Doomed to Fail - Ep 79 - Germany's love affair w/ 1st Nation culture: The story of Karl May

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

Have you heard of one of Germany's most popular authors, Karl May? Born in the 1800s, post a life of petty-crime, Karl took his imagination WAY west and wrote several books about a traveling duo - Apache chief Winnetou and German settler Old Shatterhand. Even though none of it was true, that didn't stop Karl from dressing the part and saying it was true.These books are deep in the German zeitgeist - Einstein read them... Hitler read them (of course). Taylor, who lives in and is from the American West saw her first Wild West show IN Germany in 2000. They are still wildly popular today.Learn more about this unexpected clash of cultures this week on Doomed to Fail! Karl May - Wikipediahttps://www.harvardmagazine.com/2020/02/vita-karl-mayhttps://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/04/09/wild-west-germanyhttps://allthatsinteresting.com/karl-mayNative American Association of Germany Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Orenthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Let's get back to that incredibly rich banter. We were just having Taylor. We were discussing the weather in Texas, which has been chaotic at least. We're back in the freezing territory.

And there's all this stuff that's coming up right now. So tonight, Joe Wisniewski is landing in Austin because he's here for a work conference. So he wants to go get some barbecue. So I'm going to oblige that request. And, well, it's also like 30 degrees out and it's supposed to snow. And so it's like it's such a good night to like stay home, light the fireplace, watch Netflix and just like be in bed by 10. Yeah.

Does that nice. And then on top of that, the freeze we just had burst the pipes in the pool. You were just talked, I was listening to last two episode and you were trying hard not to have that happen. And it happened. And it happened. And so, but then I need to leave in like, oh, I don't, I don't want to fix it because what's the point of fixing it?

It's going to freeze again and again from now until February. But then John and Sorcer are coming to stay with me. So I'm like, oh, God, it kind of looks trashy. They come over. The pool's half empty because all the water spilled out from the burst pipes. I don't know. I don't know. I think you can leave it.

I mean, I don't know. Whatever the right thing to do is. Look it up. What is the head? I mean, they're staying here. So, like, I'm allowed to be a little bit sloppy. No, no, no. I mean, not with being sloppy. I mean, like, making sure your pool doesn't need to be totally replaced, you know? No, no. I know what's wrong.

It basically has this, like, filtration system on the outside, and the water circulates all the way from the pool out into this filtration system. The filtration system cracked because it's partially plastic, and so all the water just leaked out. So that's what ended up happening. But anyways, we're here. We're recording. we are yes doomed to fail we are the fun twice a week podcast hosted by taylor pinero and myself fars we'll just leave it up fars um it's not a secret and we are um yeah we're going to be covering some fun topics and if i memory memory serves me correctly today taylor's going to be going

first indeed i feel like mine's going to be short but i'm like i hope it's still good that's good Because mine's going to be long. Oh, sweet. Okay. Great, great. Well, it'll be a good middle ground. So, farce. Let me go to the beginning.

Let me take a sip of my coffee. Take a sip of your coffee. Are we going to do our guessing game today? You're never going to guess. Okay. All right. Well, then. I mean, I'd be shocked if you knew this.

Do you know the most popular, one of the most popular authors in Germany? Can you name your top five German authors? I can't even name it an American author. I know. That's why I figured there's absolutely no way that you'll be able to guess this. I like how well you know me that you know that anything literacy related. It's like I don't even bother asking. I think most people in America don't know this.

So, yeah. So I am, I re-listened to our Lewis and Clark episode. And I said Indian a lot. And then I feel bad about it. because I've been reading things that, like, it's okay to say Native American Indian and American Indian to, like, because that's how people's, like, grandfathers identified after all these things. So I said it very confidently and casually, but I hope I didn't offend anyone, and I apologize if I did. I felt weird about it after. We will make amends by self-flagellating ourselves.

Yeah. I said, well, I'm sorry. And I, and Dan Carlin, he likes to say first, he likes how Canada says First Nations. It's like, you know, a whole thing, but it's not my decision to make, to do it. I hope I didn't make anybody upset because I definitely was not my intention. But for the most part, when I can, I want to use like the actual names of the tribes of the people. Because I do want to talk a lot more about the American West in the next couple weeks. Wait, what does I have to do with German literacy or literature?

