Some More News - Tunnels, Marches, Senate Fights, and Studio Execs with Jason Pargin

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

Hi. Katy and Cody are joined by Jason Pargin to discuss the March For Israel, the difficulty in talking about war on social media, the almost-fight between Sen. Markwayne Mullin and the president of the Teamsters, and the A.I. dangers in the new SAG deal. Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews   SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh   Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here-- Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229   Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA   Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/   TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews   If you want to take ownership of your health, it starts with AG1. Try AG1 and get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase. Go to https://drinkAG1.com/morenews. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/morenews (all lowercase) to take your retail business to the next level today. Take care of yourself from the bottom up this holiday season. Visit https://hellotushy.com/morenews and use promo code MORENEWS for 10% off your first order. Don’t miss out on their Spend & Get event going on now through November 18, 2023.

Hello and welcome back to even more news the first and only news podcast i'm katie stole hi katie stole hi i'm cody johnston cody johnston the thing you just said. On the thing I just said. Also on the thing I just said is former crack.com executive editor and author of the new book. Zoe is too drunk for this dystopia. It's Jason Pardin. Hi. So I watched your recent video on why American elections are so long. Yeah.

And I have decided I can't do it. Yeah. I can't do it. That's why I'm making that announcement on this podcast, on your show. My announcement regarding the 2024 presidential election is I can't. Can't. I don't have the capacity. I don't have the mental and emotional capacity. And for

those of you who have not seen the video or those of you listeners who are from outside the United States or do not follow our presidential elections closely, please understand some of you are saying, but that election is a year away. You're talking about November of 2024. It is not a year away. It is now. The process takes a year and also has been going on for a year. But the first caucus, the first primary is in January, right after Christmas. So it starts now. So the headline and the campaigning and normally in a normal election cycle, that is to try to find your two candidates. But this time we apparently know who the two candidates are going to be. This time we apparently know who the two candidates are going to be.

So it will be an entire year of just Donald Trump trying to think of ways to get him into the headlines because that's his only electoral technique he knows is to generate outrage headlines. And CNN and all those places who depend on that for their revenue, their business model now, I cannot handle a consecutive year of that. I cannot. I don't know what I'm going to do about it. I don't know where I'm going to go. I don't even think if you left this country, I think they're all talking about our election in other countries. And yet, despite everything you just said, we have been, we've already had three debates with a whole bunch of other people who are not biden and trump newsome is gonna debate desantis yeah the 2028 election is already starting too which is very exciting we're gonna talk about this more later i think because first very important to well we already speaking of trump demanding attention and

headlines we'll probably talk about we probably will talk about that but first november 16th international international folks not just here in the states check your wipers day check your windshield wipers to ensure optimum visibility in the event of inclement weather on the road. Climate change, y'all. Check those wipers. Be prepared. I mean, that is good advice. It is good advice.

I got to pick a day for it. This one, November 17th, National Take a Hike Day. That's rude. Appears to have been established by the American Hiking Society and has nothing to do with telling your enemies to go away. However, I feel like we can take a hike elections. Right. Does that work?

Did I tie it in? I'm sorry to interrupt. You've probably answered this question a thousand times. What's the process to get something like this declared a holiday? Like, is there is there a an agency you have to go through and pay like a fee? Great question, Jason. I've done extensive research on this, which our listeners have heard before. For the most part, it involves going to daysoftheyear.com and submitting it. And you have to show that some group somewhere has celebrated

this at some time. So you can't just make something up and say this is National Coffee Heating Appliance Day. You have to like get a bunch of people around to celebrate it. And then you can have like National Floss Dance Day or whatever. Look at this photo I have of my friends flossing and dancing. That's proof. Yeah. Well, we have teased the idea of getting a Twitter campaign going for National Wormbo Day. Obviously, there's going to be a National Wormbo Day someday.

And just getting that hashtag going so that then we can submit it to daysoftheyear.com. We've tried to get them in here for our interview, and they – no dice. They didn't want to – they're elusive. They're hiding out. National No Interviews Day every day of the year apparently anyway real quick uh call it national go on a hike day nobody rudely says go on a hike that's like nice advice oh you should go on a hike that'll make you feel better not take a hike it's a very simple change oh but that i like my application of national take a hike day take a

hike elections there we go just gonna keep doing that until i get an appropriate reaction from someone uh quincy could you put in like a i really need to get my zoo crew soundboard here so i can just add all kinds of long time yeah and 100 more patreon subscribers and then I'm going to get a decked out soundboard. You heard it here, folks. I promise I will not use your money for that. It'll just be a milestone to convince you to use your money to get yourself a soundboard. Jason, so we're going to talk about the news soon.

But you have, here's some news. You have a new book. Yes, it's out now, including in audio, if you're one of those people who just thinks of books as another kind of podcast. It's like a podcast, only it's all been written out by an expert in advance. It is the third Zoe Ash novel. These are darkly satirical

sci-fi novels. This one is called Zoe is Too Drunk for This Dystopia. The first one in the series is called Futuristic Violence

and Fancy Suits. The second one was called Zoe Punches the Future in the Dick. And this is book three. So I feel like

the titles do accurately convey the tone and if you're three so i feel like the titles do accurately convey the tone uh and if you're familiar with anything i've done in podcast or in writing it's a lot like that it is a combination of extremely stupid and hopefully very smart depending on how much you want to engage with it it's exactly both it's a very very, very, very delicate balance. I do try. It could be that it's all stupid. I don't know. Do you read the audiobook?

Yeah, that was the question. No, no. No? I'm not any kind of a performer at all. No, no one wants that. I think you're very talented. Your TikTok is just a delight, and people obviously respond to you very well. Nobody expected that.

