The Daily Zeitgeist - Coldplay > Radiohead, China = Black Mirror, JFK: Solved? 10.27.17

Episode Date: October 27, 2017

In episode 15, Jack & Miles are joined by comedian Teresa Lee to discuss John Kelly being a monster, Fox New's weird claims about Radiohead stealing from Coldplay, Xi Jinping & China's new citizen rating system, plus Jack's JFK theories & more. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Listen to Hungry for History on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, the internet, and welcome to Season 3, Episode 5 of The Daily Zeitgeist for October 27, 2017. you get your podcasts. a.k.a. Obi Cool J, my AIM screen name. Rest in peace. And I'm joined by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray. Yes, I just want to start off with a little fact people may or may not know, and I want to pose this, guys, to you. True or false, Elton John helped Eminem get clean. True.

Okay, yes. But I didn't know that, and that is crazy. Eminem called when he was addicted to Viking and called Elton John, and he got him through his addiction. He was a recovering drug addict, right? Yeah, it was crazy. I didn't think, hey, anyway, just want to throw facts out. That's my new thing. You should have said Billy Joel.

That would have been just weird enough. Oh, I got a Billy Joel fact. How about this? Did you know that he buys up the front row of every one of his shows and gives them to people who have cheap seats because he wants real fans in the front row. Oh, hell yeah. Boom.

That's awesome. There's some real fans. Billy Joel is the man. And we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by the hilarious stand-up comedy writer, just all-around great person, Teresa Lee, a.k.a. Larissa T. on Twitter. What's up? How are you on Twitter. What's up? How are you? Good. What's up?

Do you know, I've never, I don't know what Billy Joel looks like to this day because people have said that he's ugly and I like his music. Right. And his music makes, don't, I don't want to see it. Okay, that's fine. Are you just bullying him? No, I've like actively gone out of my way to not look him up. Because I don't want to see an ugly man and connect it to these songs I like.

Have you seen Star Wars? Yes. Have you seen Darth Vader with his mask off when he's dying? Is that really what he looks like? No. He's not that bad. He's endearingly ugly. I'm not saying it's that bad.

I'm just saying there's a picture on Twitter recently that went around surprisingly similar. I don't want... Not to ugly shame. I think it's fine if you're ugly. I just hear the music and think of him as this handsome Harry Connick Jr. Yeah, I want to imagine this piano man that's just cool and... Just picture a piano with arms and legs. ...rooting.

I would just do that. That's what we had. My favorite T-shirt. We had a brief T-shirt store cracked. And the one T-shirt that I was like adamant was going to be a hit was the cover of Billy Joel Piano Man. And it was just a transformer that was like also a piano. And nobody bought it except for me. I like bought three. People's taste is trash i would have bought the piano man shirt that's fucking awesome uh theresa what is a search uh from the past few

days that is revealing about who you are as a human being oh um i searched how do you wake yourself up from a dream oh whoa because i had one of those like dreams within a dreams you know when you like go to sleep in the morning like you go back to sleep that's usually when it happens and then you dream you woke up and had a day yeah so i had a dream like that but it was like so many layers and it didn't i didn't know i was dreaming and uh i tried to wake myself up once i figured so in the dream i woke up and got ready the only thing that was weird was i had a wig on but the night before i was trying to wait on for this like show i had to do and in the dream which i thought was real i woke up and looked at myself and thought oh great i put my wig on to sleep so i can get in character uh that's normal perfectly

reasonable yeah sleeping with a book under your pillow before it does my sleeping wig right yeah i always wear my sleeping wig but then i got ready in the dream and like started going about my day and like was on my way out the door and then i realized like wait a minute i wouldn't wear a wig to sleep oh that's so you kind of had a lucid dream like you kind of became aware but i couldn't get out of it so then i was in it for a while and i was like okay i gotta wake up i know i'm dreaming i gotta get ready and i couldn't get out and then i think i eventually just like did that thing where you blink hard enough and i woke up right um but then i looked it up because i was like oh man i was hoping that the payoff to that story was going to be that you searched it in the dream and then you went and checked your search history when you woke up you

still had the wig on and i'm still dreaming i don't know sometimes things like that like mess up my reality so for a few days i'm like wait a minute do you ever lucid dream do you know how to lose i don't know how to lose it that's crazy because i try many times too and i'm just i don't have the discipline you just have to wake up and write shit down yeah that's what they say like oh every time if you can start building that memory you'll start to see the patterns in your dream and be like, oh, okay, I don't have my shoe on, which means I'm in the dream. I used to keep a dream journal when I was a kid, and I used to lucid dream more. Yeah.

Damn. All right, well, I'm going to start doing that. All right, what's something that you believe is overrated? Overrated? I think adult birthdays are overrated. I just had a birthday and i think i'm over it i don't think we should celebrate birthdays past 18 wait why they just feel because as an adult you have to tell people it's your birthday to get them to celebrate and that

feels weird that's true yeah and then also like but if you don't which i kind of tried to play off yesterday i was like i don't know like i don't want to tell people in person it's my birthday but then you start feeling bad a little bit right and you don't and i'm like i don't want to tell people in person it's my birthday. But then you start feeling bad a little bit. Right. And I'm like, I don't want to care. But then I do kind of care when people are rude to you. And you're like, but it's my birthday. And so it's like this thing where I'm like, I got to mention it to get people to be nice to me. Or not mention it and just feel bad for dumb things.

