The Daily Zeitgeist - Eat The Rich Before They Eat Us, They (Robots) Took Our Jobs 12.4.17

Episode Date: December 5, 2017

In episode 40, Jack & Miles are joined comedian Josh Androsky to discuss Tina Fey, the tax bill that just passed, Trump's tweet about Michael Flynn, a break down of wealth distribution in America, the future of automation, college football, & 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. woman had done before, tried to assassinate the President of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson. 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nicknamed Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer, this season on the new podcast, Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to iHeart True Crime Plus, only on Apple Podcasts. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast.

As the U.S. elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever. But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows. That we're surprisingly more united than most people think. We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics, and that we need to do better and that we can do better. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. MTV's official challenge podcast is back for another season.

That's right. The Challenge is about to embark on its monumental 40th season, y'all, and we are coming along for the ride. Woo-hoo! That would be me, Devin Simone. And then there's me, Davon Rogers. And we're here to take you behind the scenes of the Challenge 40, Battle of the Eras.

Join us as we break down each episode, interview challengers, and take you behind the scenes of this iconic season. Listen to MTV's official Challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, the internet, and welcome to Season 9, Episode 1, the season premiere of das daily zeitgeist for december 4th 2017 my name is jack o'brien aka potatoes o'brien and i'm joined by my co-host mr miles gray yes it's experimental artist your boy kusama in the building how are you

uh i'm great miles thanks for asking and we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by the hilarious stand-up comedian Josh Androsky. Hello. That's me. Your words, not mine. What's going on, Josh? I'm good. I just got back from Seattle, and boy, is my existentialism tired. Hey, there he is. Having fun, huh? I did just get back from Seattle. I went to go somewhere else that wasn't Los Angeles. I was like, so I don't drink anymore. I wanted to go somewhere with legal weed where I didn't know anybody.

And it was perfect. I ended up meeting this woman on Tinder who worked for Sub Pop. And she gave me this whole tour of Sub Pop. Oh, wow. And I sat next to this dude on the plane. And you can just vibe somebody. I just vibed him. whole tour of sub pop oh wow and i sat next to this dude on the plane and i could you know and you can just like vibe somebody yeah yeah i just vibed him and i was like hey man forgive me but you look like a dude that knows where i could find some acid and he was like you sat next to

the right guy are you serious yeah and and he ended up like owning this rad bar and wearing the sweat the sweater of the bar the screwdriver bar if you're in seattle shout out to him just out of the owner yeah well i mean bar it's a rock and roll bar uh but no they've got you would love it dude they've got um this amazing 45 jukebox that has like all these like uh old like garage rock punk really soul 45 oh yeah yeah yeah i love that yeah wait so when you vibed him was it because he was just like wearing mad hacky sacks around his neck? Yeah, he had – He was hacking in the eye. His eyes were as big as the sun.

And he just looked at me and was like, are you my dad and am I your dad? And I was like, yes, yes, yes. Let's talk when the flight lands. Josh, what's something from your search history that's revealing about who you are? Oh, yeah. Okay. So this – honestly, these two, like, it's my two genders. You know what I mean?

It's like the two parts of me. So sad Billy Corrigan, which – are you familiar with the picture? No. No, I don't think so. Okay. Even if you're driving and you're listening to this, just like – Pull over. Don't.

Just – there's no time. Pull out your phone while you're driving and Google sad Billy Corrigan and look at that first picture that comes up of Billy Corrigan on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Frowning. Frowning so hard. Billy Corrigan sucks. He's a piece of shit. And he's like, like, wait, why is Billy a piece of shit?

He's like weirdly alt right now. He is. Yeah. Yeah. He went hard. He's just trying to make that bald head work for him. Right. Exactly.

He's like, oh, and I'm a skinhead now. Exactly. I trying to make that bald head work for him. Right. Exactly. He's like, oh, well, I'm a skinhead now. Exactly. I'm not just a washed fucking 90s artist. Right. Exactly, dude. Today is the greatest. Yeah. And it's because I saw this picture.

And then the other thing that I recently looked up was I was like, oh, man, all this news reminds me of something. Oh, yeah. The failed coup against FDR. Yeah, the business. The business plot. The business plot. Are you familiar with The business plot. The business plot. Are you familiar with the business plot? Tell me more.

Basically, the last time we had a president that was willing to be a class traitor was FDR. Right. And only for white people and only for white men. So we need a new one for everybody. Right. But he – this was like in the ramp up of World War II and a bunch of business interests including I believe Prescott Bush, George W. Graham Pappy and like a bunch of other like major industrialists and shit all got together in Germany. And we're like, you know, this fascism thing is pretty neat. Yeah. It's pretty neat.

Yeah. And so the – god, the ambassador, I think – so we still had, like, an ambassador to Germany at the time when Hitler was, like, taking power. And before we had, like – you know, the war had really, really begun. And the ambassador was just writing these frantic letters to FDR. Like, they're just talking about this shit in the open, dude. You got to know. Like, this is fucked. They're coming for you.

They're coming for you. And they only got his legs. No. But they tried, right? They got a general, a former general to come on board. And they were like, all right, so here's the thing. You're going to lead us in a coup to overthrow the actual U.S. government. And the general was like, oh, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. You guys know I'm like a military person. I'm not going to like and he just went and told fdr yeah and they got like fined or something yeah they got a

slap on the wrist for trying to take over the entire government their offspring became the actual president of the united states well that's the soft coup of corporatocracy right uh so what's something you think is overrated um overrated uh we can go like one two three cops the philadelphia eagles and tina fey okay tina fey is surprising okay um here's my thoughts on tina fey i think tina fey um was really great for a moment and then what happens to a lot of um comedy people is that they get rich and become insular and then i i have a feeling that Tina Fey hasn't spoken to anybody in a meaningful way who can't afford a Park Avenue apartment in like five to seven years. And it's so like you just see it in her work now.

