The Daily Zeitgeist - GOP vs. FBI, That Google Art App Owns Your Face 1.24.18

Episode Date: January 25, 2018

In episode 70, Jack & Miles are joined by TV writer Phil Rosenthal to discuss the White House website thank you video, Sessions interview by Mueller, #releasethememo, the new FB algorithm, the Google art selfie app's black mirror quality, & more. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. 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. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? 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, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions,

sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. 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 iHeart True Crime Plus only on Apple Podcasts.

What happens when a professional football player's career ends and the applause fades and the screaming fans move on? I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. For some former NFL players, a new faith provides answers. You mix homesteading with guns in church. Voila! You got straight away. They try to save everybody. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, the internet, and welcome to Season 15, Episode 3 of Der Daily Zeitgeist. Yeah. For January 24th, 2018.

I just can't say that in the same way. My name is Jack O'Brien, a.k.a. Jackson O'Brienson. My name is Jack O'Brien, a.k.a. Jackson O'Brienson. That is courtesy of Christina O.D. At Chris Loves Life on Twitter. And I am thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray. Yes, it's your boy, Beats by Gray. And thank you to Kyle Welch for that, a.k.a.

That all rhymes. Wow, see? I want to be a rapper now. And we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by the creator, writer, and executive producer of a mildly successful TV show called Everybody Loves Raymond and the Netflix show Somebody Feed Phil. Please welcome Phil Rosenthal. Oh, hello, boys. Hello.

It's nice to be here in your third seat. Yes, welcome. We're thrilled to have you. What is something that you have searched in the not-too-distant past that is revealing about who you are as a human being? Somebody told me a rumor about our president. And I googled the name of this president with the word underage. Where did that leave? I leave it to your listeners to find it themselves.

Okay. All right. That the president themselves was underage? Sure. Let's go with that. Yeah, we'll go with that. Because I don't want any hate mail or death threats. A child imposter posing as the president.

Yeah, he's secretly three children stacked in an oversized suit. Right. And yeah. Dictating foreign policy. Okay. That makes sense. I'm not saying anything about its veracity. I'm just saying that I heard a story and so I Googled it.

That's all. Yeah. That's all I'm saying about it. What's something you think is overrated, Phil? Google searches. Google searches. No. What's overrated?

What's overrated? There's a thing in restaurants the you could have like a nice romantic evening with somebody and the server will come over and say we have this and this and this and then you you it all sounds beautiful and nice and then they'll say and choice of protein right and the mood is gone i'm sorry the music playing. Right. Is there a more unromantic term in a restaurant than choice of protein? Protein. Yeah. So stop that.

Yeah. What do you propose is a better way to inform them that they have an option? We have beautiful fresh fish and organic chicken and grass-fed beef. Doesn't that all sound better than choice of protein? What are we, working in a lab? Right. It sounds like your grain. It sounds like, yeah, or you're ordering from some sort of space-age machine

where it's like, I will have the rice and choice of protein. That's right. What's something you think is underrated, Phil? Well, I think in my travels now, I'm finding street food. And people think that they might get sick. But I'm telling you, if they were killing people or people were getting sick, they wouldn't last very long. So you don't have to worry that much. And especially if you go to a foreign country and you see a little bit of a line, get on that line.

These people know something that you don't know so the idea of street food i think is is as much as we love it i think it's still underrated yeah was there what was what's an example of something where you saw a line and you just said you know what i'm getting in line i trust i trust i trust the crowd i don't know if you saw the bangkok uh show but there was a line for uh soup oh right that you got like in a bag, right? I didn't know that's what it was going to be. Yeah, right. Soup in a bag.

Soup in a bag. I thought it was soup that I could eat right there like the people, but you're supposed to take it home. Right. So we did. It was amazing. What kind of soup was it? It was beautiful.

I just heard like, I think when you went up there like, you want organ? And I think you're like, yeah, sure. But you know what? In a soup, God knows what you're eating anyway. Yeah, it all cooks down. It all tastes great. It was porky and delicious and fresh vegetables. And it was amazing.

It was 50 cents. Wow. Yeah, I mean, crazy. Like the food there in Thailand. I mean, you can go and see it. Yeah, I got to say, I saw that Bangkok episode and I was so hungry and looked at my refrigerator and I was ashamed of myself. I was like, and this is all I have to eat? Shredded cheddar cheese or something?

