The Daily Zeitgeist - Weekly Zeitgeist 249 (Best of 10/24/22-10/28/22)

Episode Date: October 30, 2022

The weekly round-up of the best moments from DZ's season 260 (10/17/22-10/21/22)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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.
Starting point is 00:00:30 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.
Starting point is 00:00:39 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
Starting point is 00:00:46 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
Starting point is 00:01:02 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,
Starting point is 00:01:22 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.
Starting point is 00:02:01 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 laughstravaganza. So without further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist. cast world uh host the ongoing podcast space cave draw some truly hilarious comics his stand-up special animation cinematographical extravaganza big nothingness can be found at david huntsberger.com which was a smart place to put it because that's his name please welcome to the show the brilliant the talented david huntsberger yeah i want to do like a miles off my... Oh!
Starting point is 00:03:07 You know what I mean? Let them know. Let them know you're in a big room. Yeah. Nice to see you guys. Nice to be back. Good to see you, man. It's great to see you.
Starting point is 00:03:15 You do look like you were in a... There's like a science lab slash shop class vibe going on behind you. Like truly... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of stuff happening back. But, you know, the pandemic, you said everyone was hanging on by a thread.
Starting point is 00:03:30 I feel like in the deep stages of quarantine, just needing to like keep my hands busy to do something, I just started relentlessly organizing and I made all this crap behind me just out of free stuff. It was just stuff that was left on the curb and i'm like oh i can use that and uh it ended up being it looks a little maniacal but it's all very organized which is nice yeah very organized there's a ferrari behind him
Starting point is 00:03:57 you guys you build a ferrari out of spare parts how you build ferrari out of old Ray-Bans. What's new, man? What's going on with you? You know, I finished the wall behind me. The organization is coming to a close. I have to get back to normal life. I'm assessing the world around us all the time, like everyone is. Some people, it never slowed down.
Starting point is 00:04:22 It never changed. Other people are reacting like they got to catch up. So a lot of stop signs being run through a lot of frantic, hurried behavior. That's just baffling to watch. And I'm just sort of reintegrating and re immersing myself in it. And you guys did one of these, all these sketches, like when we were kind of at the end of, uh, everyone's still in their homes, everyone had audio games. So I started reaching out to friends and just writing little sketches and just a way to like, I was really sick of let's schedule a Zoom and hang out. I started to really hate those. But, you know, reaching out to someone and saying, do you want to do a sketch for like 15 minutes and just goof around and really not even catch up?
Starting point is 00:05:04 Just start up the Zoom. They go, how's this sound? That's good. Then we do the script i'm like how's life good oh yeah good as well and then part company and then maybe afterward they'd message oh remind me next time i hope i just i moved i have a child like okay yeah we'll talk about that next time right but anyway i did all these sketches and then i've just been like editing them and going to put them out into the world. But that's what I've been up to really. Nice, man. That sounds like a very productive way to channel the pandemic and post-pandemic or still mid-pandemic anxiety.
Starting point is 00:05:50 I think so. Maybe we get this through behind the scenes things of like how shows are made where you see like production offices and there's like dry erase boards or post-it notes everywhere. And people are like planning, how are we going to make this thing? And then they sit down and you have to open up some sort of software and like, okay, interior, apartment, day. Then you, like after you've planned it all out, then you have to write it. And you, you, then you like, after you've planned it all out, then you have to write it. I just kind of started writing all this stuff and just checking in with my friends just to say hi to everybody. And then after I had all these like dozens of sketches, like, what am I going to do with that? So there's some of the, sort of the opposite. It came from like a good place. And then I had to be like, oh yeah, what would you, what would you, what would a normal person do here with all of this?
Starting point is 00:06:24 Yeah. Yeah. We were in one of the sketches. It was a blast. But yeah, no punctuation. You didn't even have character names. It was just a block, a solid block of text. And you kind of had to work it out for yourself. You're the full underscore.
Starting point is 00:06:37 I kept having to remind me. Just like 50 underscores. That's you. That's your character. I don't know the letters. I don't know the keys on a keyboard. I also feel like you're right, that it's affected the way people are driving. I feel like I hear, you know, an average of eight peel outs, like in my neighborhood, like on a regular basis, like in the middle of the day at a time that really nobody.
Starting point is 00:06:58 I think nobody's drag racing. drag racing. Maybe I'm not up on the drag racing scene, but it feels like a Sunday morning at 1030 might not be the ideal time, but people are peeling out. People are driving hard. Yeah. Yeah. It is weird to watch. I don't know if it's good to be kind of aware of what paradigm you're in or to just do it, like just to be balls to the wall like cutting through traffic going to work chugging coffee going to doing your hobbies and activities meeting up for friends laughing just living life so fast if you're outside of that watching it you're like what changed what is no one seems to be handling this well right yeah that is a good description of how i live my life so i get it yeah you know just rushing out
Starting point is 00:07:47 you know weekends are for the boys as miles and i always talk about yeah man playing some tackle football without pads in the park could you imagine dude crushing bruise oh my god discuss the idea of two hand touch or flags. Yeah. Just fucking separate your shoulder in a public park. Only one flag we respect. Hell yeah. What is something from your search history?
Starting point is 00:08:16 The last thing I looked up was famous people from Lubbock. Because I was born there and my Uber driver was like, Jamie Foxx from there. And we found out he was from Terrell, Texas, which is six and a half hours away. But you know who was from Lubbock? Buddy Holly.
Starting point is 00:08:34 Buddy Holly was from Lubbock. Okay. Yeah. Soon to be you on there, you think? You'll be on that name of notable. Yeah. What do you call someone from Lubbock? A Lubbockian?
Starting point is 00:08:45 That's got to be it. A Lubbocker? That has to be. There's no other choice. It's got to be a that name of notable. What do you call someone from Lubbock? A Lubbockian? That's got to be it. A Lubbocker? That has to be. There's no other choice. It's got to be a Lubbockian. And if it's not, Lubbock, get at us. We have some notes for you. We got to keep it Lubbock.
Starting point is 00:08:57 Let's keep it Lubbock over here. I hate myself. Oh, a Lubbockite. Lubbockite? Let's go with it. That's like boring. Yeah. Lubbockian sounds fun. Lubbockian sounds Let's go with ite. That's like boring. Yeah. Lubbockian sounds fun.