And the fact that we're okay with Tina Fey, America's like, just have some ice cream, blarg. We're okay with her message, A, of like, you don't have to engage. Right. Yeah, that rubbed me the wrong way. So she had an appearance on Weekend Update in the SNL premiere where she was like- Just eat cake instead of- Let him eat cake.

Right. She was like, how are you dealing with the Trump presidency? I'm eating cake to make myself feel better. Right. Because she doesn't have to engage because she's not, she's never going to be on the front lines because being rich and white supplants like any oppression that she would get. She also came back and hosted last year or a couple years ago, and one of the sketches was like her observations about like having an assistant. Yeah, right. Exactly.

Yeah, it was like, wait, that's your observational comedy now? Right, but that's the thing. You see it with Jerry Seinfeld. You see it with all these people who maybe had the pulse for a second but then have just insulated themselves so much. And the other thing that really, really gets me about Tina Fey is that she is saying don't engage, don't engage, but then doing commercials for predatory credit card companies that are responsible for why people are in this mess. And I guarantee you she doesn't, A, care or B, see the connection in those two things. And so I don't know. I think to be a good comedian, you need to have a modicum of self-awareness.

And I think that Tina Fey, for being somebody that talks so much about herself, and that's what made her comedy so relatable, about herself and and that's what made her comedy so relatable right was like oh yeah these are our like you know lazy urges and just like whiny you know like anxiety and that kind of shit that we all have uh i think now it's just spun off into this like real housewives zone like her prose is like very funny for yeah you know being pros like, it's like a laugh every like two, three sentences and in her book. But yeah, there's also like once she gets to the SNL part, there's just some elitism like in there.

She's like, you need to have somebody who graduated from Harvard. Like that needs to be half of your staff. It's like, yo, you know, there are really funny people who didn't even graduate college or high school. Hello.

Very smart. High school dropout. Right. Or high school. Hello. Who are very smart. High school dropout right here, baby. Yeah, and she's super funny. Nobody's saying she's not funny, but she's a cold, unfeeling joke machine. And I think that we will look back and history will judge Parks and Rec better than 30 Rock. Yeah. Because it had heart and it was about characters and real people. And don't even get me started on Jerry Seinfeldfeld oh my god his latter day stuff is is pretty brutal and he has weird opinions on uh

you know kids these days well especially really frustrated considering that he dated a kid right fucking dated a 17 year old yeah i mean where's his fucking he should be – Who he picked up in a park. Yeah, I forgot about that. He met a 17-year-old at the peak of Seinfeld when he was in his mid to late 30s. He met a 17-year-old high school student in a park and started dating her openly around New York, took her to Knicks games. What's something you think is underrated? Dude, I'm going to go with the song Duke of Earl. By Cypress Hill? Yeah, Cypress Hill.

By Gene Chandler, the original song Duke of Earl. Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl, Duke, Duke. Before he gets sued. That's not a cover. But that's why it's underrated because everybody just remembers. I feel like there was like one year in the 90s when there was a Duke of Earl novelty thing. Like it was either in a commercial or like Babe 2, Pig in the City or something. Right, right, right.

Like Big Mouth Billy Bass sang it or some shit. Right. And so we all just like – all we think of is the Duke, Duke, Duke part. But the song itself is fire. The song itself is like Sam Cooke level. There's a song beyond that? There's a song beyond that. And it's like real good. I only know Duke, Sam Cook level. There's a song beyond that? There's a song beyond that. And it's like real

good. I only know Duke, Duke, Duke. Right. Everybody does. Everybody only knows the Duke, Duke, Duke. Alright, so we gotta get our minds around that. Yeah, dude. Listen to Duke of Earl. Listen to the classics. Respect the classics. Alright, let's get into format. We're trying to take a sample of the ideas that are out there changing the world. Whether

we're looking or not, we talk about politics, the president, news. We also talk about the movies and supermarket tabloids. We're going to be pretty news-heavy this episode because, holy shit, what a weekend. But, yeah, we like to start out, actually, Josh, asking our guest if there's any myth that's in the zeitgeist that they think people generally have wrong like the shared consciousness this is a hot one dude jocks are better than nerds the myth is that nerds are better than jocks and the myth is wrong nerds are bad nerd

culture is destroying america and it the jocks are the only ones that can save us. And I can't believe I'm saying this as a former nerd myself. But it all tracks. Josh is like 225, just ripped. Ripped, yeah. Your muscle just like. He literally drank one of those big bottles of creatine powder, just like dumped it in his face. Walked in in a letterman jacket and pushed miles over. Kicked sand in his face.

Stole his prom date. Describe, I mean, by by nerd culture you mean what so nerd culture i mean specifically like the atomization and like festering of nostalgia uh that supplants the need for trying new things or exploring or creating things this nostalgia obsession uh you see it and everything from how every movie is a fucking reboot now to just this idea that it to me it keeps people inside and insulated to the world and it and it it's part of like a greater trend of politics right now where people are just retreating inward like tina fey talked about like i just eat cake you know like this idea that like you can escape how bad the world is through your fetish, like, your particular, like, cultural fetish and then only talk about that thing and have human relationships based on, like, that.

I think that's fucking horseshit. And it's a cop-out. just fucking lunkheads um like colin kaepernick and malcolm jenkins and basically every nba player and coach popovich and van gundy um that's keeping protest and actual dissent culturally relevant like jocks and the protest movement like are intertwining in a way that like our country hasn't seen since kareem ab-Jabbar and Muhammad Ali. And we are having important conversations that we're supposed to be having about police violence and racial equality because of dudes that, you know, traditionally people like me, little Jews in glasses are like taught to be scared of. Right.

And meanwhile, let's take a gander at what nerds are doing right now the alt-right uh fucking peter teal is a nerd and you know like all these like silicon valley tech people are exploiting the hell out of our country and they're fucking nerds let me throw this one on you you know who was a nerd adolf hitler hitler with nazis were fucking nerds he was a culture nerd he was like super into dis super into Disney stuff and, like, Coke products. Yeah. Yeah, he was a culture nerd. Kim Jong-un?

