The Daily Zeitgeist - Weekly Zeitgeist 286 (Best of 8/7/23-8/11/23)
Episode Date: August 13, 2023The weekly round-up of the best moments from DZ's season 299 (8/7/23-8/11/23)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
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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.
Miles, we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by a very funny pop culture expert.
One of our favorite first-time guests back for the second time. One of our favorite first-time guests back for the second time.
One of your favorite first-time guests.
Also a restaurant expert, a restaurant food critic.
Yes.
Apparently a s'mores expert who hosts the show Black People Love Paramore.
It's Sequoia Holmes!
Sequoia Holmes!
Welcome.
I'm so happy having me back.
Such a warm welcome.
So good to have you.
So good to have you.
I was just saying off mic before,
I was like, I love your Drake-based restaurant reviews
where you take a Drake lyric
and then you hunt down the restaurant and dish.
You try to have the meal comparable.
Like I said, for people who are like,
there's a lot of hype restaurants that
get dropped in these drake tracks let's sequoia do the exploring for you so you don't have to
take a potential expensive l at a nice restaurant so i'll take you yeah thank you thank you do you
tuck your napkin when you're eating there do you tuck your napkin in your shirt because you're
like that i really do consider tucking my napkin my shirt because i'm just loving like that yeah
my boyfriend said it was ghetto.
So I was like, oh, I guess I won't.
You know, you go to those steakhouses that have like the button slit in the napkin for you to put it.
That's when I was like, oh, OK.
That's when I was like, there are levels to even the napkins.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
And I was like, damn, I'm up in here with a T-shirt.
Maybe I'll have a little bit of a button I can attach the nap a button off next time yeah do you so what kind of it's only drake based restaurant it's just drake based thus far but take a lyric
go to the restaurant the drake name drops yeah and rate his taste so far he has decent taste you
know but i don't expand other rappers also do you know restaurant stuff I don't expand. Other rappers also do, you know, restaurant stuff. Yeah, exactly.
Like Ghostface will say a lot of food rhymes,
but they're really not attached in a coherent way to a restaurant
because it'll be like, you know,
linguine off the boot sole and you're like, huh?
Where's that?
No, thank you.
I'm good on that.
You mentioned the Cheesecake Factory, one of, I think, the greatest thing American culture has yet created is the Cheesecake Factory.
Okay, Jack.
Where do you put hip-hop?
You go Cheesecake Factory, jazz, hip-hop, barbecue.
Jazz, hip-hop, Cheesecake Factory, top tier.
There's tiers, as we already said.
Oh, so jazz, hip-hop, Cheesecake Factory are in that top tier.
You're saying, wow.
Oh, for sure.
I think those are the first three things.
I'm pretty sure Ken Burns has a documentary that he's working on.
Ken Burns Cheesecake Factory.
The Ken Burns Cheesecake Factory documentary.
But that's where I wanted to go for my birth i recently
had a birthday wanted to go there but it didn't work out because we were also seeing oppenheimer
so i saw i went to a local place the california pizza kitchen oh yeah the californians la people
will know all about that it's a little local haunt. Nowhere else. Man, we had one of the best dining experiences I can remember.
It was so good.
Wait, what about RHCPK?
RHCPK, what happened?
What did you eat?
I had my standard Thai peanut chicken, Thai chicken peanuts pizza.
Thai peanut chicken.
Thai chicken peanuts pizza.
They also have like a bacon avocado egg roll
that is so good.
They have one at Cheesecake Factory too.
I'm sure it's like copied.
I think Chili's also has one that's very similar.
They call them like Southwest egg rolls
or something. It's usually what you see and you're like,
fine, let's finally mash up.
They kept the Diet Cokes coming.
You know, it was just
underrated. Chain restaurants,
truly.
Some of them are underrated.
I don't know if Sheikah is one of them.
What's your favorite chain restaurant? I'm a BJ's girlie.
I love a Pazooki.
I've never been to BJ's.
You've never been to BJ's? No.
You sounded like when
Her Majesty told me she never saw City of God or Kill Bill.
You never seen City of God?
You what?
You never been to BJ's?
You never had pizookie?
You gotta get a pizookie.
Yeah.
It's anything for the pizookie.
If you want to have a perfect Burbank day, spend some time at Ikea, get a lunch at Ikea,
and maybe catch a movie.
Look, if you're feeling spicy hit the islands if
you're but if not go to bj's yeah where the good times are rolling mine was speaking to my
childhood that was exactly what it was like where'd you grow up i know you're from la beach
oh okay yeah yeah but you know you got to have those balance of things those are like
the go to chain places for me for sure's it. Islands forever. Islands forever.
That is one that I know.
I don't think it's that national.
I don't think it's that national either.
You got to get a little California.
I always get the shake.
Yeah,
exactly.
The Yaki,
the chicken tacos is what I always get.
Not the burger.
Not a big burger guy.
When I go there,
you know,
I do me neither.
No,
no,
exactly.
Got to have those.
Got to have those.
Got to have cheese fries.
Got to have my grilled chicken tacos, but I take the pineapple out anyway that's my order and that's there you go they think they're a burger spot but they're like that that's not what people actually
go there for i've never heard anyone be like you gotta have the burger at islands but there's like
a number of items that people really swear by they're oh yeah they have like some mixed drink that is like supposed to be really good there.
I believe that.
Their drinks are really good overall.
Yeah.
And those nonstop surf videos on loop.
Okay.
What's that?
Ignore me.
I just said, and those nonstop like 90s surf videos they just have on loop by the bar.
Yeah.
And you're like, this shit is old as fuck.
Very California.
But yeah, go ahead.
Put it on loop.
What is something from your search history?
Okay, so my search history from today is I googled inventor of the wheelchair.
And his name is Stefan or probably Steven Farfler.
And I googled him because I wanted to write an appropriate joke about how i believe that
the inventor of the wheelchair just really wanted some pussy um and then like that's how the
wheelchair was invented and i tweeted it out and then i was like oh let me actually before i tweeted
out i should say i looked up who invented the wheelchair because i was like man i already know
somebody's gonna be mad everybody the thing about comedy and writing jokes is that you can see now how people are going to be offended.
And I was like, oh, I got to be prepared for someone being like, how do you know a man invented the wheelchair?
And it's like, oh, I don't I don't think that the person who's credited for inventing the wheelchair is the person who invented the wheelchair.
You know, I'm sure there was like some fucking ancient indigenous motherfucker who invented that shit
that'll never get the credit for it.
That's the truth of the matter.
But like, you always have to be prepared.
And I hate that.
So that's a really good way to know me.
I fucking hate that our crowds have gotten so like PC
that everything has to be worded so perfectly.
And it's like, that's not how comedy works, guys.
Like, it's just me making a fucking joke
about how thirsty men are. And people are like, that's not how comedy works, guys. Like, it's just me making a fucking joke about how thirsty men are.
And people are like, that's not historically.
It's like, can you focus on some actual problematic comedy?
Don't come at me for presuming the gender or identity of the person who made the wheelchair.
Because I'm trying to make you laugh by saying wheelchair was invented by a horny guy.
That's the distillation.
Are y'all not fucking with that
exactly so that's a little about me look where i'm at in my comedy writing i laughed from the
setup the setup made me laugh so i'm fucking with it i'm on board it's is your presumption
that the inventor needed a wheelchair to get to the pussy or that the inventor was just trying to
okay yeah yeah like he he was at home he's like man
that bitch suzy told me i could get it if i could just get to her house but my legs don't work how
the fuck do i get this dick wet army crawl and i can't have my dad carry me again
all that rubble that he has to fucking drag me through like, yo, that's desperation. That's innovation
via desperation.