Starting point is 00:09:07 Lubbockian sounds cool. Yeah. It's like swashbuckler-y. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Wait, so how long were you in Lubbock before you ended up moving around?
Starting point is 00:09:15 My parents lived there for a long time, but I was three and a half, almost four when we moved to Utah. Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. But we go back. We have like family and family friends there
Starting point is 00:09:25 you know okay okay so still still something you visit yeah yeah and you have you have family there like i have a similar relationship to philadelphia where like my whole family's from there but i didn't like really i don't have any like formative memories there but i think just through osmosis i get a lot of yeah i have that i do have like some of my first memories there. So I do have like that a little bit. But yeah, some of it's like just going back and hanging out, you know? Yeah, yeah. What is your first?
Starting point is 00:09:54 Okay, I hate to just kind of go there with it like a stone's throw. But can you actually think back to what your first memory is? Yeah. So my first not moving memory just like an image my parents i think this is what it is from my parents stories but it's like me alone and i'm seeing like a wall of like fluorescent flashing lights and i think it's from when my dad and my uncle like changed my diaper at the mall and they both left me because they thought the i was going with the other one and then i got lost in the mall when i was two years old like some lady went on a big baby genius uh adventure it was like night at the museum but at the mall right no some lady my mom
Starting point is 00:10:37 was like oh yeah some some lady like white lady like found you and she saw that we looked the same because we had like similar like noses and they saw like whatever. And I was like, are you just saying that lady was racist, mom? And that's how I was saved by a race by racism. That's wild. My I think it's so funny that my one of the most vivid first memories I have is being lost in Central Park. Oh, that's a big park. My dad was with me and then he turned around, but I just took off like at three or something. And my memory is of me just crying in Central Park and like a cop comes up to me and I was like, don't fucking touch me, bro. But three, yeah, three, I was, I was with the shit.
Starting point is 00:11:20 No, but the guy was like, Hey, you know, like what's going on? I was like, I don't know where my dad is. And at the time, this was the first time they said what does he look like i had no concept of race so i was like oh and i pointed at another black dude i was like he's like him and they're like all right we got a black man oh no and they brought a guy first another black dude lost his the guy was like no this ain't my son the guy was like i'm not taking this kid home yeah and then my dad came he was like oh shit he's like yo i thought how many men are wandering around malls and parks losing their children i don't know i don't know but it's i think it makes sense that that's like my first like real yeah because you were scared right yeah
Starting point is 00:12:00 for sure i was like i don't have any fear associated with it i was just like window shopping you know right right you're like walking yeah it's like the beginning of saturday night fever yeah i this is why i'm a huge advocate for kid leashes i'm totally for it i'm like hell yeah dude put them on a leash you know and a choke collar too to make sure that they stop pulling on that shit little muzzle so they stopped eating everything. Yeah, yeah. Stop eating that. I just got to say, though, I mean, racism and the NYPD were the heroes of those two first memory stories.
Starting point is 00:12:34 Yeah. But that's what they want you to think. It's a different time. That was copaganda. I think that, yeah. Our vital memories were copaganda. You know what? All this reminiscing has reminded me of a little song that goes, look at this photograph.
Starting point is 00:12:50 Oh, my God. It's probably taken by Miles's dad. Yeah, probably like this is my son. Have you seen him? I'm actually a good dad for real. Well, my first memory is just boring, but it's Wheeling, West Virginia. And I just went back to the home where I had my first memory over the summer. And it was cool.
Starting point is 00:13:10 What is, what's something you think is overrated? I think, you know, I hate to say this, and I know it's going to come, you know, this is, I'm dropping a bombshell here. But fucking Kanye. Kanye is overrated. I think, can we all admit now that graduation was not that good? And the College Dropout, fine. College Dropout is the one album I'm like, that's his good album. Right.
Starting point is 00:13:38 Yeah, sure. That's the one that is like, okay, there's, yeah, good album. What was that, 2008? 2003, I think. 2003? Yeah. I mean, come on. You know, let's.
Starting point is 00:13:49 18 years ago. Can we stop? Like, all Kanye did was release one good album and be like, I am God for like two decades. And now people are finally just like, wait, he's insane. Right. Wait a minute. Yeah, he's insane. Right. Wait a minute. Yeah, he's overrated. His music's not that good.
Starting point is 00:14:08 And honestly, you know, the anti-Semitism, we all saw that coming a mile away. We all knew he was going to be anti-Jew. Everyone knew. It was like, listen, this guy, he has been going off the deep end for a while. He's been wearing a MAGA hat and shit. We all knew it. I was like, this is, he is three days away from reading Mein Kampf and being like, oh, this is new to me. Right.
Starting point is 00:14:33 Have you all seen this? Yeah. There's nothing more annoying than anti-Semitism for the obvious reasons, but also because everyone who gets anti-Semitic thinks they're the first person to see the matrix right they're like did you know that the jews actually like run the media and stuff have you ever heard that it's like yeah it's really old it's been around for like ever yeah yeah and uh it's been debunked a thousand times and it's a stupid thing to say out loud and they're like yeah well you don't want me to say it because fucking... Because you know, dude. Because you know it's true.
