like, how are you doing?
The security guard was this lady.
And she's like, not good my co-worker i thought it just ended there she's not good see she goes
magic she goes my co-worker he just called me he's like stuck somewhere he's in a car there's
a bunny running around in his car just like pissing and eating the seeds everywhere and he
didn't have anything to clean it up and i told him i'm not driving an hour to clean up the bunny shit and i'm like wait
wait what like there's some dude like just some random bunny like what is happening at this
maybe maybe this was just a figment of my imagination maybe i was just like tripping
on ayahuasca and i never went to home depot that ammonia yeah yeah yeah that's what happened that's what happens if you're a night owl you get
jewels like that yeah uh greg what's something you think is underrated underrated okay here i'm
going out on a limb here i'm gonna say buttered noodles you know i think i think everybody wants
to give a lot you know you give credit to the you know, a marinara or or a vodka sauce or a carbonara, you know, that's where that with some Parmesan. That's like really good food that's like really easy to do
and isn't a whole, it's not a whole headache in the kitchen.
You can just kind of like toss it together
and suddenly that's a top quality side dish or whole dish.
Right.
Controversial, I know.
No, it is kind of controversial.
It's like not controversial with young children i think young children they love that you love a buttered noodle it really i i
think of it as like too bland for me i'm a real i'm a real tomato bitch i love i mean i love tomato
sauce i love tomato salsa but yeah i i've never been into the buttered noodles because it tastes too much like noodles to me and not enough like, I don't know, what I have associated pasta with, which is the marinara sauce.
Like this is the base of the dish, right?
Like technically you're showing up for spaghetti and you've associated it with the marinara on top.
But the noodle should be the highlight of that dish. And then to get more into like, like I've recently really gotten into ramen and I'm like reading recipes on how to make it from scratch and stuff.
And like there's so much technique in a noodle and create like crafting it you know what
kind of flour what kind of grind on that flour how long are you mixing it at what temperature
that i think if you get a quality noodle and you're just tasting just a little bit of butter
you're really putting that noodle like on a pedestal and asking people to taste just that
noodle and i can see i can see where that would be like, you know, this is the highlight, like really experience
and enjoy this part of the dish that typically you're just trying to get through.
Okay, I see it.
Are you putting high quality like noodle into a buttered noodle dish?
No, I'm saying you get some egg noodles and then you just get some like grilled onions.
You mix that in and suddenly Parmesan on top.
And you've got you've got something more than just a butter noodle, I think.
OK.
Yeah.
All right.
I think I think.
Yeah.
All right.
But controversial.
Highly controversial.
We'll be hearing from our listeners maybe more than any guest we've ever had.
Sure.
But all right.
Let's take a quick break.
We'll come back.
We'll talk about inflation and Valentine's Day.
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.
I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports, where we live at the intersection of sports and culture.
Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry,
Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about
women's basketball just because of one single game. Every great player needs a foil. I ain't
really near them boys. I just come here to play basketball every single day and that's what I
focus on. From college to the pros, Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Angel Reese is a joy to watch.
She is unapologetically black.
I love her.
What exactly ignited this fire?
Why has it been so good for the game?
And can the fanfare surrounding these two supernovas be sustained?
This game is only going to get better
because the talent is getting better.
This new season will cover all things sports and culture.
Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke.
This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts separated by two months.
was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months.
These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks.
President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today.
And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president.
One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson.
I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman.
The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI
in a violent revolutionary underground.
Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore.
The story of one strange and violent summer.
This is Rip Current, available now with new episodes every Thursday.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And we are back.
And Elon Musk.
Let's talk about Elon Musk really quick.
He has had a wild couple of weeks.
He's had to pretend to donate billions of dollars to himself in a move to distract people from another story that came out.
That his Neuralink company was basically unethically experimenting on monkeys.
Where many were dying after he's like, put this brain chip in them.
Oh, it's untold suffering.
I don't know, whatever. And now we're hearing about a lawsuit from some of his black employees
in a Fremont, California factory claiming that, you know, the workplace is a racist hellscape.
You'd be surprised. You're like, oh, wow, really? The guy who the boy with emeralds in his pocket
from apartheid South Africa, letting race anti-black racism cook in his facilities?
I don't know. I mean, obviously, he doesn't run H.R., but it's his company.
So you're going to have to understand. We'll have to look into that a little bit more.
