The Daily Zeitgeist - Amazon Hates Human Workers, Anti-Racist Students Win 9.23.21

Episode Date: September 23, 2021

In episode 994, Jack and Miles are joined by host of the Ridiculous Romance podcast Eli Banks to discuss Trumps files a new lawsuit, PA HS students fight back against banned books on race, Duke studen...t rebels against tomatoes, Amazon drivers under surveillance and more!FOOTNOTES: Sorry to do this but...let’s check in with Trump Amazon’s AI Cameras Don’t Want Drivers Yawning or Checking Their Mirrors Duke student says what I haven’t been able to for years Here’s a nice one: PA HS students fight back against banned books on race LISTEN: Pachyman - “Guy Goodwin”  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:54 Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. What happens when a professional football player's career ends and the applause fades and the screaming fans move on? I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. For some former NFL players, a new faith provides answers. You mix homesteading with guns and church. Voila! You got straight away. They try to save everybody. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Starting point is 00:02:08 This is a podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness. It's Thursday, September 23rd, 2021. I'm trying to get like a Michael Buffer timber to my intro to this show. My name is Jack O'Brien, aka V vax him up joe i'm about to vax him up joe that's what this mandate was intended to do some of them try to slide but they can't slide this mandate some of them try to slide but they can't because i'm gonna make it a make it a make it a make it a mac daddy i didn't change that last part because i do believe joe biden would like to refer to himself as a Mac Daddy.
Starting point is 00:02:47 Not Daddy Mac. Yeah, Mac Daddy, I feel like. Throw the Mac first. Anyways, that AKA was courtesy of Quarantine Kids and based on Warm It Up by Chris Cross. I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray! Every morning there's a ruler hanging from the corner of my girlfriend's four-post bed. I got the vaccine so I see if I can answer, did my balls grow or they still the same? Couldn't understand how Nicky worked it out
Starting point is 00:03:27 Once again As predicted Left my balls all broken Filled with worthless cum This shit got me reeling But I'm still here all breathing Weigh my balls in pounds again Facebook said don't do it, but fuck
Starting point is 00:03:46 suck, I'd do it again. Okay, shout out to Lex Luki, Mr. Lagubrious on Twitter for that one. Yeah, you'll get a Discord invite. You ask for one when you post to this AKA. Wow. And the syllables. I love when people
Starting point is 00:04:04 nail the syllable count to make that you don't have to rush nothing and put double up on syllables so shout out to you lex lukey yeah i also like when they don't nail the syllables at all yeah that's what this mandate was intended to do it's but that's the beauty of it it's everything's so malleable oh uh but that was that was beautiful. Well done, Lex Lueke. Well done, Miles. Really nailing that.
Starting point is 00:04:29 Mark McGrath. I mean, when you see him every day, you know. I still just respect the hell out of Mark McGrath for being the highest I've ever seen someone on TV. And it was on the Wendy Williams show. It was a daytime show. And he was flying. When you're on Wendy Williams. And when you're on Wendy Williams and you're the highest person on the show. And he was there to talk about his newborn baby.
Starting point is 00:04:56 Was this the one where he's just like flying on uppers or something? Yeah, just like, and he's just like, and then they hand me the baby and they're like, you want to cut the cord? And it's just wild. And he's like like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they hand me the baby, and they're like, you want to cut the cord? And it's just wild. And he's like, you know, the color of chalk, except his nose is bright red. Anyways, Miles, we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by one of the hosts of the wildly entertaining podcast, Ridiculous Romance.
Starting point is 00:05:21 Please welcome Eli Banks! Hey, everybody. Hey, Matt. What's going's going on eli very excited to be here oh yeah thrilled to have you yeah thanks for coming on thank you yeah no i've been a long-time listener first time guest here oh yeah wow yeah okay the name every episode uh number one uh jack miles go to the beach uh number, Jack and Miles go to the beach. Number two, Jack and Miles go to the zoo. The one about Mark. Number three, the one about Mark McGrath. Yes.
Starting point is 00:05:55 One where Miles tries out for the Dodgers. That was a classic. The Hawaii episode, obviously. One of the greats. When I had the lifts in my shoes when I tried out for that basketball team. Uh- proposal honestly that was sweet yeah i mean that's sappy but yeah you know it felt a little bit unnatural for me but it was what it was every show's got and i said yes so yeah you know yeah it worked out we were on a break the one where they were on a break.
Starting point is 00:06:25 Eli, what, tell us, so, you know, I just checked out the Lucy Desi episode. Oh, yeah. What is the most kind of ridiculous romantic story that you've uncovered? Oh, yeah, let people know generally about ridiculous romance. Yeah, so ridiculous romance, it's sort of a little sister show to Ridiculous History, Ben Bolin and Noel Brown. Yeah. They're sort of creating the ridiculous universe of various other ridiculous blank shows.
Starting point is 00:06:54 And they came. Ben's an old friend of mine and Diana's. Noel, too. We've known them both for a long time. But Ben and Diana and I, amongst many other talented people, were in a sketch comedy theater troupe here in Atlanta for many years. And Ben came to us and said, hey, you guys are funny. He thinks we're funny and you're married.
Starting point is 00:07:11 And maybe you guys should take on this topic of ridiculous, weird, bizarre couples and throuples and love affairs through history. So we started digging and just yeah found some really really insane stories i mean you know we've got ones you've heard of like uh the bobbits which was lorraine bobbitt and john wayne bobbitt which ended up being so much more intense and bizarre of a story especially after the incident yeah very dark and A classic. Yeah. A classic romance. Really hits all the beats. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:07:50 But I would say some of the weirdest ones we've done, we recently did a story about Simon Park, who's a British politician who suddenly came out and said he has his whole life been having sex with an alien cat queen and that it's causing some struggles in his own marriage to a human woman here on earth and that he basically met this alien when he was he said he she first came to him as a vision when he was in the womb uh which he remembers and then
Starting point is 00:08:18 visited him when he was five years old and then many times throughout his life and they've been mating and have an alien child together this guy went on planet or is he having sex with a cat he's having sex with the cat alien on their spaceship they beam him up oh okay yeah but
Starting point is 00:08:38 no animals are being harmed as far as we know it's possible the whole thing is one big hallucination he's having in his bedroom but we don't think it got to that. Wow. Yeah. But he's currently also, it seems like he's driving a big QAnon force. He does Zoom meetings regularly with like after the January 6th thing, he launched from like 60,000 followers on YouTube to over 600,000.
Starting point is 00:09:04 And that's the latest. He shifted kind of into that conspiracy side of things. Yeah. Wow. Quite a character. All right. Yeah. Well, we are going to get to know you a little bit better in a moment.
Starting point is 00:09:17 First, a couple of the things that we're going to be talking about later on in the episode having to do with the news and the zeitgeist. We're going to check in with trump i guess you know and then we're gonna do a positive story to add life back into our bodies about some pennsylvania high school students fighting back against the backlash to critical race theory and succeeding. We'll talk about Amazon's AI cameras that they've installed in drivers' vehicles that are, you know, just straight up Black Mirror episode. Like, it easily could be a Black Mirror episode. So we'll talk about that.