To become a TikTok star. Nearly 350,000 followers on TikTok. And the videos have been viewed almost half a billion times. Like 500 million. It's got to be getting into that neighborhood. I've been on there for a year and three months since last August. And I'm someone who was never able to get massive traction on Twitter. I don't have a ton of subscribers to my sub stack. For some reason, the text based things I've always struggled with. I, because I'm someone who in my life have never done YouTube. I've never been a video person or

any kind of a performer. Even when I came out to LA for Cracked and they offered to have me in skits or whatever, I said, no, that's not my thing. For some reason, I joined TikTok mainly to connect with other like authors and book reviewers and stuff like that. And then immediately was overwhelmed by having videos reviewed by 5 million people. So it turned out the teenagers on TikTok were waiting for me to come along. I have not been recognized in the street very often. It is important to me that I continue to not be recognized on the street very often,

but I do think it's apparently, apparently you reach a certain critical mass where it's inevitable. Cody, I assume you get recognized all the time. Katie, both of you probably a lot it happens it happens and i personally enjoy it but i respect also i mean i do i think it's not not in the way of like oh my ego feels good because it can be a little bit embarrassing but i always think it's so touching and surprising like oh you know our work amazing like mine did yeah yeah but tiktok you would just be in your people approaching you would be a bunch

of teenagers and that could be weird too teenagers strange they're hard to talk to apparently not they love they they love 48 year old men just explaining things to them it's me and hank green and other people and they're talking about lobsters it is weird to see you without you gesturing to something behind you that's indicative of what you're talking about yeah which again i i just used tiktok for like six weeks just as a lurker, as an observer to try to figure out how it worked. And then had to train the algorithm to get all of the conspiracy stuff off there and all of the sex workers and all of that to get the actual content. And it's just stuff, a lot of it is research that I've stolen from my time at Cracked because I feel like I own all of that. Even if it wasn't from one of my own articles.

Like, no, if I touched it, it's mine. You cannot copyright information. Also, people don't read websites anymore, so it's good to port all that over into the new medium. Well, it's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it. Just to put a button on this clearly you're appealing to this new demographic and maybe you would want to narrate your audiobook in the future all the teens will buy it but that seems like the most stressful thing in the world like

and then you have to pay attention to how you're pronouncing words and there's like somebody in the other side of the glass like watching you absolutely and you're trying to read because my whole thing is because as a writer you never stop editing so like while i'm reading it you'd want to change words around yeah i don't know that when read out loud this flows better yeah yeah yeah no that's a really good point i'm sure that's frowned upon in the audiobook reading world it's like they don't like it i'm just gonna i'm gonna convey the general idea of this of this scene i never liked this character i'm just gonna summarize it i'm gonna skip this i actually forgot that i left this part in readers i'm gonna skip this that would actually be like a fascinating it would be method to like obviously like read the book first but then to hear the author sort of uh try to do that

and go through it like a bare bones like director's commentary almost but then we then we'd know i missed the dvd commentary days for movies that was such a loss with streaming that netflix never had like pick up here and oh yeah it's very weird that they never decided to do that that would be so much like time spent watching stuff like it's an extra it's an it's double the movie yes prime has it sometimes but but yeah it would be a benefit it's a it's hard to find it on prime like prime on my tv they're like oh it's only on certain machines that have it. But yeah, please bring back the DVD commentary. Also bring back DVDs, bring back physical media. All of it.

Yeah. Well, we can touch on this again when we maybe talk about the actor strike, but we got to take a quick break right now. We get to take a quick break. We get to take a quick break. Then we get to talk about the news. You know, okay. National talk about the news you know okay national talk about the news day here we go hello sweet darkness it's me you know as a child i was always running around eating frogs not supporting my immune system well that stops today no more frogs and if you're a long-time listener

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Even if it's a simulation and that's actually why nature is governed by mathematical laws. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash more news, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash more news to take your retail business to the next level today. Shopify.com slash more news and welcome back to national talk about the news day we are gonna start with oh good the march for israel jonathan can you set this up for us i can what what the heck happened the heck uhens of thousands of people rallied in D.C. this week for the March for Israel. 290,000 by one count, by one message, by one tweet. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries were there. They were joined on stage by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and an anti-Semitic,

Islamophobic, anti-gay televangelist named John Hagee. You know, this was a weird event because supposedly there were many people that I'm sure there were who were saying, I'm going to go and stand against anti-Semitism. But it kind of largely turned into a pro-Israel, pro-Israeli bombing campaign event. At one point, Speaker Van Jones said, I pray for peace, and he prayed for no more bombs falling down on the people of Gaza and was met with chants of no ceasefire. And there were signs in the crowd saying things like Israel finished the job. Many Gazan civilians are Hamas in training. There is no proportional response to

Hamas. And there was a a very different approach that the media took to covering this rally as they did to some of the free palestine rallies of the last several weeks i thought yeah i thought so as well um yeah it's i thought it's interesting the way it was framed because it was very much like look at these look at like this civil polite sort of march. There's nobody yelling. There's not all these college kids and their violent little protests. But it's interesting to see the sort of juxtaposition of the point behind the protests being violent,

even though it's presented as this sort of civil approach. And then kind of the reversal for the other protests were like yeah they uh you know uh there's a an event yesterday where the police in dc just uh got violent um and the it turned violent even though it wasn't uh to start but yes this event is the first big news story that came along since the shift in social media that occurred when Elon Musk bought Twitter and ruined it? Yes. Because I know that we can kind of say, well, Twitter always sucked for following big news. I don't feel like that's true if you were careful about what sources you trusted.