We're lucky to live in Los Angeles where you can find a lot of this stuff. Yeah, that's true. Thai food is great in LA. It sure is. We have good... Jit Ladah is awesome, right? There's a place called Khao Soi in the valley that makes Khao Soi

which is one of the best things I've ever eaten in my life. Right. But in Thailand, it's a dollar. Yeah. Yeah. You're paying regular prices for sure. Weren't you saying there's a Michelin-starred street food chef? Speaking of street food.

Yeah. This is Jay Fai. She makes a crab omelet that's a football filled with crab. And it is one of the greatest, greatest things on planet Earth. It is just – I couldn't believe it. She stir fries in a wok this crab and she keeps pouring egg over it. And the egg forms around this crab until you have a football filled with crab. It's just the greatest.

You can't even eat the whole thing yourself. It's $25, which is super expensive there. Right, right. If the soup you said was $0.50, then yeah, $25 crab football. But if you tried to find it in America, it would be $80 to $90. No one would even bother doing it because it's prohibitively expensive. You couldn't possibly make a profit on what what this fresh shucked crab you know meat and that's the dish that she was awarded the michelin star for that she only made that it's

just her entire no if you watch the rest of that you get there's a seafood soup but tom tom cock oh yeah yeah yeah i'm telling you all the greatest hits of the ocean are in this soup right he's giant like lobster tails and giant prawns and beautiful. I mean, I couldn't finish. You saw me. It was with another guy. We couldn't put a dent in this soup. And we had more than that.

I had to have the entire crew could eat this soup. It's amazing. I do think restaurants need to start reaching out to you for their food descriptions because a football-sized omelet, I think, would – Filled with crab. Yeah. I think that would be a greatest hit. I think any man is going for that. Exactly.

The crab football. Would feel challenged appropriately. Two crab footballs, please. All right. Let's get into format. We're trying to take a sample of what people are talking and thinking about right now at this moment. And we like to open up by asking our guest, what is a myth?

What's something that people generally believe to be true that is not true? Durian is supposedly the stinkiest fruit on earth. And in Thailand, since we're on that subject, I can easily go to this. I had it and I was afraid. I thought it's going to be the Limburger cheese of fruit. The stinkiest, sock-smelly. Right. I didn't want it. Right. They said, you got to try it.

And you know, you do things when the camera's on. Yeah, yeah. That maybe you wouldn't do. So maybe I'm a little stupid. But I smelled it. And it smelled clean. I don't even understand. There was hardly a smell. There was a slightly fruity smell.

Strange. Now maybe it's my nose. I don't even understand. There was hardly a smell. There was a slightly fruity smell. Strange. Maybe it was my nose. I don't know. Everybody's different. Some people have the cilantro thing, right? Right, right, right. That tastes like soap. I happen not to have that.

My son has it, but I don't have it. And I take a bite of this durian, and it's not only fine, it's delicious. It tastes good. It's fruity and nice and creamy. What's the texture like? Creamy. Interesting. Creamy, soft, creamy.

But a lot of the fruits in Thailand, like the mangoes there, are infinitely better than the mangoes we get in the United States. The mangoes you get in the United States are kind of fibrous, as delicious as they are. And I am here to say king of fruits, mango. Mango. Mango. Yeah. Mango is great. I don't know if there's better.

And so, you know, when you eat a mango here, you get the strings in your teeth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going to pull it. You're going to better have a floss nearby. There, it's just almost like a mango pudding. Right. Delicious, crazy delicious. Man.

You got to go. You should go to Thailand for the fruit alone. And the durian, I'm telling you, I don't know what happened. Maybe people have a bad one. Yeah. And it stinks. Well, it's funny because, like, people always use durian as, like telling you, I don't know what happened. Maybe people have a bad one. Yeah. And it stinks. Well, it's funny because people always use durian as a prop on these shows. It's like, oh, it stinks like shit, so you shouldn't eat it.

It's the grossest thing. And they try and like – Yes. I've seen it used in prank shows to be like, that's the punishment. Yes. But it's funny because, yeah, who knows? So there's a myth, right? Yeah, busted.