Starting point is 00:10:02 We punished you for blinking while driving. Yeah, literally. We punished you for checking your rearview mirror uh we punished you for getting cut off it's just yeah they're turning people into like you know they're using like a financial cattle prod on people for doing things that are 100 human human. So we'll talk about that. We'll talk about employers realizing drug tests are fucking dumb. We will talk about Miles's just visceral hatred for tomatoes. It's not visceral hatred. I know. I know. Don't start. Don't don't put me in a box quite yet. But I will. I'm not gonna gonna lie i have a i have a up and down relationship with tomatoes you have a beef with tomatoes not to be confused with beef tomatoes the yeah beef steak tomatoes uh in fact some people call them but yeah the i i'm 100 with you actually
Starting point is 00:10:58 on on this uh just the yeah we're going to talk about raw tomatoes in particular. It's mostly because this Duke student wrote a wonderfully worded diatribe against the tomato. Yeah, we need to reach out to that Duke student. What a writer. All of that. Plenty more. But first, Eli, we do like to ask our guests, what is something from your search history? Let's see. What is something from your search history?
Starting point is 00:11:24 Let's see. Well, you mentioned our recent episode about Desi and Lucy. Not to plug the show too hard, but my entire Google search history for the last six months has been various relationship stories. Of course. But sort of like a spinoff factor that I found out that Desi Arnaz was drafted during World War II, which I thought was weird because he was not an American citizen at that point. And to me, at least, this was news from my, you know, Southern public education that foreign nationals could get drafted. Yeah, just news to me. He was here from Cuba and it was apparently pretty normal in World War II. They totally changed the laws so that foreign nationals could get drafted
Starting point is 00:12:05 without being naturalized and then it did not give them citizenship automatically it's sort of they sort of uh dangled a carrot it made it a little easier afterwards so they've been doing it since back then yeah yeah hey help us out with this war it might it might it might do you good i don't know or it might not we might have been i don't know whatever but uh it's like yeah did he did he actually enlist he did he uh actually broke his or he had a knee injury before he was able to go do training but he still tried to go but they classified him as uh you know he was too injured to actually serve physically so they had him directing usoO shows. Wow.
Starting point is 00:12:45 So he was injured shortly before he went to start training. So they didn't qualify him for active service, but they ended up having him direct USO shows in California, which was perfect for him because he was already big in entertainment. He was doing, you know, this was before the show, Lyle of Lucy, but he was huge in bands and the club scene and everybody kind of knew who he was. And radio, right? It was a radio show before?
Starting point is 00:13:09 I Love Lucy was, but he wasn't involved until it went to television. Got it. It was her and another actor who CBS tried to bring on the show because they thought the idea of an interracial couple on TV was outrageous, of course. What? It still is to some people today. Like into Pelican Brief, for instance. That was such...
Starting point is 00:13:33 We talked about this in the show, but that's so... The executives kind of like projecting their own racism onto the country because they're saying, Americans won't accept it. So Lucy and Desi went out and did a vaudeville show, the two of them, across the whole country everybody loved it it was like the biggest thing in the country and they came back and said you know no americans don't reject this that's just you guys right right yeah back to that point
Starting point is 00:13:54 about how the one percent is just saying like this is what we want and this is what the world wants yeah right 99 of you like this is not what we asked for. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, people aren't ready for a Denzel Washington sequel is what I'm saying. They're not ready to see Denzel kiss a white woman. Yes. Denzel can't kiss a white woman. And also like the equalizer, too. I'm just saying you're going to hit a single, not a home run on that one because audiences are racist. And I know that because I'm racist. That was from the Sony hack
Starting point is 00:14:26 from a producer who claimed... Look, Denzel's my favorite actor. Okay? I'm just saying. Look, I'd vote for him a third term. Eli, what is something you think is overrated? All right. So we're just meeting
Starting point is 00:14:42 and I'm a lifelong vegetarian. By the vegetarian code, I have to tell you guys that, you know, within 25 minutes of us meeting. Of course, kind of went over, to be honest. Yeah, I know. It's a little late. I'm going to get 30 minutes in here. Are you sure you're vegetarian? Miles and I were over here texting. I think this guy's vegetarian, though. So, I mean, we had our suspicions. Yeah, I try to make it obvious. Look at his vegetarian skin. Oh there's an iron all healthy and shit he's glowing what the fuck is this guy's deal he has like an inner life this guy get him off get him off well i have in recent years decided that something very overrated to me is all the fake meats that have been coming out lately the The impossibles, the beyonds drives me crazy because I mean, I think it's a little different for me because I grew up like I've effectively never eaten meat.
Starting point is 00:15:32 So I'm not looking for a substitute. Sure. But but it has bumped all the other options off of menus, at least at least here in Atlanta. Oh, I've seen like black bean burgers you know uh in-house veggie burgers they're all gone they've all they're all impossible or beyond now and i just don't think it's really any good and having grown up eating all the processed hyper processed super salty fake meats that they put in the freezers it doesn't taste that different from the stuff i had when i was a kid so this revolutionary new thing kind of a big letdown i think wow like kind of like a bit like you're not to not to be
Starting point is 00:16:10 disparaging but like a vegan sort of hipster take where it's like yeah yeah yeah exactly doing all this stuff that you love nonsense i was vegetarian before it was cool yeah right and how did you wait how did you become a vegetarian this is a child like you decided as a child or no my my mom started when she was a teenager and raised us that way okay so yeah oh so so you had a so you did have a moment of being a bit of an omnivore prior no no like straight from when i was born vegetarian oh shit yeah yeah yeah i don't know what i misheard anyway no his mom started so mild, this is where the old couple behind you in the movies explains what just happened. So, his mom started when she was a teenager, Miles. But then from the...
Starting point is 00:16:55 Yeah. So, he the Iron Man? Okay. I get it now. I got it. I noticed, yeah, because I feel the ground, those black bean or chickpea type burger patties. Yeah. Have another person I know who's vegan mentioned this too, where they're like, there was nothing wrong with that.
Starting point is 00:17:15 I was fine. I was fine until then. And then I guess it's, I guess this move, this push to bring omnivores more into the right consider eating vegan or veggie vegetable based plant based which i appreciate i've got friends who switched over and they're they're glad to have something that you know reminds them of home so to speak but that's how i definitely like i'm like this is great i because i think for me it's more of i don't have the discipline to acknowledge the like that it's a net positive for me and Earth. So I'm like, well, what do I get?
Starting point is 00:17:47 Oh, okay. So I can stub the feeling of a burger. And to be honest, Impossible, I think I like is because it's almost like mimicking indecipherable cheap beef that I grew up eating at football games. Like you weren't sure if it was beef to begin with. Yeah, you're like, I don't know, man.
Starting point is 00:18:03 They said it's a burger. It's got cheese on it and the the texture of meat so let it roll yeah what's uh like what's an underrated uh vegetarian food that people are like you know for me being a vegetarian seems like an insurmountable difficult thing to uh undertake what right what's like a staple that you think that is like delicious that we, when I have that thought, I'm not understanding? I mean, growing up, like really, once I started feeding myself, my, you know, as a teenager and in my 20s, I was a very unhealthy vegetarian. People were like, oh, you're vegetarian. It must be so. And I'm like, cheese pizza and French fries are vegetarian. Yeah, it was a large part of my diet. It wasn't till like my late 20s.
