The Daily Zeitgeist - Geist & Dolls 4/14: Bernie Madoff, Nomadland, Kim Potter, A-Rod, Texas, Eric Adams

Episode Date: April 14, 2021

On this edition of Geist & Dolls Jack and Miles discuss Bernie Madoff passing away, Nomadland's Amazon controversy, Kim Potter's manslaughter charges, Anthony Edwards not knowing who A-Rod is, Texas' rolling blackouts, and Eric Adams' absurd video. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? It's right here in black and white in print. It's bigger than a flag or mascot. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Hi, I am Lacey Lamar. And I'm also Lacey Lamar. Just kidding. I'm Amber Revin. What? Okay, everybody. We have exciting news to share. We're back with Season 2 of the Amber and Lacey, Lacey and Amber Show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network.

This season, we make new friends, deep dive into my steamy DMs, answer your listener questions and more. The more is punch each other. Listen to the Amber and Lacey, Lacey and Amber show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Just listen, OK? Or Lacey gets it. Do it. There's so much beauty in Mexican culture, like mariachis, delicious cuisine, and even lucha libre.

Join us for the new podcast, Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of lucha libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Santos! Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you stream podcasts. 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, 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 i heart true crime plus only on apple podcasts hello the internet and welcome to this episode of geist and dolls that is courtesy of atlas novak i'm jack that's miles dolls geist and dolls like guys and dolls oh i thought it was miss geist from clueless and a bunch of loose dolls uh-huh yeah that do you remember miss geist that's the one that they try and they try and hook her up with oh hook her up with uh is it wallace crossing legs yeah they're crossing legs towards each other that's an unequivocal sex

invite yeah i think was the line and that that's that's not true turns out no crossing yeah you toward someone is not an unequivocal sex invite but i did like take that to be a fact when i saw that in clueless for yeah cross your legs away from me i might as well just go home oh wow you have a boyfriend you have a husband miss anders mrs anderson what mom what the fuck are you doing sick gross what the fuck are you talking about sorry amy heckerling gave me all of my ideas about what is and isn't real about this thing called puberty yes yes well like i said up top geist and no i'm jack that's miles and here's some of the things that are trending this afternoon bernie made off rest in power my friend really really great one of the greats to ever do it um the the drudge report headline is uh made off in hell uh which is aggressive but

that's what that's what i respect about him is how hard and thoroughly he got to the conservatives of you know obviously there were some victims who were not like millionaires and oh 100 yeah he did a lot of damage to a lot of people but it is funny how uh how just unequivocally they're like, rotten hell, man. It's because he did the thing all Republicans wish they were that mask off about. It's like, well, we're fine with just doing the capitalist grift. And they really hate when someone's like, no, bro, y'all are fucked.

Watch me steal everyone's money because I don't give a fuck. And they're like, I wanted to do that. But how'd you do that? And apparently a big hit in prison, people like really respected him in prison. And like, he gave people, uh,

kind of advice, financial advice. And, uh, so shout out to, uh, Bernie Madoff. Not really, but, uh, really but uh i say yes y'all i mean we lost a we lost a king today yeah king of shit i don't even know that shit is so old but yeah uh god i

mean if you think bernie madoff was bad you can there's a lot more people walking the earth today, free, doing their job. Yeah. Doing their job, ripping people off and being open about it. But, you know,

finding ways to manipulate relationships and laws and loopholes to get away with it. Yeah. A lot of Madoff's around. Yeah. Nomadland is trending we we kind of briefly mentioned this but so nomadland is the francis mcdormand movie where she plays like somebody who lived in a town that got shut down because of the crumbling economy and then now and her husband

died and now she just kind of lives out of a van. And there's a whole community of people. It was based on a nonfiction book about this community of people who kind of live in vans and just drive from gig to gig in this gig economy of ours. I remember thinking at the time, like it shows Amazon as like a, you know, giant, massive, not like very humanizing place to work, but it does, you know, she is able to have like community with the people who work there. And there's like warm relationships between the workers at this Amazon warehouse. warm relationships between the workers at this Amazon warehouse. Yes, it is patrolled by a robot, but like it just it doesn't really like it just kind of passes by those details of what life is like in the gig economy. It doesn't really pick them up and spend time with it. And so people are kind of saying it's weird that this is the front runner for best picture at a time when we're as a culture kind of coming to terms with just how bad Amazon is to its workers.