Right, right, right. And I think they're dumb. Yeah, I don't like to tell people about my birthday. I know. We were in Atlanta together as a podcast team just going to the Coke Museum. We just go on a little fun. No, that's where the corporate headquarters are. And we spent an entire day with Miles not knowing it was his birthday. Yeah, that's real.

I don't know if it's like an Asian thing. I just didn't want – It's a Virgo thing. Yeah, no, that's true. No, actually, a it's like an Asian thing. I just didn't want... It's a Virgo thing. Yeah, no, that's true. No, actually, a lot of my Virgo friends are kind of like... I mean, some people are like, Virgo season, Virgo season. And some of my other friends are just kind of like, you hit them up on their birthday, and you're like, oh, cool, thanks.

What are you doing? They're like, nothing. So anyway, I get that. But also, it is good to have a birthday. I know what you mean. When you start not getting the thing you're used to, people will be like, oh, hey, happy birthday. You kind of miss it a little bit right yeah yeah it's a double-edged sword well happy birthday happy birthday yeah what's something that's underrated

um oh weird al oh because i know that i don't think people don't like him but i just he's back in the news because he's going on tour to do just original songs and i i was like thinking about him and uh kind of like just went on a rabbit hole where i looked him up and everything and i remember like when i was a kid i was like whatever i took him for granted but his story is so cool i like that so his no yeah that is true yeah really just he was like the only guy who made like he just made a forged a new thing like became famous making parodies and i just think like yeah i don't know i was like this is we should have something for like something like an air horn or like something that shoots confetti anytime somebody does the same thing in the same week

jamie loftus who also has a weird connection to you so jamie was our guest on Tuesday's episode. And she said Weird Al was overrated. What? Because she said she's like dated too many dudes who are like, take his music seriously. Or a lot of guys who said that was the first concert they ever went to. Right. It was like a Weird Al concert. That's funny.

No, I love Jamie. Yeah. We do have a weird connection. What's something that's underrated? Oh, I was going to say writing things down, but I'm going to make it more specific. Writing in a diary because I think people don't, like, we every day we're on our phones now, and I kind of feel like nothing lasts, and I kind of just feel like. Twitter?

Yeah, but even that, like, you know, you use TimeHop, but then it's really hard to go back and just see where you were in a day. And I, like, I used to write in a journal all the time, and I kind of stopped with social media because I felt like I was expressing myself. But then I feel like there's ears just lost. Like, I don't really have any tracking of who I was. And you can't, like, look at some random tweet and be like, that's right. Like, fuck Sriracha caps. All right. Where was I, that's right. Like, fuck Sriracha caps. All right.

Where was I doing? Yeah. Yeah, we exist now in like a hyper reality that time, it's, I don't know if it lines up with me just moving to LA where there are no seasons. And so everything just seems like time truly is a flat circle, you guys. But I just, I don't know. It seems now like, yeah, everything's kind of a blur. Including, like, apparently I have a son now.

I don't remember any of this. Yeah. I thought that was just some baby you were FaceTiming earlier. All right. We're going to get into the show. You all know Teresa Lee now. You're very lucky. So what is The Daily Zeitgeist?

We're trying to take a sample of the ideas that are out there today at this very moment changing the world, whether we're looking or not, whether you're looking or not. We talk about politics, the president, news, but we also talk about movies and supermarket tabloids. We also talk about movies and supermarket tabloids. We talked about Moana yesterday because that movie is apparently taking over the minds of children under the age of 12. So it's not always like whatever is on the front page of CNN that day. We're just trying to kind of help you get to know the sort of national shared consciousness a little better. That sounds more hippie-ish than we actually are. I like that. So we're going to start out with a news story.

General Kelly, I think it's just been sort of a sea change, at least in my mind, where for whatever reason just assumed that he wasn't a bad guy because he was not Donald Trump. Right. And people were like, oh, he'll get things under control when he took over for Reince. There's no way to say that name. That doesn't sound like an angry German. And you have to ball your fists up every time. Reince!

Your voice just flickered when you said that. up every time. The lights just flickered when you said that. But apparently, so he had that press conference last week where, you know, he spoke about like what happens when a soldier dies, his son died. It was all that stuff was very emotional and touching. But then he also kind of put forth this weird version of the world in which he feels sorry for people who aren't military and people who are military are the highest type of people and we should be obeying military generals. It was all very strange.

And apparently, so when ICE was doing raids on illegal immigrants, we're now kind of more facts are trickling out. Or maybe we're just like actually looking into it because we're like, oh, this guy might be a shithead. Well, yeah, some some law students do Freedom of Information Act got some of these emails that were being sent from from DHS at the time to kind of look into what the internal communications were in those early raids, like when Trump had just taken office. So when ICE was doing raids on illegal immigrants, some of them had no criminal record at all. But Kelly sent a department wide email demanding that ICE agents send him the most violent, egregious cases to present to the media in order to, like, portray them as criminals. And then there is in The New York Times yesterday a story about a meeting in the White House where they were talking about, like, setting a acceptable number of immigrants to, you know,

come to America. And it was like, you know, General Kelly and Stephen Miller, Donald Trump. And what was the story, Miles, that like the lowest possible number was 50,000. I think they were debating whether or not to take it from anywhere from like 100,000 down to 50,000 of the amount of immigrants they would accept. And they were going around asking people their opinions on what an acceptable level was. And they got to Kelly and he said between zero and one. So a half. Right. One child.

