The Daily Zeitgeist - Ed Sheeran Stole From TLC? World’s Most Entitled Human 12.21.17

Episode Date: December 22, 2017

In episode 53, Jack & Miles are joined by comedian Ify Nwadiwe to discuss Wyatt Koch, Apple slowing down iPhones, The Office re-boot, Netflix's Bright, plus Pod Save The People's Deray McKesson calls in to talk staying motivated in the fight & more. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

Captain's Log, Stardate 2024. We're floating somewhere in the cosmos, but we've lost our map. Yeah, because you refuse to ask for directions. It's Space Gem, there are no roads. Good point. So where are we headed? Into the unknown, of course.

Join us on In Our Own World as we uncover hidden truths, navigate the depths of culture, identity, and the human spirit. With a hint of mischief. One episode at a time. Buckle up and listen to In Our Own World on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Trust us, it's out of this world. How do you feel about this, kids? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the Biscuits.

I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? It's right here in black and white and prints. It's bigger than a flag or mascot. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, the internet, and welcome to season 11, episode four of Das Daily Zeitgeist. For December 21st, 2017, my name is Jack O'Brien, aka Jack to the Future. And I'm joined by my co host, Mr. Miles Gray. That's right. It's your boy, Miles Gravis. Whoa, I've never, I can't believe I didn't think of that. you to simon workman

davis yeah who that's my namesake mine is once again courtesy of trevor uh and trevor's like your aka writer now you got ghost writers yeah well you just popped off those two right in a row boom uh and we are thrilled to be joined once again by the hilarious comedian and performer, Ify Wadiwe. Yo, what's up? Brr, brr, brr. Oh, there he is. This is your boy, Ify DZ, always staying breezy. I think I already said that.

Don't worry. We've used some words. Well, y'all had new ones. And also today, we have also another guest happening later on in the show. Yeah, we do. I teased that up front. Yeah, we have Dre McKesson coming on later on. It is a great conversation.

That'll be our mid-chunk, as we call it. Nobody calls it that. But up first, let's talk to Ify about who he is. Ify, what's something that you've searched in the not-too-distant past that is revealing about who you are as a human being? Oh, man. I think that would have to be airline cards. An airline card? Airline credit cards oh yeah you know i'm always i'm always in the air i'm fly as fuck and ready to land somewhere yeah we're gonna have to just keep you grounded yeah you're about to fly away also right

off the bat i want to give a quick uh shout you know because i don't know if y'all know it'd be going down in the dz instagram and it was getting popping. And there's something I got to address first thing. I want to talk about Calvin Lee Joseph. He asked for a shout-out. So what's up, Calvin? Thanks for getting your coworkers to listen to the show. You're greatly appreciated.

Yeah. I hope you're going nuts. Send a video of everyone going nuts for that shout-out. Thank you for being a fan of our podcast and not a presidential assassin. Your name makes you sound like you should be. So wait, with flight cards or with airline cards, like I always feel like I'm missing out on something because I don't really use my frequent flyer miles as much as I should. Yeah, because so with every dollar is a mile. And when you use the airline, it's double the miles.

And I was real hyped for it because last year my mother-in-law flew me to Argentina with miles. And I was like, wow, you're racking them up like that? And so I've always been a Delta SkyMiles member because, you know, I fly Delta. Delta got good first like there was this like sudden increase of like the airlines were suddenly like ah shit we have to be nice now and like give people movies for free and delta was the first one to take that leap so yeah you you bet on the right horse i am an american airlines person and that shit took a while

you guys there were like two years where american airlines was still like, nope, you just get a barf bag. That's it, homie. Like, that's still how we're working on this side. So what's something that you think is overrated? Okay, right now, yeah, Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, very overrated. Like, people are super hype about it. People are like, oh, my gosh. Oh, let's bow to this British dude for realizing a black queen is fine as hell. Like, no, dude. No.

And I think it's a conspiracy. I think I feel like I hear way more Americans talking about this royal wedding than we did back when it was Kate and whoever the fuck. William. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Prince William. Because we've got an american in the game exactly so this is all just a power play to get us to give a fuck about their whole like oh they're getting married no i don't care there's

only one royal family and that's the western kardashians y'all get on it get on board. Get on board. Get on board or get off. No, it's the Carter Knowles dynasty. Oh, no. Oh, really? What? Look, he could have been royalty, but he was assassinated by Nazir. Oh, wow. And so he never recovered from that.

I mean, he did. I mean, like, if you look at, like, the careers and family life, yeah, I guess Jay-Z won. But Wes Kardashianian family get on board um so you're still taking sides in the jay-z naz beef like that's wild yeah they just hopped off a time machine squash you're not gonna believe what i just saw well i remembered it again when remi ma did the sheath or sheath or yeah and i was like oh, that was a beef. But you would have never guessed that Nas bodied Jay-Z if you look at them now. I feel bad for Nas. I mean, Kalise did not really pan out for him either as a partner.

Anyway. If you want something that's underrated. Underrated, I was going to say TSA PreCheck. Just signed up right before I got here. It was super easy. So I went on a trip uh with the guys at donut media hold on are you like shilling for the travel industry hey man airline credit cards and tsa pre-check man you're gonna love this look i'm gonna be doing a lot of

traveling next year because you know i've been flying to a lot of shows and stuff and i'm like i need to get some incentive for all this money I'm spending on flying. Right. And so I was like, all right, I got to get an airline credit card and I got to get that pre-check because – It is nice. I did this thing with Donut Media. They're like this YouTube channel and –

For donuts? No, for cars actually. Oh, okay. And so we did this thing called the Gambler 500 where we go to Oregon, get a car under $500. Oh, right. And you do that marathon race, right? Yeah, yeah. I remember that.

So they flew me up, but whoever bought the tickets had NASA pre-check. I mean TSA pre-check. Guys, I'm in 2007. Yeah, you said NASA pre-check. I said NASA. NASA. NASA pre-check. I'm in 2007.