Starting point is 00:18:45 I really kind of made some choices there and started trying to eat more than just bread and cheese all the time. So, I mean, you know, I part of it, I think, is that you you start to like foods that you eat for a while. I've heard this from food scientists and stuff. You know, you go two weeks. If you don't like broccoli, you know, eat it for a few weeks and you will. And that sort of happened to me with things like Brussels sprouts that I didn't like as a kid. And now I've got five different recipes for Brussels sprouts that I probably eat three times a week. Yeah. I cook mostly at home and just try to get creative with, you know, whatever ingredients I can. It's hard to pinpoint one specifically, but yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:27 Yeah. Yeah. All right. Just buy a cabinet full of food and start dumping it in a pot. There you go. Olive oil, garlic, and rosemary will fix anything. Just buy a cabinet full of food, dump it in a pot and see what you come up with. There you go.
Starting point is 00:19:37 You have no idea how literally I'm going to take that. They're like, wait, you take it out of the cans? No, put the cans in the pot too yeah no the cans that's your just take the labels off uh what's something you think is underrated eli not to invite too much controversy but phone calls okay i get it i get that texting is useful in a lot of situations i probably 60 40 text phone myself. But this kind of raw hatred that's come against the very idea of speaking on the phone in the last few years is really strange to me. It feels like a technological step backwards. They said, well, you know, what if we
Starting point is 00:20:16 don't have to write these letters and telegrams anymore and we could just speak our thoughts into another person's head directly and that we sort of undid that? That's strange to me. to another person's head directly and that we sort of undid that that's strange to me right that it's like now i can do instant telegrams to a person's pocket telegram station yeah and you're like ah fuck no yeah i definitely see like there is i don't know if it's generation i think because like as it for me as like a teenager or whatever talking on the fucking landline was my blood you know what i mean there's no other way to communicate i mean there was aim and shit like that but the phone was like the next level because you could you could just leave the line open you're both watching a tv show not talking for
Starting point is 00:20:56 fucking 30 minutes straight doing your homework and stuff like that and i so i think part of me i still i still have a love for those times so So I, I definitely, you know, I don't understand the hate for the phone. I guess if it's like for work or something, maybe that's why, but other than that, come on now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you lose so much via over text. Like there's been studies that found that, you know, emails just don't try to fucking
Starting point is 00:21:22 tell a joke in a work email because you are going to fail people are not going to get it right you guys are right to kind of compare it to telegrams i read every text that i receive in the voice of a wistful civil war soldier writing home wow like in a ken burns documentary so that that's just how my brain works and And you say stop too, I think. Yes, I do. I do. Yeah. Well, what else? How else do I read the periods out loud? Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:21:49 I agree. I'm on board. Great. But you know, this Gen Z audience of ours is going to tear you a new one, buddy. Go for it. There's only three people in the world that'll still talk to me on the phone. Right. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:22:04 Which is also funny when i think about it like of the people and i'm like i call them like it's the same 10 people yeah yeah that's another level though of like friendship though too like are you in the phone zone oh the phone zone yeah because that's like when you know you're like i have to call this person i have to talk to them voice to voice yeah oh man i'm stuck in the phone zone with this one guy sucks man sucks just get me to the text zone already yeah i do you guys like when do you fit in your phone calls like my my wife is really good at like staying in touch with people my wife uh and she'll like call them when she's driving somewhere like
Starting point is 00:22:44 she's just like has a routine where she immediately like goes to when she's driving somewhere like she's just like has a routine where she immediately like goes to her phone whenever there is like a free moment where i would be listening to a podcast essentially she calls people right because podcast hosts are my friends and so that's me jack yeah i have parasocial relationships but i i don't really have a a time for it usually happens on the weekends for me because like i'll be like meandering and i'll get a text and then i'm like fuck it i just need to call to like keep this thing going or half the time it i'll just call because i i'm driving and i don't want to i don't want to continue a conversation over text wild it's more sometimes just born out of safety more than like, I got to talk to this person.
Starting point is 00:23:27 I'm like, yo, I'm driving, man. Let's fucking let's talk about this shit in the car. Yeah. So I don't have a routine. Eli, what about you? Mine's usually driving. That's kind of. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:23:34 Yeah. Because it, you know, Atlanta, I think similarly to L.A., very car heavy city and it takes half an hour to get anywhere. So, yeah. Yeah. All my podcasts come while i'm cooking or cleaning and then driving is uh driving his phone calls for the phone zone got it amazon would have a thing to say about that as we'll get to later all right let's take a quick break and we'll be right back i've been thinking about you.
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Starting point is 00:26:22 It's tradition. It's culture. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, the emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Santos! Santos! Join me as we learn more about the history behind this spectacular sport
Starting point is 00:26:44 from its inception in the United States to how it became a global symbol of Mexican culture. We'll learn more about some of the most iconic heroes in the ring. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask as part of My Cultura podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you stream podcasts. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast. As the U.S. elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever. But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows, that we're surprisingly more united than most people think.
Starting point is 00:27:24 We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics, and that we need to do better and that we can do better. With the help of Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki. It's really tragic. If cynicism were a pill, it'd be a poison. We'll see that our fellow humans, even those we disagree with, are more generous than we assume. My assumption, my feeling, my hunch is that a lot of us are actually looking for a way to disagree and still be in relationships with each other. All that on the Happiness Lab. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. and we're back and so donald trump suing the new york times and his niece for a mere 100 million dollars because they published that story about his taxes a while back. And I mean, this is I'm
Starting point is 00:28:27 guessing since he is famous for suing people all the time and was the president at the time that that was probably a fairly bulletproof story in terms of sourcing. Yeah. But yeah, it's it's interesting to like kind of hear the the substance of the complaint yeah because especially when you know like with reading this story like oh wow this dude uses all kinds of tricks even though it wasn't like there are certain years where people really wanted to see everything but what was clear is like oh he likes to fuck around with his taxes and how he sort of claims losses and things like that and in this beginning of the legal complaint that he filed, it's meant to sound like something more than these were documents that his niece had and just shared
Starting point is 00:29:12 with the New York Times. Rather, quote, the defendants engaged in an insidious plot to obtain confidential and highly sensitive records, which they exploited for their own benefit and utilized as a means of falsely legitimizing their publicized works. The defendants actions were motivated by a personal vendetta and their desire to gain fame, notoriety, acclaim and financial windfall and were further intended to advance their political agenda. This is the thing is he isn't denying the offense, like the authenticity or the veracity of these claims. So I fighting this lawsuit is more just like, that's true! Yeah. This is like
Starting point is 00:29:50 the cheating boyfriend being like, you catch him and his response is to claim that the person who told you about it is a hater, but like not addressing the substance of the actual yeah rather
Starting point is 00:30:06 than like oh can you it looks like you're cheating on your taxes if you weren't you'd be like i'm not that's that's that's impossible rather than who told you that who said that they're they fucking they just want to take me down they because i'm so cool yeah his his niece mary trump responded she said quote i think he's a fucking loser and he's going to throw anything against the wall he can it's desperation the walls are closing in and he is throwing anything against the wall that will stick as is always the case with donald he'll try and change the subject amazing i think he's a fucking loser and she's not like that yeah it's funny to look think of her and be like he's a fucking loser my uncle fuck this guy so she wow that's uh yeah that was not editorializing she that was her quote i think he is a fucking loser shout out to mary trump but yeah at the
Starting point is 00:30:59 end of the day it's just another case where this person you know she she got these documents because of a dispute over like her grandfather and donald's dad's like estate when he had passed or something so she had obtained these documents legally um so like everything about this is just like 100 million okay um guessing guessing the bill like she says the the walls are closing, although I'm I think we've yet to see the walls actually close. Yeah. Yeah. Stop using that phrase. Yeah. The area like there are super cuts. I think I forget who did the super cut of all the MSNBC journalists being like in the walls are closing in around Donald Trump. The walls are closing in and it's just never been true or it is true.