So this lawsuit has been following through. It's like comes after a three year investigation into Tesla.
comes after a three-year investigation into Tesla. And it alleges that black and African-American employees at the company's Fremont plant are, quote, segregated to the lowest levels, meaning
in some places, black employees are meant to scrub the floors on their hands and knees,
where employees who are not black did not have to do that kind of labor, also being subjected to
some of the hardest physical labor within the plant
quote this is from an npr article that goes on to say quote the lawsuit describes multiple instances
of racist language and drawings toward black employees penalizing black employees more harshly
than white employees and denying black employees career advancement opportunities and equal pay
for work similar to that of other employees when they say racist language and drawings we're talking
about graffiti that was
like fucking all over the place according to this lawsuit like everywhere the bathroom stalls work
benches lunch tables with things like kkk hang men's nooses go back to africa uh using the n
word in all kinds of ways that you can imagine and this is on top of like they said of being
such a segregated environment that the some of these racist co-workers had given nicknames to the parts of the factory where most of the black employees were working every day.
They would refer to some parts of the factory as, quote, the slave ship or the plantation.
In addition to other slurs, one black worker, quote, heard these racial slurs as often as 50 to 100 times a day.
It's a very, very fucked up story. And sadly,
this isn't the first time this shit has happened because another former employee was just awarded
by a judge almost $140 million for the racism that they had to endure at Tesla. And like in
their defense, Tesla just posted to their blog with this rebuttal that essentially said it like we've been
investigated like 50 times for racial discrimination and not once did they find us to be acting in
violation of the law and it's like I'm sorry 50 times that's so insane it's like it's like when
my parents like I was sneaking out of the house
all the time as a kid but i never got caught it doesn't mean i wasn't sneaking out of the house
it just means i wasn't getting caught like right insane it's a very yeah i mean that like that
i don't think i i guess they think that's a good defense although like even like the
the like labor board was sort of like like a lot of even their internal like investigations aren't compliant with like the actual law.
So, you know, it's like most organizations that investigate themselves where they're
sort of like, yeah, let me look.
OK, yeah, clear.
Yeah.
No lies detected.
Yeah.
One hundred percent.
It's yeah.
So the this Elon Musk nonsense continues.
And then, not to mention that this week, too, he was, like, he's, like, shitposting, like, Hitler memes.
Talking about Trudeau because of, like, you know, them trying to hold up crypto payments to the racist convoy.
And it was, like, it was, like, a meme of Hitler that said, like, hey, don't compare me to him.
I had a budget. And it's said like hey don't compare to me to him i had a budget
and it's like what are you god like such a gremlin i hate it no even gremlins a bad name
yeah yeah come on leave gizmo alone you leave gizmo out of this you're right yeah it's like
even the moment i ever heard his name like like the last, his name literally sounds like a Batman villain.
Like he doesn't, you know what I mean?
It's like no good can come from somebody named Elon Musk.
Are you kidding me?
Yeah.
The name is too, too many hard consonant sounds.
And that feels like, like a, it sounds like a swear word already.
Yeah.
Right.
It sounds like a swear word already.
Yeah.
Right.
But yeah, I mean, I think it's just funny because he's as he, you know, goes more and more like openly or like right wing, like what his like fans are going to be like. Are they also going to be like, yeah, man, fucking the Holocaust didn't happen.
But like, we got to have electric cars.
We really need to think about.
Like, is that the the weird byproduct of elon musk like i don't right it's
such a conundrum to me because it's like i we need like that type of technology electric or
like some some alternative to you know burning fossil fuels and and all that kind of stuff so
i'm like yeah electric cars sounds good to me.
But the main, like one of the biggest manufacturers of them is a, like, just.
A piss pot.
Piss pot.
A chamber pot of a human, I would say.
Yeah.
As we would say back in Victorian England.
It also always boggles my mind when people have the they consider these types of
people they're like heroes and will go to battle for them no matter what i'm like what this do you
think if you were in a real world scenario where you met this person that they would even give
any type of shit about you it's like so wild to me that they put them on a pedestal when i'm like
they would literally step on your neck if they had a chance like it's crazy I mean it's it they people have you know everyone has these odd parasocial
relationships and the ones with like billionaires are like really confounding to me because they're
like they they're actually like the root cause of all the chaos and instability instability that
you're feeling down on the other end of like the socioeconomic ladder like right but you're so your anger that you're actually
using to defend elon musk you you're it's completely misdirected and i get for a lot of
people he's like he feels like this fucking like fantasy story of like a guy who likes science who
like is now like this you know like shitty version of uh what's the dude from uh iron man you know i mean
oh stark yeah he's like tony stark he's like the new like you know his own hair plugged version of
tony stark and in that sense you know like no shade i i remember the old photos of you when
paypal came out in 2000 very different hairline but that's the glow up that we can experience
with billions of dollars so right one day one day that's why i
defend him for my right to get hair honestly i'm starting to see a correlation between people
becoming worse humans when they get hair plugs it's like it's like infecting their brain right
i mean okay so jeremy pivot you know hair that the plugs the plugs took him to an interesting path although he's been pretty
quiet i feel who else uh i do think that well antonio banderas see that's people don't know
about his plugs wait i didn't know yeah you know i mean hang on a second well that you need a lot
if you're gonna be a cat sorry yeah stupid reference good reference uh deep cut of puss in boots anybody no all right i got you what about
billy zane i mean he's just he's the best so is he oh yeah how do his plugs look they look good
well i don't even know if he's using them anymore maybe he got can you take them out or maybe you never had them
i don't know maybe i'm wrong about billy zane and plugs is travolta wearing toupees or or plugs i
think he's wearing a whole new face like it's right face off speaking of uh nicholas cage i feel like
has plugs oh yeah yeah yeah i mean he's tried he he was kind of like back in those 90s
films when his hair looked different every film and like nobody really just asked about it they're
like yeah yeah yeah yeah he looks great he looks great you're like hold on now did they have the
hair the same hair and makeup person on this other film maybe not but yeah uh shout out to billy zane
because you say billy zane is a cool guy still i mean i
don't know him personally but based on his performance in titanic and yes he is the villain
but right isn't the iceberg actually the villain i would say that billy z seems cool, is my point. Someone said that he
had some kind
of disorder that made him bald, and
I'm just reading a Reddit thread, so don't believe
anything I'm reading right now. And then someone said, no,
in an interview, he said it was just male pattern baldness started
when he was 25. Okay.