We go into space. Right. When I went through, I was like was like oh this is way easier yeah why what's going on and i and i always thought that you it was an annual fee and they're like no it's five years i was like oh then it's probably like a million dollars they're like no it's 85 bucks they're like but that's like i feel like the black experience in the nutshell like anything you see like white people doing you're like oh that's probably too expensive yeah i'm not gonna fuck with it uh and they're like no it's actually very easy uh why haven't you signed up for your free health care yet oh what it's like that it's

also nice because it gives you a taste of what it must be like to be in first class when you get to like look at other people who aren't in first class and feel superior to them but like you don't have to pay that much because you just get to like go line up in the tsa the first class of the security lines and like kind of look down on the people who are in the regular line it's you guys are disgusting just to listen out there i don't have tsa pre-checking because i'm trying i'm trying to stay connected to the people. I like to wait for people's coughing babies and screaming, whatever. It's humanity. Well, you had a real funny story about your girlfriend's TSA privilege. Yeah, see, that's what's crazy because people who have TSA pre-check, they pre-check privilege,

which is like when you're so used to not waiting. There will be like a couple people and it's like, oh, man, what's the point now? Why don't we just be waiting with the with the lepers. All right. We're trying to take a sample of the ideas that are out there changing the world. We talk about pop culture, the news, the president. We sometimes talk about supermarket tabloids because those are still out there telling people what's what. So, yeah, we're trying to take a temperature of the global shared consciousness of our human species miles what's our temperature today temperature uh

i mean god i'm not to say it's still getting hot too you know what it is it's like a 99 so you don't think it's a fever yeah it's hotter than normal yeah i feel like it's like we our temperature could be 98.6 we've got like one of those things that like we're about to get really sick. We just don't realize it. But so we usually like start out by asking our guest for a myth, something that the global shared consciousness believes to be true that you know to be false based on your personal experience. Ooh, a myth. That's real chill. experience? Ooh, a myth. That's, that's real, uh, real chill. I think it's, it's just straight up that like the hood is filled with gangbangers. Like I grew up in Compton. Yeah. We just watched

a music video that seemed to be operating in that reality. That's exactly what I'm like. Right. That bright music video is so bad. Check it out and laugh and know that it's not like that. We'll get to that later. But yeah, I, growing up in Compton, I was in Compton probably till about my sophomore year. But I started going to school in Downey at eighth grade, which is like, for those who don't know, Downey is more of a suburb, a kind of like white Latino area, pretty much nicer. white latino area pretty much nicer um but you know i go there and when people would hear i'm from compton they're like oh you're from compton i'd probably get shot if i went there right and like it was funny because like you know you're not at that age yet to be like bitch what you know you're more like no like like what yeah it's that kind of information growing up, that knowing that myth kind of fueled everything in my worldview to kind of help me understand how people can be naive sometime. Like I remember there was a really good town hall segment after the Trayvon Martin shooting where the guy came up and he was like, I don't blame George Zimmerman.

And people were like, and he was like, well, because everything he's watched on TV about black people, everything he's experienced, he had every reason to think that Trayvon Martin was this criminal thug for being in his place. I don't think he was right in what he did. I don't forgive him, but I will say that that fueled it. It wasn't just his own idea. And I think that's true. Like the idea that someone hears him from Compton was like, oh, man, you must do it. And like, you know, Compton, we're getting a lot of love right now because, you know, straight out of Compton, bomb ass movie. But still that kind of reinforces that idea of like, yeah, it's the struggle.

And there's a lot of good people who live in Compton. Also, there's a lot of just like every hood. You got nowhere to go. Like I had a friend who's like Kendrick Lamar is doing a show at Nickerson Garden, like very, very white, and was like, you should go check it out. And it's like, nah, just let that be for black people. One, because – just because. And two, because Nickerson Garden is like the Marcy Projects of Compton. Yeah, people don't know about Nickerson Gardens.

Yeah, like don't – like my stepmom used to work in Nickerson Gardens and like you just felt it. It was like when you would go beyond the wall. You'd be like, oh, okay. Yeah. Right. Okay. Well, it's interesting you say that because there was even a study that came out recently that was saying that news media just essentially, I mean, we knew this sort of innately, but

it offers consistently warped portrayals of black families. And I think people fail to realize just how much the media does inform these kind of really bizarre ideas of race, especially black people in America. I mean, it's kind of hard to ignore when you get like juries filled with human people voting that it was OK for a cop to murder someone for no reason. Like you really have to. It's it's not even just like racism at that point. That is like a level of indoctrination where you're like, he must have had a reason to do it. He's a police and that person was a black. Yeah.

Just a presumption of, you know, non-humanity. Yeah. Yeah. Is there, is there any like pop culture depiction that you think gets Compton right or like something that you were like, oh, that's actually somewhat accurate? I feel like a lot of like Insecure's like depiction of not necessarily Compton but Los Angeles is good. But that's also because she grew up in L.A. so she's able to do it right. also because she grew up in la so she's able to do it right and i do feel like um strata compton did get it right in the sense that one thing that people won't realize is like yeah the in the opening scene easy e that was a drug house or whatever but they legit drove a tank through the

hood and destroyed this house like it's like i feel like that's the nuanced problem we we deal with in everyday discussions of the militarization of police and police brutality is that like we're not saying all black people are innocent we're saying that we should go to jail and not just be killed in the street like dogs right and or like if you like are going to breach a house maybe kick down the door and not destroy the whole front side of the house and this is those small systematic ways that black people are put down because if for any reason, say your son is selling drugs out of your house and you don't know, they rip the front of your house. You don't have the money to pay for that. And now you're out of a home, you know, and then you get displaced to a project.

Some Saudi prince comes and builds up a big 10-story apartment complex, raises the rent, and that's how gentrification happens. Yeah, that's I think one of the best myths we've ever had on the Daily Zeitgeist. Look, I'm charged up on that DeRay energy. It's so funny. It's DeRay, but like just just, I always want to see. It's more fun to say it that way. Also Davis. Yeah. All right. Let's get into the stories of the day.

We are going to just start out real quick by running through one of the Koch brothers. Sons is in the news right now. Young man named Wyatt Koch, who is our nominee for Person of the Year. Yes. We're actually doing some episodes, some mini episodes next week that will drop where we actually give out Person of the Year. But this guy is an immediate front runner for that award. Shortlist. So he's one of the coke brothers uh large adult sons uh he makes just

the ugliest shirts you've ever seen and sells them online and there are these incredible videos of him where like it's sort of like a a music video highlight reel of this dude and how he sees himself but it's just it's just amazing we're going to play some audio from one of these. My father said to me, Wyatt, you can do whatever you want to in life, but just make sure you do it well and you do it with passion. And then you see his shirt. Every day I go to the office, I enjoy creating the clothes.