Starting point is 00:15:08 Because then you get blasted off the air. Yeah. It's like, hey, if you want to see who is in power, see who you cannot criticize. It's like, yeah, like kids with leukemia. The most powerful. The most powerful people. Yes. Yes. yes dying cancer kids you can't criticize them they run everything it's just wild to see how much though it just you know knowing
Starting point is 00:15:36 how dangerous it was to let him out there and saying like just having all this shit get aired yeah not and not taking it down whether it was drink champs or Tucker Carlson or Pierce Morgan being like, well, this, this kind of, you know, like kind of, kind of wacky shit that he's saying,
Starting point is 00:15:52 antisemitic shape. My viewers are kind of into, and plus it'll get some, it'll get some clicks. And you see immediately again, we just, we were talking about it the other day, how that led to people on the fucking 405 putting
Starting point is 00:16:05 up there like fucking kanye was right about the jews banners and shit like that and doing sieg heilen it yeah and you're like that's that's why that's why you can't have fucking people out here talking like you're saying spreading this kind of vitriolic bullshit not challenging it and then waiting for like adidas to be like and that's enough yeah right there right there that was it decided that's too far yeah it's very annoying and it's even more annoying the the kind of like this white supremacist like right wing news media is clearly using this for multiple purposes number one because you know they want to show like hey you know see there are black mega people and and at the same time they want to do kind of like blanket anti-black racism and paint all right
Starting point is 00:17:03 black men as anti-semitic because that's a huge part of it especially with their like hardcore right-wing pro-israel base who like has no problem painting every single person of color who speaks just a little bit about israel as oh well that's just the same as kanye they're the same as uh you know fucking farrakhan like there's a huge amount of anti-blackness in kind of these like blanket like accusations of anti-semitism that happen and kanye is just he's just the perfect person for them to like point and go like let's give this guy some air time because it serves all these purposes all at once it's a grab bag of right-wing talking points yeah yeah it's gross but he is anti-semitic as fuck yeah what is something you think is
Starting point is 00:17:54 underrated i mean i actually like i just somewhat recently finished um thesea books, which I had not read as a kid. I just read them as an adult by Ursula Le Guin. And I feel like I'm so shocked that I had never really heard of her until I was an adult because she's amazing. And I would have loved these books when I was a kid. And I feel like it's also funny because, you know, like, I feel like people's experiences with Harry Potter are getting somewhat tainted by J.K. Rowling just turning into like a hate monster these days. But like, if you're if you feel that way, I would definitely read the Earthsea books, because first of all, I actually think they are, you know, it's a bigger world. It builds such a larger world in terms of this feeling of this
Starting point is 00:18:54 great fantasies. And it has the same themes, like wizards. There's like a wizard school. There's a lot of things I think that J.K. Rowling actually borrowed from these books, which normally is fine. Like when you borrow themes or ideas from other books, that's like that's how you write books. Like that's how literature works. But the thing that kind of annoys me is I think that J.K. Rowling was like trying to basically say her books are better than fantasy. Like, oh, mine aren't fantasy. They're magical realism. are better than fantasy like oh mine aren't fantasy they're magical realism like fantasy is just like fairies and unicorns and my books are more you know they're more grounded than that
Starting point is 00:19:30 and it's like dude come on you have like wizards and unicorns in your book why are you and also just to kind of pretend like she's special or different from fantasy it's like no you like pulled a lot of these themes from pre-existing fantasy books which is fine the these authors also pulled things from even older books like that's how it works but to not acknowledge that is kind of crappy oh this earth sea thing sounds cool though like i was just reading the wikipedia and it's like the whole world is comprised of just like tiny islands yeah ocean but which yeah feels like a lot like what ancient greece was like right when i was mainly like you know the mainland and then a bunch of little island
Starting point is 00:20:12 nations all like going to war with each other and stuff i've always been fascinated with that and been like somebody should write this book that it turns out already exists. Did it before you were born, loser. Yeah, turns out. Got any more brain busters? 68, 70, and 72. That's dope, though. Yeah, no, it's a really good series. For adults as well, I enjoyed it a lot, and I just finished it up a couple months ago.
Starting point is 00:20:40 All right, well, let's take a quick break, and we'll come back and talk about how we all might be living on a series of tiny islands in the not too distant future. We'll be right back. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah
Starting point is 00:21:15 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.
Starting point is 00:21:58 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 Sanner. 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 00:22:34 Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss 100 percent 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've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life.
Starting point is 00:23:02 It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session. 24 hours. BPM 110. 120.
Starting point is 00:23:18 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. This machine is approved and everything?
Starting point is 00:23:33 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. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you ever wonder where your favorite foods come from?
Starting point is 00:24:00 Like what's the history behind bacon-wrapped hot dogs? Hi, I'm Eva Longoria. Hi, I'm Maite Gomez-Rejon. Our podcast, Hungry for History, is back. Season two. Season two. Are we recording? Are we good? Oh, we push record, right? And this season, we're taking an even bigger bite
Starting point is 00:24:18 out of the most delicious food and its history. Saying that the most popular cocktail is the margarita, followed by the mojito from Cuba, and the piña colada from Puerto Rico. So all of these... We thank Latin culture. There's a mention of blood sausage in Homer's Odyssey that dates back
Starting point is 00:24:35 to the 9th century B.C. B.C.? I didn't realize how old the hot dog was. Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back and we're starting to get some scores in the National assessment of educational progress dropped their performance review of our educational system and it's the first one since the pandemic and the results are not great no not great nope nope nope uh pretty pretty pretty big drops they said the survey of
Starting point is 00:25:21 fourth and eighth graders found that math scores fell in nearly every state no state showed significant improvements in reading and the lowest performing students saw the largest declines in achievement and there's a lot of takes flying out there from it wasn't really that bad that they these kids the scores drop to we need to we need the teachers unions to be absolutely obliterated because they had way too much influence in doing this and they were wrong they're not scientists bs but it is clear the performance went down and many studies show this consistently and sadly it also shows that the lower income areas were the hardest hit again which causes more concern for increased inequality down the road because these are like vital years for someone's education, especially in like subjects
Starting point is 00:26:09 like math and things like that. This is from this Atlantic article. They also say districts with fully remote instruction saw declines in test scores up to three times greater than districts that had in-person instruction for the majority of the school year. And the declines, again, were particularly stark for lower achievingachieving and minority students. Yeah. I mean, my experience with online school, my kids are much younger than fourth to eighth grade. But if I were working in a job where I was not able to be there, have one eye on what they were doing, it would have been absolutely impossible. And I think doubly so when,
Starting point is 00:26:48 if they were at an age where they don't believe everything I tell them, like, you know, like once you get to fourth to eighth grade, like they're like, yeah, okay. Like they're doing what they think they need to,
Starting point is 00:27:01 to get away with lying. Or at least I'll speak for myself from fourth to eighth grade. I'm just doing what I think I can get. Oh, yeah, I was Machiavelli up in. Yeah. So, like, of course, of course, this is going to be the case. I mean, you know, I think around the world, you know, we saw a lot of countries kept their schools open and were pointing to things that like the studies were showing kids weren't necessarily the biggest threat vector in terms of transmission and kids weren't getting as seriously ill as adults. And, you know, many of the critics of the closures like point to this and like are like, but look, every every other place saw like they knew that it was low and we still had to keep the schools closed. But school closures were mostly welcomed by parents. Like it wasn't a huge like like a lot of polling showed that this wasn't as divisive as an issue as it as it was, although many parents were talking about like the how difficult it would be to manage remote learning and working remotely during the pandemic 100 percent. But I don't know, like the other thing that they also point to is especially
Starting point is 00:28:00 like low income and minority parents were at a much higher rate accepting of school closures and waiting for absolute safety before putting their kids in school. Because I think just in general, I think they were seeing firsthand how much more like how brutal COVID can be while trying to earn a living in a dangerous setting. So, you know, everyone's calculus is different. I think that the one the one thing that should be pointed out, though, is that a lot of this isn't permanent. And Mississippi students have completely recovered in their reading scores. And a study in Ohio found that the current pace of recovery and reading would pretty much eliminate the state's learning loss. Younger
Starting point is 00:28:38 elementary school kids tended to have made up ground much quicker in the last year, but older students are recovering a little more slowly. And again, in, you know, race or family income are also very predictive of, you know, what that recovery is going to look like. Yeah. I mean, so we're in the midst of like a sprint to bounce back from this, to get the students caught up, like with all this missed learning and people's responses, the teachers have it too good. That's how we're going to solve this, is by not giving teachers the protections they need. It doesn't quite work out in my brain.