And where you were getting your news from. what sources you trusted and where you were getting your news from. This was the first time I saw that break down as an ecosystem to the point that even sitting here right now, I'm not clear on whether or not that hospital was bombed, where there was initial reports, hospital bombed, 500 dead. Wait, no, the parking lot was bombed, hundreds dead. Wait, no, the parking lot was bombed hundreds dead wait no the parking lot was bombed but it was bombed by hamas wait no the parking was bombed by zero and each time the wave of news of updates to it came in the form of this snide snarking oh i guess you know who's who's wrong now haha you know point from my side,

you swallowed some misinformation. It's like, it was something that's coming out in the middle of the fog of war. There's no journalists on the ground able to get back. And so every time there's a release from the Hamas, like their department of health or whatever, talking about death tolls, like, wow, that's Hamas, you can't trust that.

And then the IDF would come out and say, well, no, actually, the bomb fell in the parking lot. Only four people suffered minor injuries. It destroyed one Volvo, and one person suffered a bruise on their arm. It's like, well, that's the IDF. Of course, they're going to say that. This is the first time I felt like it was impossible to get good information out of that ecosystem, no matter where you went, because you can have a report on CNN. Well, CNN, that's a verified account. That's a real news organization. But they're just running a press release from IDF. Exactly.

Right. So you can't really trust that either. We've got our president up there saying something that turns out to not be true and it's all absolute chaos and everything that you're saying i couldn't agree with more we're watching in real time how this has broken down how we do not have access to accurate information and it's all very reactionary and the people that get the most traction are the ones that, you know, are the most sensationalist, the most grabbing. It's unbelievable to see just how and frustrating because this is the thing that we all have been talking about as to why this is an important space. As to why we need to protect it and why these changes would lead to more chaos which is exactly what's happening and in terms of this it's just so frustrating and people's everything has been

every the information is so convoluted and people are so reactive and reactionary even beforehand uh you know uh people who are verified or have blue checks or whatever you know everyone's victim to propaganda uh and can get sensational and stuff and they're you know there'll be feeds like okay this event is happening i can look at the verified accounts and still have to sift through some stuff but now it's everybody and there is this sort of incentive to get as much engagement as possible even more than before and uh it does make it like, it's just a cesspool of like, it's impossible. People who are not on Twitter, it's very easy for them to say, well, that's, isn't Twitter always just this dumb thing where you could only post 140 characters or 280 characters? Like, why was that ever?

Listen, every journalist is on Twitter. Every news organization is on Twitter. Every writer, every pundit, they are all on Twitter, both as users and as followers. Like, their thoughts and their narratives are shaped by what they see on Twitter. I cannot overstate the importance of Twitter. Yes, only like 2% of the citizens posted on it. Only like 15 or 20% were ever on there. It doesn't matter. The people that were on there was every influencer, every podcaster, every reporter, every columnist, every one of them was on Twitter. You could see stuff trend on Twitter and then hear it come out of Donald Trump's mouth 20 minutes later from a rally, and then it goes on the news. It starts from Twitter

to the candidate, to the audience, to the New York Times. Twitter was the hub of all of this. When Elon Musk ruined Twitter, it's not just that he damaged a thing that I did to waste time. This was the nerve center of American journalism. It's hard to overstate the influence Twitter had, had past tense, that now that has been totally disrupted where, because it is just a dunk machine, like this thing has happened. Oh, here's an opportunity for us to post our snarky little one-liner. Because again, there's like news like, well,, well, I saw yesterday where the IDF said they found tunnels underneath the hospital. See, we were right to bomb the hospital because they're using it as an outpost.

Immediately in come the dunks from the right-wing people. It's like, what are you saying now, lefties? I guess those victims weren't so innocent after all. And then, like, they've got video and it's, there's not a lot of signs of a headquarters on it. Like if there was, they've really done a good job of moving the stuff out. Why can't you wait to dunk on it until you actually know?

Right. Like I get you have a side. I get that you are very emotionally invested. I get it. I do. Watching something like this play out right before your eyes is the kind of thing that didn't we humans didn't used to have to watch happen in front of us with video and body cameras of these things happening. I get it. But there is nothing to be lost by waiting until you've verified what actually occurred well it's what's so sick about the way i mean it's always been true but especially true now you get your the first response the first take the first one to get a zinger gets the most you want to be quick if you're looking at this from a personal benefit

perspective which is why i struggle i struggle with social media across the board now because it does not reward and it does not feel good to me. It does not feel good to me to just knee-jerk share. It does not feel good to learn that something has been changed and it shouldn't feel good to any of us if we get something wrong. The other thing that's happening that feels very gruesome, I'll try to articulate this properly. And it's more on one side of this conflict, but in general, our focus online on Twitter with getting our responses and, you know, dunking and really, not desensitizes, but for how much we care about the human lives lost, you're really clouding the water we're not we're losing the point that people

are dying we're not really but when it's about dunking about like okay leftist now what do you say well fuck you this isn't even about leftists in america really this is about it's just it makes me feel sick physically sick when i look at. The speed thing that came up, because this information yesterday is coming out with Al-Shifa Hospital, which is different from the hospital we were just talking about from a month ago. Different hospital. But you feel like you can win if you get that information first. If you get that information first, if you see the photos of the few guns and the laptop and the CDR and you say, well, those aren't the tunnels and the Hamas command center that they said they were going to get. Like if I can get this information out, if it retweeted or say something about it, whatever, before all of the other people who are trying to do the same thing can say there, well, this is just a sign that there really is the command center there or there there are the tunnels there or whatever that you can win the argument and of course this is all playing out regardless of who wins this like theoretical debate between you and the anonymous right-wing person online or between ben shapiro and uh norm finkelstein if that ever happens like none of that impacts what's going on

there unless unless enough people unless you change the hearts and minds and the protests keep going and biden feels the pressure and this stuff that takes months and how much damage is done in the meantime yeah it's and because it all it did used to be all all these problems did exist beforehand it's just they've been exacerbated so bad like the the the rush to also get it out also means that that's the first the first thing people hear is going to stick with them the most no correction of information has ever been spread more than the initial falsehood yeah especially if the initial information suits the narrative that you want.

