The Daily Zeitgeist - Dems Vibez R Off, Vampire Tips For Celebs 05.03.22

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

In episode 1239, Jack and Miles are joined by podcasters and hosts of What Could Go Right? Zachary Karabell and Emma Varvaloucas to discuss... Democrats Find Themselves Faced With A Strange Conundrum for MidTerms / 2024: The Vibes Are All F---ed Up, Since we stan vampire culture… and more! Democrats Find Themselves Faced With A Strange Conundrum for MidTerms / 2024: The Vibes Are All F---ed Up Since we stan vampire culture… The Progress Network: @progressntwrk LISTEN: Umi Says by Soul SupremeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me for I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jemay 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. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports.

Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese. People are talking about women's basketball just because

of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball. And on this new season, we'll cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio apps, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke. Hello, the internet, and welcome to season 235, episode 2 of Dirt Daily Zeitgeist. It's a production of iHeartRadio, and this is a podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness.

It is Tuesday, May 3rd, 2022, which of course means it's National Teacher Appreciation Day. Yeah. Do you have a teacher that you want to shout out i feel like we've talked about this a lot but i yeah i always say my history teacher mr woolery because he gave me the appreciation for history and i ended up studying that in college but also i got to shout out one of my first music teachers judy clausen who was like really made me like feel good about being good at an instrument. Like was made it like a connected the pathways in my brain

to be like, like it was very encouraging. And you know, I would say that I'm not into music as much as I would be today without her encouragement. Shout out Miss Kloss. There you go. I think I shout out Miss McDonald last time. My seventh grade writing teacher. I'll go with Professor Wexel, my first philosophy

professor who was really into Star Trek and made you insufferable and made me the worst guys I can't believe what I heard in my philosophy class well my name is Jack O'Brien aka Potatoes O'Brien

and I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co-host mr miles gray out the window i'ma crawl even though it's way too small out this bus i fall okay shout out to fighter the night man on discord because yes the last time we were racking our brains over who closes the school bus door you know when the driver's done yeah are we crawling out the window are we just reaching our arm in are we releasing the hydraulics there's a much simpler answer but again it inspired a great yin yang twins uh yeah one of the best and and the answer was just like that you can just open and close those doors yeah

when the hydraulics are turned off you can release the hydraulic pressure in the door and then just close it manually when you get up it wasn't some magic trick or newfangled instrument yeah my theory that all bus drivers are shapeshifters

turned out not to be true I think we edited it out of the episode, but it went on for like 25 minutes. Yeah. But you were like, how did they get that thin? Like paper. The little schism in between. Well, Miles, we are thrilled to be joined in our third and fourth seat by the hosts of the podcast, What Could Go Right?

From the Progress Network, it's Zachary carabel and emma varbaluca what's up welcome hey wow i think we're gonna have to learn emma to amp up the energy level on our usually sedate and measured set of interviews clearly we've we've lost some decibel level that we need to incorporate so So if nothing else, we've learned that from the conversation so far. I was thinking my last name was made for that. That was perfect. Yeah. My last name was never positive.

Yeah. It's got, like, good syllables. It's musical. It's got four syllables in there. Yeah. Gives you some time to, like, get revved up a little bit. You know, the barba gets you gets you ready for the lucas oh thanks guys it's a change from middle school i'm into it i know right well you're getting

teased you're getting teased barba mucus that was the one oh that kind of issue could go back like as an adult and be like guys these are the worst insults i've ever heard like honestly like i know they're cutting at my at this age but y'all like really this was not this is not a great showing you could do better yeah well going through the 80s and early 90s with the name Jack was and like not a lot of Jacks out there so there was a lot of a lot of fun stuff going on, so I feel your pain. We all have our crosses to bear. Yeah. Also not the highest quality material, believe it or not.

But how are you guys doing? Where are you coming to us from? I'm in New York City. I've heard of it. I'm in Athens, Greece. What? Okay. Now, I have not heard of that.

No. How are things in Athens, Greece? What time is it there? It's almost 10 o'clock at night. All right. Yeah. You're just starting to think about dinner. That is the Greek schedule. I ate at like 9.

You're not wrong. Yeah, yeah. Nice. All right. Well, thank you guys so much for joining us. We are going to get to know you a little bit better in a moment. First, we're going to tell our listeners a couple of the things we're talking about today. We're going to talk about this New York Times article that's basically like the Democrats have found themselves with a conundrum for the midterms and 2024, which is that the vibes are all fucked up.

which is that the vibes are all fucked up. It seems to be. I mean, we've like run into this before in the history of the Democratic Party where that seemed to be the, like what people diagnosed the late 70s with was like, America's just like sad. And I think it was malaise, General Malaise was one of the descriptors.

But that seems to be kind of what they are, what Democrats are asking themselves heading into this midterm election. So we want to dig into that. We want to look at the great resignation as its demographics are shifting. We are going to talk vampire culture, all of that, plenty more. But first, we like to ask our guests, what is something from your search histories? So one thing from my search history recently was, are there any female Greek rappers? Okay. The answer was, there's exactly one.

I couldn't find any of her music, just her name. Because I really like Greek rap, but it's like heavy, misogynistic. And I was like, come on, there's got to be like a badass Greek lady out there that raps. Just one. Can't find her music. So that's where we're at. What's her MC name? I think it's Sandezania or something like that.

Okay. I didn't even get her name down correctly. That's how disappointing it was. MC Barba Lucas? Yeah, right? Yeah. Coming through? In another lifetime yeah maybe is uh are you are you like do you like did you listen to a lot of hip-hop in general and then like when you're like living in greece you're like let me check on greek hip-hop or did you suddenly be like i'm suddenly into greek hip-hop

and now you're looking for the the female mcs What's your relationship to the genre? You know what? If my friends would hear that question, they would laugh really, really hard. I have a lot of friends who are into hip hop and rap in New York. And I was living in New York for 10 years. And I was always the one that's like not up on the culture like at all, at all. But for some reason, when I moved here, when you go to the clubs or bars here, they just play Greek music. Like they don't play American music at all. So I had to get into the Greek thing.

And I was learning Greek. And I don't know, I just started to vibe with Greek rap for some odd reason. Maybe partly because they tend to be from the United States. They tend to be Greek Americans who rap here. Oh, really? Yeah. Which really answers a lot of unasked questions. How rap came to Greece in the first place.