I know. I know. Doesn't that weird? What did you be like, Taylor, what are you talking about? Are you on drugs? Yeah, I was like, did we take a segue? Okay. I guess we're not doing a segue. No. So this actually is very, very related. Wait, hold on. I just remembered I got to tell my husband to buy tequila. I don't know. Do you make it in March? Yeah, I got this like little margarita kit. It's not a kit. It's like a jar. It's like juice in it. And you just like put tequila at it and it's a margarita. Sweet. But anyway, but for my most part, I'm going to try to use tribal names of actual tribes of people in the American West, Canadian West, South American tribes when I can. And I am thinking about the American West because I was thinking about the idea of the American West. I did the Lewis and Clark. There's some other stories that I've been reading books about. So thinking about it and like a little bit about what we're thinking about, you know, exploration and genocide and all the things that happened in the conquering of the American West. So I'm going to tell you about someone who had never been to the American West,

but is a big contributor to the idea and the stereotypes of the American West. So have you ever been to a Western show, like a, quote, Cowboys and Indian show? I've seen movies. Yeah. So like a live show, if you go to one, it's like horses and, you know, fighting and it's like fun. You know, it's like fun for kids. I've been a Civil War reenactments. Super fun.

I love those. Like I like the medieval times, you know. All those things are fun. I went to a live Wild West show in Germany in the year in the year 2000. And I was like, this is fun. Kind of weird that like everybody's speaking German. But okay, cool. And I went to it and it was fun.

And I didn't really think about it. Like how weird that was that happened in Germany. But going back and like learning, I learned later about Germany's obsession with the Native Americans and the American West. and how it started from an author named Carl Mai. Have you ever heard of him? Obviously, you know the answer to that. Let's not patronize each other. Carl Mai, spelled M-A-Y, pronounced my, is a German author who really, really popularized,

and still today, Germans are obsessed with Native Americans. So Carl May was born on February 25th, 1842 in the Kingdom of Saxony. So Germany, as you remember of ours, didn't unify until the 1870s. It was like a bunch of little kingdoms, and then it unified. And he was one of 14 kids. Nine of those kids died as babies. They were poor. It was like a tough-ass life in the middle of Germany.

He was a bit of a miscreant, which I looked up. I was like, that word came. I felt like that was a right word, but I looked it up and that is the right word. He was a miscreant. He was a little, like, petty thief. he was poor he went to school for being a teacher but he was expelled because

he stole candles and he said that he was stealing candles because he wanted to give his sister wax scraps for Christmas which is like so sweet like very poor but I think he was lying because he's a bit of a liar he was accused of many petty crimes

he spent four years in prison while he was in prison he became the admin to the prison library which is important because he read a ton so we have this like man in the middle of Germany in the 1800s just reading and thinking about you know maybe maybe writing his own his own stuff. Then I think a lot of it came from the stuff he read and like his imagination was going wild. So he went around Germany like committing fraud essentially. He like pretended he was a doctor pretended he was a lawyer and like did all these things and ended up going back to jail for four more

years and after that he went to he went back and live with his parents. So are you with me so far? He came out of jail. He came out of jail. He was in prison for eight years, 32. He goes back and goes with his parents, but he has all this experience of like reading and grifting and like telling these stories. So he decides he's going to start writing. So he starts writing like pulpy stories that are like in magazines, you know,

like fun adventure stories where people like go to Sumatra, go to the Americas, do all these things. But he never actually goes there. He just kind of like makes stuff up. about the people that he meets there. And people start to, like, start to notice, they start to like it. So his, when he was 51, Carl published his most, his first book with his most popular and famous character, which is this two, group of two dudes, there's a Native American and a German, and they're like best friends and they have all these adventures in the American

West. the the native character is an Apache leader named Winatow and his blood brother is the German named Old Shatterhand

which is the German immigrant So this is the story that he's writing He wrote 15 books about the two of them I tried to listen to one because you know

that I took like a thousand years of German and I'm very far and duolingo I know that you know that totes is murder and yes so you are way more knowledgeable than I am

yes So I, the only thing I could find like audible to listen to about, about Carl Mai was one of the Winnetale books. So I listened to it and like, I mean, whatever. I got like 10% of it. But it was like, you know, it was a reading, but it was kind of a reenactment. So you could like hear like the jingling of bottles because they were like at a saloon, you know. Like it was clear they were in the American West when, but they were speaking in German, you know. And then they were like they were like meeting at a bar.