Right. That's the nicest possible interpretation of that. Well, he didn't say zero. He could have said zero. Could be that he's like cutting people in half by saying between zero and one but uh yeah it's just some sinister shit that i don't know guys terrifying uh and he also used to run gitmo as we've talked about on previous episodes so i mean you could see it in his eyes he looks he looks like right before a super villain gets their mutant powers.

It's like, oh, I can kind of see the darkness in his eyes. He just needs that magnetism or whatever to then become a full-on supervillain, maybe. Yeah. Historians of the future are going to be like, wait, you didn't see that this guy was evil immediately? Look at his photo. What the fuck is wrong with you guys? All right, let's move on to the brilliant cultural commentators at fox news this is just going to be a quick one uh gentleman by the name of greg gutfeld who uh that sounds like a redditor commenter name like greg gutfeld yeah i mean he's got he's got a show called the

greg gutfeld show as you imagine and it's like for anyone who watches fox it's like it's the most stupid panel show that they have like where people just have they know nothing and talk about everything kind of like this show but uh except he's got some really interesting opinions on music and one specifically really stuck out to us uh that he made recently i think he was on tuesday uh he has a bone to pick with Radiohead, and he let it be known. You know, Kat, the interesting thing is Radiohead is a fine band,

but they stole everything from Coldplay. No! What? Shut up, Greg Gutfeld. You don't know what you're talking about. Wait, Radiohead and Coldplay aren't the same band? Okay, Teresa, you're triggering me. I'm getting triggered!

And we ended up, like, this caused us to research. Yo, it set us off in here. Right, we were like, alright, like, Yellow came out the same year as Kid A, which is like Radiohead's, once they were done making listenable music, started making like really challenging like art music.

So it was it's just his time. His timeline is insane. And Coldplay might be the most derivative thing of another thing in terms of their relationship to Radiohead. Like they they steal their chord progressions from Radiohead. I've witnessed Chris, whatever, the lead singer. Chris Martin. Come on.

Have some respect. He's like a human ham sandwich. The human ham sandwich, Chris Martin perform. And he actually like steals the way Tomork plays the piano where his head is like vibrating back and forth like chris martin does that just like that's it's down to that level that he watches their performances and is like yes that i am that thing i mean yeah aside from sure maybe ticket sales or like money made that aside, if you're talking about the straight up art of the work that Radiohead has done and what Coldplay has done, they're not even comparable. I mean, OK Computer and Kid A are like two of the greatest albums of all time.

I can't even tell you. I mean, what's a great Coldplay album? The Time one that Yellow is on? I don't even know. They rip off themselves. Yeah, that's a good point. It's the same song. Coldplay is derivative of Coldplay.

Anyway, yes. Look, guys, get with it. Don't be on Greg Gutfeld's side. Know when someone is pushing real false news at you. They did not steal everything from Coldplay. Alright, we're going to go to a break right now. And when we come back, China. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.

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iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast is an intergenerational conversation between Latinas from Gen X to Gen Z. We're covering everything from body image to representation in film and television. We even interview iconic Latinas like Puerto Rican actress Ana Ortiz. I felt in control of my own physical body and my own self. I was on birth control. I had sort of had my first sexual experience. If you're in your

señora era or know someone who is, then this is the show for you. We're your hosts, Diosa and Mala, and you might recognize us from our flagship podcast, Locatora Radio. We're so excited for you to hear our brand new podcast, Señora Sex Ed. Listen to Señora Sex ed on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast and we're back uh so i wanted to talk about china uh xi jinping uh had a had a big speech a couple days ago uh where he announced that he would not be leaving office and introduced something called Xi Jinping thought, which is sort of a new form of philosophy on what it means to be Chinese and like how socialism works. And it just made me realize how happy I am to not live there.

The correspondent on the show that I was listening to, like one of the NPR air talk on the air or whatever, asked what the philosophy entailed. And the expert on China was like, that's for the graduate students of China to study and pick apart over the coming centuries. And it just made me realize like how awful that is that like you just have to sort of start studying whatever this guy just decides to throw off as like the official national philosophy or whatever. So it sounds terrible you so to even formulate what this actual philosophy is the students have to then parse through like his own like how i think he

wrote it down i just think the person was like it's they're they're asking how it differs from uh mal thought which was a previous leader's sort of philosophy and uh she was just like i wouldn't even pretend to begin well because the because he also like he's in the pantheon of great chinese leaders right now because the only people that are written in the constitution are mao and i think dung xiaoping and him right right so he just added himself to that list he's wedding him it's just like a pinterest board of quotes right past chinese writers right i don't know it like i don't care who it is like no country should have all their sharpest minds occupied thinking about like the