Right, right. Yeah. What about you, Zachary? What's something from your search history? Well, I did a piece last week for Time on billionaires owning media properties for the past hundred years in light of everybody's favorite billionaire maybe buying Twitter. I'm not going to mention the name just because I feel like, you know, if you don't know it, then... So there's a lot in my search history about billionaires

and media ownership for the past 120 years of American media. And what are your feelings about that trend and the continuance? You know, I knew that lots of billionaires have bought contemporary media properties like Mark Benioff and Time, like Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post, like Lorraine Powell Jobs and The Atlantic. aware of just how completely all media for most of American history, well, most of American history from the late 19th century through the present has been owned by wealthy individuals and usually wealthy men. It's pretty hard to find any media, newspaper, TV station, magazine that has not been owned by wealthy private individuals, which makes Musk's bid for Twitter seem much less of a new thing, even if it's a big deal. That, yeah, that it's like our media has been under billionaire control for quite some time.

And we're at where we're at now. Including iHeart. Just saying. No, 100%. I mean, no no iHeart is the people iHeart is on people we're like the green we're like the green bay packers of uh media outlets no it's definitely true i mean everything is yeah i mean it was clear channel before and you're like what rebrand rebrand rebrand that's true of like every everything like the everything in american culture maybe with the exception exception of the green bay packers right like there's not much that is not owned by

extremely wealthy people well i mean there's i mean there is independent media but not to the levels of what we're talking about i guess you know in terms of pervasiveness right like yeah you know that there are even even even what what people like to think of as the countercultural or alt media like the nation and harper's you know also owned by very wealthy individuals whose politics simply skew left yeah i wouldn't i don't know if i would love them in there but yeah like i mean like more like at the extremely local end like where we had like weeklies and things that were at some point felt like they embodied something of like oh no this

this is this is ran by like human beings that you can identify rather than where's the c-suite that makes all the decisions for this entity kind of thing what uh what's something you guys think is overrated oh other than the Green Bay Packers? Well, I mean, on that light, I'm sort of repeating myself. I think the concern that wealthy individuals owning media platforms is a

threat to free speech. It's either we've never had it, or we've always had it, and it has been neither here nor there to the ownership structure of these organizations so are you less concerned about elon musk doing it because i think i i i'm assuming like part of the concern that a lot of people including myself are feeling is like how how brazen and also like popular he seems to be.

It's the first time I could see a billionaire coming through and being like, no, you can't write that about me. And a bunch of people being like, yeah, you can't write that about Elon Musk. Whereas if Bezos tried to kill a story about Amazon publicly in the Washington Post, that would probably be very unpopular. That said, I just feel like those stories never get to the front page of the Washington Post that would probably be very unpopular. That said, I just feel like those stories never get to the front page of the Washington Post, right? And you certainly have

to wonder if there were multiple ongoing instances of criticism of Musk himself or anything that Tesla did or anything that Twitter did being routinely shut down and then that having other reverberations, you know, one can set up a new social media platform of information. Yeah, that doesn't have the network effect, but Trump was able to set up Truth Social. Now, the fact that he's running it really badly is neither here nor there in terms of the ease of actually creating one. So even there, it's not as if Twitter is the sole and only public sphere of very sharp and often pungent commentary. Yeah. I mean, you guys' general thesis on the podcast and on, it seems to be that not enough. And I agree with this in a lot of ways that like

a lot of the good news doesn't get reported and so it like kind of goes into this like we just hear the problems in the media but then like this feels like one of the problems overall like overarching that like we don't hear about which is that things are generally being vetted by a billionaire class that like owns all these things that are supposed to be talking to us like would you agree with that or you think that like this is just a kind of a misreading of the current i think i i think and and and Emma has a kind of aversion to the idea of good news as opposed to news that points in a more constructive direction.

But for-profit news demands attention that can be measured in real time compared to other people getting the same eyeballs. And that's the same incentives for Netflix as it is for a newspaper. So the issue, I think, is less who owns than the structure of these things have to generate a profit. And what generates a profit is what is most immediately emotional and intense and outrageous and fearful and hot emotions rather than cool emotions. And that is as much the issue irrespective of the ownership structure.

of headlines that now make a tweet go viral, right? Like there was some sort of difference or diminished heat, like through the editorial process, right? I mean, Emma does a lot more of our, you know, a lot of the progress social media, she kind of manages. And so the flip side of that is, it's also been an amazing tool to have people find information and perspectives, right, Emma, that they have a hard time finding otherwise. You know, the connective tissue that these platforms still provide. I think that the difference between social media and legacy media is just that the rules haven't been figured out yet. Like the rules of journalism have been around with legacy media for a really long time. So what's considered good editorial practice and bad editorial practice, what the rules are in

relationship to ownership, for instance, those are pretty set. And if the American public doesn't know what they are, they should know what they are. Social media is still quite new. We're still figuring out the rules. We're trying to figure out like, what does the space look like where it's kind of a public square? So issues of free speech are there, but it is also a privately owned company. So what does that mean? Who's responsible legally for the stuff that's published on the platform? It's just, I think we're going to work ourselves into a better place with that. It's just that we're in the messy middle at the moment. Yeah. What is something you think is overrated, Emma? I was going to say the five-day work week.

Overrated. Overrated in the sense that we're all doing it. Right. What's ideal, you think? What's the balance here? I would love to see us move towards four. I think that would be better. I mean, there are a few countries that are piloting that, right?

And it seems like it's so far, it doesn't seem to be throwing economies into like a downward spiral. Yeah, I mean, I guess I would say the only thing I would say to that is like, it's a really small amount. It's like, of course, right. I can't remember which countries now exactly, but it's like the government of Iceland, I don't know, or like this one company here or there. But that's not to dampen the enthusiasm about the pilot projects. Super into it. I hope it goes well. I hope there's absolutely no economic downturn and that productivity stays high so that it'll just continue.

The four-day workweek creep will continue to creep. I thought the rub on Mediterranean countries was that they had essentially been piloting the four-day workweek for generations between May and September, even if nominally it was a five-day workweek. Okay, this is the sad thing about Mediterranean cultures, or at least about Greece in particular. When I was younger, my grandparents would always have a siesta, you know, after lunch. That has disappeared. So the Mediterranean culture is getting infected by the five-day workweek hustle cultural situation, in my view. So we got to get that back on track.