All right. Let's get into the stories of the day. Yeah, busted. All right. Let's get into the stories of the day. Just right off the top, we wanted to talk about how on the White House's website they have their Thank You, Mr. President video that is just thanking the president for a great first year. I was just curious, Miles, how similar that was to the video that you had produced for thanking the president, because mine was like somewhat similar. But, you know, we hit some of the same points, but I had I guess mine was more detailed.

I got the Vienna Boys Choir together. Right. And we did a rousing rendition of You Don't Always Get What You Want. By the way, if you Google Trump Vienna Vienna boys choir, you'll get something. Yeah, exactly. Oh boy. But yeah, this video is just, it's pure propaganda of just like people who clearly need something from the president or, you know, owe him a favor or, or just pure sycophants is kind

of being like making, making up weird things to be thankful for. Cause I'm not, I'm not quite sure what sure what there is that we can be totally thankful for. But yeah, it's a weird video. It doesn't have that many views. It feels like something clearly like sort of cooked up by Trump to be like, show them. Show the people that people are thanking me. It's like Trump's YouTube channel where if you go to Trump's YouTube channel, or I think he took some of the videos down. channel where if you go to Trump's YouTube channel, or I think he took some of the videos down.

But if you went to his YouTube channel, like during the campaign, when he was like the most talked about man on earth, he had a bunch of videos that were just, you know, had a couple hundred views. And it was just him like, you know, holding court about like some pop culture from like eight years ago. And it was it was just really strange that no like he had all this stuff that nobody really cared about right he's like they shouldn't have canceled laguna beach exactly that's basically what it was right and people like laguna beach people still watch that yeah

we are through the looking glass people yes exactly uh speaking of propaganda uh so the fake news we'll tell you no uh the The Sessions was interviewed by Mueller apparently. We're just learning this. Trump says he doesn't care. He's totally cool with it. But what – so what are the details of this? I mean clearly – so yes, Jeff Sessions last week was interviewed by Robert Mueller for several hours. Jeff Sessions last week was interviewed by Robert Mueller for several hours.

And, you know, I couldn't think of any reason why you would want to interview, you know, Jeff Sessions unless it's like about the times he was like lying about meeting with Russian ambassadors or, you know, maybe committing a little bit of perjury talking about his Russia connections or that he knew about Jared Kushner and his involvement. I mean, there's many things, but I don't know. I couldn't I couldn't tell you why. But clearly, I mean, yes, I have a feeling that Robert Mueller was really putting him to the sword to try and get some answers out of him to begin trying to figure out what is going on in all this Russia shit. But can I ask a question? Yeah. Why do we think he's going to tell the truth now? Well, I think now it could be easier to – he hasn't been in front of a grand jury or

anything like that so if he lies it's there it's less i think the the stakes are lower versus now lying to like real federal investigators because now that's that's a completely different bag of worms because what he can put a case together and be like you actually completely deceived this investigation yes uh so i think there's definitely that degree of uh you know that that this is a different set of circumstances than before like whether it's a confirmation hearing where he first lied right things like that where this is completely different because now he's involved in an investment so it wasn't everything he said up till now was not against the law well i think clearly people are saying that we're making the case but i think now it's it's sort of

it's to the point where we just want to make sure we can get the proper full view of what is happening here and hold everyone responsible from the point of view of this investigation. Now it's double secret probation. Yeah, exactly. And who knows already because clearly other people have talked to Mueller. People have already made plea deals. So I'm sure he has a set of facts that he's operating with and trying to sort of juxtapose that with whatever Sessions is saying. But what was interesting is that, yeah, Jeff Sessions actually was really kind of coy about

this meeting with the White House. Donald Trump was really like, hey, what did you talk about? What were the questions? Give me the answers. Yeah. What was on the test? Like, did he ask about this thing? Like, just so I know.

Who did he vote for? Yeah, exactly. And apparently Jeff Sessions was holding the cards pretty close to the chest. Which is definitely not what the president wants to hear. He's going to be like, oh, don't worry about it. It's no big deal. Yeah, exactly. Just not giving non-detailed answers.