Nerd. Yep. Like, and the online anonymous rage thing of nerds has just, I think, like, poisoned discourse. Totally. It's a big reason why I quit Twitter. That is a hot take. Hot take. And I am thoroughly convinced.

Yeah, that got my wheels spinning. Drugs are better than nerds. Pass it on. Yeah. Hot take. And I am thoroughly convinced. Yeah, that got my wheels spinning. Drugs are better than nerds. Pass it on. Yeah. All right. Before we go to break, just want to take a sort of the temperature of the zeitgeist over the weekend. I was saying when we came in today, Miles, that I felt like the world was deflated.

Finally got it right. Oh. world was finally got it right oh just felt deflated after uh the republicans passed the tax bill at 2 a.m in the morning on friday night it just seemed like i was expecting more outrage uh and it just seemed like and also my phone was broken this weekend so maybe that was just me maybe i just didn't see the outrage as much but um i don't know like the whereas with health care and uh past trump transgressions people uh it just seemed like the energy was there to combat the insanity of it all it felt to me like the the forces that are resisting sort of felt a little beaten down to me this weekend i mean personally it did feel like it kind of was one of those moments like where you just kind of realized oh okay yeah this really is

we really are there now yeah we really just kicked the middle class in the dick and we're just like it doesn't fucking matter right and we need to save these billionaire people's money that was very yeah like at first i was really angry like leading up to it i was retweeting all kinds of shit and i was just like oh come on we gotta fucking figure this out and then by the end when you knew what happened i was just yeah i was i was resigned to the fact that i mean i guess accepting the reality of where the power is now and what the agenda is right and i think part of it right is like as you mentioned the the idea that like there was so much more resistance to health care you know and and other like trump debacles. And I think that you can use this to illuminate a lot of things about how power works and specifically how the Republicans are so good at exhausting people with technical jargon.

Tax increases and decreases are very abstract. You can look at a person in a wheelchair like the ADAPT protesters who were, like, I think, so much more responsible for health care being saved than any Democratic congressperson, like any Democrat. It was the ADAPT protesters who were willing to put their bodies on the line and show cops dragging people out of their wheelchairs. Like, that creates – I mean, you can't – there's no equivalent. There's no emotional equivalent to that and because the democrats have just seeded the ideological battle to the right for no reason there's no ideology that we can fall back on that goes no because there's nowhere to channel that anger about um class inequality because the democrats are fucking just as bad as the republicans at most of like structural inequality

shit oh yeah right there's no good guys There's no good guys to root for. There's really bad guys and then people who just kind of are like shook and become inert, which is the problem. Yeah. Yeah. The Flynn story broke that he is flipping. But, you know, every story that came out over the weekend seemed to be like, yeah, Trump's account tweeted out that he fired Flynn because he knew that he lied to the FBI, right? He tweeted, I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the vice president and the FBI.

He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide. Right. So that's essentially pleading guilty to obstruction of justice. And you would think that that would be a thing where everybody would be sort of motivated by that. Like, oh, my God, he just admitted to it. And his response was just, oh, my lawyer wrote that on my Twitter account for some reason.

And people I don't know, it just seems like people are like, yeah, of course. Like, sure, whatever. Like, fuck it. Go ahead and say that. There's outrage over the sense that something is going on and being covered up. And then there's also the sort of gnawing feeling that this is a distraction from the tax bill, which is 500 pages and nobody I know has read. But, you know, is the thing that maybe we should be paying attention to. Roy Moore is going to win.

Alabama got into the playoffs over Ohio State, which we'll talk about later. But Alabama is the Republican Party of college football. It is like a behemoth that is just spending money steamrolling the little guy. Yeah, it's fun to look at a map of the highest paid jobs paid with taxpayer money in each state. And in like, I think like 30 states, it's college football. Yeah. So, yeah, we're going to get into some of these stories when we get back. But yeah, I don't know. That seems to me to be sort of any actual information don't right but this shit is super

hilarious and really entertaining you can't focus on it because you personally can't affect it so as long as you look at this as like a funny thing that like kind of doesn't really affect your life then it's safe but if you really think like oh mueller's gonna get him now then you're gonna be miserable your entire life. Right. All right, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now.

The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life.

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In a galaxy far, far away. No, babe, that's taken. We're in our own world, remember? Right. In our own world, we're two space cadets and totally normal humans. Sure, totally normal humans. Embark on a journey across the stars, discovering the wonders of the universe one episode at a time. We'll talk about life, love, laughter, and why you should never argue with your co-pilot. Especially when she's always right. Right. And if we hit turbulence, just blame it on Mercury retrograde. Or Emily's questionable space piloting skills. Hey! Join us on In Our Own World

for cosmic conversations, stellar laughs, and super corny dad jokes. Listen to In Our Own World as a cosmic conversations, stellar laughs, and super corny dad jokes. Listen to In Our Own World as a part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't worry, we promise to avoid any black holes. Most of the time.

When you think of Mexican culture, you think of avocado, mariachi, delicious cuisine, and of course, lucha libre. It doesn't get more Mexican than this. Lucha libre is known globally because it is much more than just a sport and much more than just entertainment. Lucha libre is a type of storytelling. It's a dance. It's tradition.

It's culture. Behind this spectacular sport, from its inception in the United States to how it became a global symbol of Mexican culture, we'll learn more about some of the most iconic heroes in the ring. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. And we're back. All right, we're just going to talk about taxes real quick. We don't have time or infinite energy to get into all the many, many details. You know, the tax plan that they are passing through is probably going to repeal the individual mandate. passing through is probably going to repeal the individual mandate. So they're taking money that would be spent on health care for, you know, millions of people that are in need,

who cannot afford health care, cannot afford health care, and moving it elsewhere. But there was a really revealing quote from Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, where so one of the just most egregious parts of this, and it's not one of the details that is actually going to cost people all that much money, but they are repealing what's called the death tax, the inheritance tax, which is basically a tax on the 5,000 highest income Americans. So people who, when they die, are leaving behind over, I think, $11 million. That money is extra taxed because that's a shitload of money. That you did nothing for. Right.