Which we all know is how the best
shit is invented is through me.
Oh yeah, horniness and desperation.
100%. Those are like the two pillars
of pure creation.
Poppenheimer taught us anything.
Yeah. Pussy Poppenheimer.
Oh, crud.
I need to write that down become death
yeah destroyer of worlds he said as he had sex for the first time um jack did you get enough
sleep last night why you seem really like you don't want to be here with me tonight today am i
lagging uh yeah i think you're lacking is the real word. She wants you a little bit brighter, Jack.
She's taking it personal.
I need you, Jack.
I need you.
I can't be mean to you when you seem a little down in the dumps.
Are you tired?
Get a good night's sleep?
Yeah.
How much coffee do you want?
Oh.
Did you have a nice breakfast?
What did you have for breakfast, Jack?
Three eggs and an English muffin.
Oh, damn. That's pretty good yeah that's good damn
that's i know i like that we both were like oh shit three eggs not two
you get a workout
i think i was trying to loosen you up Jack okay okay I'm confused because I was in the middle of a
sentence and I
I don't give a fuck what you're in the middle of
I'll fucking ask about how you're doing anytime I
fucking want to it was wild because Marcella you were
lagged you were lagging on the call
so when Jack started talking
it seemed like you had nothing to say and then you started
like are you okay Jack
like in the middle of what you said
I'm so confused i love it oh shit what is uh what's something you think is overrated
what do i think is overrated i think not voting is overrated
yeah right not voting here's what's gonna. People are not going to vote because they think it's a waste of time.
But it turns out voting is very important.
No matter what fucking Republicans say about it, that's still how we're doing it.
That's how it's done. And that's why they're saying it's fake.
And that's why they spend all their money. That's the only thing we have.
It's the only real thing. And I I'm very susceptible to this shit.
You hear enough people on tv talking
about something being fake it can't help but make even the smartest person go maybe it's fake maybe
it's fake i mean it's just the power of tv i mean everybody you grew up with tv being somewhat
believable or you know depending on you know how deep you want to go with that but you know
originally the tv was pretty straightforward the news was maybe close to being real. Like they were just like, you know, I don't know,
everybody in the, I don't know what they did back then, what the news was, but, you know,
it was like sort of connected to what was really happening because there were two parties that were
sort of still functioning because they had to be in, they had to be doing,
they were, we were on our way to monopoly. were on our way back then we were just baby companies
merging so there was still enough companies that it was like there was some legislation to be done
like they had to like figure out ways to get these mergers in motion it turns out for the last 50
years all they've been doing is just merging and merging and merging until now there's no need for
policies because there's only like one company so they don't care about it there's no you don't
have to maneuver anymore now it's just about tax avoidance right so but for a long time america had a bunch of little
companies and they were they needed like uh they were kind of competing like the way it's supposed
to be and then and then when there's competition then there's differing opinions and then you need
real legislators but you know now we just have like these stunt legislators, legislators. But you have to I I'm just saying I got 13000 votes.
I mean, this is all silly.
I don't know why I'm talking.
I should I should be I should be happy.
I'm just in shock a little bit.
I just ran this campaign.
I got signs of my name on them.
Right.
I'm running around town.
You know, I'm telling everybody that it's the end of the world.
And and and and they're and they're
excited to hear it because they're sick of hearing the bullshit so it was a great experience and i'm
not it's not the end of the world it's not the world is not going to end we're just going to end
up in a bad spot you know we're going to end up in a really hot hot bad spot and i'm in hot like
heat like regular sun right yeah we're just going to end. Yeah. We're just going to end up in a bad spot.
And then it's going to restart.
And some other kind of people, you know, bug people or whoever are going to emerge from the sludge.
So it's like we're just fucking ourselves over by not voting.
So I'm just saying go fucking vote because the people who vote.
I mean, this is absurd what I'm saying, but I just want to say that I got 13,000 votes.
Yeah.
And if I'd gotten 20,000, I would have been in.
And if I'd gotten like a few thousand more, I would have made the runoff.
Right.
My position I was running for council at large was like 15, 20 people running.
So it's like the votes get divided up a lot.
Like 13,000 is really good, but it was spread out so much.
But 13,000 people voting for me as a first-time candidate was an incredible compliment.
And I actually started to really want to win because I realized I was qualified.
Also, if you want to run for office, you are qualified.
I will tell you right now.
And I know that fact now I suspected it,
but now I know it for a fact. Yeah. If you're a nice person, if you're an honest person,
that's two things that most people aren't in that space. Yeah. So go for it. We need. Surely you had to like get hired by the Democratic Party and jump through all sorts of hoops.
What was the process from going from I'm not a political candidate to I am a political candidate that people can vote for?
What was that like?
Well, I just took his glasses off.
I went and spoke at that stadium hearing because the city of Nashville and now the city of Buffalo, New York, did the same thing.
Or, you know, New York State did it for the buff. You know, they give all the tax money to the NFL because the NFL says if they don't get their stadium paid for, even though they could pay for the stadium and still have massive profits. They could pay for a ton of stadiums.
But they just know that the promise of vague promise of economic growth and also just the fact that people like, you know, in a dystopia,
people will do anything to keep a football team.
It's their only joy.
Right.
You know, so they've got this.
They've got people over a barrel.
I mean, your average person is like, I don't want to lose my football team.
Then we got nothing.
Even though they should, your average person should say, fuck off football team.
And let's use that money for a decent, for decent bus stops, you know, or whatever,
a bus stop that has a roof on it. So you don't sit in the sun while you wait for a bus and a
bunch of weeds like in Nashville and humiliated bus stops, bus stops in Nashville are fucking
humiliating, humiliating because they have all these light up signs that say, oh, this person's riding the bus.
Okay.
Yes.
I mean, if you guys know, you live in a functioning society in Los Angeles.
I mean, it's not perfect.
It's not.
You got to come to Nashville and find out what the you got to find out.
You got to come to Nashville and find yourself in a pothole that you're like peering over the side of.
Now, you got to come to Nashville and find yourself in a pothole that you're like peering over the side of.
Anyway, it's Nashville is a whole nother level of of idiot.
Like just just corrupt and no no services because there's no taxes.
There's the other thing. I guess I guess I'll say overrated. This underrated is taxes. Hey, guess what?
It turns out if you don't pay any taxes, there's no money.
For anything.
There's no money to do anything.
It's taxes are not fake.
Elections are not fake.
We have to get on board with this.
And I'm reporting from inside.
The shark.
Inside the shark.
I saw it. Inside the pothole.
It's full of sad people waiting for doctor visits.
It's a shark full of lottery tickets and i'm crazy i'm
just doing some poetry now beautiful shark full of lottery tickets is america and america is a
is a flapping flavorless oh sorry that was just there's more poetry um
yeah yeah yeah you got points from us on that we're suckers the alliteration. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got points from us on that.
We're suckers for alliteration.
So anyway, the thing is, all you have to do to run is you file some paperwork.
And I just decided I was going to run.
I went down to the election commission.
You get like 50, 75 signatures or whatever it is.
And then you're on the ballot.
And then you start an ActBlue account, which is a, well, if you're progressive,
that's the progressive, like, I hate this.
Yeah, money-hoovering operation.
I hate that expression.
It's like, I just hate all the, they should just say normal.