Okay. Cool. Thank you, Reddit.
Thank you, aggressive Reddit user.
Yeah. For defending
Billy Zane's lack of hair and the root causes of it.
But yeah, shout out to, for the people who got plugs and went positive with it.
We need you.
Yeah, we need you more than ever.
All right.
Well, let's talk about something else dangerous to do.
Driving high.
For some people.
For me, yeah.
to do driving high for some people for me yeah mostly because i when i was the type of high person that would drive seven miles per hour tops and feel like i was speeding and also that
everyone was looking at me but you know i also know i have some good friends who have been using weed since middle school as like ADD medication and like aced their GMAT like just high out of their mind because like they are better at stuff when they're high.
Right.
So it really depends.
That's the hard bit about trying, you know, as like more and more states legalize recreational cannabis.
You know, the thing all law enforcement is like, well, how do we pull people the fuck over for being high
while driving?
That's like the fucking white whale that law enforcement is searching for.
And I think in general, a lot of people too, even like stoners say, look, if there was
a way for you to actually be like, Hey man, you motherfucker, you're too high to drive.
Cause people would be like, I've been so high.
I shouldn't drive.
And most people just don't. But if there was a way to say, verifiably this person is too high to drive. Cause people would be like, I've been so high. I shouldn't drive. And most people just don't. But if there was a way to say, verifiably,
this person is too high to drive and we've proved it with this test that doesn't rely on,
you know, some guy's stepdad from the seventies being an asshole, then maybe this would be like
a fair application of the law. But as it stands, we just have things like blood tests that will
measure like the amount of nanograms of THC in your blood. But since THC is fat soluble, it's not like alcohol, which is water soluble.
That shit can stay in your system for weeks or maybe just a couple of days or hours,
depending on your biology.
So that's not really a good way to measure it.
And also it only measures like how much THC is in your blood.
It doesn't necessarily measure how impaired you might be.
And then, you know, standard sobriety tests wield pretty wildly inconsistent results because, you know, some like you're saying, some people are completely fucked up, can be completely fucked up.
Some people are normal and some people have fucking super strength somehow. that can measure someone's cognitive impairment that isn't like rife with cultural biases or
discriminatory leanings of a police officer is like critical to have a balanced application of
the law. So a few states, again, have said, well, maybe the blood test, the same thing,
but even cops are like, that's not even close. Like this person looks sober. And then their
blood said one thing like that doesn't even feel right, even for the police. So there's a device
called Cognivue, which is being touted as the solution to this problem. And it was first developed as
like a test for cognitive decline in aging people just to see like, okay, we can begin to see like
their reaction time, like their ability to track things with their eyes. And that's where I was
familiar with it from you making me take it after a couple of slow recordings right and i'm like jack come
on now which one of these is not a real word so that's what this like whole like this machine
does it like looks like a little laptop and it has like a jog wheel in the center of it
so it'll do things like ask questions like literally which shape is different and show
you like a few different shapes so you have to discern which is different or like which word is real and you have to rotate the knob to like select the answer and if you take too long
the test will just move on and like record that as like a non-answer or just begin to calculate
what your impairment that's where i started having a panic attack was that part where it was like
it'll just move on as you're going to the right answer. I was literally hearing this, the knobs and the moving on.
I can't smoke pot because I am the full panic attack.
Like I go right to middle earth.
I go right to like Smeagol.
If you don't hold onto my hand, I will slip to middle earth.
Or if I don't, I'm like such a buzzkill.
And everyone's like, I want to see you high.
It's like, not if you want to have a good time, you don't.
So even just hearing that, this literally cripples me with panic.