And then they were saying that they were like, you know, Indians in the. an area and they were like you know some of them were captured and like it's an adventure story there are adventure stories about you know germans settlers specifically going out into um into the american west and carl my was able to like save us because he pretty much said that it was him that it was like a true story he was old shatterhand and he was a person who did it um but it wasn't him he didn't actually do it he never he never went there so he at this time he was writing like he was starting to write some books about this and then it's the time of the wild west show but like the real one but not even real but like the fake one so do you know the

most famous wild west reenactor of the 1800s uh geronimo uh buffalo bill cody oh okay yeah yeah you ever heard of him yeah i've heard of him so buffalo bill is like you know the guy that has his show he has like you know people with guns and people with bows and arrows and, like, you know, tells these, like, fantastic stories about being in the Wild West. So Buffalo Bill had actually had a show in Germany in the late 1800s. And it's, Carl Mai probably saw it or, like, heard of it and was like, I got to really, like, push the gas on this, on this Native American storytelling. So he said, like, he started to really, like, lean it into being, like, these stories are true. I am old Shatterhams.

I am this person. I did go to these places. If you see pictures of him, he wears, like, very ridiculous, like, what's it called, like, fringe jackets and feathers in his hair, like, all not great stuff. And he said that he spoke more than 1,200 languages and dialects, which is, like, if you're going to lie, that's too big of a lie, you know. It's pretty big lie, but also, who's going to crack you? Well, here's the thing.

Buffalo Bill came with actual Native Americans. in his show, and Carl Mye said that Buffalo Bell killed all the Native Americans that he would have been able to communicate with. That's why he couldn't do it. Yeah, exactly. That's how you get past the lie. You just create a bigger lie. Yeah, exactly.

So he was just like creating these lies. He said, quote, I really am old Shatterhand, and I've had the experience the stories I tell, which is like not true. but that that was part of his like his like mystique so the books are also a little bit religious Carl Mai was a Catholic there's like Protestant themes all that kind of stuff is happening in the back of it Winatow converts to Christianity before he dies at the end of the books because of course you know so obviously like there's a ton of racial stereotypes and things in these stories but the people of Germany love them like they love them

they have sold more than they've still you know we'll listen to that They sold more than 100 million copies. They've been popular forever. Some quotes from famous German-speaking people. Albert Einstein said, quote, my whole adolescence stood under his sign. Indeed, even today, he has been dear to me in many a desperate hour. So, like, Albert Einstein loved these books.

They're like adventure books for boys. Arnold Schwarzenegger said that the books, quote, opened up my world and gave me a window to see America. Even though it's like, not true, but people still, like, love the idea. And then, of course, guess who else liked them? Adolf Hitler. Yep, 100%. So Hitler loved them, and he would talk about Old Shatterhand and Winnatow as being, like, examples of bravery, which is weird because they're interracial best buddies, you know?

And that's not something that Hitler loved. It's a sign of, like, how interpretive art is. Yeah. Like, you literally just take the parts of it that resonate with. your mindset and just ignore the stuff that contradicts it. Yeah, absolutely. He loved to, like, there's some stuff that are like, is, it's so bizarre, obviously. Like, Hitler's just, obviously, but there's, he would send the books to the troops and be

like, be more like these guys, you know, like when they messed up, he would say, you weren't organized enough. You should be more like Winantau and Chatterhand. Like, those are the things that he would, like, say to people. But also, he was like, I really love how. the United States, you know, moved all of their native people into reservations, and then he used that to, like, think about how he's moving people at the ghettos. And he also really loved how Americans just killed everybody.

