The Daily Zeitgeist - Weekly Zeitgeist 294 (Best of 10/2/23-10/6/23)
Episode Date: October 8, 2023The weekly round-up of the best moments from DZ's season 307 (10/2/23-10/6/23)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
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I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult.
And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church.
And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me for I Have Followed.
Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church.
Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get
your podcasts.
I'm Keri Champion,
and this is season four
of Naked Sports.
Up first,
I explore the making
of a rivalry.
Kaitlyn Clark
versus Angel Reese.
Every great player
needs a foil.
I know I'll go down
in history.
People are talking
about women's basketball
just because of
one single game. Clark and Reese have
changed the way we consume women's
sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry
Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast
or wherever you get your podcast.
Presented by Capital One, founding
partner of iHeart Women's Sports.
Hey, I'm Gianna Pardenti
and I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden.
We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.
There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career.
That's where we come in.
Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice.
And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do,
like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour.
If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation,
then I think it sort of eases us a little bit.
Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcasts. 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 an author, a documentarian,
who MIT called one of the world's 10 most influential intellectuals.
He's published many, 20 books, including the one we're going to be talking about today,
Survival of the Richest, Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires.
Please welcome to the show, Dr. Douglas Rushkoff!
Welcome, welcome.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Yeah, like we were saying before, we're we talk like we always like to have experts on certain things.
And one thing we always keep hearing about is like the scaries that billionaires get when they think about the poor people rising up and we've like we've touched on
like people buying properties in new zealand and like these like billionaire escape bunkers and
things like that and so when we were wanting to sort of discuss this further it was like it was
just great to like sort of see your work sort of completely overlap with that but also have like a
larger look at like it's really not so much about the bunkers
themselves, but the flawed thinking around even wanting a fucking bunker to escape at all.
So yeah, we're really stoked to have you on. Oh, cool. No. And thanks for that too. Cause
you know, I write this book and there's this opening scene, right? Where I meet the billionaires
who all want advice on their bunkers. And most of the journalists and newspapers and stuff who've
covered it, they're like, Oh my God god the billionaires are gonna leave us behind this is happening and it's like dude
read the book these guys are pathetic none of this is working the whole point of that scene
it's a comedy it's a comedy this is laughable these guys are nuts right yeah yeah yeah it kind
of leaves that behind pretty quickly yeah and then focuses on
you know like tells the story of how we got here right why we are here if you needed any
evidence any more evidence that we are here there is a 60 minutes piece i think last uh this past
week where they were talking about sam bankman freed and like michael lewis
was like man he's a great guy like i don't know we the world needs a sam bankman freed to like
save us from ourselves type shit oh no he was saying that i know he's got a new book michael
lewis you know he's like money ball great writer yeah the big short and he's did he's got a book
coming out like next week or the week after about sam Bankman Freed. And people don't know that's the crypto crazy. He, you know, giant crypto crash.
He took zillions and billions of dollars of people's money with him on this. Basically,
I mean, maybe he meant well, but it was a crypto pyramid scheme that he was running.
And but the weirder thing is like he's an effective altruist. He's basically one of these people who believes that the human beings alive today, like the 8 billion people around, we're just like the larval stage of humanity. We're like the maggots on the original medium. And the ones that matter are the post-human AIs that are going to spread throughout the universe. So if you have to make choices now that cause pain and suffering for these little
eight billion worms, it's OK, because the super AIs are going to be are going to be happier.
And we will become one big machine.
How many people are there going to be before, like after that? The direct quote from Michael
Lewis, there is still a Sam Bankman-freed shaped hole in the world that now needs filling.
For more Ponzi schemes?
shaped hole in the world that now needs filling. And I would say maybe not. So but but yeah, there is I mean, you talk in your book about when Jeff Bezos went to space and like this big media
kind of orgasm that they had about just this idea of like a private person we're now at a place
where a private person can get so rich that they can go to space it's like the the ultimate
deliverance of the american dream like on a cartoonish scale but yeah it's like people
really it does seem to be of the zeitgeist to like buy into this shit still like we're starting to
see some of the magic wear off thanks to elon musk being a public dipshit but it's it's still a mess
so we're gonna dig into all of all of that stuff what is something from your search history? Well, if I skip over all the moms with huge jugs searches,
thumbnails, obviously. Thumbnail. JPEG. JPEG. JPEG. Yeah. This one's kind of embarrassing.
It was, let me look it up here. It's David Foster Wallace on being entirely yourself.
Now, that is something that a man of my age
who wishes he read more
and wants to figure out who they are with Google.
This is a midlife crisis of a search.
Yeah.
Did you write something good on being yourself?
It's just a YouTube video. It's like a commencement speech, right? Yeah. Yeah, Do you write something good on being yourself? It's just a YouTube video.
It's like a commencement speech, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's probably the most embarrassing thing I've ever lived up.
And I'm just alone in my home office.
I'm like, how do I know who I am?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let me watch this guy.
David Foster Wallace will tell me.
Yeah. This guy who wore a bandana. Yeah. Let me watch this guy. Foster Wallace will tell me. Yeah.
This guy who wore a bandana.
He really stuck to that shit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, did you think he was copying Brett Michaels or was Brett Michaels copying him?
It's it feels like impossible.
Yeah.
Did Captain Lou Albano come first?
Like, we really don't know right nobody
can say like i i do like what i wish somebody had asked david foster wallace like why maybe they did
i haven't like looked through does he touch on it in his on being yourself
commencement like for instance look
at this fucking thing that i'm wrong yeah no one was like uh what's with the fucking bandana dude
why yeah whatever i know david foster wallace foremost intellectual of your generation
what the fuck with the bandana? Yeah. Some great points here.
How do I square that with everything else?
But that bandana is not.
It is.
Just accept who you are and be yourself.
Unless you're balding.
Cover that up.
It is shameful.
Not rock and roll.