Starting point is 00:31:43 But he that is his like part of his natural state is to have the walls closing in around him like that's how he right operates it's the same way with like for every anyone else looking the walls closing in means he's going to prison or he is going on trial and he will be in a courtroom at in front of a jury or something like that. That's what I think most people are like, that would be the walls closing in. But everything's so incremental. It's like the same thing when it's like they banned chokeholds. The walls are closing in on over policing.
Starting point is 00:32:17 It's like, no, they're fucking not. But I get maybe if your perspective is like it's this giant room and they move an inch. Okay, the walls are closing in on some level. Not in a satisfying way, though. As we talked about on yesterday's episode, the Trump campaign knew like from the start that the claims about election fraud were bullshit. What we're learning that his lawyers gave mike pence basically a six-step guide to uh rat fucking the election yeah like how close we actually of checking in with trump yeah part two and then we'll check the fuck out but this the whole point of this seemed to just be like to
Starting point is 00:32:59 do a coup at light speed and just try and just proclaim all this shit and then figure it out after um but this main point step three was at the end pence announced this is from this legal memo that was given to him from john eastman who is from the federalist society okay just so you can connect some dots to the people who are suggesting how we pack the courts are also giving sparks notes on how to fucking overthrow an election. Step three, quote, at the end, Pence announces that because of the ongoing disputes in the seven states, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those states. So the whole point was when they go, when he was going to preside over that whole the certification, they would keep up this idea that in states like
Starting point is 00:33:45 arizona pennsylvania etc especially where people were like we are the true electors of this state that they would sort of jump on the back of that to say like it's being completely disputed we don't know what to do with this and then essentially kick it to the congress or kick it to the house to then vote based on like each state representing like each each group of congresspeople or house members representing their state to cast their vote which would have given trump an edge if they had taken out those other states so it was just a very a very clear plan that they had and the whole thing was that they said while the the military might not have acted as quickly because a lot of politicians would have been like, this is absolute horseshit.
Starting point is 00:34:27 They were counting on possible violence breaking out. The police, because they are 100% down with MAGA being the enforcers or trying to quell a lot of this stuff and then using that to declare martial law, possibly. So they had it. They were really thinking this entire fucking thing out like how to do it while it's completely chaotic and inelegant and wouldn't hold up considering all the lawsuits that they lost on the way there they were still willing to just to go there to bring the country to that point this is the exact scenario there There was a Radiolab episode probably like six to eight months before the election. And this is the exact scenario they laid out that we talked about on this show. states they would get people like rising up and you know doing violence and then we'll just be like too close to call guys we're just gonna have to x those out and look at what's left and look at
Starting point is 00:35:33 that 233 to 232 wow we did it so it's amazing the behind the scenes effort that's always going on here as opposed to trump himself like i i always imagine in these scenarios like trump dozing off around step two as they're trying to do it to him right yeah and just being ushered into whatever room they need him in here you go you're in charge again they did a condensed version for him with step one you win uh-huh that's it one step plan mr president i love it go execute got to do. But I think this is one of those things, too, where. Americans, especially we talk about how we are constantly, you know, just in the fucking around phase and always reacting when we found out that this is another instance where we that fascism is basically taking over the republican party so there's a there's a an entire political party that is invested in fascism and willing to go any length to stay in power but like quite literally through any fucking means and like the laws and you know
Starting point is 00:36:40 the practices of this country be damned and we still have Democrats who want to play like this bipartisan shit without really acknowledging these people don't give a fuck. They have they were looking at their their fucking notes to each other, being like, this is how we steal an election we lost. And if you want to then act like, well, we got to see if the filibuster i mean that could be really bad what do you fucking think's gonna happen if they steal it they actually steal a fucking election you're not gonna have any fucking recourse it's just gonna be they'll just throw you in jail or some shit because this is gonna be like you can tell by the way they want to meddle with education and things like that they're trying to create a system where people don't ask questions and they go along with shit. And if you do, that's it's it's a problem for you.
Starting point is 00:37:28 Yeah. And the Federalist Society, again, has many members on the Supreme Court. So it's not it's not just in Congress that this is happening there. They're closer than I think any sort of mainstream media outlet acknowledges. Yeah. And no one's I don't think many people are. I don't know. At least when this memo story came out, not many people were connecting the dots of John Eastman and the federalist, the Federalist Society. Yeah. Because I because, again, I think because it's such a powerful institution in the Beltway, it's like a I guess for people inside, they weren't as making as big of a stink about it. I see. So I see more stories now, but it's just wild how, how long it takes for people to be like, well, hold on and look, who's telling him the person who's, who's part of an organization that is like constantly thinking of how to realign our judicial system. Yeah. And it's, uh, I, I feel like there's probably an instinct in the sort of
Starting point is 00:38:28 centrist mainstream media to be like well those are the like trumpists but like they they kind of put these characters in separate categories like there's the mcconnells who are like standard republicans and then they're the trumpists and like only john eastman's over on the side of the trumpists so like he like shouldn't be lumped in with or the Federalist Society shouldn't be lumped in with him. But like we got to Trump because of just unbelievable fucking rot in the original Republican Party, like before he came in and just swept it up like that. They're all kind of on a continuum, ready to just do whatever it takes to stay in power. And I think, like you said, Miles, just the total lack of opposition that they're facing to people on the left who are saying, oh, yeah, bipartisanship that still exists, even though it's a one way street. Yeah, just, you know, completely counter what bipartisan is.
Starting point is 00:39:26 completely counter what bipartisan is right it's like it's like playing fucking like blackjack with someone and like they're you catch them cheating all the time and you're like all right let's play a big one let's do this for a million dollars right now and you're like okay and everyone's like hey hey they fucking cheat you idiot don't get involved with them or if you are fucking make sure this shit is level because this this the person you are dealing with has made it clear how they're willing to get there. And not to say, you know, and I'm not trying to say that the Democrats are above any kind of criticism. But in this instance, like comparatively, they need to like, you know, they actually need to figure out how to protect this shitty system that we have or i guess maybe it just plays out and you know americans are going to find themselves in a place where they have to nap they found out right and now it's too late but i think this is one of those things like most
Starting point is 00:40:17 likely to be in a fantasy world about what you know just because it didn't it wasn't successful it doesn't mean it's still an ongoing threat. And just because that rally was a total wet fart last weekend for the justice, for the J six people, they're moving into different spaces. Now they don't need to do this sort of like public display of like allegiance type stuff there. Look at the school boards, look at these other local offices, look at the electoral boards that they're trying to infiltrate in all kinds of red states. It's a different game. And I think the focus needs to actually be on those kinds of things rather than like, oh, they've only got 100 people to show up for this. Yeah, it's like, yeah, well, they're doing stuff on every and every other channel. They're trying to figure out how to, you know, ensure that if they want want to overthrow an election willing people are in those positions to do it yeah i think that uh also established
Starting point is 00:41:10 democrats find that they have more success when they're on the defense so they can't wipe these guys out because then they've got nothing to push back about well yeah because then they'd have to fix things yeah exactly right it's always the best excuse to not fix things is to be like, well, these other guys. Yeah. Because if they weren't here, I would. Okay, well, then do it. Well, the filibuster, you see. Well, then shut up.