Starting point is 00:29:18 I also think we should all have to take these tests because I bet we're all... I think my math scores have also fallen since the pandemic. I think we're all spiritually and mentally fucked up still from the pandemic. I think it was bad for all of us. And yeah, we're like, we probably need to have a little bit of, I don't know, patience with ourselves. And also, yeah, I mean, the thing that I always thought when we were talking about this over the pandemic was like, yeah, but kids are like way more resilient than the rest of us. So they'll probably be okay in the long run. But yeah, and I do feel like the
Starting point is 00:29:56 mental health thing is like the X factor. You know, my friends who are teachers were like, I'm spending so much time, you know, like fourth to eighth grade, you're like starting to have existential crises, you know, be like, who am I as like someone separate from my parents? And my teacher friends were like, I'm spending so much of my time just like talking to kids about how they're doing and like regulating that because they also don't have each other and like their parents are busy. And so, yeah, I hope once they can like regain some sense of stability, it will allow for bounce back. But it's really sad.
Starting point is 00:30:27 I mean, I think that, you know, again, it was a very complex situation, especially in the early stages when we knew very little and the binary seemed to be stay alive or go to school. And that was basically what that was sort of what the discussion was centered around. And I mean, yeah, when you look at the data, it has to be said that school closures for those extended periods may not have been the best move, especially when you consider that like that it was widening the gap between rich and poor kids. But, you know, rather than just going all in and being like, and this is like, you know, this daily beast thing, this person's like, look, when the Republicans take power, it was like,
Starting point is 00:31:02 wait, hold on. What? They're like, and I'm not for sham investigations, but they absolutely need to talk to like, they need to get the heads of the teachers unions up there to explain what the heck is going on. Like that is the, that direction, that energy is completely misdirected in my opinion. But you know, I think the biggest thing too, is rather than just comparing yourselves, like, well, look what happened in these, like in, in Western Europe or this place or this bad place, the U S is not like other countries.
Starting point is 00:31:29 You know, we're exceptional in some good ways and also in some terrifying fucking ways. And you look at how many people died and how little government seemed to care about the preciousness of like human life. That wouldn't inspire confidence in me as a teacher or someone having to work in the pandemic when the message being reflected back to me is you will die and that's fine. And if you die, who gives a shit? Like that's a fucked up, that's a fucked up environment to operate in. And again, union busting is not the answer here, but I think like anything, right? In America, we don't have this thing where we go through something, we learn something, and then we go back and be like, this is what we learned. And this is how it will inform future decision making, because we just we tend to not do that. And I think that's not a good pattern for our country because it just undermines people's faith in certain institutions when we can't be like, hey, dude, hey, guess what?
Starting point is 00:32:18 We learned something from that fucking pandemic. Here's what we're learning. Here's what we can how we can apply these things but yeah it's just hard to find the right way to navigate a fucking pandemic when half the country thinks keeping people safe is a genocide right the art also is it settled science that this was the the wrong move to keep like schools closed And I think it's just saying when you're, when you're putting it all together, that the, what the,
Starting point is 00:32:48 what the transmission was like in a school and what the actual like potential threat to the safety to the students was, was I guess for people who want to really lean into it feels overblown. But again, I don't think it's necessarily something where I don't think it's, it's incorrect to consider the safety of people and making the best decision based off of that. But I think the bigger issue is we had so much noise coming from certain parts of our economy about getting back to normal that it completely muddied people's ability to actually look at the situation and then figure out what the best way to solve that is. Right. And if, you know, teachers were at risk. So, I mean, yeah, teachers were dying.
Starting point is 00:33:31 Yeah, teachers were dying. And like what message like like what kind of message does that send to young, growing humans that like we're like, yeah, but we got to keep those test scores up so that you can compete in the global economy like i i don't know like even in retrospect like knowing that the spread wasn't that bad with kids it still was bad for like kids could spread it to teachers and right we didn't know about transmission at all right i'm like like parents and yeah, totally. Yeah. That's why I think, you know, I, again, it's just more about seeing that when, again, other countries are doing it. And I guess looking at those results that people are immediately just like, well, fuck. And the, and the fucking scores went down.