Oh, and it has like many different things, like little ways to make the test harder.
Like the wheel will like be harder to rotate.
They say as if it was in peanut butter.
How dare you?
So just to like fully begin to like take advantage of like oh is
this throwing them off because the wheel moves a little bit slower than the first questions
then they this one seems like super wild too to for to see how well they respond to visual stimuli
they make like these flashing frantic dots and it'll instruct you stay on the bright dots
and you have like a green wedge that you can hover over like with the rotating knob.
And you have to like put it over the white twinkling like dots.
But don't mistake them for the gray ones around it.
And again, these are things that are just meant to slowly see your reaction time and things like this.
So to test this, like how well this machine worked on this Wired article, they were like, these people got together in Colorado, a group of like cops from New York who were trained in something called their drug recognition experts, which just sound like the most annoying parents kind of thing.
Like, oh, we're trained to recognize when someone's drugged out.
And you're like, oh, really?
Oh, yeah.
They write those like lists that are like, here's what to look for.
If your kid is like smoking pot.
Put a UV light on their tongue to see if they had edibles.
Like it's like literally shit like that.
So the cops, they did they did their thing where like they were looking at the same group of stoners, like a bunch of stoners volunteered for this.
And they use their skills to figure out which who was high from there and then a lot of
and then also the people use the cognitive view machine and the results were mixed because again
it cannabis affects everybody so differently the cops attended to be when they actually looked at
the data they were more lenient in their assessment than the fucking machine was like and a lot of the
people the stoners involved are like
ah like it just seemed like like the cops are actually an easier experience for me to deal with
than like the machine that felt like made me feel like i was completely failing at like
like basic motor skills but the thing that is sort of also tricky with this about 40 percent of
smokers like like stoners they think they drive better when they're
high, or at least they say they're more focused and aware, which I, I think anyone who smokes
weed has heard that refrain very consistently. Like, dude, I don't drive faster. I drive slower.
Like I'm more aware. And you know, that that's a, that's not the best sentiment to have when it
comes to road safety. And you're like, no, when I smoke this shit and I go slow-mo, I'm a better driver.
But then you looked at this test and some people with the Cognivue machine, they were like outliers who performed better after smoking.
So that was really fucking up.
Like the administrators are being like, fuck, like this guy looked stoned off his face and he was like killing, he was crushing the scores.
Like even for like sober, like genius people we've used to like kind of get an average of how people respond.
So all that to say is it's still a very, very tricky thing to figure out because there's really no one way to, you know, discern what someone's level of impairment is.
Just hearing about that machine, it reminds me of going to the eye doctor.
And when you have to look at that thing and they're like, click every time you see the squiggly line, you know that.
And it's like, I just am so panicked about seeing the squiggly line that I feel like it does.
The test always says that I can't see anything because I'm so panicking and clicking.
It does. The test always says that I can't see anything because I'm so panicking and clicking.
Yeah. Whoever came up with that, this this stoned driving thing, it feels like they just want everyone to fail.
Right. Well, yeah. And I think that's the hard part is like even law enforcement and like other like district attorneys are like, dude, we don't have anything good to really be able to figure this out.
And that's why they're scrambling to figure this out. Because, I mean, I think at the end of the day, everyone's so into this idea of impairment.
And I mean, not that everyone's so into it, but with things like alcohol, it's pretty straightforward.
But with some substances such as this, some people end up becoming fucking superman after smoking so it's like how do
we what what what is what is the way to to even keep people safe right like unless you just trust
stoners like hey man i get it dude you get it right like if if the person is good at this test
after after smoking and like getting pulled over like you probably I wouldn't feel that bad letting them drive,
even if they were out super high,
because clearly they have their shit together.
And then if you wouldn't be good at this test,
this test sounds bad enough to me to,
if I smoked weed, I would never drive ever again just take your
license based on the cognitive i just i'd stop driving i'd give away my license on the off chance
that i would get pulled over i'll just steal it from you again at the grove i'll take it from you
fair yeah but yeah i think it's it you know we're yet to figure out the best one. And I even like colloquial, someone who smokes a lot, I'm like, I don't really know how, because like, my balance is good. You know, sometimes I'll ask people like, you know, count to 30 in your head. Like, and I'm like, I have a pretty good internal clock. So I'm not like, it's, there's no real uniform way to do this. They should just make this publicly available and everybody can go, like, get high at the DMV, then take this test, and you can get a I'm an okay stoned driver license.
I would never.
I would fail immediately.
Right.
And that's why we shouldn't have our stoned driver's license.
But Miles could test his luck.
Yeah.
Because I do.
I mean, I think a lot of people get high and play video games.
You know what I mean?
And I'm killing it out there.
Oh, yeah.
And these videos.
Oh, yeah.
So I'm like, great.
Another video game to play while I'm high?
Say less, officer.