That you did nothing for. And the logic that Chuck Grassley used to explain it was pretty amazing. He said, quote, I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing. This is in a quote to the Des Moines Register. He said, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it's on booze or women or movies. So what he's saying there is we're giving money to people who will invest it, these people who are inheriting millions of dollars from their parents and have never had to work for that money at all.

And we're taking it away from people who – and this is how he views the rest of us, basically, the rest of the world, or people who spend their money on booze, women, or movies. Movies is such a weird throw in there. That's the odd man out of us three. Well, they are expensive these days. That is true. Maybe he's trying to circle back and just take a slam. It's like, oh, $20 to go to the movies movies it's a setup movie yeah i remember when he's costing nickel

right um which is by the way is the only money you'll be getting you'll be getting paid in nickels from now on thanks to the new republican tax plan um so it really gets at what is wrong with a lot of the logic with this uh tax, which so people who invest their money, he's talking about, you know, stocks, and you know, the market. 51% of families in America own stocks in 2016, which is, you know, not that bad. But when you look at how much is owned by the richest, the top 1% of households by wealth owned 38% of all stock shares. 1% of households own 38%. So he's saying we need to give more money to that top 1% so that they can invest it. But that only helps them and the stock market. And it's all part of this idea that by making the obscenely rich

more obscenely rich, you're going to stimulate the economy somehow. But I mean, as the estate tax and their anger at the estate tax proves, they just want to keep the money for themselves and for the people in their family. Yeah, there's nothing about upward mobility or anything in this bill. When you look at boom and bust cycles of the economy, we're in a good time right now, and unemployment's low. The stock market's doing great. Rich people are getting fucking richer. Yeah. A tax cut is the absolute opposite of what is normal.

There's already insane problems with wealth distribution. Yeah. The top 20% of Americans own 92% of the stock. So that money is not going anywhere. And we need to talk about also, there's a guy named Matt Brunick, who's a fantastic writer. You should follow him

if you're still in hell on Twitter. He runs a leftist think tank called the People's Policy Project. And he talks a lot about the passivity of income, the idea that when you talk about investing, because we're not taught this in schools, and the Democrats have done a really poor job of like ideologically talking about what exactly is an investment. And this idea that these people are simply creating wealth by having wealth, right. There's no work.

There's no motivation. There's nothing that benefits society. You're not creating a product. You're not creating a service. And you're not putting this money back into the economy. What it is is welfare. What it is is we need to start looking at things like this the way that the Republicans have gotten white, lower class, working class, middle class people to look at welfare moms and food stamps and shit like that.

That's what this is. This is just a bandaid to allow people who don't work to not work more. And it's way worse than welfare because you see welfare be put back into the economy. Right, right, right. These people that need food stamps aren't sitting on their food stamps. They're not like, oh, I got a mad collection of EBT. Right. Yeah, look at all these rollover dollars.

Yeah. You know? No, that's a very pervasive myth. The idea that people on welfare just sit back and collect welfare and spend it on booze, women, and movies. But then you look at the money. Like what? The extra $9 million that somebody is going to get because their fucking uncle died.

Right. How are they going to spend that money? They're going to fucking sit on it. You know about the my favorite thing is the one Koch brother who's the least evil Koch brother. The one that's gay. Fred, I think is his name. The one they thought was gay. The one they thought was gay.

Right. Like didn't enjoy smashing people. Right. So he owns a tiny town. Did you know that? He owns like a Western ghost town and he just like walks around in his ghost town as like sheriff of tiny town. Really? Yeah.

A hundred percent. Yeah. Tiny town. Like are the people there small? I don't. I just call it tiny town because it's so funny. But he has like a like a little set up. It's a ghost town.

It's like an old West town. And I don't know if he like hires people to like cosplay west world and shit in there that's amazing but yeah if you look up like coke brothers ghost town uh and it's like okay how is this helping giving this dude enough money to create fucking west world just for himself he's creating ghost jobs though yeah that ghost town that town didn't see jobs in who knows how long. Ghost jobs? There haven't been ghost jobs in here in 40 years. That was neat. Ghost jobs, mister. But yeah, the other thing, too, is just to think, again, we're in a good time, right?

The economy is strong. We can afford to invest this money in infrastructure or things that we sorely need, which actually creates jobs, which actually creates some kind of wealth for other people. That's why it's so crazy to try and wrap your head around what the motivations are of the people in the Senate. Oh, it's easy to wrap your head around it. They just want to be rich, and they want their friends to pay them to be rich. That maybe makes me just such an out-there stupid idiot

that I just feel like that's wrong. But I'm like, how could you look at other people and be like, nah, fam, we're going to fucking sit on this money and just keep it to ourselves? I think it's easy because that's how the system works. Like Lindsey Graham himself said, we need to get this passed or else our donors won't return our phone calls. He just outright admitted it because I don't think anybody – But that means you're not a human. You've lost your fucking humanity.

Well, of course I have. They just think that that's how the system works. But you think about it, right? So like like maybe maybe some senators used to be poor maybe right i'm gonna say a small amount of them used to be or an hatch was surprisingly so how long though has he been 900 years he's been exactly exactly so you get to this place and and we were talking about with like my critique of tina fey where it's like these people only see other rich people and in the beltway is so insular right that they only see rich media people uh and and that's why they all hang out and party with each other because this is all a joke because they don't ever see none of their kids are addicted to opiates and they're

not losing their houses and then if they are they're probably keeping quiet and getting them the best treatment possible exactly because they could afford it because of their wonderful health insurance right yeah and so it's it's this idea of like we don't have any bearing like like we don't see the outcome of this because everything is such a perfectly carefully staged photo op with their constituents which is what made the health care thing so great is these town halls like for the first time in my lifetime people showed up and like treated politicians how they're supposed to be treated like greedy fucks yeah you're supposed to hate your boss you're supposed to hate your local politicians you're not supposed to love politicians and like that's been a big problem of america and i think trump's helping

us with that that's the one good thing he's done right yeah no nobody's gonna be like ah i love the president yeah you're supposed to hate the president. All right. Enough of the dark stuff. Let's talk about one of the most horrifying scenarios facing the world right now. We wanted to talk about artificial intelligence and this sort of looming...