Yeah, I love that. Bring nap culture back into it. What's something you guys think is underrated? So I have a serious one and a not so serious one. My honest answer to the first thing that came to mind with what's underrated was Bridgerton season two. A discussion topic that I'm not sure is going to hit with uh what's underrated was bridgerton season two a discussion topic that i'm not sure is gonna hit with this particular i know it's been we know we know it's been taking people by storm i haven't seen i saw the first season and i was like it's better than season one like it's way better than season one although it was i think i just found myself uh waiting to

see what the duke would do in the bedroom all season one. But now we've got a little more texture to this season. Now it's the Viscount. We're waiting to see what the Viscount is going to do. Oh, okay. Right, right, right. Big, big difference. I don't know. Everyone I talked to said they didn't like it.

And I'm like, listen, this is trash TV at its finest. Let's appreciate it for what it is. Right. What's your serious one? My serious one was community. I think community is underrated, especially in the United States. I think, you know, the decline in religion in the United States, the decline of various civic institutions has meant that

people haven't formed new communities yet in the way that they should to replace some things that have been lost. And I think that that's causing a lot of loneliness. It's causing a lot of ennui on a societal level. So yeah, community. What do you see as the most promising way to progress towards a solution to that? Because, yeah, we talk about that a lot on the show. I think, honestly, it's people making hyper local communities and things that they totally dig.

people making hyper local communities and things that they totally dig my friends and i in new york were putting on a pole dancing show every month that became a pretty big event in the pole dancing world in new york and it's like this tiny little niche underground community but it did a lot for people so i think if people just follow in the direction of things that they like to do and create community around that that that will work that We don't need a bigger idea than that. Zachary, what is something you think is underrated? Zach or Zachary is fine. Anything with a Z will do. I think

the vitality of cities is being underrated. Kind of apropos of Emma's point. And the glee of reporting on the demise of cities both during COVID and now I think the excessive sort of strange rubbernecking obsessive look at crime in cities. Also, it's very selective. I mean, crime's rising in Miami just as it is in New York, but you don't

hear about it because people feel differently about Miami than they do about New York. Crimes Rising in London. I mean, Crimes Rising in every big city post-COVID as things sort of fitfully return or resume or pick up a thread. And I think hope's underrated as a thing that is vital to the human experience about being able to shape our future. And the very fact that you can't say that without a certain internal cringiness, like, oh, you know, that's going to land like a thud in a cynical forest is part of the problem. But that doesn't mean that it's not absolutely essential and vital to all of us, to our futures, to the relationships we want to build, to the world we want to live in yeah for sure

like i we've talked a lot about the over reporting of crime like i've had to like mute various like promoted tweets in the past couple weeks that are just like watching police tackle criminals essentially like i don't know where they got the idea that like, that's what I wanted to see. But it seems like there's like a resurgence of that agenda item being pushed. And maybe like that's based on people being receptive to it. But what would you say are like the like positive sort of ignored aspects of of what's going on in cities when you talk about the vitality. We're all somewhat a product of the lens and where we are, but in the past few weeks, I've been in Los Angeles, I've been in Paris, I've been in New York. I've also been in Miami

in the past couple of months. And there is a real sense, a palpable sense of people kind of being out and living their lives. Now, yes, there remains an unspecified and ever-morphing threat of COVID and what that means. But it's also clear that people have, as human beings have from time immemorial, recognize that the needs of the living have to be met. And some of that, unfortunately, carries with it X risk of harm, as it always has, disease being one of the more primary ones, but so is crime and so are accidents. And how you navigate that is both individually and collectively incredibly variable over time. But it does matter of like, what do you see in the picture when you walk out? What does your eye focus on? And I'm not saying you should ignore real human suffering. I'm saying that laser-like focusing only on that and not on the life around

it is as imbalanced as only focusing on, hey, things are great. It's like only focusing on Miami being a tech pro crypto haven and not looking at the fact that its infrastructure is strained. And it too has rising crime, that's just part of the mix. Yeah, I mean, I think the other thing, especially with the crime stuff as it relates, there's, you know, a lot of people have pointed to that not all violent crime has increased, and a lot of crimes have gone down.

But a lot of there has been an increase in gun violence and things like that that have sort of these more sensational aspects of it that help feed this narrative. While we've also seen that there's a huge push from like, you know, lobbyists, whether that's like, you know, the chamber of commerce and things who very much focused on like turning this into like a local thing about district attorneys and like how new sentencing guidelines are brought out. But yeah, it's, I think there is, there, there's so many ways to look at an issue, whether's Yeah, there are very some specific crimes are going up. As a

whole, though, we're not looking at something like that's arriving quite at the level of like certain articles we see, especially like in the like, LA Magazine, or the New York Times, or like the sources are just the police. And then there's like no other source of like any information and it's very like yeah and that's sort of what's going on take it away but we lose some of that because we're not able to like because we're so focused on that we're not able to actually acknowledge the one thing which is a lot of crime has gone down but for you know for whatever reason the focus is on everything is it's a it's like a runaway crime spree at the moment. lot. It was a big percentage number without recognizing that ridership is up 100% year over year because a year ago, people were still, I mean, they're not fully back at work, Emma.

There's kind of an informal three-day work week. But if your ridership doubles and your absolute number of crime goes up, your way of looking at that should actually look at it as a per capita reality, not just as an absolute one. I mean, 10 crimes out of a million riders and, you know, 22 crimes out of 3 million riders is still 120% increase in crime, but it sure is, it's a completely different reality if you looked at it in context, but nobody does that. Right. I mean, the media does that a lot where they track things year by year where it's like, it's almost meaningless. You know, you have to look, But nobody does that. Or the early 2000s, right? I mean, I try to talk to people about this thing. Oh, my God, New York used to be so safe. Or LA, downtown LA. Downtown LA was safe for like a nanosecond between 2018 and 2019. For the 30 years before that, it was the'm being hyperbolic. I get it. But the fact is, you know, yes, human beings, we all live at our highest set point, right? We always remember the most amount of money we have, the most we're earning and the least we were paying. And that's just kind of human nature. And we don't deal well with our set point going down. We're great when our set point goes up, right? Like, no problem. I'm doing, got more money tomorrow than I did today, or I feel better today, or I lost weight.