He really admired that. I mean, that tracks with his history. All of it tracks with stuff that Hitler would like about these. There were a lot of movies and live shows, and there still are about these books and these stories. And, you know, of course, like when movies first came out, they would just use, like, a German painted brown. Like, it's not, you know, they're not, like, like, like, like, Hollywood has done in all this. Everybody did that. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And Carl got super successful. He bought a villa. He called it Villa Shatterhand in Germany. He lived there until he died in 19, and he died in, like, 1910. When he was older, some people started to reprint his books, and, and he sued for defamation of character so this is a little bit like um what oscar wilde did where he sued for um the defamation of character when someone says something bad about him that was true you're like don't do that

just walk away you know but people started reprinting these books where he had like written like kind of like erotic weird novels before he became this this old west writer and then also they found out because of that that he had actually never been there that he was not old chatterhand He did not do those things. Was that after he died? No, this was like right before he died. Oh. But he like shouldn't have stirred that pot, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's fine. But he did travel a little. He did go to like the east of America. He went to some places in like Asia. But, you know, when they found out that he had lied about, you know, most of the like most famous stories, it was one of those things where like Hitler's justification is like

well he's a great author because he made it up you know like that like mental gymnastics that you do when you're like oh no well this means not that he was super brave but that means he's super creative I mean I would say

that it takes a lot more creativity to like make up something than it does to just tell like writing an autobiography is so much easier than creating Lord of the Rings like Lord of the Rings that's reading so I

I feel like I'm going to say this and report myself saying it. I do agree with Hitler on this point. There reminds me, not unrelated, but Stephen King has like a dude who like follows him around with like a binder to like remind him about things. You know, he's like, this is in this town and this isn't this. And like, you know, Europe that is here and like these things because like the fiction can be endless. That's the thing that always blew my mind with that stuff. It's like, how on earth do you keep it straight in your own head? I don't, yeah.

I mean, like, I, I kind of classify, like, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter all together as, like, these massive universes with, like, all these characters with relationships. How do you do that? Like, it's so, it's so wild to me. Totally. It's somebody who doesn't even read. Hey, you just named some books. That's good. They're also movies, but you named them.

To be fair, I only use them as movies. Just so we're clear. Uh-huh. Great. So, yeah, so I just want to, I know this is super short, but so this is still wildly popular in Germany. You know, like in 2000, I went to a Wild West show there. There is a professor named Harbut Lutz, who is a German professor who coined the term Indian enthusiasm that they have in Germany, which is like, people are obsessed with it. There's like pictures of people in East Germany, like wearing black wigs and all of the, garb and all of these things. Professor Lux calls it a way of dealing with the guilt of the Holocaust, especially like in East Germany, everything was awful. And in East Germany,

the government had to try to make it more socialist, obviously, because it had a little bit of, like, religious undertones. It had changed it a little bit. And somehow, in the 1920s, it didn't collide with anti-Semitism.

Even though you're like fetishizing and other, it didn't, people were still like, they were able to, like, do both. and one of the things that they did is there's this like search and we talked about this before like the search for like a perfect past and like a tribal lore and like a time when things are perfect like is it like when is it Rome is it you know the cap of the great in Russia like Houghton thinks that Kathamigrate is like the you know that was the perfect past so like thinking things like that also thinking about people living off the land and natives loving the people who colonize them so a lot of it during the 20s and 30s is because Germany thought that they were going to go and colonize the world. Like that was the plan. You know?

Yeah. So they had bit this, this fit into that idea because they were like, when we get there, we'll be like, hey, we know a lot about you. Or we'll be like, hey, like, we know stories of people who were colonized who love their colonizers. So like we're here for all that, you know, like just so like they can like prepare and like get ready for it. So that was something that, like, they were trying to think about. And at the time, obviously, there were no Native Americans in Germany. Like, they didn't know any actually real people. Today, there are mostly because of the military.

So there's a bunch of military bases in Germany. And that's where, you know, most of the Native Americans who live there are because they, like, have lived on base and have, like, gone to, like, you know, serve America in Germany. And there's the Native American Association of Germany. They have like the actual real people have like their own things. But there's still a ton, a ton of like show on this. So some of the museums are have like human remains and that's a problem. You know, like they can't have, they have like scalps of people. They don't know, you know, some who knows who they actually belongs to.