Stanley Kubrick. What a neckbeard. This sort of looming possibility that artificial intelligence is going to take over jobs. There are some estimates that say 73 million jobs in the United States could be replaced by robots in the not too distant future. Jobs that, you know, I didn't think could be like accountant and like tax preparer and stuff like that, like stuff that I assumed was pretty complicated. They're saying could potentially be taken over by artificial intelligence um like tax preparation is like i

think one of the most vulnerable ones yeah like because we already use turbo tax right already not fucking with walking into a h&r block i'm like hi can you do something with this hello can you help me please i am dumb about numbers which you can actually even tell because the way they're spending money on their advertisements is crazy. Like the celebrities that they have in these like tax preparation commercials are like, what is going on? You're like, oh, they're in their death throes. So they're doing anything they can. Right.

H&R Blockbuster video, dude. So you take a company that has lots of human capital like H&R Block and you replace it with a company that is just a guy that programmed a thing. Right. And so all this money that was going to all these tax attorneys and accountants is now going to like two tech trillionaires. So one side of the equation is this could be the apocalypse and we're not going to have employment in the future. And what are we going to do? It's going to look like an 80s dystopian sci-fi future. But then another side, I read an Economist article that was like, yeah, but you can actually pull out articles from the late 19th century and other times throughout history where people thought the same thing was going to happen. Yeah, like the Luddites were fucking smashing up printing presses.

You know, instead of technology just taking over the world and everybody losing their job, what happened was technology took over certain jobs, but it created different jobs. So some people like The Economist in this article I recently read argues that that's what will continue to happen. We won't have a complete break from history. AI will just take the jobs that exist now, create new jobs that we can't possibly conceive of. But there are reasons to think that might not be the case this time around. You know, Facebook and Twitter are taking, you know, news distribution jobs and they're not replacing them. You know, they become multibillion dollar companies that, you companies that six shareholders get really rich, and that could be run by a handful of people. But the difference that I see is that the Luddites didn't know shit about printing presses. They just came in.

They were like a sect. They're like, fuck this thing. Whereas the people who are saying that we need to start thinking about this possibility are the people who know the most. Right. It's like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. It's like the people who are like, oh, you guys don't know what we can do. Yeah. Like this is coming.

You're like, because I'm looking at it and I'm fucking scared. Right. Yeah. I just made it and I'm fucking tripping hard. I fucked up really bad. Yeah. Right. I fucked up really bad.

Yeah. There's a great New Yorker article from a couple months ago about how Silicon Valley millionaires and billionaires have all taken to survivalism. They're all like, you know, building these island fortresses because I think there is a nascent understanding that this is coming. They take so many of the jobs that there's just an entire hungry underclass that needs to be fed. It will look like World War Z, except those zombies are fucking working people. Just us. Hungry. Yeah. Right.

Just fucking coming through your city. Right. So some of the solutions to this that have been suggested are... Nukes. Nukes. Just end it all. Or universal basices. Nukes. Just end it all. Or universal basic income. Yeah.

Which is – it's something that's been tested out. But Josh, as a leftist, as our resident leftist, can you explain the idea of UBI? Sure. And granted, I'm not an expert, but I've read a lot of articles. That is – that makes you an expert on this show. Hell yeah, dude. So UBI, it was in a series of books by James S.A. Corey. It's the first time I saw it.

But the idea that we are rich enough to give everybody essentially negative tax. Instead of you paying money in taxes, everybody gets like a median standard of living income, 30 grand, let's say. Let's put it at 30 grand. income 30 grand let's say let's put it at 30 grand um the idea being that um the reason why we created these robots is so that we as a society could be benefited and wouldn't have to toil right all day in a society dominated by work for work's sake and that's what you're seeing now in late capitalism is i mean i know everybody that's listening to this has or currently is doing a job that is mostly redundant, where, you know, you're just like, I don't need to be doing this technically, or I could be doing this from home remotely.

Right. And we're all just kind of just going through the motions. And so the idea would be like, there is enough food for everybody. There's enough fucking money for everybody. idea would be like there is enough food for everybody there's enough fucking money for everybody and ubi is um sort of an attempt to level the playing field to be like okay well uh if you just are an existing person part of your life liberty and pursuit of happiness is a fucking house and heating and air conditioning and a fucking food and yeah just enough money for basic survival yeah so wait how does the math work like where's

the money come from that gets distributed so first and foremost the pockets of the super wealthy um that there would be a progressive tax they would reinstitute things like the fucking estate tax and shit that just makes sense and then there's so much money in our military budget. We spend two times as much, I believe, as China, which is our next competitor. And so if we halved our security budget, we would still be spending significantly more than any other country. Right. And all of that money could go where it belongs,

which is into making people's lives better. So between progressive taxes on the wealthy, wealthy, wealthiest, closing corporate loopholes like the fucking Panama Papers shit, actually enforcing that stuff, and then like lowering the military budget by like even a fraction, you can easily get $30,000 for each American. And it works when it happens you know there you see in in alaska for example everybody has a universal basic income because of um oil money that comes through there so that all gets split among everybody and alaska is super fucking republican but you try to take that away from them and they'll lose their goddamn minds it's literally the most socialist thing that's ever

happened in alaska right and the the people of Alaska love it. Think of it like social security, but for your life. Wait, they get distributions on the oil? Yeah. That's pumped out of it? That's pretty awesome. Everybody gets a check. And you see it happen in, like, right now there's a lot of tech people that are experimenting with this because they see the writing on the wall that we deserve this. Like the fruits of our labor have produced this excess time, this surplus of time.