We have a much harder time. Arthur Brooks talks a lot about this. We did a great podcast with him, and he's got this wonderful new book he has out. But we don't do well with one step back. We're fine with the two steps forward. And look, that has always been human nature. I don't think that's a social media phenomenon, but it certainly gets amplified

and echoed in a way that doesn't do any of us much good. Yeah. Well, I think the hard part is that people who want to influence policy realize that and sort of employ that tactic pretty cynically. Because we see, I mean, we see it it constantly whether that relates to seeding this idea that like crime is completely out of control every single place you go or that the pandemic is over you know there's like so many versions of this and the crime thing is you know it's a it's a somewhat of a pernicious boomerang from the black lives matter summer of 2020 and it's you know it is a way for some people politically to use this as a cudgel of the four people who actually did want to defund the police saying, well, it's all because of that that we now have this.

When there's also no evidence that they were actually defunded too, because that's another thing. No, there weren't. There was a little bit of talk for a little bit of time. Yeah. But just talking about it was enough to embolden the criminals and make them. Right.

And arm the police with a really nice talking point. They're like, we're defunded. I don't know, man. Sorry, we're defunded. You're like, there's an actual robbery happening. All right. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back i'm jess casaveto executive producer of the hit netflix documentary series dancing for the devil

the 7m tiktok cult and i'm cleo gray former member of 7m films and shekinah church and we're the host of the new podcast forgive me Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high-control groups and interview dancers, church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine. Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new, chilling firsthand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives.

Forgive Me For I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these types of abuses never happen again. revelation aimed at ensuring these types of abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions.

Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Sanner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked

Sports, where we live at the intersection of sports and culture. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Every great player needs a foil. I ain't really near them. Why is that? I just come here to play basketball every single day and that's what I focus on. From college to the pros, Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Angel Reese is a joy to watch. She is unapologetically black.

I love her. What exactly ignited this fire? Why has it been so good for the game? And can the fanfare surrounding these two supernovas be sustained? This game is only going to get better because the talent is getting better. This new season will cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio

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There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And so Democrats find themselves in the, like the New York Times called it Democrats mystery, how to brighten a presidency and a national mood. It basically seems like, you know, just the mood's down, folks. Yeah, the mood's down.

And the article also seems to, you know, take them at sort of face value when it comes to like what the mystery is here. Like, they're like, I don't know, like, should we emphasize the small gains we've made or try to make larger gains? And it just feels, I don't know, it feels weird and disingenuous to treat weird and disingenuous to treat people's feelings about this administration like it is a mystery illness that, like, they don't know the cause of, and they're just trying to figure out, you know, they're floating some weather balloons up to see how this works and how that works. But I don't know. We talk a lot about, like like sort of a disconnect between the reality as people live it and experience it, including on like social media versus the reality that I feel like the mainstream media and the mainstream Democratic Party seem to exist inside of or at least like sort of message from the planet of but i don't know i i think it like comes back to sort of an unacknowledged like i think 2008 like probably and the financial collapse like kind of ties a lot into this and just the fact that that there hasn't been like sort of a reckoning in the mainstream media or with the Democratic Party with what happened there.

And, you know, you had like Bernie Sanders as an insurgent candidate who wanted to address that. And Trump addressed it in his way. And the Democratic Party was kind of still in the middle. kind of still in the middle and i don't know it just feels feels very much like well there there are concrete things people are asking for you kind of said you were going to do something with that or around that and have not done those things but like so why is it be being treated as like are they depressed like what's right what are they so upset about what's why is it being treated as like, are they depressed? Like what's, what are they so upset about? Why is everyone sad? How do we make them happy?

I was just curious. So what would be the, you know, top three list of things that they said that they were going to do that they haven't done? I think voting rights is a huge one. Yeah. I think I'm honestly like looking at things like the unemployment insurance, like the weird math that happened around things being like $2,000. And I'm like, well, if you add this from over here and you carry the two, that adds to $2,000.

The child tax credit lapsing, student debt, like, you know, student loan debt. There's a I mean, there's a lot talking about like law enforcement reform not necessarily about defunding the police but looking at that with a real clear eye and thinking things looking at things like qualified immunity like these are things that were talked about i never in a million years would think joe biden would ever touch anything with qualified immunity but a lot of gestures were made in that direction and i think think, especially for, you know, black people, we look at something like voting rights as being completely at threat, being threatened. And we see countless laws, like in places like Georgia, Florida, Texas, where it's becoming increasingly difficult to vote, even for fucking, you know, the people that they want to vote for. So I think

those are like big things that feel very existential for people. I think like one, if we're if we're meant to believe that if this sort of equation here is to vote the representatives into Congress that represent, you know, the values that we have, that if we can't even do that, what what is the point here. Like we're not even looking at like that should even, I'm surprised that wasn't the big, one of the biggest things Democrats even saw just like in the cynical game of staying in power, which is like, Hey, they're trying to take away the, their ability to vote for us. But that's been, you know, that we've seen, we've seemed to let the obstruction happen, like within the party and just kind of keep it moving. I mean, like part of it is that Biden was unpopular by the fall of last year, within six months of being in office, when it wasn't even clear that those things weren't going to be passed. And there was some effort. There was a voting rights bill that the House had passed that was at the Senate,

and there was also the Build Back Better omnibus was going to retain the child tax credit, was going to provide universal pre-K and more time off for working women. But he was unpopular even before those things didn't pass amongst a wider swath of the public than one would have thought. And what's odd is the lesson that government, including Republicans, learned from 2008-2009 was that if you don't bail out people who are actually working and you just bail out institutions, you're going to create a lot of ill will. So there was $4 trillion of money during COVID, both in 2020 and then in February 2021, a lot of which did go toward, it was the first time in 40 years that lower quintile people saw some income growth largely because of transfer payments from government.