But they need to like figure out how they're going to actually respect those, those remains. I went to the Natural History Museum in New York this summer. And I think it was like an exhibit on the South Pacific tribes. But they had like a section that said, don't take pictures of these things. They've been like blessed by shamans. And there's like magic in them. It's not exciting? It's fun.

Yeah. But they're trying to like figure that out in Germany. because, like, the people who are running these museums are, like, wearing cowboy hats and, like, cowboy boots and, like, think that they're cowboys, and they're just still, like, super, super, super, super, super into it. There is an annual Carl Mai Festival in Bad Segoburg, which is a town in Germany, 300,000 people go every year. It has 4.8 stars on Google, almost 13,000 reviews, and the reviews are great. People fucking love it. I can see, it's interesting, because, like, living, So growing up in Texas where, I mean, Native American history and culture was, like, drilled into us as kids.

Like, like, I remember the first diaromas we had to ever make. And, like, it was all like, oh, God, like, it wasn't even TPs. It was, what were they called? The mud huts. Yeah, it was wigwams and stuff like that. And you learned all about, like, we'd hone in on individual tribes. Like, here's how this tribe operate. of that tribe. And it's funny

because I think it just beat the interest in the topic out of me. Like, the thought of like being like a 40 year old man and be like, let's go see a Cowboys and Indians show. It's like, I don't even want to go see Alex. I was at Hamilton, like much less one

of these. And so it's just, I don't know. It's a little endearing that they are so into it. I just don't totally get it. Yeah. Well, it's like a little bit of both. So like as a Carl, my festival, you can, you know, stay in a teepee, you can eat a buffalo burger, you know, you can, like, buy feathers. I read a New Yorker article about it called Wild West Germany, and they said, you know, if not to have fun at the festival would require a real dedication to joylessness. Like, it's fun.

I'm sure. It's like rent fares, right? Like, I think they're dumb, but, like, if you're there, you're going to enjoy it. It's like, okay, so I, in October, obviously, I went to. the October festival here outside of the Austin and maybe like 10% of the people there

were actually of German descent like we all German descent but it's just fun it's just you put on the stupid hat and then you just walk around eating eating brought worse it's just you know I get it I can get it yeah yeah I feel like so here's the thing I feel like it's it's fun and it's fun to like

experience other cultures and see what their people do you know as long because it's like as you know as you know, true as it can be to what people know. And as long as you're, like, respecting people's, especially, like, their, you know, ceremonies and they're dead and, like, all those things, you know. So in cases, like, some cases that's not happening, some cases it is, it does sound, like, you know, a lot of people have, like, dedicated their life to it.

I couldn't find this again in, like, my Googling this morning, but there are places where, like, some of the Plains Indian art forms are only revived in Germany. you know like there's people who go to germany to like navajo go to germany to learn how to do like a navajo stitch like that they didn't know how to do there's some languages that are only alive in germany because the white people killed all of the native americans here you know and they but it's still over there which is like interesting so it's like it's a little bit of a it's a border between fetus fetusization can't say that which is terrible which is bad you know culture not a costume we know those things but also it's interesting that like germans of all people who who are very like, especially during, obviously, World War II, when they're very like, you know, be this certain way, are going to also have this affinity towards another. And like, what was that for? What was it prepped for?

They are a relatively stern people. So I think having another culture where they can let their hair down and not be so regimented might have some appeal to it. That's interesting. I think that might be true, too. I listened to this comedian do stand up recently. And he goes, you know, all of y'all are, talking about and worried about um iran and north korea and nobody's talking about germany like

they started one world war and then 20 years later they were like fuck it let's do it again and we're just sitting here and chill like we don't really care i know well i was at all i was doing i was thinking how you were like where did um like where were michael schemacher's parents during 1940s you know yeah yeah yeah nobody nobody talked about it um so yeah yeah um yeah yeah um yeah yeah yeah and i love germany and i love germany I love the Germans and I just think it's so interesting that like oh also another another part of it I feel like maybe I didn't hit this is like it was so other it wasn't like it was it was like in America they these books didn't really take off because we could go there you know like we actually like saw the people and like one of the things I read was like you know in America a similar cultural thing could have happened about a book about like aliens you know or like no no Robinson Prousseau like Polynesian yeah places that are far. Yeah, exactly.