So what do people do when they have time? And so there are studies right now in like Norway and Scandinavia and like more progressive countries where based on what I've read, the outcomes of these studies are people are better parents and more integrated in their community and start gardening and like doing all these things that make their communities better when they're not you know newsflash chained to a fucking desk all day well and most people spend their money because they hate their job so much in just whatever ways they can to sort of like offset themselves yeah from like the toil as you say exactly and i think yeah another thing about the ubi is like it's to

sort of uh distangle this connection between work and quality of life. Yes. Because that's what we're all – whatever your job is, that's going to determine your quality of life. Right. And this is to say, yo, let's set a base standard of quality of life. Right. And then around that – And here's the thing.

You mentioned like what your job is is your quality of life and that presupposes all of the privilege inherent in why people get certain jobs right you know what i mean and the idea of like oh yeah well i work at a bank so i have a lot of money well how did you get to that bank where were you set up where were you given a head start that gets you and this exactly like you said levels the playing field and makes it so that literally everybody i mean this attacks poverty at the core and not just symptoms of poverty like something like an earned income tax credit would go after that's something that the democrats have means tested to be like oh if you're making under fifteen thousand dollars then you get this but if you make over fifteen thousand dollars you get and and it's all this convoluted you know obamacare fucking shit um this is just like social security and that everybody fucking gets it and everybody starts at the same place so that you can go be a doctor and cure cancer or go write the most beautiful fucking concerto or raise a happy family.

And not worry about how you're going to do that. Right. And the one thing that you never see in these stories is somebody going like, yeah, I started heroin. Right, right, right. stories is uh somebody going like yeah i started heroin you know right nobody just like sits back and just does nothing because as human beings we are social creatures and we crave you know cooperation and so this is like a huge blow in the idea of cooperation versus competition and that myth is out there that uh you know of of the welfare queen, these people who, you know, are on the dole and just sit back and they become, you know, drug addicts. And, you know, there's a famous story where old dirty bastard, like, as he was like, cashing his checks for like his, you powerful people don't want us to think that sitting back and having people money, this is like the one thing that charities never do. Because charities, it's more fun to be like, oh, I gave this farmer a cow. And like, isn't that clever that I was able to do that?

If you instead give that farmer $30 or however much a cow costs i'm way out of the show your ass but you know that is actually way more beneficial to him because he can you know he knows what he needs exactly what the job need a fucking cow right i need yeah i need a fucking i need a shovel to dig for fucking water. I need a cell phone to call. Right. And so, I mean, that's just been shown time and again that if you give people cash that they know what to do with it and they're rarely going to just sit back and be shitty citizens. Right.

I'm sure there are people who are just like, why are you doing that? But that's not the majority or necessarily a large share of it it and that also has nothing to do with class right that's a it's an internal like borderline personality disorder or whatever you know that that's yeah there's just as many fucking rich people that would just sit around we're just like oh i'm gonna spend everything right yeah so yeah uh you know there's this idea that maybe we will be existing in a post-work world fairly soon. We should. And I mean, we're kind of like Facebook is a good example of this because, you know, it's taken over how we get our information completely.

And, you know, there are very few people getting rich off of that. And also you were talking about like where you get your head start. rich off of that. And also, you were talking about like, where you get your head start. All of these internet, you know, monopolies were built on the back of tax funded, you know, government, the government created the internet and laid the foundation for the internet. So like, this is all stuff that, you know, the public invested in, and then a handful of people are becoming billionaires off of it. So, you know, the idea that the public should get money back is not insane or as insane as it might sound to you as an American.

We foot the bill for the bailouts. We foot the bill for, you know, like you said, starting the fucking Internet. That all came from our tax dollars. And then we don't reap any of the benefits. And another interesting point that you made was the idea that like this post-work world – like I was thinking about it. And really it's only been a couple lifetimes that capitalism as we know it where like your job is tied to your standard of living like is the case like you know i mean you go you only have to go back a couple generations to the idea of feudalism of you know like like can you imagine a feudalist like looking at like the liberalism that swept napoleonic europe and and just being

like i don't know if we give these reforms to the people, there's going to be some fucking crazy shit that happens. And it's just you're in the way of progress. And now that we have more information and more power and more resources than ever before, these switches are going to happen faster. And these things are going to evolve faster and we need to let them evolve. The thing that scares me though, and this is not to be negative about UBI necessarily because it's so much better than anything else we have on the table right now um the thing that scares me is a huey uh long situation do you know huey long the kingfish yeah so the idea that for those of you that don't know basically here was this guy who is the governor of louisiana who saw that rural white folks in Louisiana weren't learning how to read because the schools charged for books. So he nationalized basically whatever. He foot the

bill for all the books, taught an entire generation of people how to read, and then put in electricity in the rural areas, and everybody fucking loved him because here's this guy. And you look at the same thing with FDR and Social Security, and what happens then is that the people vote for you for fucking ever because you gave them this stuff. And so when you gave Huey Long a fucking blank check of voting, he went nuts and became the governor and the senator at the same time and just like went on this crazy power trip that ultimately ended in him getting assassinated. FDR obviously was a better president. And just like went on this crazy power trip that ultimately ended in him getting assassinated. Yeah. FDR obviously was a better president, but the Democrats were in power in Congress because of Social Security for 30 years. So the thing that scares me is who's going to implement UBI because that person will be worshipped. Right. And that's why I was so afraid of fucking Steve Bannon because he seemed like the only dude creative enough to realize that.