But yeah, it's not.
They're still having trouble.
And, you know, I think as long as we have the, you know, carceral system as it is, they're going to do their damnedest to try and find a way to make it like, this is it.
It's the most infallible test ever.
And they're not, like, pinning this to a rise in like fatal car accidents tied to
people driving stoned. Right. It's just like in Washington, they did initially right after
legalization. They said, oh, my God, look at all these like these like twice as many people are
testing with THC in these like terrible car accidents. But again, that goes back to the
thing of like that doesn't mean that they were stoned when they were driving. Some person could
have smoked three days before and had like a certain amount of nanograms of THC in their blood.
Right.
So that's not straightforward.
And even then they said fatal car crashes were actually on a decline in that period where they were even looking at it.
It just meant that now that you were looking for it, you have more data to suggest maybe more people use cannabis.
But does that mean the same thing?
Not always.
And I think that's what makes it so tricky.
Yeah.
Some people are way worse drivers.
If you are one of those people, don't drive.
But then also fewer people are like doing those.
Have you ever seen, have you seen those like dash cam videos of people like having shootouts
on the highway?
Like because of road rage incidents?
Oh, I saw that guy who like pulled a gun out of his center console and was like yeah just like firing at a guy who was also firing at him as he drove by like it was
fucking yeah i need to see that america america america like it's weird because even as i saw him
like oh he's going for his gun i'm like oh he's shooting out of his car window and i was like this
is normal. guy was in a in a larger suv type car came back rammed him and then started firing his gun at the
guy in the prius and the guy in the prius just took him out but oh my god that also sounds like
somebody who maybe you should have tried smoky weed yeah oh sorry and the other detail of that
is he had done the gop guy who got killed, had done the exact same thing the year before.
What?
Wow.
He had a hobby.
I'd imagine like, yo, anybody who's that reckless with their road rage.
I'm like, keep an eye on them.
Yes.
The most I do when I'm getting road rage is with my windows rolled up, go, what the fuck?
Right.
No, I assume I'm'm gonna lose a fight with anybody
so i and you never know who's just looking like just give me give me a reason you know what i
mean so give me a reason um so um so i i try to just just put it down and deal with it. Yeah.
Yeah.
I like to be very approving of them.
Be like, great, awesome job.
Oh, that's smart.
Reverse psychology.
Fucking nailed it.
Yep.
You nailed it.
I am a piece of shit.
Have a great day. I do that with trolls on Twitter.
I remember sometimes people would be angry if I would win at midnight.
You would get an extra amount of like, hate her face why did she win you know and like so then i would always just
reply thank because they would at you you know so i would just write back and write thank you
with an exclamation point and like nobody knew what to do i wouldn't engage i would never reply
again i wouldn't but i think people were so confused it's like yeah obviously i saw it so
just write back thank you some of them would then reply and be like no i mean you know your face is okay i just yeah i just
really like oh my god i didn't think you were gonna see it yeah i just really like nixon i
thought nixon was pretty funny but you're okay too like yeah it was nice to meet a fan yeah thanks
yeah that is i just it really is i think it's the best way to deal with a troll. Thank you.
Oh, yeah.
Kill him with kindness.
Kill him with kindness.
There was like an epic one, I feel like a couple of years ago.
It may have been Sarah Silverman where they're like, hey, man, sounds like you're going through some stuff. And like a few replies later, the person just broke down and was like, hey, you know, to be honest, I am kind of going through a rough spot.
Wow.
Nobody really.
I haven't really thought about it like that.
It was just like such a turn. And you and you're like, see, everyone's hurting.
Everybody's hurting.
As that great REM song says, everybody's hurting.
Everybody's hurting.
Because everybody's hurting most of the time.
Yeah.
All right.
Let's take a quick break.
We'll come back and talk about early 2000s
officially coming 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 Jimei 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 Santer. 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.
I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports, where we live at the intersection of sports and culture.
Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese.
I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game.
Every great player needs a foil.
I ain't really near them boys. I just come here to play basketball every single day, and that's what I focus on.
From college to the pros, Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports.
Angel Reese is a joy to watch.
She is unapologetically black.
I love her.
What exactly ignited this fire?
Why has it been so good for the game?
And can the fanfare surrounding these two supernovas be sustained?
This game is only going to get better because the talent is getting better.
This new season will cover all things sports and culture.
Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke.
This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months.
These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago, when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks.
President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today.
And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president.
One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson.
I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman.
The other, a middle-aged housewife
working undercover for the FBI
in a violent revolutionary underground.
Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore.
The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current. And we're back and actually alec the thing that made me think about this is you had pointed out that erica adams is trying to get drill rap videos banned from social media after some rappers were
killed in new york recently and like it's a it's become a high profile news story.