Starting point is 00:34:19 But again, I don't think a lot of the criticisms are necessarily that genuine because like the underpinnings of it typically end up on some version of like, well, you teachers unions have too much power or like some other weird end goal, which isn't necessarily the health and safety of every person in the country. It's more like, look what it did to business. Look what it did to that. And then like it's where this one I bet in the daily beast is truly being like well you know good luck liberals you just gave all the people who are like school choice advocates all the ammo they need right so like this i think this study is being weaponized in some ways and other people are just sort of objectively being like yeah the score is dipped they're tending to recover
Starting point is 00:35:02 here are some this was the fallout of it but, I think more than like what happened here with the school closures, the biggest indictment is more about how generally as a country we fucking handled the pandemic and getting focused on this, I think give like sort of excuses every other failure. And maybe you have to like have more protections in place when you don't have a functional health care system. You know, like maybe like the people who are have a union looking out for them are going to be a little bit more cautious when they know that if they do get covid and have to go to the hospital, it could bankrupt them. Yeah, like that. What about that? Right. So maybe what about a good a good argument or even to the or even for the people who are like well you know adults are the ones that are going to
Starting point is 00:35:52 get sick well then why are the fucking bars open right yeah those bounce back if you're if you're fucking that concerned then up like be consistent with that. You know what I mean? Rather than being like, it's just going to be adults. Also, why isn't Chili's open? Like, huh? That doesn't paint you as someone who's really... It comes back to the bias against anything that's not profitable. And schools are not profitable in the short term. And I think that's what's kind of wild is just to see people's response to this shows like as a country,
Starting point is 00:36:27 like we're completely losing our grip on being humane. Yes. You know, like there, this woman was arrested in Arizona recently because she was feeding the needy in a park and the laws don't allow you to serve food in a charitable nature. Like we're, we're criminalizing shit like that.
Starting point is 00:36:44 And also having like these wild takes where they're like the teachers unions have way too much power because teachers were dying and they were looking out for their the workers involved in this union but just using like these scores to sort of completely say that this is a this is a failure and if they want better wages well the unions really screwed them over because now they look like they don't know what they're doing. Right. It was it was a difficult situation. You know, the teachers like we got the results we got.
Starting point is 00:37:12 And it's just America is not great at dealing with difficult situations that we've seen at this at this point in our evolution. Also, any sort of like woulda, coulda, shoulda about COVID feels ridiculous to be like, we shouldn't have been wiping down surfaces. That didn't do anything. It's like, well, okay, we didn't know. And all those times they were like, don't wear a mask. You know what I mean? We were throwing spaghetti at the wall. We had no idea. Like, yeah, there's a lot of things we should have done. A lot of things we should have done differently. I don't know. It's funny in retrospect that I was disinfecting my cheerios boxes when i got them home from the grocery store and but i'm i'm also like not calling for the heads of the of the people who suggested that it could be spread by
Starting point is 00:37:57 you know particles on cheerio boxes because we just didn't know and everyone was freaking out understandably right and it did kill a million people yes and again try operating in good faith like and what's the best interest for your own health or your community's health when you let you have millions of people who will just be like why are you wearing a mask why are you doing this let me get in your shit like we're that's what I'm saying. Like, I think for people who want to make a really easy comparison, it's like,
Starting point is 00:38:29 well, they didn't do that in like South Korea or whatever. It's like, we're not, we're not dealing with the same shit. Also in South Korea, the government was like bringing people food to be like, Hey,
Starting point is 00:38:39 we know you're locked up. Here's a fucking care package. Cause we know you have to eat because we understand that as, you know, just a concept rather than our version, which is like, Hey, salute the people who are,
Starting point is 00:38:51 whose only financial recourse is to go buy groceries for people with more money. Right. All right. Let's, uh, let's move on to maybe the police are a bad fucking idea. Part two,
Starting point is 00:39:04 uh, just a recurring segment we have so a couple weeks back the edmonton police released a composite of a suspect in a 2019 sexual assault a black man who or a black male i will say who judging from the image presumably escaped on the polar express because the the image they released makes him look 12 years old. No. And uncanny, like it's not a first, like you say, like Polar Express, you're like, are you a computer animated character?
Starting point is 00:39:34 Yeah, it's a computer animated 12 year old. What? Yes. And so what they did was they used DNA phenotyping, which is the process of predicting a physical appearance and ancestry from unidentified DNA evidence. This is not a set. There is not a settled science around this. Oh, my God. The cops bought the composite from a company called Paraben Nanolabs, which sounds very official. They routinely provide this service to law enforcement, and the Edmonton police claim this tactic was taken because the public needs to get this person
Starting point is 00:40:09 off the streets, even though they admitted that the composite was not 100% accurate. Turns out that's a massive understatement. Less than a week later, the Edmonton police issued an apology over the use of DNA phenotyping after a massive backlash for its broad characterization of just a black man. Again, could be a black child, which experts expressed concern would lead to mass surveillance of any black man, approximately five foot four. Oh, my God. DNA phenotyping sounds like phrenology or something. That is like arcane that is wild especially the couple of that would like and this is who did it yeah yeah whoa face is so specific but it so it's like a police sketch but it's not it's based on kind of less than a police sketch
Starting point is 00:41:00 which racist already you know, very problematic. But one geneticist called the, quote, science of extracting facial profiles from DNA, quote, dangerous snake oil, while one taxpayer complained the government is wasting money on racist astrology for cops. Oh, my God. Yes, 100%. We always hear that the problem with algorithms is human bias. And this is like the visual manifestation of using science to dress up human bias. That's so scary. And yeah, to be like, oh, it's heritage and history to manufacture it.
Starting point is 00:41:41 Also gives DNA evidence a bad name. factor it also gives dna evidence a bad name by being like and from this dna we will conjure this image of like a composite that a computer made but yeah the the company that provides the service paraben also does dna matching but this specific service is called snapshot was first released in 2014 and a lot of people in the field of DNA research were skeptical of Snapshot and continue to be. For one thing, the company's science has yet to be published in any peer-reviewed literature. So that's one of those things that we generally look for in our science.
Starting point is 00:42:21 I wonder how they came up with the name Snapshot. It sounds too like cute and ineffective you know it's like snapchat or like a snap judge it's like that's not right you weren't even trying snapshot yeah hey this will take off yeah yeah it does feel focus grouped yes it feels like it came out of like mattel like mattel's like focus grouping like for coming up with the name of like a snapshot barbie is our new or like a fucked up kids toy it's like put two drops of blood in the receptacle container wait 15 minutes and then it'll reveal your new image like with snapshot that's like the buzzfeed personality test of
Starting point is 00:43:02 the future right totally in like datica world we'll just give us your blood and we'll figure it out yeah see what cartoon what looney tunes character we are by dropping our blood into a vial oh my god i could totally see it don't even answer questions anymore a version of the future where like you know the 23 and me goes down a path where you're like spit in a cup and then like they do all sorts of fun like personality tests yeah exactly like that it's like have you tried a balayage does not like hair dye job like that would really look good for you like what i'm giving your ancestry right yeah i'm like i don't have a hair you're looking at me you're telling me i should get balayage what the
Starting point is 00:43:41 fuck you mean right but there there's basically no way to know how they're accomplishing what they say they are their response to the criticism is we're not in the business to write papers the results speak for themselves so results are fucked up my man yeah and they're bad a geneticist whose work paraben admits they partly base their technique on suspects that paraben is just generating a bunch of generic faces and then using the DNA info to tweak these faces and fill in the blanks. It's Theranos. Oh, my God. Yeah, it really is very similar to Theranos. Wasn't that kind of what they did?