Right. And you get the jump on that. Right. You know, there is a way to run this whole thing. Right. If you have a right-leaning autocrat with like fascist tendencies and you give them something like this, then we could be in a situation like Saudi Arabia where, you know, you have this kingdom that rules with an iron fist on everything. But people generally don't do too much revolting because they're on the dole because they would not have money otherwise because there is like a weird sort of like petro-state UBI that goes on in Saudi Arabia. So UBI in general in a vacuum is a great idea.

We just need to make sure that it's being implemented for the right reasons by the right people. And making it so that it's still not impossible to jump into power. Because this could be seen as a way to allow your Peter Thiel's, your Elon Musk's and Young Zuck's to fucking still maintain power by pacifying all of us. All right. We got to take a quick break. We'll be right back. All right, we got to take a one-woman Wikileaks Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state and she paid the ultimate price Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session.

24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think

I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing.

They're just dreams. 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.

Do you ever wonder where your favorite foods come from? Like what's the history behind bacon-wrapped hot dogs? Hi, I'm Eva Longoria. Hi, I'm Maite Gomez-Rejon. Our podcast, Hungry for History,

is back. Season two. Season two. Are we recording? Are we good? Oh, we push record, right? Okay. And this season,

we're taking in a bigger bite out of the most delicious food and its history. Saying that the most popular cocktail is the margarita, followed by the mojito from Cuba, and the piña colada from Puerto Rico.

So all of these, we thank Latin culture. There's a mention of blood sausage in Homer's Odyssey that dates back to the 9th century B.C. B.C.? I didn't realize how old the hot dog was. Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, everyone. It's me, Katie Couric. Have you heard about my newsletter called Body and Soul? It has everything you need to know about your physical and mental health. Personally, I'm overwhelmed by the wellness industry. I mean, there's so much information out there about lifting weights, pelvic floors, cold plunges, anti-aging. So I launched Body and Soul

to share doctor-approved insights about all of that and more. We're tackling everything. Serums to use through menopause, exercises that improve your brain health, and how to naturally lower your blood pressure and cholesterol. Oh, and if you're as sore as I am from pickleball, we'll help you with that too.

Most importantly, it's information you can trust. Everything is vetted by experts at the top of their field, and you can write into them directly to have your questions answered. So sign up for Body and Soul at katiecouric.com slash body and soul. Taking better care of yourself is just a click away. And we're back. So we're running low on time, but we just wanted to go through a couple sports stories. Sports? It's kind of how both of us spend our weekends is we tend to watch a lot of sports. And then don't talk about it.

And then we don't talk about it. So might as well. I'm not a huge college football guy. I'm more an NFL fan. Yeah, at least they're getting paid to destroy their brains. Right, exactly. And, you know, I just really respect the politics of the ownership of the NFL. Big Jerry Jones guy?

Yeah, big Jerry Jones, big Goodell. I like both sides in that fight. I wish they'd just hug. Yeah. I've been kneeling this whole time, and Jack hasn't said anything. So they announced the college football final four. It's going to be the three teams everybody thought it would be uh clemson georgia and oklahoma and then the the fourth was up for grabs and they went with alabama which is like going with i don't know

i don't even know a fucking metaphor but um there's a i don't even know what metaphors are, man. This is a sports section. So they make more money than any program in the country. Alabama does? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then they spend more money than any program in the country by like 2X. Tell me how spending works because I don't care about college football. I don't really care about football. They have 38 assistant coaches. But they don't care about college well i don't really care about football they have 38 assistant coaches they it's but they don't pay the kids right they don't pay the kids but they

have 38 assistant one guy's like i'm tape manager the head coach who is you know a uh the devil psychopath but like the right kind of psychopath to win football games is the highest paid person in the state of Alabama. And so they're making all this money, spending all this money. And people really give a shit about the top four teams. They love this playoff where you get to see the top four teams in college football play against each other. But all the other teams are also having to try and keep up with alabama and ohio state who spends half as much as alabama but is the second most um and it's like driving these schools to like spend money on fucking college football stuff that

they're not going to make back so they're like taking money from elsewhere in their collegiate budget and, you know, spending it on college football that nobody's going to watch or care about. And like when they're outspending, you're saying that puts you at an advantage just because of like the like resources you can put into your team. Oh, yeah. Coaching and that. Yeah. And that's what inherently just.

And also just like scouting trips and like, you know, all the money that they do illegally give the players whenever they do, you know. Right. They have like the, you know how there are those Olympic training facilities in the mountains where all the Olympic athletes like train together and it's like the peak of scientific sports medicine. That's what Alabama's facilities look like. You go there and then you go to some school that spends a quarter of that that is still one of the biggest programs in the country, and it's no question where you go. So Alabama maintains its huge advantage.

Wait, then why are people mad? Do they feel like Ohio State objectively should have had that fourth spot? Wait, then why are people mad? Do they feel like Ohio State objectively should have had that fourth spot? You know, 538 had Ohio State as the favorite, and Alabama was second in line. So it was a minor upset. It's been a great year for 538, getting things right. Fucking nailing it.

But they were off only by one. They had Hillary winning, but Trump was coming in second. And so they only had it off by one. They mixed up one of the results. Yeahary johnson was number one in their poll well it's funny that you mentioned the olympics right um and i've just been you know going through a lot of stuff like the dsa la has a great like no olympics uh group um and and it's you say does it explain what dsa is sure uh it's the democratic socialists of america uh essentially uh we want you to have what you deserve, and we work locally. We're a big fan of grassroots, ground up. The basic idea is stop paying attention to national politics, at least for me.