Non-goon.
Progressive is normal.
Or hateful.
And the other is like hate group.
Yeah, there's only two, yeah.
Or backwards or forwards.
Do you like human rights?
Yeah, or backwards or forwards or violence or no violence. Those are better names for these parties. Yeah. So, yeah. So, Chris, I got it. I like how you said how you went from being like, I don't know if I can do this shit to very much like, no, you have to. And I know this happens a lot. Like when you enter like in politics, because there's this fucking mythological presence around what it means to run for office or the kind of people that run for office. What was that moment when you went,
oh, shit, it's a everyone's a fucking joker in here. The first time I went to a mayoral forum,
my friend Lizzie Cooperman, you guys know Lizzie Cooperman. She's like, are you going to be saying
mayoral like as much? You keep saying you say mayoral like I don't know if I can be friends
with you if you're going to say mayoral this much don't know if i can be friends with you if you're gonna say mayoral this much yeah she has a good point but for the purposes of this show i have
to say it mayoral mayoral forums are where the candidates for mayor here in nashville
get together and are asked questions and i once i got in the race i had to start going to these
events just to make myself
known you have to you have to become a known quantity to these people and i had some head
start with that because of the the advice column right and the book so people in this town and also
just like you know my previous life as a as a person who just you know fucking said dirty crowds
do you rock bunk rock dirty shit person whatever whatever? Man about town. I don't know.
The person is, yeah.
Crazy person.
Right.
Crazy guy.
Oh, punk rock.
Oh, he's rude.
Oh, he's rude and crazy.
And that's how you revolt, by being drunk as fuck on Anheuser-Busch products.
That's revolution, is being asleep all the time with like four cigarettes in your mouth.
That's how you fight the system i
mean that is kind of impressive sleep on the floor with a cigarette in your ass yeah uh that's
revolution no so like that that was the old self where i thought revolution was accomplished by
being belligerent sure right and burning bridges like that's the funniest thing is you have to build bridges. Revolution is building bridges, not burning them.
With tax dollars.
Yeah.
Wait, so what happened at the mayoral forum?
This show is going to be rough.
It's my fault too.
No, that's my fault.
That's why we're the hosts and you're the guests.
I drank cold brew.
I drank a lot of it.
I just did it.
The way I saw you looking down the barrel of that cup when you were drinking the cold brew, I was like, this guy is singing like stars.
Like he's going like speed in Star Wars.
It's not necessarily the best thing to do a level-headed political conversation and drink cold brew at the same time.
So the Merrill Forum, I was just like, oh, my God.
There were like 15 people up there.
Some of them were like completely nuts like
absolutely nuts you know and um and then some were like had zero charisma and and then there were
like two that like one that knew a lot of stuff uh and and then and but i mean it was not i was
immediately like my first thought was you guys was why the hell am I running for city council?
Why aren't I running for mayor?
Far from being intimidated.
I was just like, this is what we're choosing from?
Right, right.
And that's when you get into these people are, to run for mayor, you need a significant amount of money.
And people are not investing in like bold, independent people.
You know what I mean?
People are there.
They want their candidate to be the kind of person who has no friends because then you give them one cigar.
And it's the greatest experience this candidate's ever had in his life.
You know what I mean?
You can leave them around by that cigar.
One golf club that has his name engraved on it.
Remember that Kobe flag?
Yeah, you can put him in the wildlife refuge.
Oh, my God.
No one's ever given me a gift before.
This is the first time I've been in a room with more than four people in it.
Did people come to you?
Did anybody?
I'd imagine you're pretty clear that you're
not like a party man but did did you get approached by any like political operatives
insiders yes just a little bit but i mean i'm not i don't have enough power at this i mean i wasn't
enough of a known quantity to really get bothered so i just got like people who are some some billionaire
startup thing that's trying to get you to use their app and those guys that were working for
it were okay and they were trying i think maybe they were trying to do the right thing but i was
just like this sounds like they're like our our billionaire benefactor is just sick of politics
the way they are and it's like already i'm just like, that's not a real thing.
Billionaires don't care about anything.
So I'm already out.
And then you're like, no, no.
You know I'm not a white supremacist, right?
They're like, oh, oh, okay.
Sorry, sorry.
Oh, nevermind.
Sorry, sorry.
I actually think these were nice people.
I think they thought that their billionaire overlord
actually was like a guy who's had it
with partisan politics.
Well, I don't.
This is happening in entertainment, too, where I've heard tell now like a few billionaire like scion types who have all this money because their parents fucked up business.
And like they want to subvert that, like with their billions of dollars.
But they kind of don't know where to start and it is a little interesting thing where you see these people like look i know i have like this money comes from
fucking death ships but yeah i want to make sure trump isn't president and make some cool stuff
along the way so i feel like you can you definitely there there is that kind of like
billionaire with with a form like a very infant or a very newborn form of consciousness
coming online right b yeah yeah i'm so unsympathetic to those people like i can't even
believe you know i have no sympathy oh your empire is you're finally realizing like oh you're coming
to some you know so you're starting to you know understand the you know like you're just going to
give a little bit of your give all your money back then.
Give it all back.
Give it all.
Go, go, go start the world's largest food pantry.
You throw away all your money.
Get ready.
You know, get out of here.
I'm starting to feel like maybe.
Fuck off.
Yeah.
So, you know, I'm not I'm not interested in slowly waking up billionaires.
No, no, no.
I'm sleepy eyed.
Oh, I think maybe we did bad things.
Fuck you.
You fucking.
Oh, maybe maybe playing polo is not helpful.
Maybe playing polo in Dubai is actually quite shallow.
maybe playing polo in dubai is actually quite shallow so i yeah i got the cert i got the certification i mean i i i went and i i did the signatures and then i started my bank account i
had to file a little bit of paperwork which is a pain in the ass i mean it was like a bunch of
stuff i didn't want to do certainly i mean like there was some paperwork that almost drove me
insane like me uploading uploading a fucking spreadsheet into a portal. I mean, that was like,
I mean, for someone who's 54 years old, that's like, you know, why don't you just fucking jump
out the fucking window? I mean, this is the fucking worst thing I've ever seen in my life.
I mean, that was excruciating. Yeah. Hold on. Hold that thought. We're going to take a quick
break. We're going to come back quick break and we're going to come back
and talk about spreadsheets.
We'll be right back.
I've been thinking about you.
I want you back in my life.
It's too late for that.
I have a proposal for you.
Come up here and document my project.
All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110, 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not.
What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. 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.
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Our podcast, Hungry for History, is back.
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and we're back and i gotta say like so you know i've got to read read the news for for this for
this job but to this point, my... And not really.
You folks can tell.
I'm just skimming here and there.
But in terms of my fiction intake,
the climate change fiction that I've taken in over the course of my life
has mainly been the Mad Maxes,
all the Mad Max films, Water. All the Mad Max films.
Water World.
Uh-huh.
The Day After Tomorrow.
Yeah.
Yep.
And I think that's...
Yeah.
I mean, 2012, I think,
seems like it should be a climate change parable,
but it's actually...
It goes out of its way to say
that it's something weird happening
with the core of the Earth.
Yeah, new neutrinos, Jack, from a solar flare, like something weird happening with a core of the earth yeah new neutrinos jack uh from a solar flare obviously are doing something a core or something but it's
also 2012 mayans knew that so it was a spooky year yeah dude did you did you buy it did you
even part of you think about 2012 no we i Cracked, we definitely covered the bullshit, but we I did not. I didn't believe it was not part of me. I remember in 2009, I started thinking about it. Oh, yeah. I was like, damn, I'm 25. Like and just eating all her food and shit, struggling
to get a job in the recession. Like, please.