Starting point is 00:44:20 Yeah. Yeah. Now it's kind of delicious. I'm like, this is like the takedown is making itself right right yeah so that would explain why the composite looks so broad and just yeah or just be like what the like it land that you say that it really does feel like a create a player function in a sports game when it's like here are the 17 like eight faces you can then fuck if you can fuck with from there right because this one is like how where it's like, here are the 17, like, 8 faces you can then fuck with from there. Because this one is like, how...
Starting point is 00:44:48 Like, this fucking mugshot looks like a fucking 13-year-old, 12-year-old. So this is what's wild, okay? So, from the DNA testing that they're doing, they can't even determine a person's age using DNA. So they
Starting point is 00:45:04 chose the age of, you know, 13, 14. And like, that's a point that we discussed recently, like with regards to the L.A. City Council's like racist comments. It's interesting that they chose to spread a picture of a black child when they couldn't possibly know the age like the othering and targeting of black children is like real and it's a cultural sickness that i feel like comes from the dissonance that occurs in the brain of a person whose cultural conditioning tells them to be racist against black people but whose humanity tells them that these are fucking children and to like to help smooth over that dissonance dissonance they like grasp for anything they can to like find something that others black children like right the science of it right yeah like and yeah i don't
Starting point is 00:46:03 know the in terms of skin color one expert estimated the scientists would only be able to predict someone's skin color using DNA with 25% accuracy. Wow, they went all in on his complexion, too. Yeah. Yeah. But this is in Canada, right? Yeah, this is in Canada. But this is also, so the cops in Edmonton apologized for using the tech. It doesn't mean they'll necessarily stop.
Starting point is 00:46:27 And in 2020, the NYPD announced that they'd no longer use Snapshot in their investigations. But then more than a year later, it turned out that they had maintained a relationship with the company. I knew, I was like, I had a sinking feeling. I was like, cool, this is going to, you're going to hear. Cool, cool, cool, where's the NYPD and all this? Cool, cool, cool. Some American police unit is going to be like, all right, we got this new technology. Seems pretty legit.
Starting point is 00:46:54 I'll play this. This was from five years ago. This is from a local news broadcast in Denver when they're heralding the arrival of DNA phenotyping. You attend putting a face on crime. What if you could see what a suspect looks like just from the DNA left behind? So it sounds like sci-fi, but Aurora police are some of the first in the country to use this cutting-edge technology to try to catch the bad guys. But Denver 7's Jacqueline Allen found some question whether the science is ready. Private companies say they can use your DNA to make predictions about what you look like,
Starting point is 00:47:26 your skin color, eye color, painting a digital picture of your face. But some researchers are concerned about how accurate that is. So we tried it ourselves. So they go on. But again, like the binary here is like new technology to catch the bad guy. Bad guy. Exactly. But then they they gotta level that off some people who actually know what the fuck they're talking about are like not so fucking quick
Starting point is 00:47:51 right yeah it just shows again like it's this always there's going there's always like the side that's like yes spend more money so i have to do less work to actually catch somebody like hey buddy your face looks like this racist fucking ai algorithm face so it was you right um or that then they'll actually have to use dna to match that but and then on the other side of just people trying to say this is fucking dangerous it's pseudoscience yeah i mean just think about who has like these companies are like when you read the history of these companies, they get like hundreds of millions of dollars of cash infusions from, you know, venture capital firms. And who where is the money on the other side of that? You know, who's balancing that out by looking out for people who are getting wrongly convicted? It's like public defenders and shit, you know, like people who are, you know, not not making any money. And then, you know, also, it would be interesting to look at the sourcing of that local news story because they got to try it out themselves like a fun little like party game so they obviously did that story with the cooperation of the dna evidence like company that that they were reporting on so
Starting point is 00:49:14 also just the political ramifications of like circulating pictures of people a nebula like yeah yeah i was just thinking i like met someone recently who was like oh yeah i really hope donald trump runs again i don't really agree with him on anything but like crime we have to close the border you know he's like these illegals they're like causing he's like what did he say he was like my wife got mugged the other day i was like how do you know it was an illegal immigrant and he was like you don't and this guy was an immigrant you know he was like you don't know it wasn't an illegal immigrant you know it just plays into like this larger political paranoia that we're so so it's like for some people it's their number one voting issue above everything else is like am i safe is my family safe against
Starting point is 00:49:56 like these other these other people so that's so to imagine just like more imagery more faces right more more images put up on tv of like this is maybe probably a danger people with this like yeah ethnic background like that's terrifying right yeah i mean yeah people are definitely going through mean world syndrome of just having that just put right back in their face and you know we talked about the proliferation of like ring cameras and home surveillance and all this other stuff and like the fucking next door app and shit like that just feeds and feeds and feeds your like if you have if your your cognitive bias is bias is aimed towards what the fuck's going on out there everything's so fucking unsafe there's no shortage of ways to fucking freak yourself out.
Starting point is 00:50:46 There's no fucking like you could turn on any fucking channel, look at any app, whatever. There's something to reinforce that. And yeah, it's, it's becoming a really effective tool and it's the entire, it's one of the biggest things Republicans are running on now.
Starting point is 00:51:00 It's like crime wave. That's not there. Yeah. There's money in the fear. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's take a quick break. That's not there. Yeah. There's money in the fear. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Starting point is 00:51:06 Let's take a quick break. We'll come back. We'll talk about menswear. 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
Starting point is 00:51:36 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.
Starting point is 00:52:00 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,
Starting point is 00:52:29 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 Sanner. 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
Starting point is 00:52:58 100% 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've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that.