There's a picture of him in 2006 and he's rocking a full head full head of hair yeah two years before
he passed so yeah i you know i didn't i made it is it entirely aesthetic i don't know uh david
foster wallace fans dial in let us know about the df oh and the lines are lighting up my lighting up
david foster wallace fans who all use land lines yeah yeah i feel like i i got i got into a real
david foster wallace hole in like my early 30s and like we started taking those books out of
library tried to read infinite jest yeah that's what you do you know like i got really dedicated
like i really tried i got like a couple hundred pages in to that shit.
I don't know that anybody's ever made it that far.
I haven't checked the record on how far,
the furthest anyone ever made it into Infinite Jest before.
A fun thing to do is when someone says
they've read David Foster Wallace and Infinite Jest,
you go, especially you go yeah
what'd you think of the ending crazy right and then just watch them go
what did you think of
oh the spaceships were crazy dude yeah wasn't expecting that dude dude. His nonfiction was really good, though.
I think Big Red Son is his magazine,
long-ass magazine piece on the porn industry.
I highly recommend that.
Did he write an essay on taking a cruise?
I think he did, yeah. Like a supposedly fun thing that I'll never do again.
Yeah, I think I remember that, too.
Yeah, that was good. That was again. Yeah. I remember that too. Yeah.
Yeah.
That was good.
That was good.
So we're learned people here.
Yeah.
Meanwhile, I'm like, I haven't read a single fucking thing.
I have to read his whole damn name.
There's too many names.
So anyway, my life's in shambles.
Yeah.
Move on.
Yeah.
No, I'm kidding.
Ophira, what is something that you think is overrated?
More than overrated. I feel I've never seen more positive affirmations or motivational messages
in public spaces in my entire life. I mean, from a point of view of capitalist branding,
you walk into, I don't know, a Starbucks or whatever. They have positive messages
everywhere. And I believe positivity has fallen in much like the American flag.
Positivity has fallen into the wrong hands because it is,
uh,
it's,
it's like mind control.
So I think there's a lot of like gratitude.
We all have to be more graded by the way,
gratitude journaling.
I don't think,
I don't know if you guys do it.
Do you have your gratitude journal?
No, I'm not, I'm not grateful for fucking anything. So I don't see journaling. I don't think I don't know if you guys do it. Have you ever gratitude journaled?
No, I'm not.
I'm not grateful for fucking anything.
So thank you.
I would.
But my life fucking sucks.
I have nothing to be grateful for.
Yeah, right.
It's like all of this stuff.
Like, come on, just be thankful for the little morsel that you've been given to by your overlords.
Anyways, I I hate the I think it's all I think none of it is real. That's right think it's all, I think none of it is real. That's it.
Beyond overrated, I think none of it is real.
I personally, like, I feel like I
can, it's better for me
when I am focused
on the people around me as opposed
to myself and, like,
my own shit. Like, it's better for me
to just be like, alright,
let's, like, hear what they're interested in,
what's going on with them.
And thinking about things in a grateful,
gratitudinal, that's not a word, way,
can sometimes help me do that.
But there is definitely, we have a shampoo in our shower that says the phrase.
The greatest.
It says, release that which no longer serves you.
Right.
On the fucking shampoo.
On the shampoo.
That's like all it says.
It doesn't really like.
I don't even know if it's shampoo.
It's just the, you know's shampoo it's just the you know
and it's just like such a bummer vapors in a bottle yeah it's such a bummer like that like
all these ideas like any good idea just gets fucking taken and stamped onto a bottle to sell
you something that is just chemicals in a bottle it's just chemicals in a bottle. It's just chemicals in a bottle. Head chemicals, yeah. Head chemicals?
Like, the grossest guy.
Wow, I love head chemicals.
These head chemicals tell me to release that
which no longer serves me.
And I gotta tell you, as a woman,
this stuff is, like, shoveled at you.
Yeah.
It feels like kind of like the fall of Rome.
It's like bread and circuses and
affirmations. Yes. Just to
kind of stave off the inevitable. Exactly.
It's like, okay, fuck.
The bread and the circuses aren't working.
We need another thing to kind of get them to
focus on not the fucking fall right now.
I am with you.
Yeah. I am totally with you.
I'm like, shiny, shiny. Everybody
happy, happy. big smiles big smiles
everybody and i think that's where we're all realizing it's because everyone's reaction to
it isn't like you know what i've read this really fun thing at starbucks it's like shut the fuck up
starbucks that's our reaction to those things so i don't know if they're working i don't know if
they're working yeah i like shut the fuck up Starbucks as like a...
That's the story.
Open the side, Starbucks.
Yeah.
Just a t-shirt.
Just fucking a middle finger at the afro.
That's the album cover.
Middle finger.
One of the Starbucks.
Shut the fuck up, Starbucks.
My new EP that just dropped.
With the hair around it of the old Starbucks logo, you know.
Right, right.
I will say it sounds like both of you have not yet,
today, this morning, released that which no longer serves you.
No, no, we have not.
I clearly haven't had my coffee.
Yeah.
That's right.
Okay, let's go to something a little bit different.
What do you think is something that is underrated?
Ooh, okay.
Something that I think is underrated
is listening to classical music at the gym.
And this is something I only started doing kind of recently,
and it's been a huge game changer.
It's really meditative and energizing at the same time.
Beethoven's Fifth goes especially hard
if anyone's interested in starting somewhere.
I mean, that's basically edm
of class of house yeah that's yeah yeah it's a very like um that's beethoven's fifth right
excuse me yes it is yeah it's a very arousing and i mean that in the just it's a very yeah
okay stimulating like it's a no yeah no we're
you know yeah yeah yeah it's like go on
and like to the point where i was like like i didn't i don't i didn't know too much about
beethoven's history and i was like this guy must have been like the guy of his day right like he's
probably doing he's like the usher in vegas you know what
i mean of his time so i looked it up and uh that is not the case turns out it was like the exact
opposite and he was actually a very um romantic and lovesick person who like didn't consummate
his love with the many women that he fell in love with. Right. Interesting that you created this.