If you see a piece of information that reinforces the idea you had coming into it, then it's really hard to let go of that piece of information. I do kind of want to bring it back to the march for Israel a bit because, you know, I'm all in support of raising awareness against anti-semitism which is not you know combating that but that's not what this was about obviously

and a lot of the rhetoric that we've already highlighted i guess we've already said this but it just feels very frustrating the way well we censured rashida Tlaib last week for saying something that you know she's explained over and over again did not mean the genocide of Israelis but it's for Jewish people but it was considered too extreme and that you know the argument being that it's specifically sensational and yet and yet this happens this march happens and some of the most gruesome gruesome and again the same thing a few signs do not indicate what everyone there feels of course not yeah yeah but it does i mean there were a bunch that were echoing that phrase, but like doing a fun little twist. It was like, what was it?

It was from the river to the sea. Israel is what you'll see. A lot of those which you can't rhyme C with C. That's not a rhyme. But it's sort of like taking like saying like, oh, this is like genocidal language. And that's what you mean. It's so it's OK if we say it. Well, I'll bring it back.

So much of this is we've got this to bring it back to twitter as well this platform whipping people up into a fervor and you know i'm shocked at what i've seen come out of people and in a way it kind of did uh bring attention to anti-semitism by having john hagie speak right yeah i did it yes. Yes. In its own way? Do your listeners know who he is? Have you talked about him in the past? Not yet, no. Okay, let me,

here's my whole issue with this thing. I have seen many videos and many tweets and many clips from other platforms where people will begin talking about this by saying, look, folks, this is not complicated. This is a complicate. And what they mean is either it's

not complicated, it's wrong to murder people at a music festival, or it's not complicated, it's wrong if a terrorist commits an act, it's wrong to then blow up several hundred children because they lived in the same country as the terrorist. As a moral question, it's not complicated. As an issue overall, when you have on the same side of an issue, evangelical, hyper-conservative Pastor John Hagee and comedian Sarah Silverman, and they're on the same side, that implies there's some complexity at play. There's some weird overlapping bedfellows here, because if you go on social media and you say some fervently pro-Palestine things, you will find some people on your side you do not want on your

side, where they will say, yes, I agree. We should exterminate the Jews. And then likewise, there are people on the pro-Israel side who will find themselves joined by ultra right-wingers saying, that's right. Islam is a cancer and must be exterminated, who both of them will say, no, no, no, no, no. Don't lump me in with your thing. don't lump me in with your thing. But to be clear, you have people shouting the exact same slogans and the exact same talking points

who are in any other circumstance would never be in the same building if they could avoid it. So this is, from that point of view, it is not simple at all. I think people are used to in America having two very distinct, clear camps that we can just safely dunk on each other.

But there are people who all of us would otherwise consider allies who disagree with us on this. Yeah, it is a fascinating thing, horrifying and fascinating thing to watch. But how that was a big part of this at the beginning, I guess still continues to be, but people were very shocked. And I know I just said, I'm surprised by stuff coming out of people's mouths, but you know, these are strangers online, but in your own friend group, you realize, oh, we are very far apart on this. And I do think that we maybe it's always been maybe that's just always been true but certainly the last five years we've been pretty in lockstep in general within some shades of

variation you know you're if you're on the left you think this and if you're on the right you think this and now yes we've got a completely different set of people that are backing us up on what we. And you got John Fetterman and Candace Owens just doing. You know, but, you know, but within your friends. So I think a lot of people felt very personally offended by other people's opinions on this. And that's been hard to unpack. What you expect from your friendships, what do you expect from the people in your life? Because we're pretty quick to say, well, that's not my friend if they think that, right? I think that's not an unfair thing to say

about where we're at socially. Especially if you have been trained by social media and by algorithms to express your opinions in the most inflammatory way possible. Because that's what gets engagement and that's what feels good. But that's not how you would talk to a friend with whom you agree with 99% of, you know, of everything else. They could come up everything from trans rights to taxes, to guns abortion. Agree, agree, agree, agree, agree. But then it's like, well, you know, obviously this is Israel trying to do a genocide. And they would say, well, now hold on. How else are they supposed to go after Hamas?

But like, it's a very densely packed, urbanized area. How else can they go after the terrorists without, you know, there's some innocents being killed. The United States has never been shy about bombing, you know, entire weddings with a drone to go after a single terrorist. How can you complain about this? Why are you complaining about the other genocides in the world? It's like, okay, maybe this is the one time I actually need to acknowledge that they have a reason for believing what they believe, that both of us are emotional about this,

and that it is hard for me as a white dude, if I have a Jewish person saying to me, I'm legitimately scared by that attack in early October and by the callousness with which some people, their immediate response was, oh my gosh, what's Israel going to do in response to this? I'm scared of their response. Like, well, the dead have not even been put in the ground. If they're telling me that, it is hard for me to dismiss their feelings. So you have to have a more respectful conversation of saying, do you understand that no matter how upset and angry and scared you are, what this Israeli government is doing and how they're going about it will probably ensure that it happens again. Because we've been through this. Look, after 9-11, when 9-11 happened,

I was in my mid-20s, and I had grown up listening to right-wing talk radio. I famously, among people who know me, am from a very red, deep red part of the country. And 9-11 radicalized me. Like, I did not want to hear anything. It was like, bomb everybody. Because I just watched that video over and over and over again. I thought it was the end of the world. I thought this is World War III. If someone had come to me and said, do you realize that what you're about to do first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, that you're just generating another generation of terrorists?