Starting point is 00:41:36 Yeah. All right. Let's flush our systems with a nice story of down-home activism succeeding. You know, last summer, there were a lot of organizations and schools circulating lists of suggested books and other materials to help broaden people's perspective on race and white supremacy.
Starting point is 00:41:58 You know, not... So anyway, like, not all of them were done in good faith. That's probably... We can discuss that another time. But in York, Pennsylvania, their school district's diversity committee released a list of all kinds of great stuff for students, teachers and parents to check out. And like clockwork, concerned parents stepped in. processed the demographic changes in their community and decided that the reason that their community was less white was because kids are reading books about American anti-black racism. Yeah, that seems the logic. At least that's the logic I've seen. It's like, well, this is causing
Starting point is 00:42:35 more racism, huh? What? Yeah. What are you talking about? The comments at these school board meetings, and this is sort of pre the full blownblown critical race theory screaming matches like this this this happened like sort of on the heels of the summer of last year parents were saying the same stuff this is racist against white people like there was like a children's book that was like about rosa parks and it was like the most children's book i've ever seen like i i can't my kid reading this and then feeling guilty that they're white no yeah and i can tell that this book is what it's going to say rather than like, you know, being about a kid's book that's humanizing all children and be like, there's nothing fucking different. So because of all this outrage,
Starting point is 00:43:16 the school board banned the materials or rather they said they're putting a freeze on the list until they had time to review it because they don't like the word banned. So the great thing is that the kids at this high school, they didn't let that stop them from educating themselves. And they certainly didn't appreciate the sort of like unilateral nature of these like books and articles and stuff
Starting point is 00:43:38 just being restricted. So they started protesting daily. It started off with like a couple kids and then it grew into like the hundreds and they eventually created the panther i think anti-racism union student union and they're i think their mascots called the panthers but you know again you love to see it the great coincidence they knew they knew that was gonna scare the shit out of Fox News. And their parents were like, ah, Panthers, no! So their voices were eventually heard.
Starting point is 00:44:10 They were able to go to a school board meeting to sort of speak up on what they thought. And this one student, Ida Gupta, said, our thoughts are being invalidated. There's only one portion of the community that this band represents, and it's not ours. Yeah. Yeah. portion of the community that this band represents and it's not ours yeah yeah and like it kicked off like a whole uh like domino effect of of support because they were so vocal like parents sort of were like damn okay like i guess i should if the students also care like there's ways for me to also get involved the like the band books thing ended up with the one of the authors of some of the books. This guy, Brad Meltzer, he came up to give comment like the library said, like, you know what?
Starting point is 00:44:51 We don't care what the ban is like. We will fully stock all of these books and make them widely available. And then on Monday, this school board unanimously voted to unfreeze or whatever, unrestrict whatever words they want to use those books and articles and documentaries however though along the way they were like mumbling stuff about socialism and like communism even though you know it's like well you know just communism obviously like we gotta keep anyway fine it's unanimous yes communism the famous communist principle of doing what the majority of people want to do. Yeah, that's awesome. That's very encouraging. I do keep coming back to this idea that people are pointing to how nationally unpopular
Starting point is 00:45:36 some of this shit is. And yeah, the majority of people want, recognize that racism is wrong. And for some reason, it just popped in my head as we were doing this story. I think it was like my inner barometer was like, this is getting too encouraging. So I have to put something depressing in here that Nazism was very unpopular you guys it was pulled in the 30s for decades uh and and then they like below the 30s and then they swept to power they never won a popular election so yeah you know as long as this is hanging around as long as they are trying to silence people who are telling the truth you know we we can't be safe unless we're, you know, constantly fighting the ship like these kids did. It's, I mean, it's like we said earlier, the established power just coming in and saying, well, this is what, this is what people want. And, uh, you know,
Starting point is 00:46:34 and that not reflecting those opinions at all. Yeah. Well, one of their high school teachers like sort of gave this comedy is like, man, these kids are like heroes. Like, you know, like, I can't believe like the effort they put into this and that's like everything they did is commendable. But then, you know, it's just sort of like this idea that he was sort of pointing out is like, you know, most Americans and school children and most parents, they support this kind of educational material for their kids. Like, and, and they know that it's actually,
Starting point is 00:47:04 unfortunately it's part of American history, but it must be they know that it's actually unfortunately it's part of american history but it must be taught so it's just like a good a feel-good story in that sense but i think also like to your point about like nazis and stuff i think kids now are just or people now they have an ear for dog whistles like where before the dog whistle only resonated with the dogs you were trying to get whose attention you were trying to get because it wasn't resonating at that frequency for you to be aware of. And I think so many more people now, you know, and in some cases to an extreme can be like can just sort of parse through things and understand like what's happening. the best defense that we have is that people just general awareness of like what discrimination looks like in most of its forms that it's like hard to sort of like give it like a very you know innocuous or euphemistic name of a bill or something and hope that no one notices right
Starting point is 00:47:56 i'm so blown away by the the idea that learning about racist history is going to make people feel guilty like it might be my ego talking, but I'm like, I read about horrible racist white people in the past. I'm like, Oh, thank God. I'm not like them.
Starting point is 00:48:12 It makes me kind of feel better about myself. You're like, Oh good. There's a baseline at least. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Doing better,
Starting point is 00:48:21 better of average. All right. I'm yeah. I'm not Nathaniel Bedford Forrest. Good. That's a start. We just learned about this guy, Gouverneur Morris. We did an episode about him and he was this very, very anti-slavery founding father that
Starting point is 00:48:37 we'd never heard of before. And, you know, we're, my wife and I talking about our public education and not having been taught about this guy and wondering why he was so buried and you know it's like because he makes everybody else look bad but I think in not studying these things we also lose out on learning about cool people like that who were doing the right thing right yeah that there was someone standing up to them yeah during the founding of the country because before you thought it was a he we love america sign it bye and also like the way you're taught history i remember i like when i was very young i didn't
Starting point is 00:49:12 think slavery existed until the civil war right right you know what i mean like that it was like a like it became a problem like there weren't slaves during the their wait what for a while huh okay didn't realize that i mean like so it's funny how even how like when slavery is even introduced to school kids like in a textbook it's almost like it's almost treating it in a vacuum it's like and then there was a civil war because slavery happened that one day yeah yeah they were trying to do a slavery and they the the good guys fought them off like the avengers and one right and they'll tell you well it was the times that's how people just were they didn't know any better and then you learn that all these people did know better and said hey this is bad
Starting point is 00:49:55 and thomas jefferson and everyone said no to that so yeah that wasn't a scene in hamilton wasn't they left that one out where the one guys like hey y'all tripping about slavery huh right like hey come on pipe down pipe down we love Alexander like they literally leave it unspoken he's like we know who's doing the planting right it's just like oh
Starting point is 00:50:18 that's actually not good enough yeah moving that's not a oh type moment I'm sorry the bar is too low for that oh uh all right let's take a quick break and we'll be right back i've been thinking about you i want you back in my life it's too late for that i have a proposal for. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110, 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out?
Starting point is 00:51:03 I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams.
Starting point is 00:51:23 Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. They're just dreams. And of course, Lucha Libre. It doesn't get more Mexican than this. Lucha Libre is known globally because it is much more than just a sport and much more than just entertainment. Lucha Libre is a type of storytelling. It's a dance. It's tradition. It's culture. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, the emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Santos! Santos!