A romantic king.
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean.
Exactly.
I just, I think, I mean, are we claiming him?
You know, because the other rumor is that Beethoven was black.
Okay.
I have seen this.
Have you seen the rumor?
He says he's black.
The internet rumor is hilarious.
They're like, look at this.
He might be light skinned.
I'm like, I don't know. Okay. Sure. Maybe. hilarious they're like look at this he might be light-skinned okay interesting internet thing it was like beethoven was black oh sure i guess i mean i love a black ludwig but yeah
what about um okay so you got beethoven bumping through the headphones. Is it like, is that like good for just in general, it just puts you in a good place to focus?
Because for me, whenever I've listened to music, I kind of need it to be like a motor that drives my limbs to keep going.
It's usually in the context of like running.
But again, that's my very narrow experience with it.
I think it has that vibe.
You know what it is too?
It's the absence of lyrics, I think, help you focus, too.
And you really are kind of like focusing on the rhythm and the tempo and, you know, the various instruments coming together.
And it could propel you to like, you know, lift or run or whatever.
I find that it like, yeah, it's effective's effective just keeping you motivated and kind of
tuned into your body also.
What other classics are you spinning?
If you were to put together a workout playlist,
who else would show it up? Classical workouts.
I really like a Tchaikovsky.
So you like the aggressive ones?
Yeah.
Yeah, you know.
It's got to be gym music still.
Dvorak's New World Symphony.
You're like, oh, you're fucking with Dvorak too?
Okay, you really...
Those are bangers.
Yeah, you know.
Maybe some Vivaldi.
Love Vivaldi.
Love the Four Seasons, you know what I mean?
I might recommend Maurice Ravel's Bolero as a good warm-up track.
Yo, some of my classical music nerds out here i used to play in a youth orchestra so i was all
i was all about the classical music back in the day i love it what okay but you said lyrics
distract you so who's the artist you can't listen to or else you're gonna just be
just completely singing along or completely distracted by the lyrics that's a great question okay
okay i'll just reveal it i'm just gonna say it so i've gotten really into also the venga boys
going back to that like 90s early 2000s like you know venga bus electro whatever
yeah it's so hard not to sing along and be like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
I want you in my room.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A classic.
Okay.
So wait,
that doesn't mean we're like Venga.
I'm sorry.
I'm a Venga.
I'm a Venga head.
Yeah.
Okay.
Good.
You're with my kindred spirits.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Where are they from?
They were like from all over,
weren't they?
Are they really Dutch or something?
I feel like they must be European. Yeah. Well, because really Dutch or something? I feel like that was a heavy Dutch.
Yeah.
Well, because of the era when like every, like nobody was from America back then.
Like all that electronic music was either coming from like Sweden or Germany or, you know.
Euro dance group.
Dutch.
Mm-hmm.
Dutch.
Okay.
They're Dutch.
Okay.
All right.
Walsall Vaughan, D-Pen, and Dennis van der Drijschen. They're very Dutch. All right. Hup Holland. Hup as they say. Okay. All right. Walsel van Diepen and Dennis van der Drijschen.
They're very Dutch.
All right.
Hup Holland.
Hup.
Hoet zo.
Yeah.
Wait, what was that last thing you said?
I said hoet zo.
I did live in Holland for a little bit and I don't speak that much Dutch.
You see my Dutch?
Hey, I'm out of here.
Okay.
Hup Holland.
Yeah, there we go.
Let's go.
Shout out.
Let's go. That's it. That's not like I thought for this one. Okay. Let's take a quick break and just figure out what's going on with Joe Brandon's. Now Joe Brandon's wall, I guess. We will figure that out when we come back after this.
I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult.
And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church.
And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged
cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the
hidden truths between high control groups and interview dancers, church members, and others
whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine. Through powerful, in-depth interviews
with former members and new, chilling firsthand accounts, the series will illuminate untold
and extremely necessary perspectives.
Forgive Me For I Have Followed
will be more than an exploration.
It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring
these types of abuses never happen again.
Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente.
And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden.
We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.
When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions.
Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed?
Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job?
Girl, yes.
Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions.
Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice.
And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do,
like resume specialist Morgan Saner.
The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job
and the person who gets the job is usually who applies.
Yeah, I think a lot about that quote.
What is it, like you miss 100 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'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports,
where we live at the intersection of sports and culture.
Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry,
Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese.
I know I'll go down in history.
People are talking about women's basketball
just because of one single game.
Every great player needs a foil.
I ain't really near them boys.
I just come here to play basketball every single day
and that's what I focus on.
From college to the pros,
Clark and Reese have changed the way
we consume women's sports.
Angel Reese is a joy to watch.
She is unapologetically black.
I love her.
What exactly ignited this fire?
Why has it been so good for the game?
And can the fanfare surrounding these two supernovas be sustained?
This game is only going to get better because the talent is getting better.
This new season will cover all things sports and culture.
Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network,
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The Black Effect Podcast Network is
sponsored by Diet Coke. And we're back. We are. And this story has been knocking at our door for
days now. We've been trying to resist. We've been saying, we don't hear you. We don't care
about you house republicans
but there it seems like something might actually be happening i don't know i mean like so all last
week right we didn't really talk about like the potential government shut down because the maga
republicans are like we don't want any money for ukraine or this or that or whatever and we'll shut
it down we don't care if kids like miss out on their like
social you know safety net programs and things we don't care we don't care if the people that
serve us in the cafeteria of the capitol are laid off like we look in the eyes so turns out it all
it all ended up working out uh because kevin mccarthy at the last minute pulled off a squeaker
and funded the government with the help of the freaking
democrats so because of that matt gates is now like he's taken upon himself to represent all
the mega freaks in the in the house and be like that's it he's he's crossed us one too many times
and we hate that he's working with the demon crats he's like they're at he's actually a puppet of the
democrats is what he's been saying yeah okay but now he's basically saying that it's working with the demon crats. He's like, he's actually a puppet of the Democrats is what he's been saying.