And you, I think, had a tweet to the effect of, you know, Adams is also planning on banning
the opera because, you know, people who engage in wage theft and tax evasion like tend to
go there.
And so this guy, DG is serious on Twitter, lest you doubt his journalistic bona fides, came at you and was like, like, you can't be serious. You think like we're going to be able to solve those problems, like the things that, you know, we've been talking about on this podcast, like wage theft, caging humans, lack of funding for schools and programs that invest in the humanity of
underserved communities. He dismissed it as like, you know, unrealistic or childish and then
and just like clout chasing, I guess. And I actually a couple of weeks ago, we had somebody
on the show and we were like they made some point to the effect of like that the system is
fucked up and, you you know that kind of aligned
with what we've been talking about and then like stopped and was like i know it sounds childish
and i i think that's something that like i also internalized at a certain point is like
just like pointing out these very basic problems is like idealistic and childish and like not some like the the realistic
people are out here pointing out individual like acts of violence like when you go to the guy who
you are arguing with on twitter's thread he like has these posts of like a murt like a video of a
murder happening and is like the bronx is out of. And like, so he's the serious one while arguing for the banning of rap music on social media.
Like, do you run up against that a lot?
Like just sort of the,
you're being unrealistic or childish?
All the time.
I mean, I think he's maybe a bad example
because he's not really a serious person
because, you know, like he,
he really showed who he was,
not just with all the insults he was hurling at me as I was trying to just
like have a reasonable like debate,
but like he then said that Eric Adams is also trying to address all these
root causes.
And then he cited to Adams's crime plan,
which is literally the exact opposite.
Like,
you know,
Adams is,
is trying to beef up,
uh, you know, roll back bail reform and beef up cops
and all this stuff and not addressing things like healthcare and housing and inequality.
And so this guy's not a serious person, but I think what was really revealing about the exchange,
which I do see a lot, is politicians and very comfortable people are constantly trying to distract us from having the real conversation about structural inequalities in our society, about divestment from safe places to live and systems of care.
individual bad apples or, well, this week the problem
is music. So we don't have
to confront poverty and inequality
and deprivation
and loneliness and toxic
masculinity and all these other things that are sort of
big social structural problems.
All we have to do is ban this type of rap
music. And tomorrow it's
going to be all we have to do is get rid of bail
reform. And the next day it's going to be all we have to do is get rid of bail reform. And the next day it's going to be, all we have to do is get rid of this district attorney
in Los Angeles because everything was so much better the last 30 years before we had this
district attorney, right?
And every single day they point to some other little thing that is not fixing the deeper
structural problems in our society.
And to me, that kind of argument is just such a joke.
It's hard to even engage with someone seriously about it.
But there are a lot of well-meaning people that get trapped up in this. of argument is just such a joke it's hard to even engage with someone seriously about it but there
are a lot of well-meaning people that get trapped up in this and so i think it's important sometimes
to treat this as a serious argument and to point out sort of why it's so flawed
yeah it's it's again it's so much easier to just say to to ignore like all of the root causes like
you're talking about and just turn it into this thing of
like this like very understandable evil that exists somewhere and it's this this drill rap
i mean the disses are too violent and that's what's causing all of this chaos but again people
like the example people always fail to like really think about too is like well then how come you
know what what about why is there not a drill scene in beverly hills you know why is there not a drill scene in these more affluent
areas and what what would happen then with that would those people suddenly be overtaken by the
demonic drill music and then begin killing each other or is it about the the outcomes that people
are offered based on their their place in this and like in this sort of caste system that we have in the country.
And rather than saying like, you know, when people are deprived and desperate,
we begin to do things that have to ensure our survival.
And to distill it to, well, these lyrics are too hot.
Again, everything is just sort of about avoiding the real solution to something,
which is we need to address rampant inequality.
We need to address this stuff.
The greed of the wealthy has only exacerbated these things.
But again, I think that's much easier for people who probably feel that, you know, their livelihood or something is at risk with some kind of increased equality in society.
of increased equality in society i think those kinds of explanations help those people wrap their minds around because like well certainly it's not this other thing that i've been completely
turning a blind eye to my whole life it's drill music and if you think about yeah i believe drill
music was around uh even in the 60s you know what i mean like what why is it always this like
changing uh this evolving sort of like fake target that you know allows people just to
avoid again like always avoiding the part of the conversation which is yeah we have to we have to
fundamentally change a lot of things and there's something about this guy that i just wanted to
underline because he's a pulitzer center grantee which i don't really know what that means but it
sounds impressive and like he has a picture like his uh twitter header is like a picture of him like doing war reporting and like being
on the ground and like being there for violence happening in other countries and then he has this
post of like a video of somebody being murdered and the degree to which like it's ingrained in our values and the values that I grew up with,
where the action movies are about the police and doing real serious things and serious people taking care of serious problems.
that you're serious because you were kind of focusing on the like very short term,
like cause and effect of like violent conflict, like that that is the serious thing to do.