That if they could have shown me the future and shown me ISIS and said, do you understand that every drone strike is a recruiting tool for these people? I would not have heard them. I was too. Yeah, that part of my brain was off. I could just see them taking bodies out of the rubble. I would not have heard what they were saying. So I sometimes try to think if I'm trying to talk to somebody who's taking the hard line, like, I literally don't care about anyone who dies under the rubble in Gaza. Like, it's worth it. I don't care. No restraints. I don't know what I would say to them, because I don't know what someone would have said to me in 2002 that would have made me see the

light. It's like, you know what? Yeah, this, this was kind of like our own actions did kind of make this inevitable. Yeah. Maybe we should rethink what we do in the Middle East in general. I was not, I was in no mood to hear it. The logic part of my brain was gone. It was trauma. Like it was not being upset. It was, we were traumatized as a nation.

And we were re-traumatized all the time with the way our media covers it. And now I want to you said so many things that I found very interesting. See if I can thread this needle of remembering everything. now anyway, or at all, at all. And after this, people were very quick to say, what if this was the kind of response post 9-11? And it was, but also, you know, what if your social media feed was filled with XYZ? We didn't have social media. We also spent a lot of time healing and learning 20 years unpacking this. And now we look back at that whole period with great regret. And it's, it's really difficult and frustrating to see us not learn these lessons and have the ability to have hindsight and perspective and apply that to a new situation that's different but similar. people on a very real way of, hey, I know you're scared. And I, you know, and I hear what you're saying about how quickly we transitioned into the retaliation part. And we didn't have time to grieve that. And I'm not trying to dismiss your feelings. This is so complex. And may I ask you a question about how can I start off by asking you how you're feeling? None of that conversation is happening

online. There's no time, there's no no room for it and those are actually the vital conversations that we need when your friend is saying something and you love this person that is so shocking to you how can we stop and take a beat and take a breath and first say are you okay how are you feeling right now and now let me ask you another question and now let me respond to that and say this is why i'm saying that and you are gonna find that you're not as far apart unless of course they are saying what you said which is just i don't care level it and there are reasons people say it i do not agree in any capacity uh but they probably will tell you and you'll learn from it you know but that's a hard conversation to have because it'll be a gruesome one that's yeah that's a acknowledging that they'll probably explain their reasons why they believe that maybe but yeah it sucks i mean even like the online thing like there uh i've had a few i've seen everyone i tried not

to just be on twitter anymore that much because it's just not it's we all the things you could say about it um every once in a while i'll see some tweets that I know, like, I could dunk on this tweet and like, that'd feel great. But usually I'll just DM the person their tweet and like ask them a question or like start a conversation. So much more productive. Because you don't have an audience anymore. There's nobody watching that that interaction anymore and i think even even just the presence of other eyeballs on these interactions will exacerbate all the all the issues

with social media and i've had like very productive uh like back and forth very short back and forth too but because it doesn't have that that audience there it's like no no so like what do you like be real like what's this can you understand this because most people feel i think they feel more like safe and comfortable to like admit fault or like admit like oh i never thought about it that way whereas if you say that publicly like it's it's over for you which is sad but um yeah it's just none of it's uh. Well, you know, it is great. The products and services that I was going to say. We're doing this a little late because that was a nice conversation, but we got to enthusiastically introduce these ads.

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Don't miss out on their spend and get event going on now through November 18th. That's hellotushy.com slash more news. And we are back from those great ads for some great news. Speaking of how much better conversations go in person, Jonathan, what happened at the Senate HELP Committee hearing this week? Yeah, Bernie Sanders just wants to have a hearing about economic policy to promote his PRO Act, which is about protecting workers' rights to organize. But Senator Mark Wayne Mullen of Oklahoma just had to pick a fight with the head of the Teamsters Union.

I have a short clip here if you don't like to watch it. I would love to. Real quick, is it Mark Wayne Mullen or is it Mark Wayne? It's Mark Wayne. It's one word and the W is lowercase. It's not a word. That's not a name. Just wanted to clarify.

Maybe it is. It is now. I mean, it's his name, I guess. Yeah, it is at least a name. Is Mark Wayne a real name? It's a new name. What does it say? It says it least a name. Is Mark Wayne a real name? Is it a real name? What does it say?

It says it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. I think it was a mistake. It's a funny fake name to put in something. It's not. I don't see it's on the list. If there are any listeners out there named Mark Wayne, we do apologize. We don't mean anything.

I do apologize. I don't know if I do, actually. But might I say just separating those two. Mark Wayne blank. A nice pause. Okay. Anyway. Here's the clip.

Pretends like he's self-made. What a clown. Fraud. Always has been. Always will be. Quit the tough guy act and these Senate hearings. You know where to find me. Any place, any time, cowboy.

Sir, this is a time, this is a place. If you want to run your mouth, we can be two consenting adults. We can finish it here. Okay, that's fine. Perfect. You want to do it now? I'd love to do it right now. Well, stand your butt up then. You stand your butt up.

Oh, hold on. Oh, stop it. No, no, sit down. Sit down. You're a United States senator. Act it. Sit down, please. Can I respond? Hold it.

Hold it. If we can't. No, I have the mic. I'm sorry. This is so good. You'll have your time. Can I respond? No, you can't.

This is a hearing. This clip doesn't have it uh the longer quick clip there's the the longer interaction when you cut back to sean o'brien he's got some teamsters behind them and it's so funny they're just laugh they're trying so hard not to lose it. They're just like, they're very into it. And it is a treat. It is a treat to watch. I recommend watching the whole thing. Ridiculous. I'm sure you guys have actual thoughts about this.