Starting point is 00:53:25 I have a proposal about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session. 24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out?
Starting point is 00:53:47 I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams.
Starting point is 00:54:07 Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. It's me, Katie Couric. Have you heard about my newsletter called Body and Soul? It has everything you need to know about your physical and mental health. Personally, I'm overwhelmed by the wellness industry. I mean, there's so much information out there about lifting weights, pelvic floors, cold plunges, anti-aging.
Starting point is 00:54:39 So I launched Body and Soul to share doctor-approved insights about all of that and more. We're tackling everything. Serums to use through menopause, exercises that improve your brain health, and how to naturally lower your blood pressure and cholesterol. Oh, and if you're as sore as I am from pickleball, we'll help you with that too. Most importantly, it's information you can trust. Everything is vetted by experts at the top of their field, and you can write into them directly to have your questions answered. So sign up for Body and Soul at katiecouric.com slash bodyandsoul.
Starting point is 00:55:15 Taking better care of yourself is just a click away. And we're back. And so are the Teletubbies thank god i yeah so i was like you miles that when the first wave of teletubbies hit i was too old to give a shit and like you know too far away from having children to even like conceive of ever giving a shit about this sort of thing right but it was this big media like the place it did cross my radar was a media panic about whether it was like instituting evil satanic or you know queer ideology into babies like this is a show so i've got like as part of your baby's mind yeah this is this is a show that like uh this is a our writer jam put this story together
Starting point is 00:56:16 you know did a lot of awesome research and i i watched teletubbies footage for the first time and it is very strange. Have you guys watched any of this footage? Yeah, I remember when it came out, I remember being, just because I was like, fine, what is it? And I remember being like, oh, this is for babies. Because they're not even using words.
Starting point is 00:56:39 You know what I mean? It's just all vibes. Yeah, it's all just rolling hills, a son that has a baby's face inside of it. Giggling. And so that's what it was originally. So one controversy with a new one. We'll just get into that because this is probably the news hook you'll see is that the redesign, you know, the same way that like Star Wars fans will like don't want anything changed.
Starting point is 00:57:05 They just want you to release the same movie again i guess this teletubbies update people are mad because instead of being inside a cartoon sun the baby's head is just floating out in space like out in the sky and then their sunbeams behind the baby's head and people are like that's weird that's on the other hand the original the original design also extremely strange so i'm not i'm not sure i can like fully understand any complaints about criticism where people look it's not in the sun it's not an irradiating sun beam yeah that that doesn't surprise me at all. But yeah, that is apparently a complaint that some people have had. They just dropped the first trailer last week.
Starting point is 00:57:51 So we'll see if this has any. What do you call like the ultra fans, like the ultras for Teletubbies? Is there like a crew of them? Yeah, tubbos, tubbers, tellies, tubies, tubberinos. Yeah, but there's like a People article that was like, Reboot looks mostly unchanged in design, but some fans have been left raging at one major difference, and it's just that the baby's head.
Starting point is 00:58:14 One fan, me. Some fans, me, and muttering under my breath when I first saw it. But it is such a strange universe they've created and it seems it does seem it seems very psychedelic which kind of makes sense because like a lot of the understanding or you know at least theories on like what psychedelics do for people's minds as they like remove all the doors or like you know different filters we've built up over life just to like be able to get through day-to-day life so you know be able to focus on something boring and psychedelics like allow you to peel those back so you're just at a place where there's like none of these filters
Starting point is 00:58:59 and everything's coming in kind of unfiltered and that would seem to be like how a baby would perceive the world. And when you spend time with babies, you do also have that thought. You're like, oh man, they seem like they're tripping with the stuff that they're interested in. Like they're just like the plants are growing. The grass is moving. how do my bones move me is the trippiest question one of my kids asked me that i can remember but that's just like par for the course they're constantly saying shit where you're like what the fuck are you talking about but i think so i think just generally it makes people uncomfortable because there is like a logic there that resonates with their inner child or their inner baby. I guess inner baby is completely different from inner child.
Starting point is 00:59:54 And that's like the thing that Teletubbies does that other media for children doesn't do is it actually seems to create a world specifically for babies using baby logic actually this this story made me like go and google just have have people watched teletubbies while tripping and like what was their experience like and i will say i can't recommend it for for everyone based on the like some one person who's like die hard was like love watching the teletubbies where when tripping this is a direct quote from a uh from a mushroom enthusiast forum i taped them in the morning to see what it would be like to watch them while on shrooms and it was the coolest they are cute and everything in the show is super colorful can't watch them without laughing my ass off it'll bring the child out in you i guarantee it but then like some of the responses
Starting point is 01:00:49 to this were like this is do not listen to this person like i when i watched it i saw like demons in the sun baby i swear it like the sun baby as it's about to dissolve into sunlight turns into a demon for first split second this person was like big tip if someone's having a bad trip turn on the lights put on a teletubby tape and set the person who is sad mad scared whatever in front of the tv and give them a blanket or a pillow i don't think that's good advice necessarily you could you could try it but i mean they might attack your television i like that we're finally looking we're finally doing real research into psilocybin and baby vibes as a way to heal people but i also like the idea of teletubbies like as it's like rorschach test of
Starting point is 01:01:38 like dude watch it and you're either going to be like this is fucking crazy i can't handle it right or you're like oh this is like some dumb ass baby shit but't handle it right or you're like oh this is like some dumb ass baby shit but i get it like because you're like i'm baby you know yeah exactly but i mean like just random controversies are pretty par for the course like we said there's backlash from parents who thought the show was dangerous nonsense others pointed out it was dumbing down the simplicity was like damaging well you know education experts said the simplicity was exactly the point there's like constant repetition because some people were like the plots are just crap there's there's no sense of place the camera placement doesn't make any sense.