Be bold means to me be authentic, be real, be yourself, be confident, and always be a gentleman, but still have that tenacity that no one can take away from you. Oh, nice. I want my shirts to be able to be worn in the boardroom or in a discotheca or a night club or on a yacht. The discotheca or a nightclub or on a yacht. The discotheca? I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Can we just stop that? I really. What the fuck? A discotheca? This dude just turned into like a fucking Spanish language learning tape for seventh grade. Yeah. All of a sudden, the discotheca.

Or a yacht. Yeah. Like, this guy, he's clearly a, I mean, when you look at this young man he is the manifestation of late stage capitalism in a human body and he's been gas lit by privilege to the point that he doesn't understand that he looks like a total asshole this guy's shirt he's wearing a shirt with literal money bags cartoon money bags cash flying out of it that made me makes me mad is like if little yadi wore that shit it'd be hot right and like so you don't even have the business mind to like be like let me get like fashionable rap people who can pull off wearing money bags on the shirt sorry i'm sorry

um i he instead he was like i am the human embodiment of not cool, and I am going to put myself front and center in an attempt to sell this shit. You just just like Google this dude because he's just draped in like attractive women in every scene of this video. And he at the part where he's like, I just like going into work and designing the clothes. It shows it shows him sketching like a human form with like clothes on it and it is what i would have drawn in sixth grade maybe fifth grade it's like the proportion old yeah the proportions are all off like well i wasn't a good drawer miles but uh the proportions are all off he's like coloring it in and it just it looks like a bad elementary school art project uh and i think this looks like a bad elementary school art project.

And I think this is getting a lot of attention because this dude is also, you know, the human embodiment of this new tax plan and that he's stands to make more money than just about anyone in the country because he's, you know, inheriting a shitload of money from one of the Koch brothers. Yeah, which is why because his dad is like like, obviously we know Charles and David Koch. They're like the evil part of the evil empire. But his dad has the most privileged problems I've ever read about. He's a wine collector, and he sued a guy for selling him fake knockoff wine that was supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson. This is the kind of dude who buys Thomas Jefferson wine and is like, oh, this is fake. How much is he selling them for?

Like $2 million or something. Who knows? So that's how much he paid for some wine. Oh, no. $2 million was what he paid for a 130-year-old picture of Billy the Kid. Oh, right. So this is the kind of guy who's like, I buy a little. I mean, this family is wild, dude.

I mean, bless y'all for having so much money that you can just, these kids' dreams are all coming true. Also, if you don't have time to look up the video, I'll describe it for you. Think of a 90s comedy and think of some overweight dude getting hit over the head and then he has some fantasy of him being successful. That's what it looks like. It looks like it's a parody of itself. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. like that's what it looks like it looks like it's a parody of itself right yeah uh yeah my favorite bob dylan lyric ever is uh helpless like a rich man's child and like that that's this dude just seems like he's just completely been destroyed by his upbringing yeah if you google guy who buys friends his face will come up the price ain't that high right you want your swag up yeah hit me up i mean i'm kind of feeling these all over print graphic dress shirts that no one fucking asked for just smash cut to next year where you see me and miles next to why it just shucking and jiving dude that's like two people of color friends like his price will go up oh yeah oh yeah come on white all right we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back we will have Dude, that's like two people of color friends. Like, his price will go up. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Come on, Wyatt.

All right, we're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we will have Jeremia Kesson. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who, on October 16, 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. 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 Saner. 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. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson.

I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current. Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen 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. And we're back and we're thrilled to be joined by the American civil rights activist and host of the truly must listen podcast, Pod Save the People, DeRay McKesson. DeRay, thanks for joining us. Yeah, thank you. Yeah.

No, it's great to be here. It's an honor. I'm excited for this conversation. So one thing I really love about Pod Save the People, on the daily zeitgeist, we feel like the news a lot of the time encourages cynicism by focusing sort of only on the bottom line and giving us like the highlights of, you know, when something bad happens, you know, we'll get the death toll after a hurricane. But Pod Save the People does a good job of, you know, sometimes highlighting the small victories that happen that might get overlooked. Like, for instance, you had a recent news rundown where I think Brittany, by the way, your news rundowns at the beginning of the episodes are just so good. Those conversations are indispensable. But Brittany talked about the fact that the death penalty executions are down 90 percent over the last set number of years and that it was the work of, you know, just hardworking defense attorneys that that got that done. Are there

other stories of small but some like substantial victories that kind of come to mind that you wish were told more widely in the mainstream media? Yeah, you know, when I was putting together the podcast, it's important to me that we didn't just focus on the sort of cycle of Trump and what is on cable news so that we had a conversation about all the other things that were happening in the country or in the world that like people just didn't know about. So there's like one episode that we, Clint, one of his pieces of news was about the relationship between climate change and child marriage, which was like fascinating. We just talked about recently the incredible work that's happening in Austin around

the police union contract. So organizers and activists and citizens have gotten together to push, and they were successful in getting the Austin City Council to unanimously not support the latest round of negotiations with the police union contract. So that was really important but aren't Trump and aren't sort of the chaos that's happening every day on people like CNN, MSNBC. So that's been a real focus because we know that the trauma that you see on TV isn't the only thing and the joy that you see on TV isn't the only thing. So one in eight federal cases heard in a – one in eight cases heard in federal court next year will be heard by a judge that Trump appoints. It will be the single largest expansion of the judiciary in the last 50 years. So it's those sort of things that like I didn't know until we had to, you know, we started talking about on the pod that like brought it to our attention. And it's been helpful for people to think about different ways that they can push and challenge and sort of make the system better. Yeah. The police shooting contract

thing that you did down in Austin was really cool. Is that something that is sort of nationwide, like something that's up for discussion, I guess? And can you just like talk a little bit about how the nuts and bolts of that work, like how the law can be changed to, you know, hold police accountable when they do shoot somebody? Two years ago, a set of us got together and we created this organization called Campaign Zero that's a platform around ending police violence. And one of the things that we did was we did the first ever public database around police union contracts,

because what we found was that there are literally just two different systems of accountability. There's one for citizens and there's a completely different one for police. And the one for police is negotiated and managed through the contract. So what you find in cities like Austin, Austin has clauses where the police get access to all investigation materials before they can be interrogated. It's like that is something that no private citizen gets to benefit from. There are cities across the country where it says there are clauses like,

you know, the officer has to be disciplined in the least embarrassing way for the officer in the department. You're like, I don't even know what that means. Places like Chicago have clauses that say that the discipline records get destroyed after five years. You're like, well, it doesn't make sense, right? So one of the things that we believe is that systems and structures should be right and they should be fair and that they shouldn't be, the public shouldn't be beholden to, like, the benevolence of a really good person in office or in a role.