If you are about to have a fight with somebody and then Bernie Sanders holds you back from the fight, you were not actually about to have a fight with somebody. you back from the fight you were not actually about to have a fight with somebody if you as a bernie hadn't been there to restrain to physically restrain me i would have whipped your ass like yeah i don't i think if you had wanted to get free of bernie i think you probably could have and then on twitter somebody tweeted at this guy asking to be on their podcast or some taunting message and he tweeted back a picture of himself next to a table full of his guns yeah if you want to go to his twitter feed or want to look at that if you've not seen it and that's that's this thing that we do now i guess where we're at yeah that's

it it's all a performance and you here's where i would say well well, he made a death threat. It's like, no, this is the way we talk. This is the way we talk to each other. That guy, he's not going to shoot anybody. And granted, there's a basketball player named John Morant who was suspended for many, many games for holding up a gun in his car because that, of course,

is whatever they would say. That's hip-hop, thug, gangster behavior. But when a white, you know, member of the Senate has an array of assault weapons on his table and says, anytime, baby. Well, that's just being

a First Amendment constitutional hero. Totally different. Please do not confuse those two behaviors. A Hamas command center worth of guns, you might say. You could say that, yeah i think uh some of what sean o'brien had tweeted is a little bit you know inciting you know hashtag little man syndrome he

didn't read that part out loud but that's unnecessary but but ultimately my point to tie into our earlier conversation is like, even though I am very entertained by this, his tweet was sensational and gets lots of traction online. And then the responses and it becomes another circus show on Twitter for people to react. Of course, we are incentivized to post the gun with the picture with the gun to post the tweet. You're getting attention to your cause. You're getting more people on your bandwagon. We are incentivized to post the picture with the gun, to post the tweet. You're getting attention to your cause.

You're getting more people on your bandwagon. Anyway, that's all. This is going to be the next year of our lives because this is the Trump game plan and always has been. Take a hike, elections! Trump is not a genius, but he knows exactly how this works. He knows exactly how engagement works. He knows exactly how engagement works. He's been in media for 40 plus years. He knows the game.

And the game is that CNN wants content and he is a content machine. And so, yes, a lot of the stories they run will appear to be negative and that they're about scandal, about the outrageous thing he said. But they will not be things that hurt him with his supporters. And at the end of the day, it's coverage. So, you know, CNN knows that in Trump's world, the louder the mainstream media screams, the more his supporters love it, because that means he's effective, right? Because he makes the liberals cry liberal tears. So they know they're feeding into the machine. But their job as a news organization is to make a profit. Yeah. Not to give the news, make a profit. But you're you are, I guess, correctly suggesting that calling his political opponents vermin can only help him.

Oh, even if the outrage that it inspires is of course it is it's like look over here look at me give me the attention now yeah he's not on stage yet um so and he knows how to get the the stage attention even when he's not and then it becomes a thing and then you get the clip or whatever and then it's rolled back in some way like this fight that we it wasn't gonna happen that we almost saw um although i will say that the uh um the teamster leader i i stand by him tweeting those things because i feel like he would say those things in person sure um and it's not one of those like performative like ah little man syndrome like he would absolutely say that to this guy um as opposed to uh mark wayne not actually using his guns against uh these people

um despite tweeting it but it is i it's this it's just gonna keep happening again and again and again but it reminds me of it's not the same thing because it's not violence involved but um this sort of like position about like uh internet's uh real, Twitter's not real life, free speech, people can say what they want. It reminds me a couple years ago, Marsha Blackburn was in a hearing, and she had a Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, in the hearing. And she was like, hey, I have this tweet from this employee that criticized me. Do you still employ that person? like asking like why didn't you fire this person for this mean tweet about the senator um and uh it just made me think of that and uh we're gonna we're just gonna see many more just like people bringing their online bullshit into the senate uh for us

all to hear the mean tweets that they get. Yeah. Again, cannot overstate the effect that has in the real world. People bring it into their real lives because the people who shape the narrative, they're all on. They're still all on Twitter. Trust me, there has been much talk about how, well, we got to abandon the cesspool. They're all still on there. Of course. They're all still on there. Marsha Blackburn just tweeted this week that Rashida Tlaib allegedly has Hamas ties.

I did see that. Like, I don't think there's any community note on that. And so, right. How are you supposed to not react to that? How are you supposed to not be outraged by that? But. Right. But it's part of the it's the move, but it's an effective move because, yeah, like that's absurd. What are you doing? This is you shouldn't be doing this, but it's part of the it's the move but it's an effective move because yeah like that's absurd

what are you doing this is uh you shouldn't be doing this but it's gonna get worse before we wrap up today should we do a hard pivot to talk about this sag deal and this sas love interview i think we should yeah they have reached a deal with studios but it's not so good it's not so good jonathan why don't you set up some of this for us please and thank you you're welcome uh sag got a lot of what they wanted um similar to the wga deal but a lot of SAG members have strong concerns about the lack of protections for AI. The deal does require consent and compensation for the creation of any digital doubles, but it's not complete. And if you don't consent, they can just not give you the part. And it's also if the character has recognizable feature. So it's basically for the higher paid talent for a

higher level talent or quote unquote you know there's so many ways that they will be able to trick you into like giving consent or and i can't stress enough that this has never been about the top earning i mean sure they're affected by this deal but we're talking about the survival of an of a profession into the future. And this is all of it's incredibly important. And there definitely are some wonderful gains and improvements. But this is the issue that actually does affect whether or not it's a viable career option for people. I've talked about that here.

This will be applied a lot to lower level actors to background actors that is the primary way we can get into the union is by being background performers for one also i feel like this is getting a little not lost because like that's all true and important but also it's gonna make movies and tv worse you're gonna be watching stuff and you're gonna be like what's this like uncanny crowd of people doing in the background this looks like shit like it's just gonna deteriorate the quality of everything you see if you're going to be taking advantage of people and putting these cgi versions people in the background, because they're also going to do that as cheaply as possible, too. It's not going to be like a high quality version of these people.