And then actually talking about structural issues is like the not serious thing like that. I don't know. It's just, especially now with social media,
which I feel 90 years old every time I complain about social media,
but like it is so,
like every aspect of this value system
of like, you know, being able to over-index
whatever problem you want to exaggerate
is like so deeply ingrained in like how how we
communicate and get information that I'm I don't know like I is there anything that makes you feel
hopeful Alec like about the struggle that you're kind of engaged in I think it's easy to feel
hopeless because the problems in front of us seem so daunting. And you've got very powerful interests who not only are controlling how all of this money is being spent, all these policies, but they're also, you know, ones who own the media system in which these discussions are being had. But at the same time, there's a whole new generation of people that are seeing through this
stuff, that are having conversations that we just weren't having 10 years ago. And we know when I
was a younger lawyer, just starting out in this space, there was really no one talking about the
need to shrink the size of the criminal punishment bureaucracy, to take money away from police
departments, to invest in communities of care.
No one in sort of these elite spaces, that is. Obviously, the people in these communities that
are directly targeted have been talking about this, you know, from the very beginning. But
there's a, I think one of the reasons we've seen this incredible pushback from the police and from
these media interests is precisely because they were threatened by a lot of the growing social
movement to change the way our society thinks about its investment priorities. And so I think
that is a positive. We are definitely seeing a movement of people led by the people that are
most targeted by these systems of human caging and surveillance and brutality and violence. And that's encouraging. And we're in a
reactionary backlash right now. But the thing that it's reacting to is a very encouraging set
of developments. And I think it's very, very important that anyone interested in this comes
together with other people who are interested in it and starts getting involved in their own
community, whether it's in mutual aid, whether it's in bail funds, whether it's in organizing
around environmental issues,
health issues, housing issues,
criminal punishment system issues,
mutual aid efforts, immigration issues.
There's so many ways to plug in
around something that you're personally
really passionate about
that all are sort of factoring into
us building the systems
of care that we need that are going to replace this horrific system of violence and i think
that's all positive yeah it's i mean yeah like to your point it's clear that the that like a moment
of clarity for people over in the summer of 2020 where many many people are just like, hold on. Yeah. Is this the right thing?
Is this the way we get out of this? That scared the shit out of law enforcement, clearly, because
we've seen them pour every single thing they can into countering the sort of clarity that some that
many people are beginning to arrive to, which is sort of like, yeah, I'm not sure that this
carceral system is the way that we solve things. It sounds like we need to actually help people rather than solving the failures of
our capitalist society by just investing more in punishing the poor. I think people are beginning
to be like, that doesn't quite connect. And yeah, when you see them, this all in thing of like,
man, the shoplifting, this, that, that, that's the drill music.
It does. You can tell that they're in a much different posture than before when I think people were just much more willing to accept whatever the local news said and just be like, yeah, I mean, if that's the cops system, it's hard to, I don't know how you counter that aside
from just going further into your bad habits of stoking more fear without really being able to
present the people with actual wins that law enforcement has been behind. They're not out
here being like, hey, you know what? We revamped. We turned half of our force into first responders for people
who are in need of a mental health intervention and things like that. And look at the crime.
It's gone down, baby. You could leave a bike out and nobody's going to steal it because they're
just unable to do that because the way the system works for them is, no, we just have to keep
brutalizing poor people. That's the only thing this thing is set up to do. So we're just
going to turn up the heat on that. And I think it has this effect of on one side, a lot of people
really, I see it all the time. People I used to go to high school with on Instagram were like
looking at taking a picture of a dumpster that has graffiti on it. And you can tell how like
cop brained they are because they're like, oh my gosh, do I need to get a gun now?
Yeah. There's, there's graffiti on this dumpster behind my office building.
And I see this is what's happening right now
because people are running just out here doing whatever they want
because there's no law enforcement,
while many others are just sort of like, no, no.
All I see actually is a lot of pain and suffering that has gone unaddressed.
And that, to me, is a more pressing concern than, oh, do we have to lock up,
you know, the Mach three razors at the fucking pharmacy? And so, yeah, like I that yes, with all
the with all the momentum, clearly that, you know, this narrative that's been introduced by, you know,
the powers that be in law enforcement, et cetera, there is like there is just that little bit of
clarity that you're beginning to see a lot of like people sort of step into as it relates to like what's
actually playing our, our country.
I mean, I, I think it's worth talking about the, the convoy that's happening up in Canada
because like they, without any, not any coherent worldview other than like sort of an underlying white supremacy that everybody seems to be on board with, they were pretty successful in like making everyone's lives miserable and like grinding everything to a halt for a number of days.
And they definitely have the built-in advantage of the police also being on board with the fact that they're waving Nazi flags.