Exactly. So that's why then you cut to this quote yesterday of they're asking like, hey, are you worried about this meeting? So he's like, oh, no, absolutely not. I'm fine. It's great. It's fine. And then stop the interview. He's like, oh, no, absolutely not. I'm fine. It's great. It's fine. And then I'm going to stop the interviews like, OK, no more questions. So clearly, you know, Trump is a little shook. But I guess that feeds into now this sort of new attempt from the GOP to sort of really begin discrediting the FBI, because that's like become like a huge news line that the last couple of weeks, whether it's apparently like Trump was leaning on Chris Wray to get rid of the deputy director of the FBI, Adam McCabe. And it just looks like they're trying to clean house a little bit at the FBI because

they're like the one law enforcement agency that has the most information, it seems like, or they're most vocal about their concerns about what was going on during the campaign. Hashtag release the memo, right? Yeah. And the memo, right? Yeah. And the memo that – so that huge hashtag that got circulated widely, a lot of people were speculating like, oh, it's Russian bots that are spreading this. I mean to a certain extent that may be true. But according to like Twitter's internal analysis, someone at Twitter said it's being

retweeted a lot in the states. But yeah, this memo that everyone is talking about is this report that Republicans and the house intelligence committee were saying like, they have proof of like widespread surveillance abuse from the FBI and like that the FBI has this corrupt agenda to undermine the president and, and, you know, to, to throw him out of office. And that's makes sense. I guess when you're trying to discredit the people who have all the receipts and evidence uh that of all your wrongdoing there's no better way to just try and get no there's no better defense than to say the offense is lying um so yeah so they have this memo that's going around and it's just sort of ramping up more and more and more which looks like the

actions of people who may have something to hide not people who are on the right side of things. It's like roaches complaining that you turn the light on. Yeah, right. Exactly. And then saying that the light is lying or like, don't believe that this is this is artificial light. We are not roaches either. We are human beings.

So please do not kill us. Like, I don't know how far you can go with that. Pretty far. Yeah, apparently. So now it's just getting kind of dangerous because you have actual senators like ron johnson went on fox news yesterday and is trying to push this like that the fbi has this secret society this is ron johnson talking to brett bayer on fox last night we have we have an informant that's talking about a group that were holding secret meetings off-site

there's there's so much smoke here there's's so much suspicion. Let's stop there. A secret society, secret meetings off-site of the Justice Department. Correct. And you have an informant saying that? Yes.

Is there anything more about that? No. We have to dig into it. Wait, where is this? This was, that's Ron Johnson talking to Brett Baier. Like, he's on the Hill.

Like, you can clear, I think he's in the Capitol building based on that, like, echo. Right. Now, who's Brett Baier? What, what? Oh, he's you can clear – I think he's in the Capitol building based on that like echo. Right. Now, who's Brett Baier? What – Oh, he's like a Fox News anchor. Fox News.

OK. Can't you just discount this as – oh, the comic book said. Yeah. Right. The propaganda wing of the Trump administration. And so what's funny is – yeah, this is him saying there's a secret society and they're basing it off these texts that one one of the guys in the fbi had said like the day after the election that i think could have been read pretty flippantly of sort of like oh god like i guess i have these like secret secret society meetings now kind of thing and they've

just latched onto this one text to sort of justify this idea of there being this like other dark entity happening what they don't talk about is that same fbi agent in the beginning of it one of the texts they have was also him saying that he wasn't quite sure there was any there there with the russia collusion thing right it's funny like rather than using this text like they could hang up like well this fbi guy never thought there was anything they're being like this fbi guy started a secret society to try and undermine the president right um and now then you cut to lou dobbs uh who's my goodness he has fallen quite far uh he and trump are very very close they go way back yes talk on a regular basis yeah so this is what lou dobbs was pushing in his opening monologue of his show

uh last night uh for on fox business channel, everybody. It may be time to declare war outright against the deep state and clear out the rot in the upper levels of the FBI and the Justice Department. Yes, I said the rot. The FBI and the DOJ have broken the public trust by destroying evidence, defying oversight, and actively trying to bring down the Trump presidency. Tonight, there are new concerns that anti-trump fbi officials formed even a secret society at the fbi to subvert the president after his election so this is it is like a comic book yeah of course it just sounds like like

second-rate propaganda you know and not. Yeah, it's not even good. They should learn more from the Russians on how to do it. Yeah, exactly. It's just really – it's just dangerous that this is – like if you are living in this Fox News bubble, that now they're trying to force-feed this idea that the FBI is actually the enemy of the state. Well, the only dangerous thing is that a third of the country believes this. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