I'm not talking on behalf of DSA. I'm talking about why I'm in it. Stop paying attention to national politics. You can't affect everything. You can't affect anything but if you uh work to make your community better and then you teach other people in other communities how to make their community better and then you learn from other communities how to make your community better then everybody gets rid of the little trumps at the local level um and then that creates the groundswell it's kind of the opposite of like the top down

like green party let's trot out jill and just be like, hey, we're here. Just come back from my party with Putin. Right. We want school board and city council and shit like that. And we believe real change starts from that. But the reason I brought them up is because inherently the DSA, especially LA, is against the Olympics. And it's like this. it seems like alabama is doing a mini olympics every fucking year where they're just building these weird things with

public money at great cost to like because it's not just that they're building this shit with public money right it's that this shit is going to be useless yeah and after the olympics after the olympics and when you talk about like the sports medicine stuff like that's not going to fix cancer that's not going to fix you know like actual fucking problems that people have that just increases someone's 40 time right exactly 40 right yeah and so you know it's it is pretty funny uh when you look at like how shitty the olympics is uh at the ioc as a group of just unelected, completely, like you can't hold them accountable, rich people. And then you look at the people selecting who's in the college football playoff. It's the same sort of just like party boy rich guys who, you know, party with Dominique Strauss

Kahn and are like, guilty of multiple assaults. Like you just know, anybody that's a college football booster is guilty of a multiple assaults. All right. Now for one last story that we can't turn into how fucked we all are by America as a society. We'll see. I don't think. Miles, this one's yours. Oh, my God. So, look, I'm a fan of Japanese baseball players.

Fan of a little baseball. And specifically this player shohei otani who is playing in japan is going to come to the major leagues and he is a fucking freak this dude can throw an insane fastball he can crush the shit out of the ball when he's at bat he's like looking like a real true two-way player which is like hasn't happened since favorite babe ruth right like and this guy it's crazy. He's the truth. It's coming to the Doyers, baby! We'll see.

So the reason I wanted to talk about this today is because over the weekend, all 30 MLB teams, they prepared presentations to try and get him to be like, hey, baby, why don't you sign for us? But he quickly whittled it down to seven teams. It's the Angels, the Dodgers, the Cubs, the Giants, the Mariners, the Padres, and the Rangers. Now, some people say maybe he wants the AL because of the DH. Maybe he wants the National League so he can play in the outfield or whatever. But it looks like, at the very least, there seems to be a little bit of a West Coast bias here. Southern California bias. Because, yeah, I think, A, he really wants to be able to fly to Japan. And that's an easier flight when you're leaving from the West Coast than it is from the East Coast.

And also, like, the Dodgers, I think you should come to the dodgers we've got some japanese players baby you'll fit right in we take care of you in la we love the japanese pitchers hideo normal shout out to you oh baby it's i just want to bring this up because we're getting closer and this guy's gonna be a very exciting player in baseball and like for the first time i'm very excited about uh you know i, even more than obviously when the Dodgers and the World Series are very excited. Sure. But like to know that there is a Japanese player who is like a freak. But again, we don't know how it will be in the MLB. But he shows great potential.

Great things could be happening. And guys, just keep your eyes on this. Can I read a quote from an interview with him that my friend sent me? It's so funny. So MLB.comcom asks what cities are you curious about and would like to see and otani goes the rocky balboa statue i want a picture of that and mlb.com goes philadelphia has a baseball team you know and he responds no i just want to visit fuck you phillies that's for the matt stairs game are you are you from philly no Boom. That's for the Matt Stairs game.

Are you from Philly? No, I'm from L.A. And the Phillies, the one playoff win I ever saw the Dodgers do was in the NLCS in the one game that they fucking beat the Phillies in that year. That, like, Ryan Howard and his huge droid's head just beat the shit out of the Dodgers. I think it's those Subway sandwiches that got them so big. Oh, yeah, right, right. That's what he'll say. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure. big. Oh, yeah, right, right. That's what he'll say. That's what he'll say. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure.

Right, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Allegedly, allegedly. Everything I've said is allegedly. Allegedly. All right, guys, we're going to end it there.

Josh, this was so much fun. Thank you for having me. This was great. Thanks for doing it. Where can people find you on the internet? You can check out my podcast, Left Coast,

at Left Coast Pod. And we do, it's myself and Sara June, who also was a guest. A lot of people love that episode. She's great. And the two of us are newly radicalized comedians, and we have on people that are way smarter than us to tell us about specific parts of leftism. I think the episode that's going to be coming out soon, We have a history of the doomed electric car in Los Angeles, as told by James Adomian. That's a great story. We do a multi-hour deep dive on Saudi Arabia with Felix Biederman from Chapo Trap House.

That's going to be coming very soon. So check us out, Left Coast Pod, on Twitter. L.A. used to have the largest public rail system in the country and I think in the world. It was up there in the world. And they just tore it all up because the corporations, the Goodyear tires of the world came through and were like, no, it would actually make us more money if you didn't have that. And so they bought it. And this is a little tease of what you'll hear.

They came together to create a corporation. Goodyear and like other automotive companies came together, bought the light rail, and then dug up the tracks and just removed, not only dismantled the trains, but

removed the tracks so no trains would go there ever again. Miles, where can people find you? You can find me on Twitter and Instagram at Miles of Grey. You can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien. You can find us at The Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook fan page that is The Daily Zeitgeist. And we are on Twitter at just Daily Zeitgeist, at Daily Zeitgeist.

And you can go to dailyzeitgeist.com where we post our articles and our footnotes where you can find all the sources to all the stuff we were talking about today. We weren't just making all that up, unfortunately. That's going to do it for today. We will be back tomorrow because it is a daily podcast. Thanks for today. We will be back tomorrow because it is a daily podcast. Thanks for listening.

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. In California during the summer of 1975, within the span of 17 days and less than 90 miles, two women did something no other woman had done before, try to assassinate the President of the United States.

One was the protege of Charles Manson. 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nickname Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer, this season on the new podcast Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to iHeart True Crime Plus only on Apple Podcasts. MTV's official challenge podcast is back for another season. Only on Apple Podcasts. And we're here to take you behind the scenes of the Challenge 40, Battle of the Eras.

Join us as we break down each episode, interview challengers, and take you behind the scenes of this iconic season. Listen to MTV's official Challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast. As the U.S. elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever. But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows, that we're surprisingly more united than most people think. We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics, and that we need to do better and that we can do better.

Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.