It scares me. I'll be honest that what the implications are, because once we establish a precedent precedent it's very difficult to change that we do renegotiate every few years so you know there is there is that but you're still going to be doing it in the meantime and establishing the workflow and that this is what happens and it starts to take root and so it does it does scare me and some of the quotes oh real quick once like once they get the ball rolling on this kind of stuff and it becomes more just like part of the way they do business when the next strike rolls around they'll be able to prolong it even longer because they will have these things in place we're like well we don't actually need all the actors to do this we have our little computers

i want to read a little bit from this thing. This was a press conference or a Zoom meeting where they were going over the deal with members and answering questions. And this is from Duncan Crabtree, Ireland. The reality is there has never been a time when we have been able to successfully just block technology from advancing, Ireland said. And so strategically, our best option is to channel that technology from advancing, Ireland said. And so strategically, our best option is to channel that technology in the best possible direction. Crabtree Ireland fielded numerous AI questions from union members. He was asked if actors could be required to give an AI consent as a condition of employment. Yes, they can ask you for that. If you can't reach an agreement with them, then yes, they can go ahead and hire somebody else he was also asked how to make sure that ai would not deteriorate the craft of acting over the time

i don't think we can guarantee that i think it honestly surprises me that we're just saying that we're gonna allow that yeah um but i understand also this has been fucking grueling such a long time in the impact on everybody everybody in la not just actors and writers it's horrifying to think of continuing to do it and horrifying to think of how things are gonna how scary that is. So that's my perspective on it. The saving grace on this, I think, may be that AI sucks. Yes, it might be that. If they take your likeness and make a performance out of it, it is going to suck,

and they're not going to be able to do that for every movie. Yeah, the issue is that the background actors, if they already have software that can generate a crowd in a stadium, they've had that for a while. So the idea is that the background actors, if they already have software that can generate a crowd in a stadium, they've had that for a while. So the idea is if you do one movie and they scan you in to get your performance as an extra for the rest of your life, they never need to call you back. They can have you running from a building in an explosion. They can have you running from Godzilla down the street. They can have you in the stands at a football game and do not need to pay you a penny.

have you understand that football game and do not need to pay you a penny is my understanding is what they they want that part of the deal of you doing that movie is they've scanned your likeness and they can just use it so now as long as they don't show your defining features or characteristics which you unless you're i assume a very distinct looking person it's very very easy to put a hat on your background but also i'll just interject to, you already have to haggle and fight. You're in a commercial. You have to have your face on screen for X amount of seconds and be visibly recognizable. Well, they'll haggle that. They will fight you on it.

I am in one right now. And they try to fuck you at every corner. So I honestly don't even have faith in recognizable or not. You know, it can look almost exactly like you and they've changed your hair maybe or whatever. Or maybe they just do it, fuck it, and they won't respond to you saying, like, you owe me money. Anyway. Let's put it this way. say, you owe me money.

Anyway. Let's put it this way. You've heard that story, not even if it's an urban legend, that the laugh track you hear on a lot of shows where they don't have a live audience, where it's canned laughter, that a lot of those people are dead because it was recorded in the 1950s and they've just been using the same laugh track forever. I think there are actors

alive now that 50 years from now, in the background of some restaurant scene where they need diners in the background, they will have plugged in that actor. Years after they've passed, they don't know about it. They don't even remember the people plugging them in don't even know their name. Oh, yeah, they've got a database. And then you're like, that's my grandma, isn't it? She was an actress.

Young woman, middle-aged man balding man yes exactly they'll have all these categories they can sift through and the stock photo of background actors let's dial this up and make him a little bit uh chubbier a little bit heavier let's give him a beard and they will not be tracking down all those people like hey here's your check we used your face as a background in a new episode of the reboot of How I Met Your Mother. Nope. It will just be a database of faces and figures of people that once upon a time came and got a single check for not very much money to sit in the background of a commercial or a film. And then they were in the database and now they can just grab it and use it forever and ever and ever. And that's automation. And they'll say, look, that's just

the way it goes. You automate things. It's like, yeah, but you've kind of captured my human essence and are stealing it for profit. For the rest of time, actually. Jason, you're looking right at me and you're saying middle-aged, balding man. He's putting on some weight. He's growing a beard. I'm like, what? You're saying in general, right? You're not just looking at me.

You don't know for sure he's looking at you. A dullard. A man. He looks like a failure. He looks so fucking podcast producer. No TikTok presence to speak of. Disappointment for everyone in his life. No.

And then this interview that I had mentioned with David Zasloff, who people who are not in the industry may not know that name, but he's the guy who took over Warner Brothers and then ruined the entire industry. He's the guy who took HBO and dissolved that brand. He is the perfect epitome of a businessman who takes over an entertainment brand and has no concept whatsoever of how art or entertainment works. He only came in saying the balance sheet is all wrong. They've got too much debt. And so things like renaming HBO to HBO Max and then just to Max and not understanding the concept of a prestige brand and what that means in a media environment where there's infinite stuff people could be watching.

That having a brand that means quality to people, that there is nothing in the world more valuable than that. That when a new show comes out on HBO, it used to mean something like this is probably going to be good. used to mean something like this is probably going to be good that he would just delete that from the universe because it somehow they had some consultant from mckinsey or whatever tell them to do it that is a perfect example of having somebody in charge of an industry who doesn't understand the stuff they're making which all of us have experience with living through that oof uh yeah indeed it's really uh a frustrating tragedy um to see and like he's uh it's it's kind of perfect that he keeps wanting to give interviews and like uh dropping these quotes because he's not the only one in this industry who just doesn't like movies or tv or like doesn't understand uh anything about them and um what makes things like that successful but he is the

most vocal and uh one of the more powerful rich ones and seeing him say uh a lot of stuff he's said in the past months i i feel like has at least hopefully like opened people up to this concept more but man i don't how do you change hbo to max cinemax was a thing for so many years what are you doing pick it even if you're even if you want to get rid of hbo pick a different word i'd like to read these two quotes uh that we were talking about before we end. So there's a David Zaslav profile in the New York Times magazine, and it's talking about the end of the writer's strike. And this is from the profile. They reached a tentative deal on September 24th.