What do I do?
But yeah. The scariest
of all years. There were those Mitt Romney
videos. Yeah.
But I don't know.
The solutions of those films
and in just the popular imagination
to a large degree seems to be
everyone's going to die.
And then you're left behind because you're the main character of the story to kill or be killed.
I think the day after tomorrow, I remember ending with people like on the space station looking at the globe and the U.S. is like mostly frozen ice.
Yeah.
And then they're like, yeah yeah but the air never looked so clean
it's like that's the earth healing itself killing us all off so just yeah just put just freezing
north america is the solution i mean fine if so be it i guess uh yeah do you have anything else
to offer us that does seem to be like sort of stylish nihilism seems to be the way that is at least I think I default approach climate change until like we really start digging into it.
Right. Because like books like man or not books, you know, novels like Waterworld.
Again, the novelization very fucking water world fucked me up so bad as a kid like
fucked me up because wouldn't that come out like 94 or some shit i'm like 10 years old
i went to see that the magic johnson theater with my grandfather and he was like wow he's like that's
i was like what a movie huh and i was like shaken to my core as a kid really yeah and i was like, what a movie, huh? And I was like, shaken to my core as it came. Really? Yeah.
And I was like.
Because you were like, this is how we're going to be living?
Well, the logic made sense.
Because like you knew about like the earth heating up and pollution and things at the time.
Right now, we had just celebrated getting rid of styrofoam, I remember, and like CFCs and shit.
And, but like, but the logic path of earth become warm, ice cap, ice melts, therefore the water everywhere vis-a-vis. Yeah. And I was a bad swimmer. I was a weak swimmer. Like I was a terrible swimmer. So there was nothing more terrifying than a world where everything was someone's pool party where I sucked at swimming.
pool party where i sucked at swimming yeah you know what i mean yeah and so like there were multiple layers to it and again that shit didn't really offer you any solution aside from like
maybe you could find this map to find a fucking hidden island you could fucking live on or some
shit yeah but it wasn't like you're gonna have to wear a t-shirt to cover your weird chest hair
because it's a pool party exactly and i think the kids aren't ready to really accept that yet
or your three hairs you
have on your armpit my chest hair grew in i i still have a weird patch of chest hair but it
grew in asymmetrically what do you mean like it favored one side of your chest favored one side
and was very like it wasn't like a small amount came at a time it It was like, bam, there's a weird patch of hair.
Like I was just like one 10th of my chest was werewolf right away.
No way.
Yeah.
And just like coming down,
like the left chest,
the left.
Poor guy.
Yeah.
So wait,
you had to wait.
So,
so,
oh,
so you were,
you were rocking,
you were rocking the shirt in the pool kind of thing.
Sweatshirt in the pool.
No.
But yeah, that was a thought that crossed my mind.
Yeah.
If that's Waterworld, then that's your cross to bear too.
But yeah, no, I think all that to say is like, so from time immemorial, my concept of climate
change is literally skip anything in the middle.
It's just jump to the like Earth death where like I'm holding the dust.
That was once my family.
Yeah.
And it ignores like what the reality of the next, you know, 40 years is probably going to look like.
you know, 40 years is probably going to look like.
So the goal of the mystery for the future is to imagine, like, the time between now
and, you know, when...
It's, like, people describe it as, like, utopian,
but millions of people, like, die from climate change,
which it seems like might be inevitable,
but it describes a possibility of like humanity changing the way that we live on the earth to actually
like have a chance and it's very i don't know i kept waiting for it to like have like a plot twist
or something where it's like and actually i was the one blowing up those planes because and instead it's just very it's kind of hyper like feels like his goal the whole time is just like kind of working through it. And it's I read a review that said it's bad it's definitely worth reading but it's like it really
delves into like there's long passages that are just meetings with like finance people
and stuff and like talking about how you would make this shit possible but gives you a much more
vivid you know idea of of like what potentially is was the work or the processes that we're going to undertake rather
than like i because i feel so much of what we're experiencing right now just to be like
so are we ever going to get off fossil fuels yeah and then we kind of feel really fucking
just destitute and downtrodden and like you know hopeless because of just like focusing on one part when this is
like a multifaceted issue with many ways to approach it to solve it. And I think that's what
that's why I appreciate works like that, that can kind of break our minds out a little bit of that
like pattern of thought. Yeah, I truly just have a very difficult time imagining an end of capitalism because i like it's a quote like
it's been associated with the author of this book he's not the one who said it and like when i've
heard him interviewed about it he's like i don't i don't like that quote anymore but like it's
easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism for me that rings true like i just couldn't yeah and and therefore every
solution that like comes up i'm like but corporations are just gonna like fuck that
out of existence like if you like any anything like that is just going to get ruined by us and
i think one of the things that i learned in reading this book is that it's hard to
imagine the next 40 years from inside the United States.
And like, especially from inside, like, if you pay a lot of attention to the United States
zeitgeist, like it is, it has not been leading us in a direction that would suggest like
that these
things are possible.
Right.
That we're going to be talking about.
So I don't know.
Let's,
let's dive in.
I mean,
the first big question,
the book suggests that like the radicalizing event that,
that will bring about this sort of global zeitgeist change is that india sees a heat wave
that kills like five million people like it's the there's a certain point at which if the humidity
is high enough and the heat is high enough your body just can't cope like the human body can't
cope and so like it seems like if things don't change this is something that's
somewhat inevitable and this radicalizes india as a country and they start doing some of the things
that have been like sort of controversial ideas that people have put out there like you know
putting reflective material in the upper atmosphere to reflect, to like basically dim the sun.
We did miss Snowpiercer as another cheerful look at how we might address climate change. because pentatubo was the volcanic eruption that most recently like significantly altered the temperature globally for a period of time, like I think a year or two. from the UN. And it's temporary, but it like, you know, it's the first thing
that changes people
and starts getting people
motivated to,
all right, how are we
going to deal with this?
We need like...
Because that can never happen again.
Yeah, that can never happen again.
It's the largest mass death
like in the history of the world.
And again, if you're just tuning in,
we're talking about
a science fiction book.
If you're high and listening, something's like, what is this happening?
We're talking about ministry for the future. If you're just joining us, this is
Terry Groff. And Kim Stanley Roberts. Yes. But like, it's science
fiction, but a recent article in the New Yorker pointed out that we're actually like
not far from the thing, from that inciting incident
happening. Like this this spring or I guess
it was last spring saw the most dire pre-monsoon heat wave in Indian history and it was only a
slightly lower humidity that prevented a real life you know event on par with what happens in the
book and still like lots of people. Lots of people are dying from heat
already. And it's just
our...
I don't know.
We've suggested that it's just
because it's hard to imagine
and there aren't that many movies that
depict people dying from heat.
You don't really have it in your head
what that looks like.
And the pictures that come with it in your head like what that looks like and the pictures that come
with it in newspapers are people having fun while opening up a fire hydrant right yeah and so this
is an event that like kind of makes it real for everybody in india at least and that that seems
to be something that they also wrestle with
that I'm glad they did.
It's not like all of a sudden,
everybody in Texas is like,
man, what happened to the people in India
is really bad and we need to act on it.
In the book, they're like,
it needs to happen to you
or to like your community
for it to be real to you.
Yeah.