And in Austin, you know, we made all of the findings public. We did it for about, I think it was like 60, 70 cities in our first data set. And they saw it, like activists in Austin saw it and they started organizing and they called us for support and we came and supported it. But they did the work, you know, they put it in, they got people testified at the city council from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. It was incredible. That's wild. Hey, DeRay, this is Miles. I had a question just from an organizing question in general. In the early days, in the buildup to Obama's election and shortly after, I was doing a lot of organizing. One of the biggest things that I feel that, you know, you are just, you have really figured out how to just connect people to issues and overcome apathy,

which is usually like the hardest thing for anyone organizing. Just in terms of like the last year, and I feel like there are so many things to be incensed about and outraged and take to the streets. What do you suggest for people who, you know, might start to feel a little bit of apathy coming on? Because I know a lot of people just are starting to feel exhausted in a way, but there's still definitely a lot of fight left. How do you kind of see the role of overcoming apathy or tactics to overcome it to sort of to go into this next year? Yeah, you know, hope has gotten a bad rep recently. And I worry about the way that we talk about hope in the public space. I think about hope as a belief that our tomorrows can be

better than our todays. And I think about hope is work, not magic. I think a lot of people think about hope is magic, that like, to be hopeful means that you believe in some sort of fairy that's going to come around and like change the course of history. You know, when King talks about the arc bends towards justice, you know, it bends because people bend it. It doesn't just bend on its own. So when I think about what keeps me hopeful is I've been all around the country and around the world, and I see all these people like realize that they can do something. They realize that they are going to be heard, that they have power in a different way.

When we think about what it means to empower people, it's like I can't give you power, right? Like we can't give each other power. What we can do, though, is help people find the power that they have. We can help restore structural power to people that they should have. And, like, I've seen people realize that. We never think about the voices. We've always thought about the unheard. And all across the country, like, you see people. And, like, that gives me, that fuels this understanding that like tomorrow can be better.

Like we can make this better. There are some people who believe that like God created, you know, earth man and white supremacy. And I'll never concede that this is like an original creation, right? Like when people say the system is working, how it was designed, it's like, that to me, isn't actually hopeless. Like that to me is a reminder that like people made this. And because people made it, we can make it something different. That's cool. That's a really good point. Yeah.

You guys met with Ajit Pai, I think I heard you say before he repealed net neutrality. What were you hoping to accomplish with that meeting, and what did you accomplish? Yeah, so we met with the chairman of the FCC probably a week before the vote, a little bit less than a week before the vote. I met with him at a conference. We sat next to each other. We were both speaking at a conference, and we sat next to each other, and he was nice, and we had a great conversation. And we had been trying to schedule a meeting in person, and it's like the calendars didn't work. And finally, you know, I wish we'd been able to have the conversation not so close to the vote.

But I proposed a date in October, and he could do it, and then I couldn't do it. So it ended up being what it was. But, you know, me, Brittany, and Sam were there. And I think it was like I wanted to hear him out. Right. I wanted to understand like what the philosophical positions were and wanted to tell him our perspective, you know, so much of this is about showing up and we can't influence people. We don't talk to, we can't,

we can't sort of change the conversation at the table if we're not at the table. We know that the work doesn't only happen at the table, that it happens in the streets. It happens in the boardrooms, it happens at the dinner table. There are many places that we need to make sure we bring the conversation. But one is bringing it to the people who have structural power, knowing that like the people who have political power are always the people themselves. So we had this conversation. I think it was interesting because I hadn't ever thought about one of their big points or his big points is this idea that, like, the true censorship comes from the platforms, not from the Internet service providers. Right. So what he will say, what he's written about is like, you know, the fact that Twitter bans people and isn't transparent about it or the fact that the Facebook algorithm, which decides what you see and how you see it as a secret is actually a bigger threat to insert here right like freedom transparency safety than repealing that neutrality and like i you know

while i disagree fundamentally i'd never thought about that as like a like that wasn't one of the things i was that i was thinking about sort of pushing back like i didn't think about that as like a big lever so So that was one. You know, he had a lot of faith in the FTC. And like one of the things you see from the Republicans in general most structural power and the most money decide how they work. Exactly. Always leads to a system that benefits the wealthiest people, you know, like that doesn't work. So it was it was good to listen and hear from him directly. It was disappointing that the vote still happened the way that it did. Yeah. I mean, I totally agree that Facebook and all the different platforms are threats in and of themselves. But I don't see how giving, you know, the ISPs access to, you know, the ability to also have some determination on that does anything but add an additional threat to the mix. Like, I don't see how that's going to help us, you know, fend off Facebook.

But, yeah, I am totally having run a website. I ran Cracked for like 10 years. And, you know, that site kind of got killed by Facebook tweaking the algorithm and, you know, us not knowing why or, you know, them like bending things just basically toward whoever was paying them. So, yeah, that's disappointing. Is there something that you're looking for to kind of see whether they're going to like fuck us? Like the ISPs, is there something based on that conversation that you think we should all be looking for as a canary in the coal mine? Yeah, I think that, you know, I had the former chairman of the FCC on the podcast right after we met with Ajit. And one of the things that he said is that the world won't end right now, right?

So we're fine. This will be tied up in the courts for a while. And that we should be looking forward to what happens in like a year or so. Like that will be when this the rubber really hits the road with this so so we'll see you know i am i'm mindful like there's a lot that there's a lot at stake here um i'm hopeful that the trump administration doesn't last you know till till 2020 like something has to happen to get these people out of here right so we'll see yeah you're right this is iffy and i have a two-parter question one's going to be

a little harder than the other uh the first one is uh you know i i'm la born and raised so i grew up out here and you know once you know i think once the police start shooting started getting more visible and ramping up even though it was kind of uh known to people of color it kind of sparked something in me i had you know i put in i, I was starting to put on my like vest and get ready to do my thing. But, you know, I started trying to speak to people and lawyers about like what we can do about the LAPD and like places like out here where the LAPD has a separate bill of rights that protect individual cops from being held accountable.