ideas of one person let alone like just the head of state who didn't come to power because he like was particularly like philosophically profound it's just just seems like such a fucking waste of time um well weirdly i mean i totally agree but weirdly in history like even in chinese dynasties which i know ironically like the new china doesn't really want to teach their history but chinese dynasties a lot of these dynasties uh i know ironically like the new china doesn't really want to teach their history but chinese dynasties a lot of these dynasties uh leaders would just kind of introduce like new doctrines and then hundreds of years later we we look back and we're like oh okay this is this makes sense but i i do think they have a history of doing that but those dynasties also

killed a bunch of people and were super shitty so so and you're saying they were like progressive philosophies sometimes yeah i know like sometimes they uh well confucius was super misogynistic and then uh empress uh woo kind of just came in and was like the new thing is that we're just gonna uh be a matriarchy we're gonna like raise women and so hundreds of years later you look back you're like oh this actually put a lot of women in power. By the time she killed a bunch of men and just like people, innocent people in order to push her thought. Hey, that's where this country is going. You guys pretty much men. If nobody sticks up for men, I don't know what's going to happen.

Hey, look, I didn't think we were going to bring this up to later in the show because we have our new segment called Talk Sick Masculinity. But yeah, bro, we got to think about our rights for real. We're talking some sick masculinity. Um, but yeah. Yeah. Teresa, you've been to China.

Didn't you like shoot? I did. Yeah. I went to, I shot a commercial there last year. Um, and it was very interesting going, um,

cause I, but there's like so many interesting layers of it, but I'll just kind of briefly, the weirdest part was just how like fake everything felt. Because I went to Shanghai where they want you to feel like it's doing very well. And there's a lot of Westerners there and a lot of commerce. And a lot of the locals they'll kind of, who work there will live outside of the city in really, really poor areas.

And what I noticed is like every block there's a mall. And these are like, not like, you know, suburban middle-class malls. These are like fancy high-end malls with like really high-end designers like Versace, Gucci, Prada, every, like every block there's one of these malls and they're just empty. There's nobody buying stuff. It's very, very dystopian feeling. A lot of people in there are just workers cleaning the banisters, the floor, so it's very shiny. And we just hung out there on our days off. My sister and I went to shoot it because it was air conditioned, but it felt so creepy. Yeah, I don't know.

And then you're always being watched. Truly, the internet is just monitored. You can't send a text without the government reading it. Yeah, it's like my argument is always, well, yeah, I mean, sure, Facebook gives away our privacy. But it's not like anybody gives a shit enough about me to like monitor what I'm texting to somebody. But yeah, in China, they are very aware and on top of that shit. And they have people whose job it is to monitor it and to care. It's like a really big Disneyland where there's just people watching you. Right. That's what it seems like to me. I've seen all these different

architectural things that are just copies off of like American buildings. Like they have a White House. They have an Eiffel Tower, which, yeah, don't let the fake media tell you that it's French. It's really American. But they yeah, it seems like and I think you were you were telling me that at parties in China, they will have like, oh, yeah, white people who show up. They just so this is a job you can have in. It's I feel like there's probably some version of it here, but not with race.

But there is straight up. If you're a white, like traditional white looking like blonde person, you can make money in China just attending events. And they just say you're a celebrity. And people don't have access to information as much. So they can dress a girl up in a really nice dress and just say she's Miss USA. And you get paid to go to these events and it adds social currency for these events if there's white people there. Because they still sort of glorify American celebrities. But there's people, they're sort of glorify American celebrities. But there's just like there's people with no they're like nobody is just random people who live in China get paid to go to parties.

Sounds like the Soho house. Right. And be like, oh, I'm a celebrity. Who are these people? Yeah. Well, yeah, because I guess this all sort of all boils down to this new thing of that. Apparently, the idea of the social credit system is about to become a reality in China by 2020. Like it will be a mandatory program where basically the government will monitor things like where you shop, what your online activity is, how much time you spend playing video games, if you pay your bills on time, all this stuff

to basically create like a score to sort of dictate whether or not you are trustworthy or a upstanding person. And that'll like, that'll determine like your access to things like internet speed, like how quickly you can check into a hotel or a flight, how like how freely you can travel abroad. So these, these whole kinds of things are like basically we're now beginning to quantify and rate human beings yeah like that black mirror episode nose dive right from season three episode one is basically about that um that's so insane so

yeah and then like also the kind of things you post on social media will will also affect your score so like if you are obviously like being critical of the government right now is like a no-no but if you even do something if you're if you have anything like remotely resembling like a criticism that could affect your score not only your score but people within your social network like your score is also tied to the people that you associate with um and this sounds like some, you know, like just Orwellian shit, but this is like one, this is actually in the process of happening. Well, I think they already have some version of it,

but it's voluntary and it's going to be mandatory. Yeah. And people are like already like bragging about how good their scores are. And like, because now like we're starting to figure, like they've gamified your obedience to the system essentially. But the creepiest thing about that article is they talk about the black market that's going to come out of that. And it's just like people are going to start selling reputations. There's different layers to this.