And clearly we're,
I mean, that's usually how the u.s works is
like it has to literally be on your fucking doorstep walk through the door and fuck your
shit up and then you're like oh okay so that's a thing but yeah he talks about an example of like a
neighborhood that got destroyed by a tornado and like the people the neighborhood over were like
yeah well that was on them they were they were in the path of that tornado and it's like well that could have been anything well yeah that's
like even like those like like small group of republicans in north carolina they're like really
worried about sea level rise and yeah like they're like just shut up they're like i live here and i'm
watching it the fuck are you talking about right yeah but anyways so he wrote this book in 2019 right he
gave a speech this past april that he actually said the book is too bleak like he says calling
like the the book talks about how the 30s is what he calls a zombie decade because of all the
like institutions that are still coasting on the inertia of you know the past order of things right
which you know banks running everything in the united states and stuff like that even though
they no longer serve us or you know make sense in the world and he thinks that's actually already
too pessimistic and like to me that sounds like, that's a great description of the world as it
feels inside America right now. We're in that in-between.
Yeah, just things that are coasting off of inertia. But he sees a lot of really cool programs
around the world that he finds encouraging. I do think this book kind of turned him into a public eco-intellectual. And so he is getting a lot of the information
about like all the stuff people are trying,
which is cool.
It's stuff that doesn't get covered
in the mainstream media.
And that's probably why, you know,
I want to talk about it so much
because it does feel like it's being kept
like a secret from us us and it's kind of
important information so what are the kind of departures from our you know our our current norm
that you know uh that society moves into in terms of like addressing this yeah everyone just needs
to get a tesla and you're good yeah just get get a Tesla and give you a lot of good money.
And we're good here.
Oh, then, all right.
Well, dude, it's been a great episode.
Right, gang?
You heard it.
Get a Tesley, baby.
Get that Tesla.
Get that Teslizzle.
No, actually, there's...
It's conspicuous in the omission that, like,
he doesn't even bring up electric vehicles.
Or if he does, it's just like as a...
Like, there's more adoption of this happening
like in the early stages.
Sure, sure.
We actually, like there's another thing
from my search history is like car bloat,
which is something I found out about over the weekend,
which is that like as people are making this transition
to electric vehicles,
they're also making the cars way bigger on the roads.
And even in Europe.
Like Europe...
I'm sorry.
I picture Europe as a bunch of people hunched inside.
Like those little tykes size...
Those injection molded plastic...
Red and yellow.
Yeah.
That's what I picture the shape of European cars.
But the third most popular highest sales car model in europe in 2022
is an suv like they're they're turning into i mean yeah we touched on just on the normal show
about how like people who are like city planning and like do that kind of stuff or just like
cars are too fucking big for streets for fucking parking lots like you're not like what it's eventually like the
cars are literally gonna be too fucking big and people are gonna like fucking bump into each other
not to mention that these cars are just like way fucking heavier and more tankish than ever do
yeah they're so much heavier like evs like it compared to the like similar size gas burning
vehicle it's not like well so you should keep burning gas but
it's just it's a good example of like how in the current system right like why i'm so cynical is
like the current system will find a way to take it and turn it into like in this case an arms race
yeah or some kind of yeah consumer consumerist commodification
fuck fest where it's like oh yeah the way we get out of it is you buy this thing yeah it's like
but that's more consumption when we're talking about what what the so what the fuck yeah and so
yeah it's it's like breaking roads and it's also it's like really scary because those car carriers so the way the way this is being dealt with right now by the way just real quick and
then we'll get into the things that actually work but just as an example of why this like
hasn't naturally occurred to us like this this is what gets done with good ideas is like so
they get these giant like f-150 pickup trucks that are twice
the size of like an f-150 in 1993 but they're electronic and then they are like one of the
complaints that people have is that when you have to like transport them they put them on the back
of those car carriers yeah but they're so big that like they don't you can only fit like
a handful of them oh on the back of car carries wise like because yes you can see them loaded up
with like the normal combust combustion cars but the uvs are so much heavier oh those things are
already the scariest things to be driving next to oh fuck yeah like those car carriers where you can
like just see the weight like you can just see it it. It looks like it's like a drunk,
like 300 pound person,
just like teetering next to you.
And I have seen bad boys too.
So I'm already like terrified of what's going to happen with those.
So the way that the shipping and, you know,
trucking industry is trying to deal with the fact that it's like,
you can't fit as many on is just asking for them to change the weight limit on car carriers so that they can carry more of them.
We're not we're not a rise. We're not rising to the occasion with like actual solutions, stupidity.
So to make things more convenient for the sale of objects.
of objects. Yeah. And so this novel asks you to imagine that like there like as the consequences of climate change continue to become like realer and realer to people, you get a world where people
are like, wait, what if instead of just doing that, what if we built more reasonably sized cars or what if since cars don't actually work and electric
vehicles are still polluting through the like manufacturing process like what if we found
other solutions for getting around like what yes so one of the things that he talks about is just the need to transition to a post-capitalist system for world governance, just generally.
All right. Just like that.
He says, easy, easy does it.
I love that. Yeah, for sure.
The point is that like the climate and inequality are part of the same problem.
100%. Like the extremely wealthy will continue to make decisions as if the rest of us don't
exist because under the current system, like practically speaking, as far as they're concerned,
we don't exist.
They never have to see us.
They never have to like deal with the consequences of their actions.
Also, capitalism as currently constituted will continue to extract and like burn fossil
fuels if not otherwise encumbered.
And so like the current system is set up to reward people for doing things that are bad for us.
Right. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. The incentives are things that are not moving towards solutions or anything.
Or they may be perceived as that in the beginning, but ultimately, no.
Yeah.
And the most powerful country in the world is still the U.S.
And it's run by capitalism without restraint, like proudly.
Right.
So one of the things he uses the model of Mondragón, which is a worker owned collective in the Basque region of Spain, España.
Uh-huh.
PaÃs Basco.
Basco.
So this is a co-op that it's a voluntary association of 95 autonomous cooperatives that, you know,
each co-op's highest paid executive makes at most six times the salary of its lowest paid employee.
There are no outside shareholders.
most six times the salary of its lowest paid employee. There are no outside shareholders.
Instead, you have a tryout period. And then if they like you enough, you get a chance to buy in to be a part owner of the company that you work for. Right. And there is like a CEO type person
that's called a managing director. And, you know, but the members themselves vote on many of everything
i mean yeah like everything yeah strategy salaries policy the votes of all members whether they're
senior management or blue collar all count equally and like in it he's saying that like
like moving first of all like we're going to be probably moving towards worker-owned collectives
in order to survive yes and and that is a really like that example if you really like read up on
there's like documentaries or you can find shit about the mondragon like they it it it will blow
your mind as an american labor worker to see that you're like and then so the person right there in
the factory line they own they also own the company yes exactly and then so the person right there in the factory line, they own, they also
own the company. Yes, exactly. And then, but what happens like if they make less money? Well,
what about layoffs? Well, see, they own the company. So then rather than answering to
shareholders who are saying, well, I need my fucking shareholder value to hold up. So you
need to lop some heads off and do layoffs. They decide internally what has to be sacrificed,
what can be dialed up,
what can be dirt dialed down in order for the company to keep going long
term.
And like,
that is such a completely different way to engage with what you do for
work when you actually have ownership for it,
which I'm glad to see something like that would seem normal.
Like would seem like naturally like a fair thing to somebody if you like presented the idea to them.