It felt like we hit a real wall and I wouldn't know what to do with that. And that kind of discouraged me. So in that, what do you think we can do about things like Bill of Rights that protect cops? And what can activists do to not be discouraged while fighting the fight? Yes, so the Bill of Rights are actually like part and parcel with the police union contract. So if you go to checkthepolice.org, you can see all of the Bill of Rights across the country

for police officers combined with the police union contract. They're like the same, essentially the same thing. So you're right. There's one that protects LAPD and the other police departments in California. They shouldn't be discouraging to people in the sense that like, you know, people did it. And because people did it, people can do something different.

So like we can lobby, we can become the state legislature, legislators and change it. We can become the city council. Like, so that's like a path that is real. The other thing is that people just don't know. So I think that if people knew they would like, it's hard to defend the idea that the police just get access to all the investigation materials before they get interrogated. Like, I don't know if that's a hard thing to defend the idea that the police just get access to all the investigation materials before they get interrogated. Like, I don't know if it's a hard thing to defend.

What the police have always said for decades is that, like, any attempt to make them accountable will, like, somehow dampen public safety. And, like, that's a shame. That's a deflection. You know, a third of all the people killed in this country by strangers actually killed by a police officer, which is wild, right? Like, that's,'s like a wild thing. Insane. So it doesn't discourage me. I think what is hard is that there are 18,000 police departments, right?

So when we think about the fix, a lot of these fixes will happen at the local and state level. The structural changes, if it's not conditioned to funding by the DOJ, will just be harder at the federal level, especially if it doesn't come from legislation. So for now, it is working at the local level. And like people have been doing incredible work. I think that people need to remember that it's possible to win. Right. In America, it does seem so often like, yeah, people do things and then people can undo them. But it does seem like the more well-funded side or the side that stands to make more money tends to win out over time.

Like I'm asking a question that's already been asked, which is like, how do you avoid getting cynical based on that? But yeah, it does just seem like money, the side that stands to make money has such an advantage in our country. Yeah, and, like, we should tease, like, you know, money helps amplify and, like, change the way the pace of the way information spreads, and it also helps people make different choices about their time and energy, right? So money allows, like, for advertising and airtime or for people to just own the, like, Fox News is a great example, or, like, you can just pay a gazillion people to

Canvas or whatever because you have the money. The thing that money allows to happen, like we can figure out a way to organize around that doesn't require money, but still has the same impact. It's just harder, right? And I think what is different about this moment is that there are infinitely more people who are ready and willing to do something than there's like a structure to sort of point them to what to do. And you then there's like a structure to sort of point them to what to do. And you don't really need a structure where you're paying people, right? Because like, you can just pay them. It's a little bit harder when you have 80,000 volunteers, and you're like, let's go do this. So I'm hopeful that in 2018, that we will figure that out a

little better. I think that the movement, the protests over the past three years have provided some structure. I think the indivisible folks have provided another set of structure. But I think in 18, we'll see sort of a superstructure that just like helps people figure out where to go, what to do that can mitigate or offset the impact of those with money to be as dangerous as they've been. Yeah, I mean, that's incredibly hopeful and admirable. And yeah, I mean, you guys are fighting against some interests that have more money than a lot of the nations that you read about in history books that people had to fight against. So it's it's pretty incredible what you what you're managing to do. And so I wanted to shift over to there was a recent report about how Obama's presidency economically hurt black families more than just about anyone in America.

And it was also just generally bad for equality in the country. I'd love to get your thoughts on sort of the legacy of the Obama presidency as it relates to, you know, those stories and just in general. And, you know, from a symbolic and energy level, like how you deal with stuff like that. Yeah, I think that I think that the critiques of Obama with regard to race, especially in the beginning of his term, his first term, make a lot of sense. You know, the report talks about black unemployment and inequity. And I think it is true that Obama sort of had this idea that if we change the game for everybody, people of color will do better, too. Right. And and I think the data in some ways didn't actually bear that out. I also think that like, we can't take for granted things like

healthcare, right? That like, people of color, marginal people disproportionately benefit from that. And that's not inconsequential. And that in some ways, one of the critiques of Obama that perhaps is the most sort of fair is that they didn't push even more through when they had Congress. Right. That like you look at what Trump's doing now is that he's trying to ram everything through in the first 365 days. And like, what would it look like if Obama was even more aggressive around some of the bigger systemic issues when he had Congress? And then you look at the rest of the presidency and there was no Congress. Right. So it was really just an administration trying to use its administrative power. I think the protests really forced Obama to think about race differently and to publicly talk about race differently because it was race. Right.

It was all these black kids getting killed by the police. And he had to do something. You know, I was hopeful at the end of the administration because it seemed like there was progress. And I think that they were trying to do a setup for Hillary and that she didn't win. And I think a lot of energy was lost there. And that was sad. Yes, it was. Wait, you're saying Hillary didn't win the election? That's crazy.

You know, I have to say it really calmly. Oh, yeah. Just to go along with kind of like the Obama legacy, because that is something that has been, you know, it's talked about a lot. And I think especially in the wake of that Cornel West op-ed in The Guardian about Ta-Nehisi Coates, you know, it seemed like he was even alluding to the fact that there were like levels to the struggle or this movement.

You know, what did you make of that? Like, do you think Cornel is expressing a valid point the wrong way? Is he completely off? I'm just curious to sort of hear your thoughts on that. To me, one of the biggest takeaways from the entire debate between the two of them was this, was the idea of progress and what it looked like and hope. And I think that, you know, Cornell's push to Ta-Nehisi was sort of like, you know, fatalism is either unearned or wrong for all of these reasons. And Ta-Nehisi didn't really respond to Cornell's statements as much as he sort of just highlighted that Cornell hadn't read his pieces.