Starting point is 00:52:11 Join me as we learn more about the history behind this spectacular sport from its inception in the United States to how it became a global symbol of Mexican culture. We'll learn more about some of the most iconic heroes in the ring. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. Hi, everyone. It's me, Katie Couric. Have you heard about my newsletter called Body and Soul? It has everything you need to know about your physical and mental health.
Starting point is 00:52:45 Personally, I'm overwhelmed by the wellness industry. I mean, there's so much information out there about lifting weights, pelvic floors, cold plunges, anti-aging. So I launched Body and Soul to share doctor-approved insights about all of that and more. We're tackling everything. Serums to use through menopause, exercises that improve your brain health, and how to naturally lower your blood pressure and cholesterol. Oh, and if you're as sore as I am from pickleball, we'll help you with that too.
Starting point is 00:53:15 Most importantly, it's information you can trust. Everything is vetted by experts at the top of their field, and you can write into them directly to have your questions answered. So sign up for Body and Soul at katiecouric.com slash bodyandsoul. Taking better care of yourself is just a click away. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast. As the U.S. elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever. But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows, that we're surprisingly more united than most people think.
Starting point is 00:53:55 We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics, and that we need to do better and that we can do better. With the help of Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki. It's really tragic. If cynicism were a pill, it'd be a poison. We'll see that our fellow humans, even those we disagree with, are more generous than we assume. My assumption, my feeling, my hunch is that a lot of us are actually looking for a way to disagree and still be in a relationship with each other.
Starting point is 00:54:24 All that on the Happiness Lab. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And we're back. And so, yeah, I wanted to talk about this Amazon AI cameras innovation in making the experience of being human just a little less livable and more like you're living in a dystopia. Yeah. With our overseer technology, we make sure all of our employees are working at their highest output possible. So we've heard, you know, that that employees feel the need to wear adult diapers, go to the bathroom in bottles in order to, like, keep up with the demands from Amazon that Amazon micromanages scheduling to the point that, you know, if you take a bathroom break, you are now behind schedule and you're going to lose money. And so earlier this year, it was announced that Amazon would be installing a wonderful new tool to continue in that direction. AI powered cameras that go in the delivery vehicles and require drivers to sign biometric consent
Starting point is 00:55:46 forms in order to keep their jobs. So that's always good when they're basically just saying do this or you don't have a job anymore on something that is like the most fucking horrifying thing I could imagine signing off on biometric consent forms i wouldn't even like sign that at a doctor's office right it sounds so fucked up i'm like no fuck you full biometric consent they're like i need to take your blood pressure i'm like okay okay fine do that and it all sounds creepy but when you take a closer look you find it's even creepier than it sounds. So they supposedly flag dangerous behavior, including looking at phones or even yawning. A system will audibly correct you.
Starting point is 00:56:35 Oh, my audibly correct you with a robot voice. Yeah. Fuck off. Yeah. fuck off yeah so they are tracking vehicle location and movements potential traffic violations and potentially risky driver behavior such as distracted driving or drowsy driving the the company that like created this technology and sold it to amazon for like 61 million dollars i think insisted that their product was made with the driver's best interest in mind so drivers won't be victimized which would be easier to swallow if they didn't then sell their cameras to fucking amazon who just
Starting point is 00:57:10 had to pay 61 million dollar settlement after the ftc showed that they were uh screwing their drivers out of their tips they what they did is they lowered the driver's wages, but then used the tips to make up the difference so the drivers wouldn't know that they had had their wages lowered. And so the cameras, which were announced earlier this year, have now been rolled out in many markets. The complaints from workers have been numerous and often horrifying. One driver is worried the cameras will film her changing the adult diapers she has to wear while making deliveries for amazon god they haven't even fuck i mean like the fact that they're still like oh yeah there's we still they still have to wear diapers if they need to use the bathroom because we haven't loosened that and on top of it there
Starting point is 00:58:01 will be a camera fucking recording all that is yikes yeah the right we already know that drivers peeing in water bottles is a frequent occurrence so like they force you to do inhuman things that your body can't handle and then film you while doing it so you feel like your privacy is being invaded drivers are getting distracted driver notifications for simply changing the radio station or drinking water which two things that it's been said human beings should be allowed to do drivers uh get in trouble if another car cuts them off in traffic which prompts a warning about maintaining a safe distance from what one driver described as a dystopian dark robotic voice. And sometimes they get written up for not stopping at stop signs that aren't even there.
Starting point is 00:58:50 And so these events are recorded and used to tabulate a driver's score at the end of the week, which then determines if they're eligible for their bonuses. Despite all those glitches, the scoring is not at all transparent and you there's no like appeals process so it's just like yeah fucking horrifying yeah i mean you couldn't you couldn't like make your work more dehumanizing than to do shit like this to someone who's working you know like the fact that it's like sensors are going off because of your bodily functions or your impulse to yawn or entertain yourself. We change the radio, whatever. And some things like you are you are displaying too much human behavior.
Starting point is 00:59:37 Automaton get back. Like it's I can't think of any other way to describe this except for it's monitoring people for being human. Yes, exactly. Showing too much human, too much humanity. I can't decide if it'd be worse or better if it wasn't the dystopian dark robot voice. Like if they got, you know, Jennifer Connelly or something like it's just her voice telling you to stop being human. It's almost more dehumanizing, right? Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 01:00:03 I prefer to be like Danger Will Robbins. Yeah. It's definitely going to be the next, you know, the way that like Waze has like Boy George and Arnold Schwarzenegger doing. Yeah, they're for sure going to be like, guys, good news, problem solved. We've paid many different celebrities to. Would you like Esther Perel to tell you to stop pooping yourself or so by paid them we actually just recorded their voices when they were interacting with our alexa devices and then used a algorithm to make it sound like they were saying these things
Starting point is 01:00:37 but yeah so they are claiming amazon's claiming that the cameras have reduced accidents by 48%. I'm assuming that is like the scoring system, not something they're opening up for review. But according to drivers, the cameras actually make things less safe in many ways. They so much as look in their side mirrors to change lanes, they get a distracted driver alert. Not to mention the constant beeping creates a massive distraction to drivers on the road. And even if it did create a drop in accidents in the short term, it's absolute existential violence that is is to push humans to the breaking point of just like inhumane treatment and hide it in spaces like warehouses and delivery vehicles where the public can't see it. They are so unregulated because we live in a moment where capital just has all the power and they have the most capital. We're just not seeing it anywhere other than people just being like, this fucking sucks, you guys. This is not any way to live. not any way to live.
Starting point is 01:02:03 Oof. A friend of mine up in Michigan was working for Amazon and refused to sign this and was told he wouldn't be fired if he didn't sign it, but he wouldn't be eligible to drive the vans anymore and therefore wouldn't be given any deliveries to do. So basically, like, just
Starting point is 01:02:19 would have to quit because he wasn't working there anymore, basically. Your employment status will be frozen. You're not being fired you're being frozen yep yeah it was already a thing up there because he he was a driver for it wasn't he didn't even work directly for amazon it was a small delivery company which amazon employed many of so that they didn't know one company had enough employees to unionize right Right. Yikes. Yeah. Right. And also it helps them with liability for accidents and shit like that.
Starting point is 01:02:51 Yeah. And then everyone can move to one of those Amazon towns. Right. Yeah. Oh, those are coming. Yeah. Just work and we'll give you everything you need. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 01:03:02 I'm waiting for rentals real estate uh for amazon to get into that game yeah i mean that's discount on your rent i mean and honestly like that's what those amazon like those company towns are gonna eventually turn into you know like where like i'm i you know like there's probably gonna be a world where it's like hey man you can like suffer under this other version of capitalism or come to our dystopia, like, like diet slavery town and come by and, you know, your, we'll tell you you're late from your apartment because we know where you are and it'll, and, but Hey, all your needs will be met and you just give your life to Amazon.