Head in the sand, baby. Head in the sand. That's just the culture. There's no, we're not able to look the truth in its eye and then respond to it. If the truth is too ugly, we will completely bring up the fucking preservation mechanisms to either distract ourselves with something else or begin writing articles that have nothing to do with the truth of what we're all seeing. And yeah, I can, like, it's frustrating, but then it makes sense.

You're like, oh, but this movie's like, it, it kind of shows, it's kind of cold in there. That's kind of true. But I'm talking about how awful in general, the idea that people who are our parents' age, our grandparents' ages, where you're like, oh, y'all should be able to not fucking work. I wish we had a society set up where at a certain point they're like thank you for giving your labor to this system now you can chill and unfortunately we we backload it so you have to go through all this bullshit before you can rest yeah and the movie isn't like this like traveling to survive it's like yeah no i mean that's the thing that's why i'm like a little bit

uh you know of two minds with this uh critique because first of all it's like you know a work of art and so uh right it's not a documentary being it's not a documentary even though it is like that's kind of what it's getting credit for is being both like a split between a feature and documentary but it's also like the overall like effect that you get is not like pro capitalism right like it's more uh these people are just having to move just to survive and just having to you know like work and play like live among the remnants of previous generation success just to get by um and yeah it's not it's not like things are great and amazon is our hero it's like a very it's more nuanced but like people are pointing out that the non-fiction book that is based on like head

details such as a uh 70 year old camper force worker that's like the thing where people come with their campers and like amazon provides a rv park basically where they can all live and then they work for amazon for like a period around the holidays i think but in the nonfiction book, one of the camper first force workers, uh, was stationed near a conveyor belt and a box flew off and knocked him down, causing him to hit his head. Uh, and Amazon's in-house medics determined he had suffered a concussion.

Uh, and he was sent back to the job. Uh, the Amazon in-house medics determined he hadn't suffered a concussion is the most it's so wild like that they have medics ready to tell you to go back to work like that that is an expense they're willing to pay not to create a work environment where uh you can you can't like walk off the job i'm sorry are these what are these how are these are these professionally trained medics oh no no no there are people who are before you can actually move into uh corporate hr you have to be one of

these people who pretends you're an in uh in-house medic training who then just was like no that ain't no concussion yeah you, you're good. You didn't even do anything. You just asked me how hard I hit my head. Right. Okay, great. Anyways, definitely a worthy conversation. I think anything that can draw attention

to how fucked the worker conditions are for the gig workers in Amazon and just gig workers in general, I think is probably worthwhile. I haven't seen the film. I know what it's about. I've seen like sort of isolated clips.

But overall, does it, would it make someone be like, oh, that sucks for this, for these people? I think so. Or is it kind of like balance where're like that sucks but also you know like at least it's all right like yeah they got some stuff it feels like post-apocalyptic like the whole thing feels like they are uh living in the ruins of a shattered culture that's what you get from the amazon part where like i said there are like these rolling robots that are like zooming around on the floor that where they're working and the idea that i got from it is that like they are this is like sort of a in the way that a lot of post-apocalyptic movies are like this is the story about the

resilience of the human spirit like it's kind of like that where like they're finding ways to bond and like have fun conversations with each other despite the fact that uh it's just complete hell i think they're living i think the way that we're gonna have to get to like a point where people start actually realizing what the fuck this actually means that people in their 70s are like well my retirement plan is to have the little bit of cash i have to buy a mobile shelter so I'm technically unhoused and travel from gig to gig to just eke out a living

at my age. And I think that we need like the fucking treatment where it's old white people and unfortunately it's going to have to be old white people because they're like puppies for white people in in this country where they're like dirty in amazon warehouses for people to be like oh shit yeah that's not how i want nana to live because just

explaining people in their 70s and their twilight years are having to live like this is still like still obscure and i remember reading that new york times article years ago when like this first thing sort of emerged about like boomers finding their retirement in mobile homes and shit how like immediately i was like oh it's so fucked up but yeah i guess everyone's gonna get that message a different way second degree murder is trending uh as is kim potter's name uh kim potter is the police officer who murdered dante right uh yeah in a traffic stop look at that already second degree manslaughter yeah that's interesting that was quick uh being held without bail because a lot of things they're saying was they were just looking at her duty belt you know where she has all her equipment and the taser is on the left side.