Yeah. Especially if the alternative of like just full blown unfettered capitalism or neoliberalism, the current form of capitalism we live under is just like we start to see the evidence more clearly that it just doesn't like
it's not possible going they got fucking little kids working at the bars now right like that's
where we're at they can get their little hands inside the pint glasses miles and that helps
yeah they keep the fruit flies out of the mixer bottles like no this is it but again yeah like
we it we can see
it play out because it is almost going like we actually already have a script it's called
idiocracy right and yeah yeah it's it is that version very quickly my brain you know is so like
capitalism poisoned like it immediately when you talk about like a co-op like there's this quote
in this profile of mondorgone in the new yer where Larry Summers, our favorite guy, Harvard president, so he must be liberal and smart, characterized
co-ops as intrinsically sleepy and short-sighted. When you put workers in charge of firms and you
give them substantial control over the firms, the one thing you do not get is expansion. You get
more for the people who are already there wow everyone is greedy and
will try and fuck you so you just have to fuck them back like it's just that very basic like
intrinsic kind of cellular greed capitalism model of humanity that i like grew up in like that's
how i thought for a long time the world worked.
But so Mondragon, there's probably a good reason that we don't know about it is it has succeeded.
Sorry, did I cut you off?
No, no, I'm just kind of just rambling on the side agreeing because, yeah, I mean, like, it's just wild when he's basically saying it's like, yeah, the problem is no just destructive growth.
Right. That's the thing. That's the only thing about it.
And when you hear people who work in worker owned co-ops or like even people in like in Mondragon, they're like, it's clear.
Profit is important because you need that to to help sustain a business.
But that is not the fucking be all end
all it's to it's to it's to ensure the longevity of the of of this project and just be able to
have it be something because like these some of these people are like second generation
uh in the co-op or they're like yeah my fucking parents started this shit yeah and yeah so now
it's up to us to like to shepherd it as far as the like no growth thing is
concerned this started in i think the 40s as like a four people four students from like this priest
who is the founder like created a community college and then like worked with four of the
people who graduated
from there who were like really promising students.
Like,
I don't think I have all of this correct,
but like it started with like four people that he was like,
I bet you guys would make a good company.
And now they employ around 80,000 people.
76% of those work in manufacturing co-ops and are owners.
And it's not like,
I think the only thing that I had really heard of
as a co-op in the U.S.
is like grocery stores
or like little like boutique stores.
Just like Mondrag,
I'm like,
one of the manufacturing companies
makes bicycles
at an industrial scale.
Others make elevators,
produce huge industrial machines
using the production
of jet engines,
rockets, wind turbines.
They have schools, large grocery chain, a catering company, 14 technology, R&D centers.
They even have a McKinsey-like consulting firm.
Hey, see?
Right?
Yeah, exactly.
In 2021, the network brought in more than 11 billion euros in revenue.
So I don't know.
Like, I don't want
this to be like and they've never had a problem but it's it's so directly flies in the face of
everything i've ever heard about socialism or like well the possibilities of like how
an incentive structure can work because of being you know raised in this country right and so the
book just like generally creates a model of the present and near future where like things just
aren't i think i assumed like the internet had this like promise when it first like became a
thing and like websites and you know the freedom of information
and i just assumed that like the fact that it inevitably got fucked up by the forces of capital
like it that it is inevitable and but like when you take a step back and like think about how
things could work under a system where like the economy works to serve
people rather than like people working to serve the economy like that's a line from the book that
is like so basic i'm embarrassed that i stopped and like wrote it down but it seems profound
that was your that was your real eyes realize real lies you're like oh what the fuck
man hold on man yeah i don't i know it's so simple but again to when you've been propagandized and
evangelized about capitalism through from fucking the gamete phase of your life yeah like yeah it
does it does seem like it's just like you can't even imagine the inversion of
something it's like no what yeah we gotta we gotta help the economy it's like no motherfucker
there's nothing about social media that inevitably says that the cup the companies who provide that
service would sell your information for marketing purposes and it's kind of weird that like it turned into like a brainwashing
like addictive competitive like fucked up thing like it right like but that's what hypercapitalism
does to everything like the blockchain is a cool technology in theory and hypercapitalism turned it
into a fucking ponzi scheme right like that's what people think of when they think of the blockchain,
whereas like it could be a very valuable tool and probably will be into the
future.
They actually do talk about the blockchain.
How is it used in the future?
In the,
in a ministry for the future,
they use it to just make it so that the hyper wealthy can't hide their money
in tax havens.
Like all, all money is.
Yeah.
All money is online.
So it can't be hidden anywhere.
Right.
And the way that that's brought about is that there's like an attack on the Swiss banks where a lot of the hyper wealthy hide their money.
And it, you know, they lose they lose track of all the different accounts that they have and basically
they're like all right well we need to make it so that this information is just publicly available
yeah because the old system kind of no longer works and i guess the the importance of the
internet like point that is that like now everyone knows so much more than they did before like the internet gives us
access to all this information uh all these tools for accessing the information and it's still just
like a tiny drop but it right it's harder to fool people and it's easier to kind of it's going to be
harder to hide the realities of the ship from people, or at least it
should be in theory. Right, right, right. It's, I mean, it's interesting because so many of these
things, right, because I know another element, because I've seen Kim Stanley Roberts speak
before too, and he also talks out about like regenerative agriculture and, you know, for
something, you know, in my mind it's kim stanley
robinson i've said that before i think yeah what did i just say stanley roberts oh why did i just
yeah sorry i then i said kim stanley roberts for anyway like in other talks i've seen him give
just like about the book and just like other sort of like climate change like well like what's like
what the fuck are we about folks kind of talks is to
also see like regenerative agriculture be brought up so much which again feels like when the ultimate
sort of theme like if there is any sort of quote-unquote solution it's like to completely
like unfuck our heads with the idea that growth is good and we need to be seeking profits at all
costs yeah and especially with regenerative agriculture it's like a really good
way to wrap your head around just how we do things in like the most backwards way
because current like just gigantic mega agribusinesses we're all about especially in
america just monocrops it's like this piece of ground will only grow fucking soybeans or corn or
whatever when that's done we're
gonna fucking we're gonna boost the fucking because
it's all about yields what we can get
from this it's all about putting as
many fertilizers in and all kinds of chemicals
and shit to bring about higher yields
and then once we pull that shit out we
just let that patch of dirt stay
fucking dirt and do let
like don't let like nature do its thing.
Like allowing, like, for example, just like the soil erosion is a huge thing that I was not really understanding its connection to our ecosystem.
And the destructive way that we farm doesn't allow for our soils to actually regenerate the microorganisms that it needs and also allows
for things like, you know, better water absorption. So they're like versions of it, like no till
farming, like we're not just fucking ripping shit up and allowing plants to put roots deeper into
the ground, which means if they have, they can go deeper into the ground photosynthesis, they can
take that fucking CO2 and put carbon directly into the soil.
And another huge part of it I did not realize was that as a reservoir to capture carbon,
the ground is like something like many times larger than the atmosphere in terms of its
capacity to absorb carbon.
And like when you look at something like that and you're like, holy shit, a lot of and again, I'm doing a very like very simplified distillation of regenerative agriculture.
But the idea that we need to be actually working in harmony with the earth actually also helps for things like the desertification of our land for drought and, you know, carbon capture.
And now that's.
Miles, how do we 10x that?
How do we scale that?
Okay, this is how we 10x that.
Double click on that real quick for me.
Yeah, yeah. Bank play? Bank run on that?