And that did not engender like, oh, we're doing well. I mean, there is a degree of, you mentioned malaise at the beginning, Jack, that there is that aspect of what's going on that isn't purely about, I think, something one can point to specifically. That doesn't make it an undiagnosed illness. It just means, first of all, it's almost impossible to do anything right now other than those two stimulus bills during COVID that has anything resembling bipartisan support. I mean, there are actually things that have bipartisan support. Like, weirdly enough, criminal justice reform was the one bill passed that had genuine bipartisan support during the Trump years in December of 2018. That actually, for the first time, moved away from a lot of the draconian sentencing that had become commonplace in federal courts. It doesn't do anything for state systems, which are different.

But it does speak to, and part of why Emma and I are trying to do this, our own show of getting people to look at what people are trying to do to solve things is, the United States definitely is in a culturally massive question mark verging on despair and cynicism in a way that would have been really familiar in the mid-70s. cynicism in a way that would have been really familiar in the mid-70s. It's not like we haven't been here before and would have been really familiar in the mid-1930s, would have been really familiar in the mid-1870s. At best, these are like cyclical things where we snap out of our somewhat illusionary view of us of being the greatest of all nations that has solved everything, right? A comforting narrative that's never been true, but which we buy into really easily for long periods of time. And then it's like something happens and we wake up and we're like, wait a minute, right? No, we're not all those wonderful hyperbolic Hosanna things that we said that we were. We've got real problems and we've got real

issues. And the challenge, of course, is to have that clear, gimlet-eyed awareness of what's going on without sinking into despair and cynicism, without that then trending into the other direction. And we're clearly, whether you're on the left or the right, easily heading in those directions. And I think that's partly reflective of the fact that no political leader has anything resembling a majority approval, let alone much of a plurality. I would just add really quickly, Miles, I agree with you 100% about the child tax credit. I think that was terrible that that lapsed. One interesting thing about voting rights is that it is a very serious issue. There are several

states where they're rolling back, you know, they're making it harder to vote. But what's interesting is that the Brennan Center also put out a report about all of the new pathways of voting that were open during the pandemic with mail-in voting. And what was all the hubbub about mail-in voting during the last election? There's actually like 26 states that made it easier to vote. They took the new pandemic pathways that had put into place about voting, particularly around mail-in voting, and they kept them. So this is just a side to it that is not often discussed. And, you know, it's the same thing with what Zachary's saying. We're not trying to paint, like, you know, let's look at everything through

rose-colored glasses. It's just a balance question. Right. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I do think, too, that, you know, there are some things that Biden is at fault for, like the massive cash transfers that went into place during the pandemic, like Zachary mentioned, were massively beneficial for people. It also seemed to have kicked up inflation. I'm not sure how much we can blame Biden for, you know, gas and gas prices going up and up and up with the war right now. So I think some of the malaise does have to do with like the Democrats are not delivering. And I think that they're particularly not paying attention to voters' concerns about working and wages and worker power compared to corporate power. But some of it, too, I do think

it is kind of like there's a bad vibe right now. And I'm not sure that the Democrats are all to blame for that. I don't think that they are all to blame because this is centuries built up where now like the lived experience of an american person is such where the american dream is you know not very accessible to most people anymore and that the feeling that people have is like oh my god all that like post-world war ii uh glow is completely faded away and we're looking at like crumbling infrastructure stagnant wages and like really massive societal issues where it looks like the leadership in the country can't really like really address the elephant in the room which i think for voting people is inequality and like broadly tackling

that issue to say we absolutely hear you that being able to live in a city has become, it's prohibitively expensive. Even if you're just trying to, if you're a single parent, like good luck, like trying to do that. We hear you. We understand that that is something that societally feels like we need a realignment to say, what is the minimum that an American deserves? You know, like many other countries have that defined where it's like, you will not go broke because you've, you know, like many other countries have that defined where it's like, you will not go broke, because you've, you know, because you got into medical debt or things like that. If you want an education, here, go at it, here you go, we get we're, there's a place for you to attain that. And I think we're by not really getting into that part, I think it's probably messy for both parties, because at some point, they have to acknowledge their connection to it.

And I think that's what makes it a little bit difficult is that the you know, the both parties because at some point they have to acknowledge their connection to it and i think that's what makes it a little bit difficult is that the you know the both parties in this country have been so entangled in that inequality that it's like they're finding it very difficult to a acknowledge that they're the policies that they were supporting and with the hopes of thinking like yeah this is this is the way way to have all of the abundance flow to many people isn't working and to really acknowledge that, to really say that that is completely failed and we actually need to think about it. I think that's what some people are waiting for is like, can we just acknowledge that this has failed? Because it's failed so many people at this point. It's hard to say that this is us moving in a beneficial direction.

Yes. I mean, I have two pushbacks on that. One is, I think it's not about inequality as much as it's about what you just talked about. I mean, you could reduce inequality, the amount of inequality, and still have people not be able to afford living in cities and going bankrupt for medical debt. It's the abundance part. It's the non-proliferation of sufficient abundance to enough people in an otherwise highly affluent society. And inequality per se is not, reducing inequality doesn't solve those issues. Just like, you know, as we see with inflation, right? Expanding incomes doesn't do you much good if the cost of things is rising more quickly than your incomes are expanding. If costs went down, which was somewhat happening with the deflationary effects of technology, then you wouldn't necessarily need more income, right? Because net-net, it would be the same thing. Your dollar would be buying more if the costs were going down. If abundance. And one of the real obstacles for the United States is the set point of the mid-20th century, which we look at as some sort of normative moment

where everything worked, but so many stars aligned in that moment that were both of our own doing and also global, right? World War II ends, the United States is 50% more than that, actually, of all global industrial capacity, the entire world, right? We were this engine because we hadn't been bombed. You know, we were the one bombing. We weren't the ones getting bombed.

We had emerged victorious. There was some degree of collective unity that had to do with white America, right? And the GI Bill was great, but it didn't extend to African Americans. It certainly didn't extend to women. And yet we hold that up as the validation of a system that worked. And I'm really of the mind that we hamper ourselves more by thinking that we had a formula that worked, that we are now failing, rather than recognizing that we never really had the formula

we think we had, and it never worked the way we idealize it having worked. You know, that we were always much more flawed than we like to tell ourselves. We're always more just like a group of humans who had an interesting formula for social organization that did allow for things a lot of other societies didn't and still don't. But I think the fact that we look to that moment in the 1940s and 50s and 60s as this is when it worked and now we failed, I think that's a false story of who we were. I mean, who looks to that, though? Who are you talking about when we talk about looking to the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s? I don't think that's who we're talking about. Well, when I even say that post-war glow, I think that's not to say

that I don't idealize any moment in American history. No, I'm not. I look at you guys are. But I think a lot of our public debate speaks of a kind of something worked and then we got off track. Yeah. The Republican Party and Fox News certainly do. Right. Yeah. But the Democrats do as well. This is a time when there was more democracy or more egalitarianness or more rights that are being, you know. I don't I don't think it's just one side here. Sure. What I see is that the media, like when I say this post-war glow, is that that is, like you're saying, that is looked at as like something, you know, like we were doing okay or whatever.