The handgun is on the right side. And the way that they are holstered is that they're essentially the grips are like facing the rear. So you can draw like with your right hand, draw from the holster on your right hip versus like if the if it were reversed, you might cross your waist to draw your gun because the handle is facing outward. So they're saying like, you know what side your shit is on. And based on the direction or orientation of the handle, you drew your gun. Right. You didn't you didn't think you drew your your fucking taser. And so they're like, yeah, this this thing kind of clear that i don't think this is an accident aside from maybe verbalizing

it for the camera to deliver your attempt at an academy award or most racist goon trying to pretend that they're human oh shit i shot him i don't know about that and the other thing too is knowing that i think she was the head of the police union or whatever over there like they you know because there's plenty of stories talking about how the heads of the police unions are typically someone like you are the person getting in the way of you know you're covering for officers that kill people yeah yeah you step in there's a and another write-up they're talking about how in one of these shootings like in the investigation you saw the first person an officer after they shot someone

killed them as they lay dying was a text to the head of the union the police union to explain what just happened more than calling for backup more than other things like yo this has happened because that's what they do and yeah there's just so many yeah i mean the police unions in many times many times are the ones who if the police are criticized are the like they're the tip of the spear in terms of just like the toxic ideology of like you said what about us you can't talk about us that way like let's go back at them i mean we've we saw that with just the new york police union response where they and even then the protest they were flying a blue lives matter flag the cops send up they start flying flags yeah yeah and also it's clear

yeah and they were they were told by uh or there was a city council vote where they were like you can't shoot at the people anymore like you can't shoot tear gas you can't do any of this shit and the police completely ignored that so just wildly unaccountable seem to be just responding to hurt feelings as that's been their entire MO, this entire movement, the Black Lives Matter movement

is to act like you're being personally attacked and then use your military grade weaponry to have a temper tantrum um and this i don't know what the i don't know where this how this this evolution like what's going to happen exactly because they're they are because they're being looser and looser uh you know nearly damn near three people were killed every day by police in 2020 and i don't know what what they how they think they're gonna spin this in any way other than i don't know maybe we'll just see more break dancing police

viral videos or something to try and be like no it's not just that stuff because i you'd hope at this point people's opinions really you really need to start thinking about what what law enforcement actually means and what safety actually means. Because for too long, we're just going hook, line, and sinker, mouths open, being like, whatever you feed me, like, okay, cop good. Yeah, we like cops. Great. They're people too. And they are. But the way policing works, it creates a system and a whole army of non-humans who look at many other people as being sub-human and therefore their lives not being worth anything. And that has nothing to do with safety. Anthony Edwards is trending in happier news.

Now Anthony Edwards, the number one pick in the NBA this year. Having a hell of a... That's a great joke. I think we did it last time. Miles, it's a great joke. Dr. Mark Green? Dr. Mark Green, yeah. joke i think we did it last time miles it's a great joke uh dr mark green dr mark green yeah picked first in the nba uh draft by the minnesota timberwolves uh this dude is just uh one of the funniest he's just never he doesn't like have any filter. And so, um, like there's a big news story that a rod is putting together a ownership

group to buy the Minnesota Timberwolves. And he was asked how he felt about it. And he was like, I'm, I don't know who that is. How they run. Uh, and,

uh, rules. And I think he's for real. I yeah i think so i think he just like i don't know he's young and dude yeah yeah i but do you if you weren't around if you weren't like paying attention when he was in the league you know yeah i don't know i feel like if you don't care about baseball like for as athletes you're like you want that a rod money like just colloquially ref a rod is known as the dude who secured one of the heaviest bags of all time yeah um and you want that but i don't think it really matters because i just i also love him when especially when he was talking

that irish reporter yeah it goes like And he's like, I like that. That's tough. Where are you from? That accent tough. I'm from Ireland. Oh, yeah, that's tough. Ireland. I like that.