Starting point is 01:03:40 Soon. We just plug you into the machine, use your body as a battery. Right. And don't tell the Wachowskis because we kind of got the idea from the Matrix. But hey, it's a good idea. It's a good idea. Have we covered Amazon Towns on the show? No, I don't think so.
Starting point is 01:03:57 I mean, it's something I've, throughout the day, I'm just reading all the nightmares of stories. Yeah, we'll talk more on Amazon Towns, y'all. Coming soon to an episode of Daily Zeitgeist near you. Yeah. All right, let's talk about tomatoes. You know, Miles, you said you have a kind of love-hate relationship with the nightshade, the famous red nightshade. I, as a kid, hated them.
Starting point is 01:04:23 Could not stand them on anything i hated them on sandwiches i'd always pick like raw if it was raw i just did not like it i could always pasta was fine uh like pasta sauce like things like that were fine like ketchup obviously but like when it came to raw tomatoes i just had this like i couldn't i didn't like the taste and sometimes the texture would be weird an unripe tomato like it would ruin a sandwich for me as a kid. And I was like, ah! Like when it's white? Yeah.
Starting point is 01:04:50 And eventually, like, I came around. I got older. I tried more. I found new ways to enjoy tomatoes. Like, you know, caprese salad or, like, salsa. Like, I didn't even like certain salsa sometimes. Like, if it was, was like pico de gallo or something like if it wasn't super sauced up i'd kind of be like but then i i part of me just
Starting point is 01:05:11 like grew up i felt like i was like it's not that bad and when you eat it with other stuff like it's actually enjoyable which brings me to this piece that was uh they they mentioned in the takeout about this Duke student who wrote an op-ed for the student paper there, the Duke Chronicle, to go off on the cafeteria, sort of their love with just putting tomatoes on everything. And the way this person describes scenarios in which tomatoes work or don't work, I think it spoke directly to me and it encapsulated my exact beliefs on tomatoes for the most part and i just want to just read some of this because it is next level writing he says could you uh read it in a civil war soldier writing home yeah play it be like a like a listless banjo picking in the back. Upon taking the first bite of the sandwich, my tongue was assaulted by an acrid tanginess that instantly overwhelmed any other flavor.
Starting point is 01:06:13 Worse, the texture was that of wet rubber, chewy and fibrous, yet unnervingly moist and slippery. Another ingredient was present, and there was more of it than even the avocado that was crucial to the name of the sandwich. Once again, Duke Dining had tricked me into eating something with tomato. Let's step back for a moment and examine the tomato as a fruit. The taste of a tomato is pretty good. Even if it's strong, it's sweet, tangy, just a little bit acidic, and surprisingly savory. Not my favorite, but I can understand why others enjoy it. The texture is more of a mixed bag, with some parts that are relatively rubbery and an
Starting point is 01:06:50 uncomfortable amount of juiciness, but it too has its time and place. Even if my personal preferences are against this particular fruit, it does have some value to it. Unfortunately, tomato is forced well outside of its appropriate context. The taste can be very overwhelming. Imagine putting even a small amount of ketchup on mac and cheese. Even more so, the texture only works in a very few settings. This is why many iconic tomato dishes like pizza and salsa use tomato sauce or crushed slash chopped tomatoes rather than the wet rubber composite that defines a whole tomato. So it goes on to say like i get it i respect the tomato it's a great thing but there's a time and a place for it and
Starting point is 01:07:32 his main gripe though it's more about how he says that the duke like dining company like the people that handle like the cafeteria stuff they're putting it on everything like he just doesn't even understand why it's showing up on certain things i am 100 on board with this take i i think the tomato should be regarded like baking soda or like flour as like a thing that is a great ingredient for some of my favorite eat the powder but don't just like fucking give me the powder raw, dude. Like that sucks. It's terrible. Like pizza with whole tomatoes
Starting point is 01:08:10 is so much worse than pizza that has tomato sauce. I am personally of the opinion that pico de gallo is worse than any salsa with like stewed or like kind of canned tomatoes that have that, you know, are a little bit more gloppy and have been more flavors because it's just really simple. It's like, you know, cilantro, onions and tomato versus like you getting chilies and things like that. Yeah. Eli, where do you stand?
Starting point is 01:08:37 I mean, as a vegetarian, I guess the first question I'd ask you is, can you eat a tomato just straight raw? Nothing on it. Not just straight up, just slices dry? I can and I have. Not often. The pizza is my line. Like sliced tomatoes cooked on a pizza is too much. I can't get with that.
Starting point is 01:08:59 But I'm pro tomato. I'll eat tomatoes on most things without a problem. Yeah. Like ketchup. He gets into ketchup on mac and cheese and stuff and that's a whole other world and i i'm not okay with that that's not even let's not explore that i mean i mean that's a bit of a straw man nobody over the age of six puts ketchup on mac and cheese like why why ask us to imagine that just to like you're wasting valuable space with that sentence but yeah i mean i i the thing is like tomatoes as he goes on to say it's like it shouldn't be treated as like an like a omni topping like that you can put it on everything and i i get that too i think more the thing that really
Starting point is 01:09:40 puts me off is when shit isn't ripe like don't't just put, don't just force it in there. If it's not right, don't put it in there. Yeah. Cause there's nothing worse than a young ass tomato. That is like, just really like, you're like,
Starting point is 01:09:53 am I eating like a watermelon rind? Like that part really gets me off, but are not gets me off, puts me off. Whatever it does it for you now. Yeah. Hey, look,
Starting point is 01:10:04 thank you. No judgment here but i think like the other thing is there are times i really like it in there it does bring an added dose of like moisture and you know a texture to a sandwich but i can't say it can be on everything that's just yeah that's how that's fair i wonder i think in the vegetarian experience like tomato is a lot of substance on your sandwich. Like you kind of have to have it or you lose a half inch of your sandwich, which is already going to be lacking compared to most people's. Right, right, right.
Starting point is 01:10:34 Yeah. And I'm and I'm fine with it. But now please, like, let's make sure they're right. Make sure they're right. Yeah. Because there's only a few. I mean, like I like cucumbers without anything. I'm I love.
Starting point is 01:10:44 Oh, yeah. I love a great cucumber. I don't need shit to eat like a like a little Persian cucumber or something like that. because there's only a few i mean like i'll eat cucumbers without anything i'm i love yeah i love a great cucumber i don't need shit to eat like a like a little persian cucumber or something like that but a tomato unfortunately just for me i think i think that's sort of the difference is like it's one of those things like on its own by itself it i i'm not fully on board with that flavor deep down and i have to i've had to accept that and i'd argue cucumbers are harder to fuck up than tomatoes like cucumbers are just generally like good on everything my only thing with cucumbers is that they dominate flavor yeah they do cucumber on it i am cucumber is the
Starting point is 01:11:17 number one taste i'm getting yeah unless you take the skin a little bit if you peel it a little bit you know what i mean and that that gives it a less less little bit of a less of an edge but yeah i mean again i don't mean to say i just like tomatoes i do like tomatoes and i have they're just for me i get it's a very context specific thing and i think that's what maybe this op-ed was powerful in raising my awareness that i'm like oh this is a context fruit yeah and not a on everything type i order salads without tomatoes like i ask like i specifically like say no tomatoes please like when i if i'm ordering a salad the it this did like kind of bring to my attention like that i love like tomatoes as an ingredient tomatoes might be my favorite ingredient because i love marinara sauce i love salsa like those are two of my
Starting point is 01:12:07 favorite like things in the world to eat but i just do not fuck with the raw tomato on its own thank you for uh giving my life meaning and purpose young 19 year old yeah essentially probably a freshman right who's like going to the dining hall like probably just like just this kid too smart for his own good and he's like you know what and like his friends like dude that's so funny the way you're like taking it down like that because all his bros are like dude fuck bro smells on this again and he has to go back and just say like this. There's this one line where he's like, it's a mistake they make frequently at a variety of venues. And he starts calling out the individual places on campus. Obviously, Twinies has snuck tomatoes into many innocent looking meals.