Right. Yeah, because we already buy bots and followers. Like, people do that on Twitter and Instagram. So that's naturally an extension if you need to up your credits. Right. And there are, like, NBA players who have writing teams who write their Twitters. And I'm sure lots of celebrities do. Yeah. And I mean, the economists just had this whole thing about facial recognition technology, which I know about because I read The Economist. But they were saying that a lot of the forward movement on this technology is happening in China because they have every one of their citizens faces in a database.

So they're able to, like, run all these algorithms that can basically both identify faces and also, like, predict certain things about the people that, you know, who knows how accurate it is. But it's yeah, i don't know i think people think of china as like this huge economy and yeah we're vaguely aware that they're communist but uh you know it's just this huge successful economy but i think more and more as we go forward we're going to be uh looking at them as sort of this place that is showing us how badly some of this technology can go. Well, I don't even feel like the borders are as clear as we think. We think, oh, it's so far away, but the internet, a lot of Chinese developers are making the apps that we use.

I don't think Snapchat is Chinese, but just using that as an example, how much time we spend looking at our faces on a phone on a daily basis. And if a Chinese app launches here, which they totally can. And if it gets popular, like we're now putting data, American data into that app and they're collecting our faces. So I feel like this kind of thing can blow up so much faster than we think. But I also think it's important to too. A version of that is already happening just in culture in general. Everything is, we rate things on Yelp or whatever.

We get rated on Uber. And think about even that. Jack, we've all talked about this, how we get our Uber score up. We get all hurt when we're like, yo, my shit used to be a five or a four or nine. I'm like, now I'm a four or seven. Now I'm going to be really nice to these drivers

to start getting... Like passive-aggressively nice, nine i'm like now i'm a four seven like now it'd be really nice to these drivers right to start getting so like like passive aggressively nice where i'm like you right but still like talk to me right but see like even how but like we're even seeing how scores these like scores are not even really meaningless and don't even affect our ability to like get a bank loan how we're even subtly modifying our behaviors based on this like number yeah i mean i write every podcast i go, so you guys are going in a book. Four point. How are we doing? Out of ten, I'm assuming.

Do you need more coffee? Do you need some more? Let me know. Yeah, it can be really addictive. Like, even checking your credit score can be a little bit addictive. Checking your Uber score, I got real into that. It was unfortunate. Do you think people are going to start?

Because in China, what you're saying is you're going to have a totally different living experience based on your score. Do you think in a way people are going to start developing like different, like there's going to be like communities of like lower score or bigger or higher? Who knows? I mean, like it's sometimes they're saying like on some dating websites, like if you have a higher score, like you'll be ranked higher in a dating website or like to be like, Oh, these are, you know, do good or people are like people within your score. So I think it's like, it'll even create a more defined cast system even just based off of like what, what the things, the products you buy or who you talk to, the music you listen to.

I couldn't imagine what my social credit score would look like right now. Cause like I play a lot of video games and I have a lot of scumbag friends right yeah thank god we don't have that good place well in the good place um it's like the after they die but they they you accumulate points during your life but you don't you don't see them until you die but it's sort of like this like based on if you're a good person. It is another fictional reality where there is a central ranking system. Yeah. So basically all these different shows are like predicting it in one way or another. And yeah, I mean, in the Black Mirror episode, I won't spoil what happens in the end.

But just the thing that they suggest is just everybody is doing these superficial interactions that are sort of partially based on fear because you're where you have to be outwardly pleasant because you're worried that they right so you're like giving them a high ranking so they'll give you a high ranking and like that's how you interact with people uh which is also what i found happening to me when my uber score started dipping i was like hey man so how you doing yeah what's going on i like that hat man so how long you had this car she's just like yo so chill out bro you're sweating all over my seat i also feel like it could be very liberating if early on you just decide you don't care but i don't know but if

it fucks you up like your ability to access things like the internet like how yo it's like if you go low enough you're gonna come out on the other side maybe i don't know i like that theory yo i think there's different yeah i'm just kind of playing into a system and then there's kind of If you go low enough, you're going to come out on the other side. Maybe. I don't know. Oh, I like that theory. Yo. I think there's different. Yeah. There's kind of playing into the system and then there's kind of like breaking out of But the thing is, but the reason why you wouldn't is because this score actually determines your access to things that like you need in your day to day life. So you couldn't just be like, fuck the system.

Well, to be like, okay, fam, well then you can get slow internet speed. You don't have to go anywhere. You don't have to get alone. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. But that's what privilege is. Right.

And people, that's invisible. and people live with different levels of privilege yeah you can either just like feel bad about it or you can kind of try to like get woke or whatever i don't know this is a little different but i just mean like i think there's gonna be it's not a what it's not gonna be a two-way street there's gonna be all these other layers of course i mean when you think about it too like people will find a way like people always do to game the system no matter what it is like we do that all over the planet so yeah black market score inflating will will be another thing that they'll probably have to deal with or like honestly if it's all about the books i buy or whatever what i'm buying like then fine i'll buy whatever books i need to right my score will

help me get a nicer house or whatever crazy out I'll still talk crazy out of my mouth when you see me in the street. Or, okay, here's a crazy – but now it is very fictional. But I feel like – because people who are more educated and trying to combat the system will probably not have as high of a score because they'll probably be questioning authority. Right. So maybe a secret code will develop where if you have a certain low score, you try to get to a number. I don't know what's out. Let's say it's out of 100. And you're like, OK, 33.