I feel like if you replace those flags with Black Lives Matter flags, we're dealing with a whole different situation.
Oh, yeah.
But so, I mean, the latest in this story is that Trudeau is invoking the Emergencies Act,
invoking the Emergencies Act, which is the Canadian act that was used to suppress people's rights during World War I, World War II, internment camps. And then in 1988, they reshaped the
War Act to give it a little bit more congressional oversight. But it's a fairly it's a pretty problematic like and scary use of force that the government is like
kind of coming in and using or like invoking i guess and i'm just like wondering i don't know
do like is there any part like the movement for progress and social justice like should we be looking at like these sorts of
actions that actually like fucking disrupt an entire city like this is not a well thought
out plan but it's just something that's happening in the news and i'm just like wondering without
them having any coherent argument or complaint they They are succeeding. Like if, what if a, you know,
the movement to end wage theft, like did something like this, a thing that actually affects more
truckers than the 6% of anti-vaxxer truckers in Canada. Like why don't we see more things like that?
Should we see more things like that, where it's like a very disruptive, you know, behavior
like this?
Absolutely.
I mean, this is why you've seen states, particularly conservative states across the country,
states, particularly conservative states across the country,
criminalized to an extraordinary degree these kinds of direct actions. So now if you did this in a number of states
in the U.S., you could be hit with huge felony charges, go to
prison for life, you'd be called a terrorist, the federal government can prosecute you.
They just prosecuted two women in Iowa
for disrupting climate infrastructure, and they prosecuted them as terrorists.
And when it's being done on the left-wing side, all of the incredible bureaucratic apparatus of state violence is arrayed against you, and you're called a terrorist.
Whether it's people who are trying to disrupt animal agriculture or toxic fossil fuel infrastructure.
And there's a really interesting and thought-provoking new book
called How to Blow Up a Pipeline
by a Swedish climate activist and philosopher,
which essentially makes the case that you just made, Jack,
but makes it really beautifully.
It's a really fun and short read.
Even more beautifully than I just made it? I thought I really nailed that.
Well, obviously not as beautiful as you.
With all my stuttering and
pauses. I thought I really
nailed it. Yeah. Sorry.
Sorry to interrupt.
I think you should send him some notes
and maybe the next version of the book can be
a little bit more eloquent.
Absolutely. How to Build a Pipeline is a really inspiring read about the need for direct action on the
level that actually confronts the enormity of the ecological disaster and collapse that
we're about to confront as a sort of a global world. And the more that starts to happen,
the more repression we're going to see,
the more things like what Trudeau just did
are going to be arrayed against anyone
remotely pushing environmental or social justice.
And it's going to be very, very scary,
especially as significant migration
of hundreds of millions of people
starts to become sort of the monthly norm. Right. Yeah, I guess anything that somebody
is learning from this should be taken with a... I think it has been allowed to go on this long
because it doesn't have any coherent agenda or argument that is like picking up steam with
anybody that I can tell other than just white supremacy. So I feel like they're like, yeah,
sure, hang out, you know, take a picture. Their examples were the Ottawa police were letting
the truckers, these convoy protesters take selfies in the back of their squad car and then so that
they could spread misinformation that they had been arrested to like get people outraged. But
of course, the police weren't arresting them. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's telling when you're
in the back of a squad car with no handcuffs on when you're looking out the side of the window
like, help. No, that's not what's happening there. And, you know, it's funny, too, like they talk a lot about, you know, they don't want to send in the military or they don't want to really start, you know, rounding people up like they would at a, you know, protest that would have involved disenf they don't want this imagery of people actually being suppressed and being brutalized by the state.
And I, you know, part of me is like, well, that's really just for them, because most people who are protesting, they don't need to be brutalized by the police at a protest to get in touch with their oppression.
test to get in touch with their oppression most people already are whereas this serves a very much visual narrative to be like you see even because even what we're talking about is total vaporware
and bullshit but if they get out here and start arresting us then we can add a little bit more
emotional energy to this to help you know kind of build some momentum because at the end of the day
like you're saying it's not the many people are confused you
know especially if you're outside of this anti-vax trucker convoy world where they're like what are
these fucking people doing like this is nonsense but you know they're very much in the in pursuit
of those visuals to help sort of solidify or validate their sort of victim narrative which
is just truly not there,
especially not when you're hugging the police when they're supposed to be clearing you out.
I mean, like I and I think that's the other part, too. It's very hard for people who,
you know, have somewhat of a brain to look at that and go, that's weird. They hug those protesters,
but are firing rubber bullets straight into the eyes of the other people, and they're
not, they weren't holding up global
commerce.
Alright, that's gonna do it for
this week's weekly
Zeitgeist. Please like and review the
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I hope you're having a great weekend and I will talk to you Monday. Bye. Thank you. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult.
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I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports.
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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.
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