Starting point is 01:12:57 But nearly every sandwich offering at Cath includes tomatoes. And so do many of the crepes. That part, I'm like, oh no do many of the crepes. That part, I'm like, oh no. Many of the crepes? Yeah. And almost every bread-bound bite to eat at Pitchforks comes with tomato on it, from the burger and the fried chicken sandwich to the
Starting point is 01:13:18 moderately more appropriate salsa on tacos. Even beloved campus eatery The Loop slaps slices onto most of their dishes. Like, don't put tomato on a fried chicken sandwich. Because you're interfering with the crunch. I love a nice crepe with some Nutella,
Starting point is 01:13:33 banana, and a big fucking slice of tomato right in there. Just a juicy ass piece. Just half that thing. Don't even slice it. Just half it. Smush it up in there. Eli, it's been a pleasure having you, man. Hey, it's been great being here.
Starting point is 01:13:51 Where can people find you and follow you? You can find me on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at OhGreatIt'sEli on both. There you go. You can find our show, Ridiculous Romance, at RidicRomance on both those platforms as well. There you go. And is there a tweet or some of the work of social media you've been enjoying? You know, just this morning, I came across a tweet from Dana Schwartz,
Starting point is 01:14:14 who's a really funny comedian, and it just said, Wizards knew about the Holocaust and used none of their magic to help. And I didn't know what that meant meant but it turns out it's the premise for the new fantastic beasts movie is called the secrets of dumbledore and it is about the wizard's involvement leading up to world war ii oh no and i can't imagine why like i think i was i think we were all better off just assuming that that you those two universes didn't exist in the same place honestly like i was better off never even thinking about the wizards and the nazis at the same time in my head so i don't know why this is the premise for the
Starting point is 01:14:58 new movie but apparently it is that's that's supposed to endear them i guess you know they're like or they're gonna be like or is it like trying to like endear them? I guess. Or is it trying to justify to say, hey, it was a tough time, man. It was a complicated time. Even though they had powers no human had ever seen, they weren't sure if they should help these other people who were in dire straits.
Starting point is 01:15:17 That's amazing that the whole Harry Potter universe is kind of based around a Nazi metaphor, but then it's kind of an imperfect one. So it's funny that they're like, yeah, they're not Nazis at all. We were never saying that, actually. The wizarding world is kind of like the Confederate South in the sense that they never learned to do anything because they were just always reliant on this horrifying thing that made everything super easy for them. But that's a longer discussion. Miles, where can people find you?
Starting point is 01:16:04 What's a tweet you've been enjoying? Twitter, Instagram, at Miles of Grey. Also, the other show, 420 Day Fiance with Sophie Alexandra. Come check that out. A tweet that I like. Wow. Got a couple good ones. The first one is from Taming Fred Savage at Fred Taming.
Starting point is 01:16:23 Tweeted, alive? You may be entitled to compensation. Which just feels like about right, about the mood right now. I think I'm old. This can't be. There must be a class action suit I can get in on for life being like this. And then literary agent Needing Jerk at Rajon Delman tweeted, Call Me Maybe is 10 years old the popularity of the song has officially outlasted the concept of calling someone on the phone and hopefulness hey there it is so yeah and hopefulness so yeah a few concepts that we
Starting point is 01:17:00 talked about today let's see pat regan tweeted I think there should be an Oscar category called TV show that gets an Oscar, actually, which I think is a good idea. The Eli Kremendahl two days in a row tweeted, remembering the time I started a new job and nobody told me what to do. So I spent two full weeks just scrolling Instagram before finally asking my manager what my job was. Office jobs are a literal joke, which ties in nicely with our conversation yesterday about bullshit jobs. Then Eric Curtin tweeted, you're in our DMs. She's
Starting point is 01:17:34 actually a catfish account I created. You're in my DMs. We are dating now. I love you so much. You can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien. You can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist. We're at The Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook fan page and a website, DailyZeitgeist.com,
Starting point is 01:17:52 where we post our episodes and our footnotes, where we link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode, as well as a song that we think you might enjoy. Miles, what song are we sending people to go on tour? Oh, this is a song that we think you might enjoy miles what song are we sending people to go oh this is a treat and maybe a treat for people who love you know dub reggae old school you know trojan type stuff uh from back in the day but there's this artist named pachi man and i played a song what the fuck i never heard of this like dub artist this is this dude pachi garcia who's uh this puerto rican artist who is currently making like reggae dub songs but like quite literally honoring the same recording
Starting point is 01:18:33 techniques of the of his predecessors and it sounds so authentically just like of the time it blows my mind and i just love like when musicians and producers put in like that level of effort to really try and replicate like to the like the tape sound or the tape they use to get these tracks going so this is a modern song that you're gonna think came out of the fucking late 60s early 70s from jamaica but it's actually uh patchy man p-a-c-h-y-m-a-n and this track is called guy goodwin and all the stuff is just so dope to listen to um and if you like that group krung bin who i've called out a few times on the show he's actually touring with them um so that's that would probably be a dope show to check out yeah yeah all right well the daily zeitgeist the production of iheart radio for
Starting point is 01:19:22 more podcasts from iheart radio visit the i visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That's going to do it for us this morning. But hey, we're back this afternoon to tell you what is trending, and we'll talk to you all then. Bye. Bye. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?
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Starting point is 01:19:56 Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions sponsored by Gilead now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.
Starting point is 01:20:08 What happens when a professional football player's career ends and the applause fades and the screaming fans move on? I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. For some former NFL players, a new faith provides answers. You mix homesteading with guns and church. Voila! You got straight away. They try to save everybody. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. It's me, Katie Couric.
Starting point is 01:20:41 You know, if you've been following me on social media, you know I love love to cook or at least try, especially alongside some of my favorite chefs and foodies like Benny Blanco, Jake Cohen, Lighty Hoyk, Alison Roman, and Ina Garten. So I started a free newsletter called Good Taste to share recipes, tips, and kitchen must-haves. Just sign up at katiecouric.com slash goodtaste. That's K-A-T-I-E-C-O-U-R-I-C dot com slash goodtaste. I promise your taste buds will be happy you did. Señora Sex Ed is not your mommy's sex talk. This show is la plática like you've never heard it before. We're breaking the stigma and silence
Starting point is 01:21:23 around sex and sexuality in Latinx communities. This podcast is an intergenerational conversation between Latinas from Gen X to Gen Z. We're your hosts, Viosa and Mala. You might recognize us from our first show, Locatora Radio. Listen to Señora Sex Ed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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