But again, you look at even as you lay out, not all those benefits are distributed equally. In fact, you know, most people, especially if you are not in like the white mainstream, there really hasn't been a great time for those people in this country. And to say that, like whether it's thinking that something worked and then failed or just saying that, like, nothing is going right. I think what we're saying is like the same thing is that we're not, we're not, we're not actually arriving at a moment where we're trying to actually reckon with what's going on. We have ways to kind of shroud the discussion in something else than just silo it off into like a separate thing and just make it about, okay, well, let's look at, uh, let's look at how we can help out student loan, like people with student loan debt, or maybe we can look at how Pell Grants are distributed and how that's working. But again, all of these issues are sort of part of this larger problem that we have is that most American people on some level have these like feelings of like, I don't know if I'm going to have enough to make it or to be have a level of financial stability. I look at that with my friends who are in their mid 30s who work at grocery stores still and talk about the stress they have from doing like smaller jobs because it was harder for them to go to college. They didn't

they weren't taking out student loans and things like that. And there's I see firsthand a lot about how ground down people get. And that's my concern is that I think, you know, even in a past episode, you talk about this idea of nostalgia that we have of this idea of the return of the king and someone will come to right all the wrongs. And it's really not that simple. We have to sort of put all of that shit out of our mind and say that there has to be this basic reshifting or really looking at the things that we're saying. What is the minimum? And I think that's an easier place for a conversation to start for in general to talk about this is what's the minimum an American deserves by being a citizen? What is that? What is that?

How does that enable you to live a prosperous life? Yeah, that I totally agree with, that there should be some baseline understanding of what does an affluent society provide as its contract to itself as to the basics of healthcare, education, shelter, food. Not a particularly high bar, or shouldn't be a particularly high bar, of security. That once we've established that, then everybody's lives can go in all the different directions that everybody's lives go. One concern I have with the malaise like storyline is, you know, the last time the Democrats got like blamed for a nation with malaise like, you know, that that ended with or that led to eight years of Reaganism and Republicans like just sort of staying hyper focused on like the wealthy and like, you know, America's great because of this small part of what is happening in America. I just I feel like that tends to be I don't know, I don't I don't want to see that dynamic again. But if the Democrats continue to be just like the holding the holding bag for like everything that's negative and the Republicans can just, you know, threatening horrible things and, you know, being horrible leaders back to like a, you know, sane democratic alternative

that then everyone's like, yeah, but like this problem is still there. Like, I feel like that's the dynamic we're currently at is that whatever you diagnose the problem being, and I think that there's a, a, a huge unacknowledged like wound from 2008 that like the, and from like, you know, corporate,

you know, when we talk about like Biden not getting things done in office and like it's stopping with like Manchin and Sinema, like that was they are like heavily influenced by like dark money and corporate interests. The Democratic Party and that mainstream has chosen to be the sort of holding bag for all of this malaise, but they don't have some alternative that they're not choosing to offer an alternative, I guess. about this with my friends a lot because I'm a millennial. And a lot of us got really screwed going into college, during college, and coming out of college. And it did lead to a lot of us, you know, sort of getting behind as far as not being able to settle life for ourselves with enough money to buy a house, particularly in a city that's relatively expensive. But I also just think like the Democrats are not working with the things that they should be working with. Like Miles brought up the child tax credit. That also is something that has bipartisan support. There are Republicans who support various versions of that. They should

be going straightforward towards that. Why aren't they? The whole discussion around student loan debt I find really odd because once you cancel out everyone's student loan debt, you're still left with the undiscussed problem, like you guys are pointing out, that it's prohibitively expensive to attend a lot of private colleges. So you might have solved that in a moment in time. Okay, great, everyone who has a lot of debt is free from that. But a lot of the student loan debt that's being held in the United States

is from for-profit colleges. And like I said, it's not going to solve the situation of people entering into college. They're just going to graduate with more debt. And again, the Democrats are also not focusing on health care. So... To echo that, there were things that the Democrats could have done in 2020 that because of the party's sort of maximalist position

about a lot of these things didn't happen. You know, even Joe Manchin had a voting rights bill that he had helped craft, that he would have supported, that was far less than the voting rights bill that was passed in Congress, but was far more than no voting rights bill and would have given the federal government much more teeth to take on some of these restrictions in some of these states. There was also a series of social spendings that could have passed through the Senate. Emma talked about the child tax credit. But there was a kind of a maximalist position.

And I think in many ways, you know, a lot of what is dispiriting about the Democrats is the degree to which by trying to govern as if there was this huge mandate without recognizing that, look, I mean, there's a whole series of Democrats in swing districts in non-urban areas of the country, you know, people like Alyssa Slotkin in Michigan and Tom Malinowski in New Jersey, who's an old friend, and Abigail Spansberger in Virginia and Cindy Axne in Iowa, who support all these things, you know, and feel like they have a constituency that would support them, but not at the most, you know, we're going to remake society a la what more urban, you know, younger, educated voters want. And by not taking the half loaf, you know, the proverbial, like not taking the deal that was on the table and going for the wish list. I think that's, I mean, it is almost impossible to overstate what a mistake that is. And it changes the narrative in a way that didn't have to be. You know, there's more support for a lot of these things because they affect a lot of humans' lives, irrespective of what party they affiliate themselves with. And, you know, I think that's

going to be part of the real challenge for the Democrats, other than the fact they've done a really effective job counter gerrymandering. Well, and I think the issue, though, too, is right, like they'll come out with these maximalist solutions on the campaign trail to court the voters. And then when it's time for the rubber to hit the road, the lobbyists step in and completely derail everything. And I think that's a huge part. I think that's why for me, I'm not sure how the current setup is equipped to actually take on these issues because they're so systemic. I used to be a lobbyist for a for-profit education institution, and the work I did had nothing to do with education. It had everything to do with exerting pressure on politicians to