If you have a 33, that's like you're in this club of like we're resisting. So maybe a secret code will come out of this on purpose. Yeah. And then you like it's kind of like the, you know. Yeah. Let them know. A little like code. I feel like stuff like that comes out of crazy.

We'll see. I mean, it starts in 2020. So. Right. I'm sure within a few years of that. Yeah, that's what I would hope because people used to be anti-establishment. And I feel like a lot of that has gone away with social media. I feel like people just are now bought in to the system to a large degree. Like, nobody's punk rock about their credit score, you know, because credit score really determines what you have access to. And so, like, nobody's like, ah, I didn't bother establishing credit.

And people are like, man, that's cool, because it just affects your ability to have a life. Like, I wonder how much, how possible that's going to be. Hopefully possible. Well, because it's the carrot and the stick. But then there will be lenders who are down, who will like, you know, I don't know. Well, right. Because if everybody takes their score, they'll be like, hey, commerce is halting.

There's going to be, yeah, I think there will be a resistance. Maybe, I don't know. I mean, I'm not there, so I don't know if people are resisting. Come back. It'll probably be season 200, and we'll see where we're at. All right. We're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back after these messages. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente.

And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions. Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice.

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from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school

to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? I mean, the Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels with the image of the Biscuits. It's right here in black and white in print. A lion. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch is a leader. You choose hills that you want to die on. Why would we want to be the losing team?

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So yesterday, a bunch of JFK assassination records were dumped into the National Archives. But I did want to, since the JFK assassination is in the news, and this is one of my favorite things to talk about, I wanted to talk about the theory that I read that I think is most convincing as to what happened. To start off, is there a theory that is like most popular first because i've at first i've not really heard the one that you talk about a lot but is there one that most

people tend to believe in a lot of people believe the cia was involved a lot of people believe that cuba and russia colluded to like do it because oswald had defected to uh russia and lived in russia for like a year or so um but he like tried to sort of get involved with the soviets and they were like yo man you're like clearly a maniac like we're not we're not interested they were even like yo pause fam yeah yeah exactly so he like did not have did not gain access to the higher levels of power. There are some weird meetings supposedly with the CIA or weird coincidences where he was like in the same building as the CIA office. But. So I did an episode of a podcast I did three episodes of called Good Question, where I looked into this. And so there's this guy, Bill James, who invented Moneyball. He invented basically baseball saber metrics, which I don't care that much about

baseball. But it's interesting in the in the sense that he's this sort of polymath, self-taught guy who was a night security guard at some factory and just sat there and read and read and read and like uh watched baseball and like just analyzed statistics and so this guy in the middle of nowhere just with not much going on starts sending out this baseball prospectus where he's like hey all of the assumptions about baseball are wrong, everyone. And it like slowly catches on with a bunch of different people and eventually catches on with Billy Bean, who is the GM with the Oakland A's, which is where the whole Moneyball story kicks off. But that whole theory is started by a guy named Bill James, who is just at the time was a night guard in the middle of nowhere. And he's not even in the movie Moneyball. He now is in the front office for the Boston Red Sox.

But the other thing that he is obsessive about besides baseball is true crime. And he wrote a book called Popular Crime, I think, a few years ago, where he went through his theories on what happened and all these different crimes. He basically he doesn't have any special access. He's just read every single document that has been released and has read like every single book that puts forth the theory on what happened. And basically he thinks this is what happened he has he's like either oswald acted alone or this theory is the only one that i've heard that was plausible first off to set up what we do know is that jfk was hit with two bullets yes so he he was uh hit with two shots there was a shot from oswald that struck the curb next to the car,

and some cement jumped up, and that's where you see JFK kind of touch the side of his neck, because I think cement hit him in the side of his neck. Then there is a second shot that goes directly through his sort of upper back, lower neck, and comes out the other side. You see JFK's arms kind of go up, which is this standard human response when your spinal cord is severed, which is what happened. The bullet went right through his spinal cord.

So he would have actually been paralyzed and potentially a vegetable, even if this third shot hadn't happened. But the one there's a third shot that is the gruesome one that makes like the Zapruder film, the footage of the assassination that we've all seen almost unwatchable, that it's a shot that takes off the right half of his skull, basically, and his brains like go everywhere. And so this theory comes from a guy named Howard Donahue, who was a gun store owner in Texas, who was like sort of an expert on ballistics and guns. And he first got involved in just the JFK assassination coverage because CBS

News was investigating the theory that you couldn't get three shots off with the gun Oswald was using in like as quickly as he did. And I think that's even in like the movie JFK that like you can't get those shots off quickly enough. And this guy, Donahue, who's like a gun expert and just badass with guns, gun expert and just badass it with guns, both gets three shots off quickly enough with the exact gun and also hits a target that is moving in the same place that JFK's would. So he proves, no, you could get those shots off. The thing that he can't figure out, though, is that so Jeff or so Oswald was using this rifle that shoots a heavy, slow, like relative to other bullets, full metal jacket bullet that tends to stay intact. And for instance, when the second shot that he shot hit JFK, it went through him and like went all over the place.