Yeah, okay.
But now he's basically saying that
it's time to call it on his speakership.
And if you recall,
Kevin McCarthy is not a good negotiator.
Not only because he is an untrustworthy scumbag
that's lower than snake nipples,
but also because he is a terrible
negotiator, just terrible at like even understanding the dynamics or leverage of a
negotiation.
So on his way to get the votes to become speaker, if you recall, he had to like, they had to
call like 15 votes before he finds like, what do you want, dude?
Like, I'll name my kid MAGA McCarthy if you want, like, just please let me get this.
He basically said, here, I will hand you
the MAGA freaks, a big red button in the form of being able to oust me. If one member wants to
pursue a motion to vacate the speakership, AKA get me out of here, then if you got the votes,
then fine. And we've come to that moment where now Matt Gates is like, oh, we're doing it.
I'm doing it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. And he needs
less than 10 votes right now from
his Republican colleagues to be able to
oust Kevin McCarthy.
Yeah. And so it looks like he's going
to be ousted? Well,
this is where it gets fun.
He would need the Democrats
to... Never mind, I already stopped listening.
Yeah, sorry.
To be honest, I stopped listening when you turned into James Carville and said,
lower than snake nipples.
I love snake nipples.
He's lower than snake nipples.
That boy lower than snake nipples.
That's so evocative.
Yeah, I don't know why.
I just had to.
I've been trying to put that in somewhere.
You had to go full Carville.
And I was like, had to.
That's the thing when you're dealing with somebody like that.
They're lower than snake nipples and you can't trust them.
But the thing is,
the Democrats would have to save him.
And most Democrats have just laughed
at this notion where they're like,
hey, would you vote?
They're like, what?
And like you,
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was like,
the only way I would even think about it
is if he came with some kind of deal
to be done,
but then still preface that with like,
but this guy's lower than snake nipples.
So there's no way we can believe him what he says, because the second he works with us,
he goes around and says the opposite thing on Fox. So he would need the votes. We will see what
happens. But like, when you look at quotes like this from Democrat Jerry Connolly of Virginia,
this is like, you would, you would imagine the deal would have to be gargantuan, aka impossible.
He said, quote, upon examination, I do not understand what any Democrat
would find of redeeming value
to allow him to persist in the speakership.
We should not enable, aid, or abet
his continuation in office.
You know when someone pulls out the word abet?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's the big gun.
It does sound like this was
like a 12-year-old
trying to write a sentence
that sounded official
it's all
12 year old they had like a little twitter
war
yeah
where it was like
bring it on just did it
like they're having little back and forth
like on a schoolyard
bring it on Just did it.
Yeah.
So really like I'm surprised he didn't say it's already been brought.
Just did it.
It's already been brought.
Didn't go for that jam of a retweet.
That would have been.
Oh, I heard of that.
I heard of it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we'll see where this ends up.
But I mean, like the vote happened and he didn't get the he does not have the votes. McCarthy. Correct. Which seems to be the only place he's comfortable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I of right now, they tried it. But, yeah, he just barely got out.
Oh, so he's still in, but he also, it was not an encouraging vote.
No, no.
Got it.
Yeah, sorry.
We'll see.
But just got a notification while we were recording the story.
Anyways, guy like that, he's only comfortable when
he's down in the muck,
mucking it up with them other boys.
Yeah, with all the snake nipples.
Just trying to figure out how to best
represent the American people.
That's right. That's all he's trying to do,
everybody. That's all I'm trying to do, man.
That's all I'm trying to do. Didn't know that was a crime.
Didn't know that was a crime. Hey, speaking of
didn't know that was a crime, that's know that was a crime. Hey, speaking of didn't know that was a crime,
that's what Amy Coney Barrett's going to be saying
because the FBI is apparently interviewing
several individuals alleging that they were abused
by members of the People of Praise,
the Christian cult that Amy Coney Barrett belongs to
that got a lot of attention in the run-up to her confirmation.
Yeah.
And not mentioned once.
Yeah, it got attention from the activists
and other people who were just so shook to their core
that a creature like this would ascend to the Supreme Court.
But yeah, in the hearing, people were like,
and you're a family woman, right?
It's like, oh boy.
That's why we need not our grandparents to be in those confirmation hearings. So apparently the group encourages
members to speak in tongues, make prophecies about the future and expel gay people. So apparently
that group, not totally on the level, which I think we all find shocking. I mean, I feel like the gay people are getting the best deal of all.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're like, you're not allowed.
Okay.
They're like, cool.
Oh, damn.
I'm sorry, I didn't even ask.
Sorry to hear that.
Oh, no.
Yeah, you're like, oh, no way.
Okay.
I guess I'll go.
This is terrible news.
But private schools closely affiliated with the group have admissions policies that in effect ban the children of gay parents from attending.
That's very frightening.
Yes.
And what?
Right.
Wow.
But the thing is, though, like it's not we're not sure if it's active.
Right.
Because the one thing we know is like it was I think the Guardian confirmed that like five people were interviewed by the FBI.
So but we're still not sure if they're like, is this going somewhere?
Or is it one of those things that FBS is like,
yeah, we'll look into it and then do nothing.
Yeah.
Yeah, they tend to,
they have the ability to just ignore the shit
out of some pretty wild shit.
Brett Kavanaugh.
Right.
Yeah.
Where they're like, yeah, we interviewed people,
but we didn't really follow up.
So they've been contacted by this group,
people of, what's it called people of praise
people of praise people of praise yeah people of praise there's also the group people of praise
survivors that sounds like a first draft don't you think that's a first draft of a name for a cult
yeah man i bet it was the result of the longest most boring meeting of all time when I came up with that.
Holy shit. But yeah, so this group of people, survivors, are a group that's designed to call attention to the claims of sexual abuse survivors.
And members have been in touch with the FBI, have been apparently confused that the FBI hadn't reached out sooner following press reports about alleged abuse,
which, yeah, it just all further illustrates how strange it is that her membership in People of Praise
never came up in a Senate hearing to confirm her as an appeals court judge.