convince voters that this politician was using X policy to benefit them when they weren't. And my whole existence was predicated on a wealthy donor wanting to make sure that his business was doing well. And I think that's a huge, a huge blind spot in the discussion is that it's not just Joe Manchin sat down and looked at the Build Back Better infrastructure bill and said, you know, cutting it back a trillion dollars every couple of months, which coincides with, I think, why Biden's numbers by the fall hit such a weird point. Because we started off this spring thinking this bill is going to work. Then slowly you got to see that a lot of the more corporatist elements of the party, you could see where their interests were. People suddenly are now voting to block

bills that were going to bring prescription costs lower. And lo and behold, it's coming from people whose biggest donors are from the pharmaceutical industry. And I think, yeah, like, well, and all of that is pretty disheartening. But I think if when that's completely absent from the conversation, we're, we're going to keep, we're going to keep getting stuck in this like abstract version, like what's really going on without, again, reckoning with how the system is actually operating and who actually can pull those levers at certain points when they want to. Yeah. I'm with you about healthcare for sure, Miles. I mean, coming to Greece and living in what's probably one of the worst European countries as far as health insurance goes, the dramatic difference between here and the United States is like, it's unbelievable.

It's unbelievable. I feel like I should recommend everyone if they can, like, go live in Europe if you can for some time, see what the health care is like, then come back, you'll have a crystal clear idea of how much better it could be in the United States. Yeah. And unfortunately, too many people are just living the version where they're experiencing the worst kind ever without any idea of how much how good it can be. And we're just grinding people down to like nothing. I feel like that's it. It's like I've gone through periods where I ignore my mental health and just like grind myself. And then like, like you know there are

negative consequences but if you just like don't take that as a as a factor into consideration but like the the reality of like living in America in a place where like getting sick or hurt can like bankrupt you is so fucked up like so dark and the the fact that like you know you would have to like that you feel like you need to suggest to people like you guys have to see this shit it's crazy like over there you can get hurt and not be bankrupt is like that that feels i don't know i i think there are a lot of things that we kind of lose track of because we're so used to them, as you guys kind of talked about, but that need to be improved and are the thing that is like grinding people down, like you were saying, Miles. to say that if you're on public health insurance here in Greece, part of your medical experience is not going to be bankruptcy, but it is going to be bribing the doctors and the hospitals that they'll actually take care of you. So yeah, I mean, health insurance is hard. Let's just say that.

Yeah. Well, because again, like I think it speaks to this perversion of like certain industries where we're not taking certain things and saying, that's not a thing where you need to go and exploit and extract trillions of dollars out of. Like that's at a minimum, a thing to keep people healthy and alive. Like don't begin to mix that up with growth and shareholder value and those kinds of ideas. Because yeah, when we do that,

we completely reduce people to just shit on the spreadsheet abstract numbers and at a certain point one person being like i need to crank this up by half a percent means tens of thousands of people going to bankruptcy and we're like we're completely i think uh divorced from like the humanity of it all which i think is just it it unfortunately when that happens a lot of the people who are the most vulnerable we forget about it because it's not necessarily maybe presents the greatest threat to the most people all the time but it simmers and it ends up you know where eventually that that rot touches all of us although i have to say one of the things that really startled me in pandemic time, the heart of it in 2020 was like a fair number of us, I looked to Western European national health systems with a degree of admiration profit motive per se. It should be about, look, every person in a society should be able to get the healthcare they need for the lives

they want to live. But those national systems were no more able to cope with the demands of a pandemic for the most part and showed many of the same fissures between sort of haves, have-nots that the United States did, partly because their own budgets had been eviscerated over the prior years because people didn't want to really pay taxes to support that collective good. And they were susceptible to the same mantras of efficiency. And efficiency means, you know, you don't have spare beds. It means when a crisis hits, there's no slack. The slack costs money. All I'm saying is like, it is true that we have massive structural impediments

to delivering some of the goods that you talk about, but it is eye-opening to see the degree to which it's very hard to find a human assemblage on the planet that does this particularly well, other than some smaller homogenous societies. You could say, look, Denmark does this pretty well. But Denmark's like Manhattan plus Queens.

That's not said with any pejorative, right? It's just I think it's easier when there's fewer people and they're all somewhat related. I do have to say, I bribe all my doctors just to get better reports, better test results. What did you put for my height there, Doc?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What'd you put for my height? Could I get an extra inch on my height? Drop like 20 pounds from the weight, and that cholesterol needs to come way down, bro. You can bribe people here to get a driver's license too, which is why it's really scary to drive here. Wow. All right. Let's take a quick break.

We'll come back and talk for like five minutes about vampires and then we'll let you guys go. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high-control groups and interview dancers, church members, and others whose lives and careers

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And we're back. And, yeah, let's talk vampires. Vampires are back. I mean, I guess we should start off with the most important question, right, Miles? Most important question for our guests. Emma and Zachary, are vampire fangs hollow like straws

so they can drink the blood through the fangs or are they sharp pokers to create a wound to drink from? Okay, I feel like there's only one answer to this question is the right answer and that they must be like straws otherwise yes otherwise the drinking doesn't make any sense to it doesn't work you'd basically have to like rip open a massive wound you couldn't have just like two pincers and then what lap up the blood it would be like a little trickle it doesn't make sense

it's like an artery though you know what i mean they're going for the jugular maybe so you got good good pressure good good blood pressure coming out of there but i do but okay i like that now i agree i'm going with emma 100 here wow so this is huge because gang so we miles and i like came up in the vampire game thinking that was how things worked. But, like, then we're made to feel stupid. And, like, up until you guys just said that, I had felt stupid. But maybe not. Maybe this is the truth.

Maybe we were right all along, Miles. I guess the thing, the devil's advocate is that like Capri Sun you know, you can just puncture a hole and then just suck that thing dry like you don't need your teeth to yeah, but there's one other problem there's one other problem with that picture which is if you ever see a vampire, and of course we've all seen real vampires do this

not just the movie ones if they were just two puncture wounds you'd have to first puncture and, you'd have to first puncture, and then you'd have to move your mouth. Because you have to move your mouth up to the puncture for suction. And that would be a totally different, that would be a two-step process on the neck.