Yeah.
Dude, what do you think? VC play on that?
Yeah, this should regenerate agriculture. It should be people's new social media. It
should be people's new bank.
Well, this is the thing. This is where our old ways kind of slip in, right? Because now
many people are using the term, but with interchangeable definitions,
whether that means it's regenerative in the sense in the process that we're doing or that the
outcomes are regenerative. And they mean very different things in terms of how we're interacting
with the earth. So again, like when I read stories about that and some people like the most optimistic
forecasts and the white paper that the stud that
this like forecast was based off of has been debated by other scientists was saying that like
you know if you actually were able to properly do certain regenerative practices on like all of our
grasslands and farmlands and that just sort of became the norm it we we would capture all of
the carbon that's emitted right now already and have the capacity
for more gigatons of carbon now i think a more not getting completely carried away with that
version of that at least for me that is heartening is the idea that we we have all of these tools
that we know work right and whether that means it's going to 100% or even fucking 30%, any reduction is a good
thing, along with all the other things we're trying to do as a species. But being able to
see that those things are available, these are things that we are trying to implement,
people are definitely trying to implement it, there are definitely like large interest groups
that are trying to do it for many different reasons.
But that helps me as a human being
move away a little bit from the water world idea
of where this thing goes.
And to know that like,
we have the ways to do this.
We just have to fucking put it together.
And that's the fucking hard part, right?
But I think for me,
it's better to have an idea of how to
like to actually
address the situation rather than to be completely
resigned to the fact that it's going to overtake it like
the way I felt about police violence
in 2014 is
very different than how I think about police violence
and how to actually address it
now now that I've I've done
like more
research, more work, more interacting, more conversations with people to know that it's not
just like, man, it's always going to be like this. It's like, well, no, there's things like
qualified immunity that are holding us back. And in the same way, it's really good to be able to
also arm yourself with these kinds of points of knowledge because it goes a little bit less from like okay
well i guess i'm gonna wear my football pads with spikes in it and face paint i burnt out honda
prelude in the desert to being like no man like these are a lot of things like we need to be
thinking about more and are there but again that's that's our main battle is to not is to be able to
coalesce around these things yeah can kim Kim Stanley Robinson, like in a speech from...
Is it Roberts?
Kim Stanley...
I think I've been saying Roberts
and that might have fucked everyone else up.
But it was funny.
When I Googled his name a few weeks ago,
I found a...
I found a...
Like one of the Google hits was a transcript of one of our podcasts where I called him Kim Stanley Roberts.
I know.
Every time I actually talk about it in my mind, I always say Swiss family Robinson.
Exactly.
I say Kim Stanley Robinson too.
That's a miracle, empirical rap.
Miracle.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sorry, y'all.
The fever cooked my brain but he he talks about
how like in the years since the book because the book does talk about regenerative agriculture
but he's like i was a little bit skeptical that it was as big a deal as people were making it seem
he was like i i thought it might be kind of like AI, like this buzzword that people are throwing out.
I'm like, this is just the solution and we can like knock it out and 10 exit and scale it.
And he's like, no, it's, you know, it's actually a real thing.
But again, it's it really is like a thing that I've heard him say multiple times is that like, and he says it a couple of times in the book also, is that like profit is inherently predatory and is inherently going to like that.
That can't be the motive of a world that gets out of this problem.
Right.
Because if that if that in any way is intersecting with what's presented to you as a solution, it is not.
It's actually the problem. And even as much,
and we see this so much,
like in how we are presented products as consumers,
as a way to do your part,
et cetera.
When you do,
you do a lot better is like,
if you fucking can find ways just to do things immediately around you.
But yeah,
it is,
that's kind of what's interesting or that's that's
what makes it so daunting is that it's like okay so the way out of this is the opposite of this
eventually yeah but i think at a certain point there are too many people who are not benefiting
from the current like order of things that you i I guess our hope is that we can,
we just hit that critical mass where we're all realized like it's,
like something has to be drastically different.
Yeah.
All right.
Let's take one more quick break.
We'll be right back.
I've been thinking about you.
I want you back in my life.
It's too late for that. I have a thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that.
I have a proposal for you.
Come up here and document my project.
All you need to do is record everything like you always do.
One session. 24 hours.
BPM 110. 120. She's terrified.
Should we wake her up?
Absolutely not.
What was that?
You didn't figure it out?
I think I need to hear you say it.
That was live audio of a woman's nightmare.
This machine is approved and everything?
You're allowed to be doing this?
We passed the review board a year ago.
We're not hurting people.
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.
How do you feel about biscuits?
Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast,
Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school
to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves,
the biscuits.
I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean?
The Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels with the image of the biscuits.
It's right here in black and white in print.
A lion.
An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch.
As a leader, you choose hills that you want to die on.
Why would we want to be the losing team?
I'd just take all the other stuff out of it.
On segregation academies, when civil rights said that we need to integrate public schools,
these charter schools were exempt from that.
Bigger than a flag or mascot.
You have to be ready for serious backlash.
Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, everyone. It's me, Katie Couric.
If you follow me on social media,
you know I love to cook or at least try, especially alongside some of my favorite chefs and foodies like Benny Blanco, Jake Cohen, Lighty Hoyt, Alison Roman, and of's serving up recipes that will make your mouth
water. Think a candied bacon Bloody Mary, tacos with cabbage slaw, curry cauliflower with almonds
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perfect burger and must-have products like the best cast iron skillet to feel like a chef in your own kitchen.
All you need to do is sign up at katiecouric.com slash good taste. That's K-A-T-I-E-C-O-U-R-I-C.com
slash good taste. I promise your taste buds will be happy you did.
I promise your taste buds will be happy you did. in Major League Baseball. And then the Doc Brawl came up afterwards. And I was like, guys, why are we so obsessed with all these fights?
And it sounded like I was like, no big deal.
Leave white people alone.
You're like, guys, let's not get carried away with this video.
Moving along.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, we got to clean this up.
Right, right, right.
So, yeah, I chose the exact wrong moment
to be like,
enough with the fistfights, folks.
Guys.
Guys, why don't we just all
love each other and be nice?
Yeah.
But anyways,
I've watched it from all the angles.
Oh, yeah.
All the key moments,
the swimmer,
the Aquamane.
Scuba Gooding Jr.
Scuba Gooding Jr. Scuba Gooding Jr.
Swim cell Washington.
Shaquille O'Gill.
Yeah.
Wait, what was Washington?
Shaquille O'Gill?
So many, the hat throw is just wonderful.
And the folding chair.
Oh, yeah.
Some things.
So I went back and watched the argument that led to it and
the restraint from
the eventual hat thrower
to not start
throwing hands at the people
as he's having this conversation
is not to be overlooked.
It reminds me of like when
an umpire is
talking to
a baseball manager,
and the baseball manager is just swearing in their face
and spitting on them.
And the umpire just had...
Their point is just very basic.
This boat needs to go right here.
And he's just pointing...
This is a message that could be explained in five seconds
to a five year old. But because you are drunk white boat people who have been in the sun all
day, this is taking an hour. So just I want to shout out his his restraint in the in the lead up
to them then fully like, like you know sucker punching him and
gang tackling him that's why there's so many levels of catharsis as a black viewer too
where there's that restraint where you know you can't fully come for this fucking drunk
asshole and you kind of got to take it and And you're like, God, I know that fucking patience. Then when the hands get to flying, it's the next level that the fucking portals open in the Avengers.