After months of resistance, the moguls capitulated on just about every front. Zaslav says he has no regrets. Quote, they are right about almost everything. So what if we overpay i've never regretted overpaying for great talent or a great asset this is absurd compare that to what he was saying during the strike wild like he wants him to be fucking homeless right like he was one of the hardliners that that quote didn't get traced back to him but like he's the guy who deleted the batgirl movie he's the guy who deleted this Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote movie because he only sees like, well, if we delete the movie and never show it to anyone and throw it in the trash, we'll save like $40 million in marketing costs and we'll get a tax break for $30 million because he can't comprehend

that no one's going to want to make a movie with you if they think you're going, if they're going to spend a year or two years of their life making a film, and then you're going to throw it in the trash. In his mind, he would say, well, they got paid. They got paid. Why do they care? Because he doesn't understand that people create things because they want the world to see them and that no filmmaker no creative who has the power to say no is going to go to do work for warner knowing that their film they may spend two years on movie

it may sit on the shelf for a year and then he'll just delete it for a tax break and listeners understand they they could have sold these properties to some other studio and let them be released and didn't they they deleted them from the universe no one can watch them and so all of these performances all of the writing all these people put in work is that that work is just gone and he doesn't see the problem because he doesn't understand the very very first thing about the product his company is producing so i don't care actually about that at all yeah at all it's like yeah it's like the line goes up line goes down that's what he's looking at okay but that's that's that's my point yeah i'm not taking the hippies point of view of well the

movie studios should just be in it for the art they shouldn't care about money i get that they have to make money i'm saying that the line will go up this quarter that over the long term everything you're building will die completely you're gonna kill the industry in this process you're gonna kill yes i mean it happened with this wiley coyote thing where like they are gonna scrap it and then people like well that's awful um we don't want to we like people like said they didn't want to work with them anymore. And now they're like letting them shop the movie around so it can get a release. But they like saw the immediate effect of that.

They probably won't change course really in general. Yeah, reportedly a number of people who had set up meetings with Warner Brothers canceled them. Yeah, because why would you want to do that? meetings with warner brothers canceled them yeah because why would you want to do that like it's like again like it's like yes they got paid but they didn't and yeah people do work so they they can make money and continue living and surviving but like people are in this industry to make things and have people see them and like bring you know whether it's joy like some they want people to see them that's part of that's part of the process um and if you continue to say we're maybe not going to let anybody see them then no one's gonna you know want to do that and also no residuals

less money over time right exactly yeah and it's like especially when it's like this again like a looney tooth movie with john cena uh that's. I think it was like screening in like 90% or something like that. And they're like, no, we're going to pull that. We'll let you see the flash instead. It's just absurd, the whole thing. There's this one other quote real quick, because this is in that same profile. And I think this just speaks to who this guy is. I'm only going to read a part of this.

The longtime New Yorker had always loved movies movies and against the advice of several media peers, he had moved to Hollywood and taken over Jack Warner's historic office, hauling the old mogul's desk out of storage and topping it off with an old-time handset telephone.

This guy just wanted to be a Hollywood hotshot. He just wanted to be on the hotshot. He wanted to be in the room with the desk. He's not using that phone. I bet it takes up

a lot of space on the desk. He wants to bek maroon oh maroon cartoons that's right yeah that's who framed roger that's right we're just making references to 35 year old yeah well yeah i think i think we've done it i think we've made good headway on our list of topics i think we've done it. I think we've made good headway on our list of topics. I think we've done good justice to them. Changed a lot of hearts and minds. Changed hearts and minds. And... Go check out...

Good job. Warner Brothers, The Flash, out in theaters still. How about you check out Jason's TikTok and his book? And his books, yeah. Jason, tell us about your stuff. He's got many books we can check out jason's tiktok and his book and his books tell us about your stuff got many books we check out i am jason k pargin p-a-r-g-i-n is that last part on tiktok that also still on twitter slash x and on threads and on blue sky and instagram and youtube and still on facebook all under that same username I update all of those myself also I have a sub stack under that same username and also several other things that I don't remember that's fine and that's most most of my day but uh and yeah if you're a writer in

this media environment and you're trying to let people know you have a book, this is like the bare minimum. I wish I could do more, but I don't have a staff. It's all just me because, again, I do not yet have the technology to create an AI me that can do TikToks. Not yet. Not yet. Yeah. Well, you know, that's something to work towards. A postless society one day one day one day nobody

will be posting anymore it'll be beautiful well jason thank you so much for joining us you're great you're great you're a great guest we love having you please come back you don't even have to have a book to promote i feel like i wind up i wind up talking too long and screwing up the template for everybody's show no at all there's no there's no template here don't worry there's no template we're real fast and loose the only thing that is mandatory templatized is that at the end of every show i tell our listeners the honest to god truth which is that we love them very much. Much. Have you ever heard that story that Napoleon used the Egyptian Sphinx for target practice and shot its nose off?

Or maybe you've heard that a French astrologer named Nostradamus correctly predicted nearly 500 years of human history. Or maybe someone told you that the legendary blues guitarist Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads in Mississippi. These stories are what I like to call historical myths. Great little tales that may or may not have any basis in historical fact. On Our Fake History, we explore these historical myths and try to determine what's fact, what's fiction, and what is such a good story it simply must be told. If you dig stories about death-obsessed emperors, lost civilizations, desperate sieges, voodoo black magic,

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