But I think a fair critique of the Cornell position is sort of like, where has the prophetic tradition taken us, right? That, like, there's a legacy of the prophetic tradition in this country that, like, didn't achieve the freedom that it purported to achieve, too, right? And I think that that, like, along that fulcrum, I think that's fair. I think there is a fatalism that Ta-Nehisi has made sort of mainstream, and while that is not, and I, like, that doesn't resonate with me, I understand how it resonates with some people. I think there's also this prophetic tradition that like people latch on to because it is the backbone of the civil rights movement. And I think it's fair to question sort of where that came from. I do think that, you know, I'm always interested in how much space the public intellectuals take up. And the perspective is so different than the people who have been in the rooms or have been in the streets and have been sort of have been on the grind with these issues so it's it still feels very theoretical when i read some of this writing

and you know i don't live in theory i live in practice right so the theory is helpful insofar as it helps us think about the practice differently and i'm not sure that that debate helped me think about the practice of this work any differently. Right, right. Is there something about activism and that people kind of get wrong or misunderstand? Like, I know I've heard it said on your podcast that the founding fathers were activists. Can you, are there like things that when people who aren't involved on a day-to-day level like you are, when they picture in their mind activism, that they just get totally wrong? You know, I'm less interested in, like, how you identify.

Like, you should, you know, it's interesting. It's only people of color that have to, like, choose between sort of profession and being an activist. And I think about activists as people who, like, think the world should be better and are willing to fight for it. So you look at Colin. Like, Colin has to choose between being like a football player an athlete or like somebody who believes that the police didn't kill people white people always get to live in a world

where they can be like uh they can be like a dope accountant and a pta mom like they don't have to right but people of color always have to make a choice and like that i think that's a false choice so when i think about being an activist it is it is as much of an identity as it is an approach, right? And like, when you think that, like, I don't know, anything from the school should be better to like, people shouldn't have to work 100 hours a week to have basic food or a house, right? But like, I think that that is like, that is what it means to be a citizen or a person. And I don't care how you identify as an activist as long as you're committed to the work.

So when we think about social justice, it's like even that is redundant, right? Like what does a justice look like that isn't social? I don't know. Right, yeah. That is, when you say social justice, like as somebody who's been on the internet, like that is just a, that's like a bad word now.

Oh, yeah. Like fucking SJWs. Right. Yeah. I had a question for you. This is more just on a social level because, you know, I've noticed sometimes on the left there's been a lot of infighting. And I felt like you've dealt with other another activist lashing out at you. And, you know, that caused some stuff.

And a lot of that, how do you feel about that? Because for me, you know, the thing that I'm always wary about is being public with calling out and being pedantic about people's quote-unquote wokeness, and then some, like, alt-right or someone on the right using that to kind of try and bury that person. Yeah, it's like a hard bomb. You know, as much as we fight the system and the people we disagree with, to be honest, it is hard to see people not keep that same commitment in their own work, right? So that's like one.

The second is I'm mindful of like what it looks like when we fight publicly. You know, I will say that any disagreement I've ever been in that has resulted in a public disagreement, we've tried to resolve offline. So me and the people I'm around, we never bring the battle to the Internet because I'm sensitive of what it means to have a big platform and people think that this is the way we disagree. But sometimes you call people, you you text them and they will tell you one thing in person and then say, do something different. So we've never brought the battle to the internet. You know, and the third is it is real that like there are people who want us to, to like lose, right. And they, they take any moment of disagreement as a way to like divide and divide and divide. And like, that is true. That shouldn't change our commitment to being honest.

And I think that for some people that people inside the movement who are like, they know things aren't real or dishonest or shaky. And they're just like, you know what, for the good of the whole, just like, don't talk about it. And like, I don't know what a freedom, what a politics of freedom looks like that's rooted in lies. Like that doesn't to me look like liberation. Right. So those are the things that I like try to guide myself with. And again, the things that we've ever thought about online publicly have been things that people brought to us, not things that we have brought to them.

Definitely. I just I think we're running out of time, but I just want to ask one last question on a lighter note. DeRay, what is the greatest TV show of all time in your opinion? X-Men, for sure. I love the X-Men. The X-Men cartoon was like, storm changed my life. What? Everything was great. Yo, talk that shit, DeRay, yes. If I never ever see the Phoenix Saga ever again, I feel like there was like this

weird pier where it was just like reruns of the Phoenix Saga, but I'm exhausted with the Phoenix Saga, but I love the X-Men. Da-na-na-na-na-na-na Da-na-na-na-na-na-na Wow, yes, Demen wow yes that was the most that was the one of the best answers i've ever heard yes sir i had the i had the piece of vhs that they gave you with oh yeah yeah episodes and it was it wasn't only like five minutes though yeah it wasn't that long but so i just want you know i had to had to let people in on, you know, the, the, just the lighter side of this conversation too.

One last light thing. So you took your vest to Patagonia so it could get like touched up. Was that like a D-Ray special or can anyone take their Patagonia vest in? Anybody can take their clothes to Patagonia repair shop. It's called Warner Ware. They do. I've never not had the vest overnight, so they will fix it same day for me um and i appreciate that so that is like a they i had to get a new a new zipper because the zipper broke got a little band-aid because the down was coming out so

they take care of me they're great uh when i was arrested in baton rouge the baton rouge police uh stole my book bag they still have it they said they can't find it in patagonia send me a new one so they've been very kind just a patagonian yeah seriously now is that a branding thing or is that a comfort thing or all the above no so you know in the beginning uh of the you know we were on the street for 400 days right so we were actually in the initial waiver protest through all four seasons right i needed something that i could wear that i never had to pack uh that i could wear whenever. Right. So if it got too cold, I put a hoodie on under it if it was just OK and I'd like where it is.

And it became a thing for other people way before it became a thing for me. But my apartment, like I used to live in Minneapolis and my apartment is literally to this day still in storage. Like I need to figure out who I'm going to give my best to and books and all that stuff. But it's still there. So the vest is like the heaviest thing that I wore. Nice. So it's sort of like a, it's like a safety blanket. I'm used to it. It keeps me like grounded and humble. You know, it's like, I can't, I'm not wearing real design or anything because I'm wearing

the same thing every day. It's simple. It's like not a lot of decisions to make. And I've always like had a thing. So like when I was in college, I wore this like one hoodie every single day. It was like simple. It was great. When I was in middle school, I wore this jean jacket every day.

So the vest is just like a simple, like easy to do, got it, not a lot of thought. It means something to me. I've been in it like through dick and then through a lot of situations. You know, if I can be with President Obama in the vest, I can be with anybody in it. Like a good friend, an old friend. All right. I think that's all the time we have you for. But this has been a real pleasure.

DeRay McKesson, thank you so much for talking to us. Yes, thank you. And for appearing on our stupid podcast. You guys are great. Well, thanks so much for having me, and I look forward to seeing you again soon. All right. Thanks, DeRay. And we're going to take a quick break.