Yeah, well, it's like on one side, Republicans, there's no way they would bring it up because it's like,
get her in there, let's tip the scales of the of the court and then i'm sure democrats it's like an optics thing where it's like they don't want to like because
this is how they're probably thinking about it if i question people of praise i'm going to open
myself up to being painted as an anti-christian like atheist person and i and i just don't have
the spine for that i'm also lower than snake nipples it turns out right I just don't have the spine for that. I'm also lower than snake nipples, it turns out.
So I just don't touch it.
Yeah, I tried to get into people of praise
and they rejected me.
So.
Right, exactly.
And I don't want to mess up my chance in the future
by casting aspersions on them publicly.
That's right.
They're just jealous.
All right.
I want to offer an official overrated from me.
Oh, that's right.
I know we usually save those for Monday, but Roman concrete.
There's a new AP story about how they're trying to figure out the secret to Roman concrete.
And they just made a breakthrough earlier this year in a study where they found out
that it is self-healing, that it's able to heal, don't crack that story. We've like covered that
story multiple times, like over the past five years, like it keeps coming up. Yeah. The last
time was the beginning of this year. Okay. Where they're like, they've cracked the code. And when
I was like, this is like nine months old, this story.
Yeah.
At the very least, because for people who don't know,
we're not Roman concrete isn't like a new street drug.
We're talking about the concrete that the Romans used.
From the Romans.
Yeah, that they were using, because everyone's like,
look, thousands of years, it's still standing.
They must have a secret to their superior concrete.
Yeah.
So like just yesterday, there was a new AP story being like another
breakthrough. And it's the same shit that we've seen before that like nothing has changed about
the story. They acknowledge in the story also some things that we didn't have before, like that it
couldn't hold over three stories. Like if you tried to build a building out of Roman concrete
today, it would crumble.
Sounds like all the buildings in New York.
Right.
If they're all Roman concrete.
Yeah.
So part of the reason it survived as long as it did
is because Rome was basically abandoned.
It went from the center of the world
to 30,000 people
and livestock
just roaming the streets.
Just immediately, like there was the fall of Rome
and then nobody wanted to live there anymore.
So nobody was building new buildings.
Like nobody was trying to knock down the old buildings
to build the new buildings.
So like in the article, or in an article I read,
they compare it to London,
which like all the old buildings in london for the
most part are got knocked down like because they were building new buildings but like rome
nobody was fucking with it so that's why we have the ruins yeah i think you'd have to go to like
bath to see like roman relics anywhere like in the or at least that's the closest thing i've
heard of like krakow poland that wasn't, it has a super old, you know, buildings and architecture purely because it wasn't bombed to shit.
Right.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
And so like, oh, it's like, well, actually, it's just, it wasn't destroyed.
It's not that it made it, it wasn't destroyed.
Just nobody was really fucking with Rome like that.
But the one thing I love about the Roman cement, Roman concrete, I'm sorry.
Roman cement is the street drug.
That is the, and that shit is wild.
It's amazing.
It will optimize your workflow.
Actually, it makes you so effective at spreadsheets.
HR meetings with that.
Let me tell you,
they just fly by.
Oh,
you mean the wrong cement.
So,
it was like,
right,
they have these limestone chunks in it.
Is that it?
That's why it's self-healing.
There's like chunks in it.
That's one of the theories.
That's one of the theories.
But I just love it
when people
look at the way
things were constructed
in the past
and they just go,
oh,
you know,
like in this case,
they're like,
it's all lumpy
because they were dumb and they just didn't stir well right like yeah yeah
no no that's that's they weren't just bad stirrers in the past we didn't just evolve to be better at
stirring yeah yeah that's my take i think that's that was our secret but so the ap article points
out that like a lot of their cement mixtures are different. Like you check one sample and a different one and like they're like, it's weird. They put like a bunch of beer in this one. And then this one has like a lot of piss didn't, they were just like trying different shit and like seeing what worked. And obviously the buildings that worked are the ones that lasted
and everything else crumbles. And we're giving them credit for like being masters of concrete,
but they were just like trying a bunch of different shit out, seeing what stuck,
the stuff that stuck was able to last because nobody was trying to knock it down
to build a highway to help with traffic flow.
Luxury housing, there was no luxury housing going up?
Yeah, exactly.
I would put the beer one near the piss one.
I'm sure those two different mixtures were happening
pretty close.
It was across the street.
Yeah, it was across the street.
But yeah, I guess one of the things that doesn't get
brought up a lot is you can find examples of this where architecture has lasted for a long time, but it's in India.
And, you know, India doesn't the the colonial brain doesn't like to think about India having figured stuff out.
They like to think about Rome.
Right.
Men are supposed to think about Rome every day.
Is that is that
is that what we're being told right on tiktok yeah because the romans didn't have any any slaves
working on those things it was all people that were pretty they were pretty good jobs yeah yeah
but volunteered happily yeah because they just believed in the project you know it's a shame we
don't have that kind of work ethic now that's's because you believe in something. I know. So just a quote from the article describing the two processes. Cecilia
Pesci, a materials scientist at the University of Sheffield in England, said they'd toss just
about anything into their mixes, talking about Roman architects, as long as it was cheap and
available and the ones that didn't work out have long since collapsed. But some materials seem to show more intention, like in India, where builders crafted blends of
local materials to produce different properties. According to a civil engineer at the Velour
Institute of Technology, in humid areas of India, builders use local herbs that help structures deal with moisture.
Along the coast, they added jaggery, an unrefined sugar, which can help protect from salt damage.
And in areas with higher earthquake risks, they used super light floating bricks made with rice husks.
They know the region.
They know the soil condition.
They know the climate.
So they engineer a material according to this.
Yeah, but how much piss is in it, though?
Exactly.
How much vodka?
Yeah.
Just dumping it in.
I don't know how this one works.
We'll see.