It went through him and like went all over the place. It's the magic quote magic bullet that Oliver Stone talks about, because that whole theory is based on just misaligning like the two people in the car. It's not a magic bullet. It's if you just like move the people to where they were. The guy sitting in the front seat who it also struck was just sitting below JFK. But so it's a straight line. This bullet just is very heavy and it goes all the way through him, goes through another guy and ends up somewhere in the car. But that's how that bullet behaves is it stays together. And the third shot that takes off half of Kennedy's head is the way a bullet would behave if it was one of those disintegrating bullets from an assault weapon that is spinning so fast that the bullet actually comes apart when it strikes something. And that's how you get like this just gruesome, devastating, devastating, huge wound.

Rather than like a clean shot, like just through and through. It's just as a ballistics expert and as a, you know, expert on guns, he's like, those are two separate bullets that are behaving in completely separate ways. So he starts looking into it and he's like, the third shot that takes off half his head doesn't seem like it's even coming from the same place that Oswald was shooting from. It seems like it's coming from like an AR type rifle, like which are these assault rifles that are not full metal jacket bullets they're spinning so fast that when they strike something they come apart um and that's how the the bullet behaves when it hits jfk he is like but i mean obviously somebody would have seen a person who's standing right behind jK, which is where it seems like the bullet is coming from,

and carrying an AR like that. So he was like, confused, but he, you know, put this out there and was like, it just doesn't make sense, like from a ballistics perspective. And then two years after he realizes this, he sees a photograph taken from in front of the motorcade. And right where he thinks the third shot should have been coming from, there's a Secret Service agent holding an AR-15. And he's, like, standing up in the car trailing JFK's car. So he comes up with this theory that basically when JFK is hit with the second Oswald shot, with the bullet that his full metal jacket stays intact and goes through him and all over the car, that the cars slow down because they realize that everybody's being shot.

And the Secret Service agents in the car behind JFK are like freaking out. And one of them stands up to turn around to, you know, look at where Oswald is shooting from. And because the cars slow down, he falls forward, the guy who's standing up with the AR, and accidentally lets off a shot, and that's the third shot that takes off half of JFK's head. Woo! You heard it here, folks. Cue that music up. Oh, a different one.

It's the music they play to mock me when I... Actually, that wasn't a mock. That is very, very interesting. So the idea would be there are some pretty suspicious things about the aftermath of the assassination. Kennedy's body is immediately whisked away onto a plane. And his brother, Robert, who is the attorney general, I think at the time, attorney general, is is like adamant that they get the body back to him. And the secret service, like basically steals his body from where it was pronounced dead.

And the doctors are like, what are you doing? Like, that's, this is not how autopsies happen. They basically like push past him, get it on a plane back to Washington. Uh,

eventually his brain disappears. That's like a weird thing that nobody's ever really been able to explain. And so when he was buried, there was no brain. I think that's right. Wow. And so the idea would be that this is why there's a cover-up, because

they're trying to protect the Secret Service agent from, you know, and also trying to protect JFK's sort of legacy legacy because it's less strange. Like if you die by a gruesome accident, it's less sort of, I don't know, noble seeming. Yeah, there's no sort of myth, that mythical quality than like some dude accidentally shooting you.

Yeah. And there are a couple other things that happened at the hospital. Some like a witness who was there remembers distinctly hearing a Secret Service agent on the phone with RFK saying there's been a terrible accident. So the theory is that that's where the cover ups coming from, just protecting the Secret Service agent. coming from just protecting the Secret Service agent. And that's where a lot of the weird sort of mysterious, confounding details come from. There is a cover-up, but it's just to protect the reputation of this guy who was just trying to do his job and had basically the worst day of work that anyone has ever had in the history of the universe. But he wouldn't – so when you first said that, I was like, oh, does that oh does that mean there's some inside like secret service but it's straight up just an accident it just

seems like it would be too uh because it wouldn't make sense if they already had lee harvey oswald shooting why would the right they wouldn't have set it up that way right exactly and it also seems like if you are going to hire an assassin to like shoot from the window, why would you then have a Secret Service agent like in the car right behind him be like, I'm shooting him, too. And so one of the questions I had is like, why didn't anybody see this gun go off? Like, wouldn't there be a muzzle flash? And apparently there wouldn't be a muzzle flash. And also a weird thing that happened on the ground is that people smelled gun smoke. Also, a weird thing that happened on the ground is that people smelled gun smoke and the place that they were, they were on a bridge that the cars were going under when they smelled gun smoke.

And the they would never have been able to smell gun smoke from all the way up where I was. Right. But if the gun smoke was coming from the cars driving under them, then it makes more sense. from the cars driving under them, then it makes more sense. So I did this conversation with, I interviewed both the author who wrote the book with Donahue about this theory, and I also interviewed one of the leading JFK conspiracy theorists. And I said, you know, I've looked at a lot lot of different theories and this is the only one that makes sense. And it was so interesting how this conspiracy theorist responded. He just got so mad at me for bringing up this theory. And I was like, but like, so what's wrong with it? He's like, Jack, it's been disproven. It's a ridiculous theory. And frankly, I just want to move on.