We will be back after this. 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. 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. Hey, I'm Gianna Prudente. 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 Saner. 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. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts separated by two months.

These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover

for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The 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 iheart radio and realm listen to dream sequence on the iheart radio app

apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Yeah. We just talked to one of the great leaders of our time and we still can't stop talking about Wyatt Coke because that, that dude, we've just been Google image searching him. And I highly suggest that you guys do the same, but also shout out to DeRay for saying x-men animated series

yeah that was kind of cool i i mean as if i didn't admire this person enough yeah oh yeah as a black nerd it like lit me up like i'm juiced up i'm ready to go right right right i didn't even know there was an x-men tv show what yeah wait how like the animated version no no no you had to have seen that's not an excuse okay You didn't know there was a... I just feel like it's impossible. Like it was inescapable. Yeah. When was it on?

In the 90s? Yeah, like the early 90s. What did you like growing up? Like in the early 90s, I was a teenager. Yeah, what were you doing though? You know, watching like movies and stuff. So you just stopped watching TV completely? Okay. he sounds like me when i talk about why i haven't read harry potter oh he is like the guy although you've read harry potter so i've read

the first three harry potters okay well anyway yeah well he does have a favorite bob dylan quote so fuck you guys yeah they're they're laser engraved on his sparrows uh yeah no i'm just kidding i totally knew there was uh all right we're gonna blow through take a quick break uh all right let's go through some news items uh apple has admitted that it does slow down old iphones uh was not a figment of your imagination or just seeing the faster newer version and making you think that your old phone was slower it's actually they they admit that they make the phones slower with new updates they make old phones slower with new updates because they say the battery on old phones is deteriorating and so they need to make it slower or else it'll i don't know like melt

your pocket or some shit i mean it makes sense i mean i i understand the like the technological logic of it but i guess the other thing we're talking about is like well then if you can then you should just be able to replace your battery to keep your shit running peak. But it's like prohibitively expensive. No, it's just there's no reason to do it. Well, yeah, because they use unobtainium. And so we'd have to go up and see the Navi. Right.

And that's a whole thing. No, I mean, they, yeah, there, there have been smartphones that have replaceable batteries, but it's just, they say it like makes, makes it too big and too like clunky or whatever. So, uh, it makes more sense for them just to, just to buy another one. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I experienced this disposable iPhones experience this firsthand because I just upgraded to the iPhone 10. I know. I just rolled in with a 10 today. Yeah.

Yeah. because I just upgraded to the iPhone 10. I know. You just rolled in with a 10 today. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, my old phone was deteriorating the money in my wallet, so I had to spend it. So I spent it on this, and now everything's safe. Although Anna just slid me a note that said that an iPhone battery costs $79. Really? So maybe it's not too bad. I imagine the installation is probably the other part, because they have to, like, take it apart with a welding.

Well, that's if you go to the Genius Bar. Dude, you've have to take it apart with a welding. Well, that's if you go to the Genius Bar. Dude, you got to find one of those slick dudes. Just go to Glendale. There's somebody. He'll hook you up. So the office is coming back? Yeah. Look, I'm so excited.

Five years ago. Yeah. So NBC, I guess because Will and Grace was such a hit, they're like, oh, hey, well, I guess we should start bringing back other great beloved shows. So it looks like there's a plan to bring back The Office. But here's the thing. It's still very early on, and they're still trying to see who's down. But Steve Carell, according to most people, is not going to be in it. So I don't understand the reason of bringing it back.

The reason why Will and Grace, I'd imagine, was able to capture more people was because at least the core cast was returned. Although I know some people were saying some people were missing, blah, blah, blah. But it'll be hard to say that The office is going to perform the same way because also even at its peak the office was never as big as will and grace so is that true the office was never i think maybe just for in terms of like the actual ratings right i think as a cultural phenomenon it's probably debatable but i think in terms of like what the numbers did uh at that time like will and grace was like a phenom. And also, like, if you think about it, too, the ending of the series was pretty satisfying. Like there weren't any loose ends to tie up.

Like, I don't feel like I need anymore. It would just be a cash grab. Yeah, exactly. And also, it only ended four years ago. Right. So that by the end, the last like two seasons, I felt like the only thing I heard from people who are still watching it is that somebody needed to put it out of its misery. Yeah. And the guy who created it has gone on to make – Parks and Rec was great.

And if you've already watched all that, he's making The Good Place now, which is also pretty solid. One of the good things is it gave us Ellie Kemper. Okay. Yeah. But I did – She's wonderful. Okay, yeah. You know?

But I did. She's wonderful. I went to look up some of the 90s NBC shows, and I got some banger pitches that would, I think, be more successful than if they were to bring back The Office. Okay, so what do you got? So I got Fresh Prince. Oh, my God. I got. But Uncle Phil died.

Make it canon. Saved by the bell. Without screech. A different world. screech a different world oh a different world that'd be interesting uh and uh freaks and geeks i would love to see jasmine guy again yeah where is she anyway saved by the bell is what i was watching you guys instead of yeah did you watch the college years too you know that was a real that was that was hard to watch too although i did watch it but i have fans You know I did. That was real. That was hard to watch too. Although I did watch it.

I have fans. You know Saved by the Bell happened inside Zach's head? Oh, yes. This theory, yes. Tell people about the Saved by the Bell theory. So the theme song. All right, Nick. I'm being constantly undermined.

Oh, shit, yo. Put that knife down. So the theme song, when you hear it, it goes from like the beginning of his day, waking up in the morning. You hear the bell. Right. And then he goes into school and has a shitty day at school. Now, the Zack Morris we know has never had a shitty day at Bayside. But in the song, he has a shitty day at school, gets home and says, it's all right, because I'm saved by the bell.

And then the theme song that starts every episode is a school day. And then the once the show starts, we're actually entering Zach's dreams. So the theme song is his waking life where he's just like a shitty C student, which is what the first season of the show was. Zach was like lived in Indiana and he was just a shitty C student who had a teacher named Miss Bliss. And then second season, we enter his dream world where he lives in like some California suburb and like he's the coolest guy in school and he can freeze time with his hands and shit. So that's that's my fan theory that we wrote about it correct interesting I look, it's something to think about that's what I was doing instead of watching X-Men

you were analyzing what the real meaning of and that's actually probably more meaningful than me just mouth agape watching Sentinels destroyed pencils in between your fist and finally Netflix has released its first blockbuster movie.