I wish they'd put in that one.
I'm drunk, man.
I have no idea.
No clue.
I just piss.
How did we lose the recipe for roaming concrete?
I know.
It's because you gave it to Daryl.
You gave it to Daryl.
Daryl did not pass it along.
No.
I know.
It is kind of funny that nothing was passed along.
Stories, tons of folks' tales we have, mythology, but not one.
No one decided to write down how you were making your cement?
Not a person.
Yeah. Nah. Just pee. Just some pee,
man. You know what it is.
No limestone or volcanic
sand? Nah, I don't know. It's just piss,
I think.
Not just piss.
I think it's my magic piss.
Is that
anything? The one man
who pissed into all of our structures.
Right.
Could you imagine if that really did take?
Someone's like, I think it's the piss, dude.
Right.
But then they're too embarrassed to pass it down to the generation.
The truvius wasn't writing that one down, huh?
Yeah.
Wait till they find out it wasn't the leader and it wasn't the strongest man.
It was the librarian.
Yeah, right.
We would get Mabel out here.
She'd be, and I don't know, something about it.
She has a lot of cats.
Might be some syndrome, I don't know.
Is it the tea? She likes tea.
Yeah.
But anyways, apparently we're supposed to be thinking of roman the roman empire
every day and i just i this is my excuse for why i don't think about the roman empire every day i
just i think it just never occurred to me to think about the roman empire in general like when i first
saw that thing like the tiktok trend i'm like dude dudes be thinking about rome i'm like maybe is it
is that i don't know how who is it white guys that are thinking about rome i'm like, maybe is it? I don't know. How? Who? Is it white guys that are
thinking about Rome? I don't know.
I guess just a good model of something
else that has fallen.
Yeah, I do think
it's an ancient culture
that is also
full of self-devouring
cannibals of consumption
like we are.
Exactly.
Towards the end of Rome,
they had an insatiable urge for micromilitarism
to go outside their borders and just deplete their resources.
I don't know.
That doesn't sound like the U.S. at all.
It doesn't sound like anything.
Anyway, guys, release all that to you,
which is no longer useful.
Thank you.
And also watch season three of Love is blind and enjoy national taco day
that's right do you like your hair shiny yeah yeah chemicals
all right let's take a quick break and we will come back and talk about our roman concrete
the las vegas sphere the monument, I think this is the monument,
like the ultimate, the furthering-est of capitalism that we've gotten. This is the
peak. And it's not necessarily a good thing. We'll be right back.
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And we're back. And just to kind of summarize what we were talking about before, like this, because I did find the book ultimately hopeful because, like, it really clarified this
idea that I think we all assume that there's something happening with
resources and the earth that is inevitably leading toward a climate apocalypse. And you talk about
how that assumption is purely based on like their mindset of like this extractive kind of their addiction to 10x growth is really what's driving
this inevitable move towards a unsustainable world and climate and like if you if people
are able if like the zeitgeist is able to switch over to this more these more circular economic
models we have enough water, we have enough resources.
That's what we've found over the past decades.
You know?
But it's hard, you know, I mean, I get that it's hard.
You know, and I talk to middle class people
and they're like, yeah, I'll do the kind of things
you're saying, once I've got like a million dollars
in my 401 plan, then I'll stop.
Or just, I just need to work two more years at this bad job that
i know is destroying the planet and then i can stop and when i listen to them they sound like
addicts you know where it's like dude i just gotta drink until this project is done just until this
just until the next thing and there is no it actually it's now it really is now there is no it actually it's it's now it really is now there is no next first there's
no next big thing that's going to save us i was talking to a billionaire who says oh i've got
this carbon capture device we're going to put it right on the back of the car and right on the back
of the truck and it's going to suck the carbon out so we don't even have to go to evs like oh
good the fuck luck with that you know or oh the eco city thing it's like a pill and you drop it into
the water and that city's gonna grow out of it that's you know magical crypto perfect city for
children and regenerative agriculture and there's a stack for this and a stack there's no thing but
it's hard to tell people like right now how do they start you know and that for me if we talk
about it and i've given up with this if we talk about
it as oh a new economic system or a thing then they're like oh no it's a socialist or something
oh god yeah you know and if we could sort of take the ism off socialism and just make it like social
yeah social like and it's interesting you end up in the same place but you win the argument so
i do that thing about you know instead of buying a drill from home, minimum viable product drill from Home Depot and making all this waste and using it once, go to Bob's house, knock on Bob's door and say, Bob, can I borrow your drill? Right. And Bob is going to bring a big, thick motherfucking drill that plugs in the wall the way God intended. And he's going to come over and say, Doug, you're a fucking nerd. You don't know where to, you don't know where to find a stud. I'm coming over and
drilling the hole for you. Right. He's going to come, he's going to make the hole. It's going to
be great. But then like three days later that weekend, I'm supposed to have a barbecue at my
house. Bob's going to smell the barbecue and Bob's going to think, wait a minute, I went over and
helped Doug drill a hole in the wall and he didn't invite me over to the barbecue. So now I'm going
to have to invite Bob over. All right. So I invite Bob to the barbecue.
That's fine. And Bob turns out, oh, it turns out he's nice and his wife is kind of nice and his
kids are cool and they like my, all right, well, that's so bad. But now the other neighbors smell
the barbecue and they're like, wait a minute, why is Doug inviting Bob to the barbecue and not us?