And I'm like, OK, but like, so do you have some reason that you disbelieve it? He would not give me a reason. He would just say that it's been disproven and then move on. And I was like, all right, so what do you think happened? And he was like, I can't say what happened, but there's a lot of mysterious stuff that points to some connection between Oswald and the CIA. It was just like so strange. And I think it's probably that they... It's not fun.

It's not sexy. Yeah, to think like some guy errantly shot him. Right. And also that generation like wanted there to be like a government like conspiracy, I feel like. I'm sure this go around. They'll find a way to put this on Hillary Clinton. Right. Yeah.

That's what you're saying that eventually they're going to reveal the documents. And yeah, they're going to be like, oh, what's this? I mean, because, yeah, that's the other thing, too, is this these documents like long awaited documents that that are like linked to one of the country's greatest mysteries is coming out that Trump was like, yeah, let's let's put these out. Let's let's do a little distraction. I mean, hopefully it's not a distraction. It's five million pages. So if anyone has some really good reading skills, let us know. Calm through there. Teresa, you were saying that we're going to look up from the archive. Oh, yeah. He's totally distracting.

I mean, we're going to look up and our flag is going to be the Russian flag. But we now know. But we know that nothing. It was five million pages of just the most dry shit. Yeah. So I don't know. Maybe by the time people are listening to this episode, the documents have been dropped and it was secretly. I don't know.

I mean, that would be the craziest shit if these documents actually had some like you know game changing information right i doubt there would be if they're going to release that that could like fundamentally cruz's father that would be dope that would be dope i'm my bet is still that there'll be something in there like hillary clinton has someone who's this rodham fellow who's this rodham is involved um oh another weird detail and then we'll end this showham is involved? Oh, another weird detail. And then we'll end the show is that immediately after LBJ took over office, he seemed terrified that the Secret Service was going to accidentally shoot him and kept saying that kept being like, these guys are going to shoot me one day. Like there's a story from the night of the assassination where he's like walking around and the Secret Service like thinks he's an intruder and like turn their gun on him. But and he's like, I could just see that being a thing that because he knows they just accidentally shot Kennedy, like seemed more terrifying to him than like they might have just been like, oh, thank God it's it's just you. been like, oh, thank God it's just you. But yeah, he specifically, there is a quote from him saying,

I swear to God, these Secret Service agents are going to shoot me accidentally. Wow. When you guys can download all this from Jack's manifesto that he's been writing, we'll have that in the footnotes. So glad I just got that off my chest. Yeah, you look... None of that is true, by the way. I just made all of that up. Yeah, it's from a book called Mortal Error by Bonner Menninger, written with, I want to say Phil Donahue, but that's obviously not right. Very different Donahue. Yes.

Earlier, Miles was playing the audio of that, and I thought it was like an official video, but it's a video some guy made. I just looked over, and it's just like images of like Illuminati eyes. Pyramid eyes, yeah. And I was like, what are you watching? It's like, this really throws me in with like some people who believe crazy shit. No, no, no, no. I'm sure the documents will confirm all of this. Well, it's a fun thing to believe until it's completely disproven by this document dump.

That's going to do it for today. Teresa, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. This was super fun. On the finale of all episodes. I know. What was your favorite memory of season three? Is it really a finale?

Are you guys ending? Yeah. And then we take a mid-season. Well, we have to take a... We're on hiatus for a second. Right. So this is the finale of season three. We take a two-day hiatus to revamp.

Where are we going this time? Hawaii was great. I'm thinking of going to Tibet or something. Just get my mind right. Just meditate for a little while. My dog is a Tibetan Spaniel. Shout-outs to your dog. Shout-outs to your dog.

Where can people find you? You can find me on Twitter at Larissa T. Oh, come to my stand-up show. Can I plug it? Yeah. November 5th at The Friend. Good show. Free show.

In Los Angeles? In LA. Yeah, if you live in LA. If you follow me on Twitter, you can find the info. Awesome. Miles, where can people follow you? You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at MilesOfGrey. You can follow me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien.

I'm very private about my Instagram. You can follow us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist, on Instagram at TheDailyZeitgeist. We have a Facebook page called The Daily Zeitgeist. And you can check out our footnotes on dailyzeitgeist.com. Super producer Anna is putting them up as we speak. There's links to all the different articles that we're pulling facts from in this episode.

And yeah, oh, and The Daily Zeitgeist is produced and engineered by Nick Stumpf, who you heard on yesterday's podcast, but we don't do credits usually. And, you know, then to season three, we should probably mention Nick is the man that makes it happen. And The Daily Zeitgeist is also edited by Lawrence Stumpf. It is a Stumpf family affair. Stumpf production. And that's going to do it. We will be back on Monday.

Talk to you guys then. Defne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti.

And I'm Jemaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation,

then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's so much beauty in Mexican culture, like mariachis, delicious cuisine, and even lucha libre. Join us for the new podcast, 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, emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Santos! Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. How do you feel about biscuits?

Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? It's right here in black and white in print. It's bigger than a flag or mascot. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.