And it was like the fact that we were like far away. And also just like the idea that like Hitler and other Germans were like getting ready to colonize the world. Yeah. You know, that's a part of long term plan. That's kind of the thing with me in this topic is like again, like growing up in Dallas, driving up from Dallas to New Mexico to Nevada through Colorado. Like I am, it is just, it's weird. It's like, how is this not like so. obviously around everyone but it's like oh yeah i've grown up in the in the south of america

which is like where predominantly these cultures took hold and the civilizations to hold and so for me i'm like i don't know it seems very there yeah i'd love to i'd love to hear if anyone listening has experience or ideas or like you know how you know as a native person like how what it's like right now in america because like it's not just the south it's everywhere you know obviously there's tons of tribes in Canada and that's a huge problem you know and like the the northwest you know has a ton of stuff as well and like but like where we see it more in some places I don't know well I think I think it's more but that's true I think it's more prevalent here because when America was first colonized it went from east coast to west coast

and so I think probably by the time they got to like this part of the country it was like oh like maybe just shooting everybody in the head is in the right way to deal with this and so there's like a little bit more effort in preservation but yeah i don't know i don't know i've read a couple of books about like you know how um but just like life as as a native person in america and how like you know we use their tribal names and like there's something about like how terribly, terribly we treated the Miami tribe and how we just like obliterated them. And then

we obviously have like Miami as a big city and someone in my life was like maybe they named it Miami to honor the natives. And I was like they did not. Wait, is that why it's called Miami because of a tribe? Yeah. So many of these like towns and like you know, most of the words that we know

for like Midwestern and those towns are all just like native tribe names. So I don't know. There's so much. And I want to, I want to learn about it whilst respecting it, but I also remember how much, how much I loved it. I'm also reading Island of the Blue Dolphins to the kids. So that's like a whole thing, a whole emotional thing. Wait, what's Blue Dolphin? Island of the Blue Dolphins is about the, it's like a fictional story, but based on this woman who was found in like, I think in the Pacific Northwest, she'd lived by herself on an island for like 30 years. Like she was alone and just spoke a language

that no one understood. So no one could really figure out what had happened to her. but Island of the Blue Dolph, this is about a teenage girl who gets left on an island by herself. It's really good. It's a very, it's a very coming of age book for young ladies of the 80s. It sounds like it would be fun. Well, it sounds like it would be fun as me right now. Probably not if I was 12 years old. Hey, I was wondering, how many languages go extinct in a year?

Oh, good question. How many languages go extinct? Nine languages cease to be spoken every year, or one, 40 days. What? That's bananas. Yeah. It's crazy.

That's crazy. Sweet. Well, thanks for sharing Taylor. It kind of reminded me of the Jack on Winterbaker. Remember that guy? Yeah. Because he was a German author and he came to the U.S. When he came to the U.S.

He, like, dressed like a like a cowboy. Like all the pictures of him in the U.S. He had like tassels and shit. Because I bet, I bet like this guy influenced him. Oh, I'm sure this guy influenced him. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. That is funny.

I have, like, also the idea of, like, a European coming to America and being like, I'm going to put on my boots. It's so weird. I love it, though. It's funny. It's funny. Yeah. I want to learn more. I want to learn everything.

So tell me more things, America, and Canada and other people in the world. Everyone. All of you. Just tell us things. Sweet, is there anything you want to wrap with? Yes, I have one quick thing. Oh, two. I don't know.

I watched Society of the Snow, it was great. Oh, my God. How awesome. The last 10 minutes, I cried uncontrolably, but it was really good. So it's so much better than alive. I can't, I don't know if we're ever watch Alive again. I know I did when I was little, but I feel like, I'm not even going to try. Yeah, yeah.