Before long, we're going to have a block party and everybody's going to be having fun at this
barbecue. Right. That's the nightmare, right? That's the downside, the bad thing. But now that we're all together and talking,
how did we meet? Well, you know, I borrowed Bob's drill. Now people on the block say, you know,
I wonder, I was going to need a new lawnmower, but instead of me buying a new lawnmower,
what if we just like use two or three lawnmowers for the whole block and we just share the ones
we have? Because I don't use it more than a couple hours a week so now we're buying less lawnmowers buying less drills and we have more
money to start doing stuff i'm teaching bob's kid algebra because i'm paying him back for the favor
that he gave me and it's all working out someone invariably gets up when i do that in a talk and
says well yeah but what about the drill company yeah bad for sales what about you right and the person who has the job at the drill company and the old lady someone said what about the drill company? Yeah, bad for sales. Right. And the person who has the job at the drill company and the old lady, someone said, what about the old lady who has a pension fund that's dependent on the stock in the drill company for her to for her to survive?
neighborhood. And hopefully we're going to wind this down. That's why we're not doing it in revolution. I'm not saying everybody today, stop buying drills, right? It's not going to work like
that. But slowly and surely, as we replace some of that activity, the power of these giant
megacorporations kind of diminishes. This huge, you know, ridiculous global supply chains end up kind of shrinking down. And we slowly kind of turn the corner
towards something more social, more circular, more on the ground. We take some of the weight
of government and social service programs to take care of us. We take some of the weight off the
climate, off the economy and all that stuff all at the same time, then that's what I meant by, you know, I have more hope in people that people could kind of flip and
go, oh, this is fun, right? I'm okay with this. What if life was actually fun? Like that's kind
of a crazy idea. But how many drills do I have? But I need drills. There drills there's this uh david wayne movie the 10 where like he and his
neighbor or two two characters like two neighbors get in a cat scan buying frenzy where they just
like that they get competitive about buying cat scans anyways i don't know why but yeah you like
just to the point of the socializing you you reference a couple of times in the mirroring of others.
So it almost feels like we're being delivered
from this very powerful way that we become part
of a network connected to other people,
made up of other people, like that's very natural,
very human, like how humanity got this far.
We're being delivered from that by these powerful people
who are like mapping onto us
their weird thing
that is like,
that doesn't value that,
that doesn't see the intrinsic value of that.
And it's making us miserable, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean,
the way like a Marshall McLuhan or somebody,
a media theorist, would look at it is what you're talking about are the values of the television age. Right. We got television and we use television to paint pictures of the world that made us feel inadequate about where we are, that we need to get that other thing, right? The television is sort of what put us in competition
with each other and kind of de-socialized us
because the less satisfied people were,
the more likely they were to go buy stuff.
So television was this really terrific influencing machine
and it supported markets and companies
and consumption and all that.
And now we've moved into a digital age
and we're kind of using that same industrial age,
television era, oh, let's use it to influence people
and get them to buy more stuff and all that.
It's like, well, maybe that's not the digital thing.
I mean, it's not sustainable.
It's too, when a digital algorithm
can reconfigure itself in real time to influence your behavior, it's like, this isn't going to work anymore. This isn't just going to get people to buy Ford cars, right? Because people don't even have jobs at Ford where they can afford a different place. So I think we have to stop kind of using media to get people to do stuff
and start looking at using media and technology to provide people, you know, some of what,
some of what they need, which is, it's a, it's a big, it's a, it's a big mind shift,
but you know what, you know what I mean? This is like a very different media environment
that, that this stuff works differently than industrial age stuff. We're
not just coaxing people. It's as if television was more like social media, which is more like,
say, the missionaries. They go to a population and they propagandize them. They get them to
worship the new God and they do a lot of intelligence on them. And then the missionaries
send the intelligence back to the crown. And who comes next? The conquistadors, right? They know how the native population works.
They've got the intelligence. They go in and they get them. That's kind of what the AIs and the
digital things are. They're the conquistadors, not just coming to influence us, but coming to
annihilate and replace us. And that's, wait a minute, that's not going to work. So that's why
we have to flip the script and say, well, how can they serve us instead? And this technology could.
Once you start saying, wait a minute, once you get out of the framework of how do we retrain
people for better jobs once the AIs come and start thinking instead, how do we retrain people
for lives of meaning and pleasure and leisure?
And it's like, ooh, that would be,
that'd be kind of fun.
Right, because I feel like so much talk,
even like with like universal basic income,
it's always just to like offset the damage
that tech innovation is going to do.
It's not because humans,
like we just, because we're so productive,
we should begin shifting to something
that resembles more like leisure time or family,
like the ability to just commune with nature because you want to, it's always like, well,
yeah, man, when this tech comes online, everybody's fucked. So the only way we can keep them at bay
is by giving them like a pittance every fucking month. And that's universal basic income. And
it's always interesting to see, like in your analysis, like a lot of these things that we are,
we're getting preached to us by like these tech people. It's always like, it's never actually to solve anything. It's, it's a solution
that is just it, but it's, it's a, it's a new product packaged as a solution that is never
actually intended to address what's happening. So we're in this snowball, like this constant,
like this never ending thing that only leads to increased,
like to your point, depleting our resources,
you know, degrading the environment,
which for them, it's like, well, that's the end game
is then it's gonna all break
because I'm too good at capitalism
and then I gotta shoot the pores.
I know, it's like for programmers
who are so big on disrupting systems,
you think they would consider
disrupting corporate capitalism. They
would consider something other than running to Morgan Stanley with every new invention they have.
But they're ultimately so reactionary. They're so conservative. They don't challenge the underlying
assumptions that their companies are based on. I'm going to go disrupt the taxi market. I'm
going to disrupt the book market. But what about disrupting the market market?
You know, imagine that with abundance.
You know, it's like this is so much easier than writing another kludge to make this current system, you know, churn another 10 years while you look for a way out.
And the other side, you know, like the Koch brothers side of this thing,
you know, those guys are the big climate deniers.
You go to an actual Koch brothers conference,
they all believe in climate change.
They've got all this stuff on what's going to happen
and the methane gas and the this and the that.
But their objective is,
don't, let us be the only ones who know what's happening
so we can prepare for it while the
rest of society is is is told that this is a myth yeah right yeah the very like elitist thinking
that's happening that's like it's really cynical yeah yeah of the mind and the more that that
happens and the more paranoid people get then they get into q anon and 5g towers and the great
reset and that covid was here to reduce the population of the world.