Oh, right. And you don't, that's not how it works. It's one, and then it's a latch, and the latch doesn't work if the puncture is like significantly toward your nose. Right. And it's like, plus it's blocking the hole in which the blood would be flowing from if the fangs are still in there. Yeah.

So I'm just saying. Damn. Thank you, Zach. Okay. I mean, I guess we have a we also have a less important update from the world of vampires. We also have a less important update from the world of vampires in that Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly have talked about liking to occasionally drink each other's blood. Apparently, MGK will cut his chest open with broken shards of glass so that Fox can drink the blood. And the vampire community was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Back that shit up. I'm sorry. What did you say? Yeah. Yeah. Real quotes from vampires. One man, Belfazar Ashen-Tasson, the co-founder of the New Orleans Vampire Association. No, that wasn't fucking around. He's saying most vampires, again, to saying you can't just drink somebody's blood.

What are you, sick? You got to know whose blood you're drinking he says vampires do extensive research on their blood donors before using even the slightest drop and it says it took him six months to get to know his blood donor and feel comfortable before uh he would ingest the blood another and then so and to the shards of glass thing another vampire father sebastian the founder of the endless night vampire ball said you got to be careful you got it you you got to use like medical procedures to have the blood withdrawn properly otherwise it's you're looking at a terrible terrible mistake or you know potential harmful issues so i just like that the vampires came out to them

and we're saying this ain't some fucking movie where you just start slug sucking on a bloody wound. Get real. You need to have someone like maybe a phlebotomist on standby to properly do this. a set of really strict and clear rules of engagement when it comes to how you drink, what you drink, and from whom you drink. That never really occurred to me, to spend time and energy mapping out the parameters of. And that's the really cool thing about sub-communities. We go about our lives thinking, at such a point as you decide that you want to actually drink someone's blood,

it's a pretty simple, basic transaction, kind of like Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton. You know, you just put a little bit of a vial and you show up at the Oscars and there you have it. But indeed, you know, there's some real serious expertise and complexity there. Maybe we can talk about cannibalism the next time we talk, because I'm sure there too, you know,

thermometers, temperature, minimum, which cuts are better, storage techniques, right? How do you make sure they don't reach for the wrong thing in the cooler? Whatever.

I'm sure it's all out there. Yeah. It's all about community. You know what I mean? That's what I was saying earlier about building community. Thank you. It's very important.

Come on, New Orleans. Hit up nova let let balfazar know you're here for his uh safe technocratic uh form of vampiring is there like a vampire name generator because like is is balfazar ashen tassant is that his is that this person's legal name or do you when you fall into vampirism you're're like, hold on. Now this is my confirmation saint name, Belfazar. Do you go to Van Rice Corpus and try to find your spirit vampire name? Right. It might be his legal name if he changed it, but it's certainly not his given name. There's no way.

Right. Unless he comes from a line of yeah right new orleans vampire association true true true well guys it's been a pleasure having you on tdz uh where can people find you follow you all that good stuff so you can listen to our podcast called what could go right we're on you know any podcast platform you can think of we're at progress progressntwrk on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, if you're a LinkedIn person. You can also sign up for our newsletter, which is also called What Could Go Right, and that's on the Progress Network website, which is theprogressnetwork.org. Yeah. And think about it as kind of a yin to this yang.

Yeah. There you go. Right. Balance in the force. And is there a tweet or some of the work of social media you've been enjoying? So not quite a tweet, but a tweet to an article, which was Kevin Kelly. He was one of the founding editors of Wired Magazine. He turned 70 last week and he put out this list called 103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Knew. It's really great. It's completely random.

There's absolutely no order and just gems throughout. So I recommend that. It's on his website called Sechnonium, I think. All right. How about you, Zachary? So just for funny tweetlandia, there's a woman named Eden Dranger who has a hilarious set of ever new Twitter feeds. One of her recent ones is, whenever I feel ugly, I just remember that I'm a terrible person too.

There you go. And the other is, we should have to answer like five security questions before making any late night online purchases. Yeah. Wise words. Got to identify which square has the boat in it before you make bad choices. And I'll leave you with the final one of hers. If I was a marriage counselor, I'd just let the couple log on to any dating app for two minutes there you go uh miles where can people find you what's the tweet you've been

enjoying uh find me on twitter and instagram at miles of gray if you like basketball check out miles and jack got mad boosties our basketball podcast is where you know again we talk about the world here we celebrate celebrate the NBA over there. And if you like 90 Day Fiancé, check out 420 Day Fiancé with your boy and Sophia Alexandra. A tweet I like. First one is from Natasha Lyonne, because I've been watching a little bit of Russian Doll, the new season. And so whenever I see her tweets, I can't help but hear it in her voice. And Lyonne tweeted, how come no one talks about wap anymore you guys used to love wap

random natasha leone tweet uh and then another one from at asante's inferno tweeted i love that when british people sing they cut out all that bullshit. Yeah. That was like when I heard like, like an interview, like, like Led Zeppelin the first time ever as a kid. I was like, wait,

what? What the fuck? What? Hey, but sometimes, you know, green deck adds back in from our, from our end.

Suddenly we're British again. Tweet I've been enjoying. Gian Marco Ceresi tweeted, Oh Oh you don't like cargo shorts? Let me check my 46 pockets for a fuck to give 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

Where we post our episodes and our footnotes, where we link off the information that we talked about in today's episode as well as a song that we think you might enjoy. Miles, what song do we think people might enjoy? We're going to do an instrumental version, a cover by this

group, Soul Supreme, of the track by Mos Def called Umi Ses. A lot of people know that song umi says umi says but this is a great instrumental cover of it even more so so this is soul supreme's version of umi says all right well the daily zeitgeist is a production of iheart radio for more podcasts from iheart radio visit the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you listen your favorite shows that's gonna do it for us this morning. But we're back this afternoon to tell you what's trending. We'll talk to you all then. Bye.

Bye. the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry.

Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry.

Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of naked sports up first i explore the making of a rivalry caitlin clark versus angel reese people are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game clark and reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball and on this new season

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