I like that. Could you ask that question again? Yeah. So, in a way, I mean, yeah, he's definitely very endearing. So, I take nothing away from Dr. Mark Green. Texas rolling blackouts. They almost fucked that one up again because of like they were expecting a cold front so we're not expecting a lot of uh air conditioning being

needed and the cold front never hit and they were like hey man we dodged a bullet i know you guys thought we were bad but we came real close to having rolling rolling blackouts again, but we dodged a bullet. Uh, and it's like, cause the temperature projections were like 20 degrees off. You guys were almost, you were like on the edge of having another disaster. This place is,

if we weren't so comfortable as fucking consumers at every other level, this there, we would literally like other countries at this point are everybody's in the streets yeah you know i mean like the infrastructure is so clearly falling apart their fucking energy system in texas is an absolute joke and i think i don't know how much longer everybody till we figure out like a lot has to change very fucking quickly. The idea that they're like, Oh God, we didn't know it was going to be fucking hot.

Like what? And the system's so fragile that just off of that dumb shit, people are going to be like, Hey man, we might have to have some blackouts because of this shit. Like that is such a low level of like expectations for the people running such an important uh system it's just like that's you wouldn't forgive anyone for being like it's a little hotter than i expected so i'm gonna fuck off today uh my job yeah like that's huh that is not okay uh And finally, Eric Adams is trending.

I mean, it's, I'll just say, check this video out. Ayumi Shinozaki, tomorrow's guest. It's her tweet at the end of the episode. It's one of the most amazing things of it.

It's one of the great tweets. Eric Adams right now is running for mayor of new york and he used to be a cop baby and that's why he's got the fucking new york fire officers union and shit backing him because you know he's part of that whole you know back to blue back to whatever shit and his video is really something else it is like and i say it when we first talk about he's so cop-brained if you've it's like he's ceased to become a human because he only sees a like perp and officer binary yeah he so the video the premise is he's going to show you how to go through your own house and see where kids might be hiding contraband uh and it rules it's

it's one of the funniest like i i can't believe how just on the on the nose it is but it's gonna if it doesn't inspire an snl sketch by the weekend i'm gonna be really mad yeah because it's such it's an it's such a new york video um and the the logic of the video and i don't even mean to get in front of ayumi's tweet because but that's how good this shit was we had to talk about it so much even after we recorded but the logic of the video is like the best kind of comedy where it's like you don't know what your kids got in the house i mean mean, look at this backpack. Maybe there's a crack pipe in the front pocket. Like, what? And then there's another section just producing guns out of the strangest places.

Yeah, look at this stuffed animal. You wouldn't expect it, but yeah. Just look up. Yeah, the string music is absolutely on some other shit. But yeah, this video came out like 10 years ago but because he's running it's coming back baby and it's working alright those are some

of the things that are trending right now that's gonna do it for this afternoon we are back tomorrow with a whole ass episode of the show until then be kind to each other be kind to yourselves don't do nothing about white supremacy I'll talk to you all tomorrow. Bye. Bye. other 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. There's so much beauty in Mexican culture, like mariachis, delicious cuisine, and even lucha libre. Join us for the new podcast, Lucha Libre Behind the Mask,

a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host Santos Escobar, emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you stream podcasts. Hi, I am Lacey Lamar. And I'm also Lacey Lamar. Just kidding. I'm Amber Revin. Okay, everybody.

We have exciting news to share. We're back with season two of the Amber and Lacey, Lacey and Amber show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network. This season, we make new friends, deep dive into my steamy DMs, answer your listener questions, and more. The more is punch each other. Listen to the Amber and Lacey Lacey and Amber show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just listen,

okay? Or Lacey gets it. Do it. How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the Biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? It's right here in black and white and print. It's bigger than a flag or mascot.

Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.