And, you know, because I get it. It's comforting to believe that there's like an Avengers style Dr. Evil supervillain, George Soros Jew, you know, who's who's controlling the world with his, you know, from the Italian embassy with space lasers or something.
But it's like I know know, however comforting that is,
it's time to grow up and say, no, no, we are we are in charge here. We're actually
this is much simpler. This is much simpler than it looks. The only time we really get into problems
is when we're trying to operate at scale, you know, like Zuck or Musk or whoever. If you want
to operate locally, like ninety nine.9% of us can operate locally
and we could, let's just dedicate 1 million people to thinking at scale. You know, is that enough?
We want 10 million people thinking at scale and it's like, let them go do that so we can just
take care of each other. Yeah. And it's like funny too, because like for, for all of like the ways,
I think we're just, you know, propagandized into thinking,
oh, you know, there is no solution. Like the only solution is to just hit the fucking pedal harder
and go through this rather than like slowing down or looking at it. Like we have so many examples,
even in our recent history that shows that like, you know, like you, you bring up the Greenwood
district in Oklahoma, like black people were completely excluded from the mainstream American economy.
So they figured out how to do it on their own outside of it. And it was something that was
cooperative and was just like, well, if we only have us to rely on, then like, let's make this
work. And sure enough, it got to a point where it invited all this resentment that we had that race
massacre. Right. Well, because the whites were confused. Wait a minute. If these black people
were cut off from the economy and they're not allowed to participate, why are they doing better than us?
Right. Right. So they went in and killed them. Right. Right. But we've got to look back at that and go, oh, they were doing better than that.
The blacks are doing better because being cut off forced them into local circular economic activity.
They started relying on each other and, yes, doing better. Now, do you need to be cut off?
No, there's a balance, right? You shouldn't have to be completely cut off either. But boy, oh boy,
when you see a lesson like that, when you see the way American farmers got out of the Depression,
you know, through stuff that really looked like communism and cooperative land ownership and local currencies.
You realize what we need is a more balanced set of economic instruments, you know, different ways of operating where we're doing favors for each other.
It doesn't look like wrong on some level.
You know, people these days, we want to do a clean transaction.
We'd rather have someone we don't know
come in and clean our house for money
than the neighbor's kids are trying to,
you know, do something.
Yeah.
I mean, the dumbwaiter effect,
which you've already made reference to,
like the invention of the dumbwaiter
by Thomas Jefferson,
which in, you know,
elementary school history classes
is claimed to be, oh, he wanted to save
the quote unquote servants at his house
from having to walk up and down the stairs
with heavy plates, and it's actually no,
he wanted to hide the fact that he had slaves behind the,
you know, hide it from people on a lower floor.
There's this anecdote in the book that really drives home like what we're up against where, so it's the people assembling
our iPhones for Apple are made to use this toxic fingerprint cleaning solution to make the new
product to just make sure there's absolutely no smudges
on an iPhone when you open it in the box, when it comes out of the box. It is toxic. It poisons
them. But they get premature babies come out of them and stuff. I mean, it's really bad,
but completely like. But it's such a good example also of the genius of capitalism as this like singularity like erasing even the
subliminal clues of the exploitation behind our most beloved products so it doesn't even like
enter into our minds like they're they're doing this like five levels deep thinking
and it's like you know the people like these harvard educated people are like going
to work for apple and coming up with that innovation of like we well like what we found is
that if they see the smudges then like they start to become like get a vague sense of unease with
the world so it has to look like this perfect gleaming cube that was just like delivered down from on high and like
with amazon does it less artfully but like more blatantly it is their entire business model to
remove the workers at the store from our lives by replacing them with packages that just show up
and you know i mean and they're not hiding like they have a company called Mechanical Turk named for like, that's a historical event where like a robot beat everyone at chess, but was really just a chess master very complex thing that like knows exactly what it's doing
that is really going out of its way to try to deliver you from having the thoughts that you're
talking about of like, maybe I should like hang out with people in my neighborhood. Like maybe,
you know, maybe this isn't as simple as I want it to be. Maybe the thrill that I get from opening this box
and having an iPhone there
that looks like the object from 2001,
you know, like that isn't a thrill
that I should be pursuing.
But they're working hard,
but it does feel like
we're getting further and further away
from just fully being absorbed by their bullshit.
But I don't have a ton of evidence for that.
Well, I mean, that's why I tried to write a book about them
that makes us laugh at them, so we can see,
okay, if these are little nerd people
who are scared of human beings,
then that's why they project onto us the fear of a fingerprint, the fear of knowing, you know,
the fear of the people and the dirt and the women and the nature and the, all that stuff.
It's like, I get it, you know, and there, there are, there are pills that can help us
emotionally survive in a world where we don't have that human contact, certain whatever SSRIs and antidepressants and all that.
But there's also ones that are sort of encouraging complexity.
There's all the new people out microdosing and trying mushroom therapy and doing other things. Although I'm still confused that you could take a fucking tech bro, send him down to South America and have him do a bunch of ayahuasca. And you would think it would
bring the great reckoning and they'd go, Oh, I'm, you know, I've got to reconnect with the world
and the people and the thing. But it's like somewhere between their, their ayahuasca trip
and their, their G5 flight back to san jose they reverse engineer that the
friggin social network they've made is that solution yeah the product they're already
working on is actually the thing right if they can just find this one like tweak to the algorithm
that's actually what is going to right but when their focus is on post-humans rather than humans,
which for a lot of them it is,
right, post-humans don't have those fingerprints.
Post-humans don't have the aborted fetuses.
The post-humans are this sort of idealized idea of the human,
the kind of the tech bro idea of human as information as perfectly
auto-tuned soulless you know abstraction yeah abstraction right yeah which which i understand
i i understand the yearning for that you know anybody who's fallen in love with an anime
character knows what that is but it's um it's a right? It's a stage of adolescence,
not a fruitful place for us to
go as a civilization.
Alright, that's
going to do it for this week's
weekly Zeitgeist. Please
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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.
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