And people are like, we're fucking here and we're not going to watch this shit happen because it or nicole hannah jones talking like you know there's a history in alabama obviously and there's obviously a history of racial spectacle like
violent spectacles where people have had to watch untold horrors happen to black people at the hands
of a white mob and there was just really nothing you could do because of the white supremacy that
exists in our country and to watch it all kind of coalesce into this like three act Shakespearean
like brawl is like, it's really, it's really something.
I don't know.
Sequoia, how would I, you know, I know I see that.
I see the energy coming from you just from the mention of it.
But yeah, did you, where, where are you at with the video now?
This filled my spirit up so much.
I have never felt so nourished as I did watching this particular piece of content.
It is so cathartic. Like you said, like we're watching the entire story arc, something that was captured from so many different angles.
Yeah. You're like, OK, that's how that started.
Oh, we got here okay
but my favorite part of the video is when we watch the crew get off the boat and the people
are skipping up to the boat with the white people on it the skipping is a threat if you've never
seen somebody skip to a fight you take it as some light if you know you know that is a that's a warm
up it's a warm up like it's a warm up my man's was so giddy to skip to be also that moment where
the boat gets close enough for the dock to the dock for them to disembark there it's like almost
like at the gate they're like let me fucking get off this. It's D-Day. I swear to God.
It's like leaning over the edge.
Yeah.
That was my favorite commentary where the people watching were like, oh, here they go.
They knew.
They're like, oh, no, you fucked up.
You fucked up.
And you get bonus black points if you said oop or boop every time you saw a punch connect.
Oop, boop, boop.
I know you boop.
You felt that? You're taking me out. Oh, my God. It was so good watching it with the commentary. of punch connects you know what I mean boop boop boop oh I know you boop
you found that
you're taking me
out
oh my god
it was so good
watching it with the commentary
everything about it
was so good
I have not seen a video
that made me feel that good
in so long
yeah
and you know what
I think there's something too
like that I saw
you pointed out
on the root also
that just like
the reason I think too
that it feels better
is that
like luckily no one is pulling firearms out.
Yes. No one died.
Yes. That would have been a complete different thing would have been a whole other escalation and something that we kind of brace ourselves as Americans to be like, oh, shit, there's group violence.
Someone might start busting something from somewhere in the South.
I'm shocked nobody had a firearm on them.
I was shocked.
Based on new police reports that came out,
apparently one of those guys was throwing racial slurs at that dock worker
and also said they were going to go get a gun, too,
according to one of the people that they witnessed
and another person who was working with the boat.
But part of me, this is just a general
warning to people you have to know when someone is at their like wage job and you fuck with them
chances are they are there will be some kind of like collective response like having a shitty job
is like being in the game you know what i mean yeah when you got that shitty job you're like
yo you are not,
like, you'd be like,
look at this motherfucking
talking shit to him.
Hold the fuck up.
Absolutely.
You are going to get
a level of smoke
returned to you
when you fuck with somebody
at their job, too.
That's the other part.
I was just like,
they have done no analysis.
They did not do
the proper threat analysis
with this.
They did not have any context to have the proper threat analysis if you've never seen somebody skip to a fight you
don't know that you're in grave danger when that happens if you've never like had a wave job wage
job i don't know these people obviously they might have but if you've never had that collective
action spirit you don't know that you fucking with this one person this is a dog whistle everybody's on you right now
right and there are definitely more people who have had shitty jobs than not like that it's also
you know people pointed out that like the the structure of the video is people standing by
watching and then joining in and that's a big deal because like standing by and watching horrible
shit happen is how i think a lot of people feel a lot of the time now yeah and so like that there's
something cathartic of you know the it starts as one of the things what one of those types of videos
that we've seen so many times and then the thing that doesn't usually happen and finally happens where everybody is able to join in.
And there are more of us than there are of them in a lot of these circumstances.
But it just hasn't felt that way to this point.
And I think I don't know.
I think it does a good job of driving that home.
So and I was fully prepared for the cops to not arrest any of the voters, the initial voters.
Oh, yeah.
And I was I was still going to be like, OK, I'm going to look at these black men that went to jail on this behalf as vigilantes.
And like, you know, right.
But they went ahead and arrested all the right people, too.
You could not have had a better video.
Yeah.
Even the chair guy even the chair guy the chair guy they're
like look we don't we don't have charges but like bro we need to talk to you man we need to talk to
you because right you that was it and you you fucking united that poor woman with the fucking
chair that's why i started watching through my eyes where i was when i saw the chair come out
i was like oh this might get a little bit more violent than I'm comfortable actually doing. But luckily it was plastic.
It definitely, the way... But it was plastic, right. Nobody was bleeding.
Like, it was like, okay. Sure.
It wasn't WWF style, but... I don't know.
One of my favorite moments is when they're
arresting the chair guy, and then
that white woman comes up
in, like, the all-white dress,
and I don't know what she
says to the cop, but the cop just, like, gives her
a tiny shove.
And it's immediately revealed that she is way too day drunk to be in this situation.
I'm like, does the wobbliest fall on her ass that I've ever seen?
Oh, man.
That's one of the great falls in the video.
Yeah.
Some of the men jumping in the water to avoid the fight.
Yeah.
It was all good.
That was truly, you know, you can't, sometimes your ignorance does boomerang back to you.
And I don't know what, I saw this one, there was like one fucking, someone made a TikTok
parody video of like, try that in 2023.
Like, I don't know what year you thought it was, but try that shit in 2023.
Jason Aldean, what's he think of this? No, no, thought it was, but try it in 2023. Jason Aldean.
What's he think of this?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
People are people.
People got their eye on the prize.
And yeah, like I think if there's a Jack, you wrote in here about how people pointed out that it is, you know, this is this is Black August, too, where a lot of significant things have happened in black history, including rebellions, the Nat Turner rebellion, the birth of Marcus Garvey and Fred Hampton. Like, this is another
historical month in Black history. And it's kind of like, not to say that this is in line with that,
but things happen in August. The Ruth did a list there with this as the latest in a timeline that has, yeah, Fred Hampton's birth, the March on Washington, you know, the Watts riots, the Ferguson protests beginning.
And I kind of loved it.
So, yeah.
Anyway, just y'all, please just listen to people who are trying to keep you safe.
You know, that's that's all this guy was trying to do.
And then you had to go and get in your ugly racist bag.
And look what happened to you.
Look what happened to you.
Look at you.
Yeah.
So, God, between between that and the Boston cop video.
So, so many healing videos.
Boston cop videos.
Oh, man.
And I thought Oppenheimer was the best thing I saw this fucking week.
No.
Damn.
Top three movie that you saw this week.
Top three movie I saw this fucking week no no damn top top three movie that you saw this week top three movie i
saw this week uh in the last week the doc brawl then boston pd cop slide then oppenheimer yeah
yeah that's good that's an oppenheimer deserves oscar attention but so does this yeah yes yes yes
we need we need this to be like just captured in like renaissance like painting form you know what
i mean wow what if beyonce placed footage of it on her show i would be actually really excited a different
but yes that would be i don't know what effect that would have on the crowd but it would have
a fucking effect for sure when would she play that you know what i mean when could she like
what song could she juxtapose that? And people are like, yeah! I don't know.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Womp womp.
Womp womp.
And you're like, oh, shit.
All right.
That's going to do it for this week's weekly Zeitgeist.
Please like and review the show if you like the show.
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. 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
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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,
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or wherever you get your podcasts.
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 4 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 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.