They spent, I believe, $80 million, $90 million on a single feature-length film. They got the writer of Victor Frankenstein, Max Landis, famous douche Max Landis and the director of End of Watch. So that's cool. But also Suicide Squad. Less cool. And it's if you've seen the trailer, it's a bizarre sort of weird racial allegory where Will Smith like is what a future an L.A. cop who's like racist against uh like magical creatures yeah or speciesist yeah he's speciesist um and it is we're we're gonna watch it over the weekend so we'll report back to you but as of right now uh it's getting just killed straight up zeros right yeah

it's getting like actual zero that's aggressive. From reviews on Metacritic. Just slam dunked into the trash can, except for one place. Right, yeah, except Variety was like, oh, Max Landis is a true genius. It's like, yo, Max, just tone it down a little bit with your review of your own movie. Did Daddy have to come through and be like, hey, you better talk nice about my son now? Yeah. Max Landisis back when i was at cracked we had to kick him out of the cracked forum because he was such an asshole

like we didn't kick many people out of the cracked forum but that dude was such a dick wait what was he what do you have to do to get kicked out of a fucking forum just be super obnoxious oh really was he like just flaming he's like you guys don't know shit like my stories are fucking dope i forget i i don't remember the specifics of the conversation i just remembered that we were like oh remember this asshole oh right this guy he just released a movie called uh what was that movie called chronicle chronicle yeah uh co-wrote yeah oh that's the one with like the kids fly around and shit yeah that movie was solid. That kid, not solid. Guy who wrote it, not that great a guy.

I tried to make money with Cracked, submitting those pictures for the list. Never got picked once. Oh, really? I got to look you in the eye. That's why I'm here. If he keeps inching his chair closer to Jack, I'm about to press him over.

And that's going to do it for today, I think. Right, guys? Yeah, I think. Well, lastly, let's just shout out to Nick for uncovering a musical conspiracy theory. Oh, yeah. You know, Ed Sheeran's song, The Shape of You, really took the charts by storm. Yeah. So next week you'll hear our conversation about the song of the year.

And we skip over. We're like, you know, our songs of the year weren't the most played because the most played was this bullshit The Shape of You by Ed Sheeran which could have come out in any year and it turns out it had already come out in a different year so there's this New York Times

article where they're talking about The Shape of You, the most played song on Spotify and as super producer nick stump put it uh ed sheeran and his producers are just standing there jerking each other off about like how great the writing process was right and nick was watching this video and he was like holy shit it's it's just scrubs like i've heard this progression before this note sequence before so i guess let's do a little side by side let's hear ed sheeran first and then we'll hear scrubs girl you know i want your love your love was handmade for somebody like i don't want no scrub

i mean but really when the inspiration hit, I was just like, I don't know. Yeah. He like, they're talking about it. Like they're talking about it. Like it was the invention of the light bulb. It's I don't know, man. But yeah, so that, that is the most played song of the year. And that proves nothing, but that this was year. But it kind of sounds similar.

And also, it's hard to even argue that because they changed the progression just enough that it's not a total ripoff. Right. But that's what most music is these days anyway. The whole story is like, and Ed Sheeran didn't even know he had magic when he first wrote it. He wrote it in only 90 minutes. It's like, yeah, that's about how long it would take to rip off TLC. But all right. Sorry, Ed Sheeran.

Ify, it's been a pleasure, as always, to have you. Where can people follow you? Oh, you can catch me at IfyWadiway on Twitter. I-F-Y-N-W-A-D-I-W-E. On Instagram, same one. And on Twitch. A few of y'all have been coming on my Twitch stream talking about I'm here from the Daily Zeitgeist.

I was like, wow, I didn't know. Got a few Twitch heads, listeners. TDZ sent it for guards. The Zeitgang is large. Zeitgang? If you come into my Twitch stream, make sure you use hashtag Zeitgang. So he knows, because we get one cent for each person.

Miles, where can people follow you? You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at milesofgray You can follow me at jack underscore o'brien. You can follow us at the Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram Daily Zeitgeist on Twitter. We have a Facebook fan page. We have a website dailyzeitgeist.com

and where you can find episodes and our footnotes. Footnotes! Where we link off to sources that prove the stuff we're talking about is actually real and written by actual journalists. And finally, we have a new show, our first new show from the West Coast How Stuff Works studios and the comedy imprint that we're starting up out here. It's called Culture Kings. It stars Jack Keese, Edgar, and Carl, and they're all guys who we've had on before.

They are all super, super funny dudes. And the first episode comes out on January 10th. Look out for that. It's me, Kyle Tart. Make sure you listen to it. It's going to be good. Europe is trash. Boy.

That was. This came for Carl. Oh, man. You know, that's wrong. You're Edgar now. Hey, yo. What's up? It's Edgar.

I'm sad as hell. And I do, you know, check my artsy post out. And you got something for Jaquis too? I think that's you. No, I'm going to leave him with it. I like Jaquese. I like Jaquese.

Although this man has the smoothest fucking voice. Just wait. Man, anybody who's listening to Culture Kings, I'm telling you, Jaquese's voice is going

to melt your heart Get women pregnant. Get women pregnant just by listening to it. Yes, yes. And that's going to do it for today's episode. Miles, what are we

going to ride out on? We're going to ride out on a song by an artist called John Bap. It's called Let It Happen. It's a live band, but with a very J Dilla feel. He's like this really dope lo-fi. I don't know. I mean, just check it out. When's it from?

Is it like new? Yeah, it's new. This song actually came out this year. So check out John Bap. And the song is called Let It Happen. What's the genre? Ah man, I don't even want

to put this man in a box. Okay. He does, he does it all but he has a hip hop. He definitely comes from that tradition

but it's like, there's also guitars, it's vibey. You'll like this one. Cool. We're going to ride out on that. We will be back

tomorrow for one final episode before the new year and then we have a bunch of kind of mini episodes that we're gonna drop on you guys over next week keep you warm keep you warm over the holiday uh but we'll be back tomorrow for another episode because it is a daily podcast talk to you guys then bye Thank you. Thank you. Petals of a fair Sweet petal

You Lots of angels With you Thank you. I'm sorry. October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unnerves the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti.

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