I, speaking to movies, I just watched Salt Burn, and I'm going to be a contrarian. I thought it absolutely sucked. I thought it was really stupid. It made no sense and was pointless and a waste in two hours. I don't believe you would watch Salt Burn. you of all people who don't... What does that mean?

You literally just said like a couple weeks ago that you wouldn't have... You don't watch movies that are like Oscar worthy like the big thing movies because you do you're not going to like them

so why would you watch that? Well it was on Amazon Prime and I was like oh okay I hear about this movie quite a bit and I was like sure let's put it on because going to a movie theater to watch one of those movies

it's just like my eyes would start bleeding but at home it's like okay I can pause take a walk outside play with Looner for a minute. You don't mean like, I can take breather. It's like, okay. Let's get

back into this. I just Wikipedia-ed it a couple weeks ago and read like the three-paragraph summary. It's so stupid, Taylor. I was like, I don't want to see this. I'm going to be exhausted. I don't want to. I do. I love murder on the dance floor that Sophia L's Baxter song. But

that's, that's it. That's all I know. I think that everyone is pretending they're smart. That's what I think is actually happening. I think everybody I think that basically like the film industry and the academy award industry just shoves all this marketing out there saying this is the best film ever says this person and says that person and what by the time it trickles down to like commoners like us it's like we've all been inundated with this kind of feedback loop and so when you go out to

dinner or drink to the friend like oh my god saltworm was magical you're like yeah yeah it was magic you know we don't believe it I think you're 100% right I think you're right. I think, I think a lot of popular culture is people pretending to be cool. Yeah, totally, totally. See, with Oppenheimer, I was like, this movie sucked. Like, it was, it was about the coolest thing in the world, which is this fucking creation, creating a mass city in a community to build this horrible weapon that did horrible things. But still, it's like, it's an incredible story. We just focus on this angle of, like, let's just film Sillian Murphy's fucking eyes go wide. Yeah. For like two and a half hours. Like, what? Anyways.

Interesting. I mean, yeah, I think that, that, that. then then what is storytelling cool I have questions should we have another podcast where we just reviewed movies I would love to do so like 15 years ago we had this like pop culture website um that was we would like write things in it whatever and I would do movie reviews of movies that I haven't seen and it was really I thought it was really funny it was just like based on like the trailer or like a poster and I would review it would only be fun though Taylor to the listener if we disagreed. So we have to watch movies

that we know we're going to be contentious. I'll think about it. I don't know what it could be. We watch musicals. That'll never happen. All right. Yeah, you're better off.

You're better off asking you to read. I wish I have a book club. We can't have one episode a year. You're like taking me right back to college when I spot all the cliff notes. I remember every now and then I would like, I would read one page. age and be like teacher i want to talk about this part of the book like okay and then do you remember

when earlier it said this thing it was like uh and i just like start vamping and making shit up and it was like obvious that i didn't read it um yeah that's a lot of everything is people pretending to be smarter than they are but what are you do pretend to be dumb i don't have time for that doing a pretty good job myself um confidence um cool that's what i got thank you i think you everyone for listening i hope that um you found this interesting i think it's it's a thing that I didn't know was a thing until I knew it was a thing. So hopefully I learned something new. And let me know if you do, there are like, there are casinos and things in, around me that are like native owned. And they have like big powwows. Like, can I go to

them? I feel like I want to. Yeah. I just really, I just want to like, I think it'd be really fun. Like I want to do it right. And I want to like, you know, learn real things. Cause it's cool as shit. And they, you know, there's like, like I've always say there's stories of people from forever ago that I just will never know and it drives me at my mind. Taylor, if you just drove from what I'm at to where you are or vice versa, you would run across about 7,000 like reservations with casinos on them that would love to take your money and have you join a pat wow. That's true.

That's fair. They would love my money. They would love it. Come in. That sounds so fun. Let's do it someday. I'll report back. I'm down.

Sweet. Again, doom to fail pot at gmail. dot com write to us let us know what you think um suggestions ideas all that good stuff and follow us on all the socials at do NFL pod and um we'll be joining you in a couple of days with my story well-hoo thanks first thanks Taylor I'm gonna go ahead and cut it off and boom