Starting point is 01:02:25 It's like, yeah. Like the fucking characters are called like Inky Winky and like Papi Lulu. Like what the, and you're like, I don't know. I mean, the mise en scene, like, huh? Come on. And then they try and get real for one episode, like the one where they had a bear come into Teletubby land and it became it was like outlawed in various countries censored by the BBC because it was too scary. I watched like five minutes of it. It's truly it's actually not as creepy as like a lot of the commentary makes it seem like the bear. I think I might have seen the one that was like post some
Starting point is 01:03:06 editorial changes but the bear just like talks with a silly like i'm a bear and i'm here to eat whatever i want and you know it still has the sunshiny vibes there is a voice that repeatedly tells them to like run and hide from the bear which is dark here i think we're gonna play a little segment um there's the bear is this like two-dimensional cardboard yeah i'm the bear i'm the bear with brown fuzzy hair scary okay jack we gotta stop we gotta knock this shit off it's fucking crazy it's really good it's posted by nascar fan 2048 yeah that's who's posted this youtube video i caught up some teletubby stuff from time to time it says this is custom made so maybe this isn't like pure teletubby he's like
Starting point is 01:03:58 look man i'm in a nascar and freedom and freedom also extends to the media where i will upload the unedited lion and bear teletubbies episode the red band trailer so this is not very um okay i'm looking over there because it has like a i'm that's the noise that the bear makes. I guess the lion is chasing the bear. So children are learning about the kill or be killed world of the jungle. Yeah, hard to know where they... I don't know.
Starting point is 01:04:38 Okay, fine. I remember the thing with Jerry Falwell was because the one was purple and had the triangle like thing on their head. They're like, you see. Right. I study. I study gay semiotics. I know about this stuff. Right.
Starting point is 01:04:53 And that was the big that was the big thing that there's a character. I think it's Tinky Winky who wears a tutu and carries a purse and is a boy and or is i guess like that these are gendered gender fluid and cubbies because it was the 90s instead of being like that's there's nothing wrong with that they were like what you're wrong it's a bag yeah it's a bag. It holds bag! It holds bag! So, I don't know. I can see this being a thing for the right to come back with when they're already responding to... I think when we see a cultural reboot
Starting point is 01:05:43 that was something that was popular in the 90s, and then it comes back in basically the same form in our modern world. Like we saw this recently with Hocus Pocus, where a mom was like, and there was a witch on my TV, and like that is satanic. And it's like, oh, we've moved, we've moved backwards. This is, this is like, we're, we're regressing culturally. So this is just another one where I would be on the lookout for another example of the right finding a way to freak out about this.
Starting point is 01:06:20 I think it really is like in this way, it, it, it does say something about your subconscious where if you're sat in front of a piece of media that doesn't have like an overt structure or narrative that you begin to fill the gaps with the weirdest shit. Right. Really? I know what they're trying to tell a baby through this thing now is just really, I don't know, telling of whether like how, how, how like much our intellects have just gone in the gutter where people don't even know how to just sit in that and be like, huh, I don't know what that was. Okay, fine. Or be like, I hate when it's quiet.
Starting point is 01:06:57 I don't like to be with my thoughts. So a TV show, which is the equivalent of being with my thoughts is not the kind of place I want to be. Therefore, I can project all this other weird nonsense into it. Yeah. Hard to know. Hard to know. Yeah. I mean,
Starting point is 01:07:11 it's definitely weird, but so are the minds of babies and like all programming directed at babies is like the blues crew or blues clues. Is that the one where they just like turn to the camera and they're like, what do you think? And then sit there and wait for you to answer? That's very strange. That is an uncanny experience that would be just as easy to be like, they're demonstrating that they are autonomous slaves to the Illuminati because they're just there's long periods of silence that make me feel uncomfortable. There's going to be overreactions from a right that is going further and further, just spinning further and further away from the planet and any sort of gravitational force of reality. And this feels like just pay dirt for them. So it'll be interesting to see. My familiarity with content, especially produced material on television, is that it has to go through a lot of yeses. And then even beyond pitching it to a room, you might have a writer's room. If something is birthed out of cable access, yeah, me and my friends have these weird costumes. We got them when we were traveling abroad and we started filming ourselves
Starting point is 01:08:47 just making baby sounds. And someone picked that up. You're like, oh, that was the beginning of Teletubbies? That would make sense as opposed to like someone going into a room, opening a briefcase and like setting out. So here's what I'm thinking.
Starting point is 01:09:00 The people just sitting there like, I'm trying to follow you. I appreciate you pitching to us, but go through it again. So I wear this suit. My friend wears this one. We make these sounds. It's like a star child baby thing. We've studied babies.
Starting point is 01:09:17 Who says yes on that? Are they just like, yeah, I mean, that's our network. We just try anything. Go for it. Someone in Europe. That is definitely where that happens. Not in the United States. But I think people that have like extreme dogmas are like, no, this was, yeah, like the Illuminati purposefully putting together all these ingredients.
Starting point is 01:09:36 It's like, yeah, right. When the Aquabats fell apart as a ska band, they knew that was a a setup move. For yo gaba gaba. Like what? The ska wave crested. And then they found themselves in a good position. But I was curious. If I was going to be able to find somebody. Who tripped and watched Teletubbies.
Starting point is 01:09:58 With baby mindset. And they were like. Yeah it's actually just very straight forward. And it feels like you're just watching. a PowerPoint presentation. This all makes total sense. If you are in a baby's mind, it's like very clear. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And how would you know how you would be inside of a baby's mind? I was on a significant amount of LSD. Oh, okay. It wasn't such a strange affect on people years later at a lunch you know with that
Starting point is 01:10:28 just i've made it kind of well it's cute you think that but when i was making tubbies the thing about a great bitch and i know i learned this on tubbies right there's someone that had that like stacks of money from teletubbies. It was such a dick. Call him Tinky Winky Wink. Because, like, they have to come up with a nickname that makes it clear that they're, like, friendly with them. My friend Tony played T-Dub the first few years. And what a diva. Couldn't get him in the costume.
Starting point is 01:10:57 We threw money at him. Throw money at every problem. That's how you solve it. That's how you solve Teletubbies. I can go on all day. That's right. Oh, shit. All right.
Starting point is 01:11:06 That's going to do it for this week's weekly Zeitgeist. Please like and review the show if you like the show. It means the world to Miles. He needs your validation, folks. 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. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M
Starting point is 01:12:26 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. the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Carrie Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making
Starting point is 01:12:51 of a rivalry. Caitlin 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.. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry, Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Starting point is 01:13:10 or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. 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. 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 4 of Naked Sports.
Starting point is 01:13:50 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.

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