It's that concerted kind of messaging machine of Fox News. And then when you go to Drudge Report, it has been nothing but memo gate ever since a few days ago. Now, Secret Society is one of the top headlines on Drudge Report. Whistleblower colon Secret society held off-site meeting. This is based on a single text message that, you know, we don't know what the context is at all. There's also five months of missing messages between two FBI agents, I think,

or two Department of – I mean, yeah, at this point, they're just really grasping at anything to try and give any kind of veracity to you. Or seem guilty. Right. That's how guilty people act. Yeah, exactly.

Act like everybody, you know, it's like a rat in a corner. Yeah. They're going to bite you. Yeah. And they're running out of teeth, basically. So we'll see how crazy it gets. But yeah, clearly the FBI, you know, time and time again, they have been the ones to uncover the lies or whenever someone has not been honest about their interactions with foreign governments and things.

They have been willing to step in like, actually, we heard like we've surveilled the phone conversations and we know that for a fact that that's a lie. So that's their tactic is like if you discredit the FBI, then maybe they can get the whole thing to go away. And so the release the memo, what memo are they talking about? This is the one that the House Intel Committee is saying, like, hey, we've got we've we've been looking at some stuff and we've put together this report, this memo, this memorandum of, you know, outlining all the abuses of power that we you know, that the FBI is doing and overreaching with surveillance. And they're like, oh, when you see this, it's going to blow your mind.

So the memo is produced by them. Yeah. Right. It's produced by these people who want to claim, who want to discredit the FBI's investigation. Right. So they're just saying, oh, man, if only you could see this thing we wrote over here. And then they're trying to create like this groundswell of people being like, you should release it then release the memo but i i assumed when i saw that hashtag that it was some sort of primary document

like that they were like wait wait do you see this memo that we uncovered but it's wait do you see this memo that we wrote yeah wait till you see this book report i did exactly okay why don't why don't you just tell us what you want to tell us? But anyways. It's all grand theater. Yeah. So it's pretty bad theater. Yeah. Is there any indication that this is going to affect the Mueller investigation?

We'll see. I mean, who's to know anymore? I mean, because there's constantly been this threat of Mueller being fired and who knows if it's going to happen. If it doesn't, I think Sarah Huckabee Sanders yesterday said, oh, I can't – we're not thinking about firing Mueller because the left-wing media would go crazy. Yes. I'm like, yeah, that's why? Right. Because you're worried more about the optics from the media than you are like the actual investigation. So we'll see.

She's a delight. Yeah. Well, she's a delight. Yeah. And once again, this is a great indication of what I've been talking about the past couple of days about how they talk about there being a left wing bias in the media. They actually have a whole corporation that is just regurgitating their talking points, like straight from what they want them to say. It's going out directly to the audience. And the left doesn't have that. The left has people who are trying to tell both sides of the story. And I think it's a huge disadvantage. I think that's how these crazy sort of conspiracy

theories suddenly take off is that they're, you know, the left has totally it's like watching the Democrats try and negotiate with the GOP. And, you know, the GOP says, Oh, well, you guys have a left wing bias. And so that's the beginning of the argument that like, the media is just starts from, well, we do have a leftwing bias, but the thing you have to understand is rather than having their own Fox News. And by left-wing, they mean human. Right. Exactly. Or fact-oriented.

Right. All right. We're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back. 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. a dream sequence 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. It was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, former Packers star Kabir Bajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation. KGB explaining what he believes led to the arrest of his friends at a children's Christmas play. A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian, now cut off from his family and connected to a strange arrest. I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. I got swept up in Kabir's journey.

But this was only the beginning. In a story about faith and football, the search for meaning away from the gridiron, and the consequences for everyone involved you mix homesteading with guns and church and a little bit of the spice of conspiracy theories that we liked voila you got straight away i felt like i was living in north korea but worse if that's possible listen to spiraled on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, substance use disorder and addiction is so isolating.

And so as a black woman in recovery, hope must be loud. It grows louder when you ask for help and you're vulnerable. It is the thread that lets you know that no matter what happens, you will be okay. When we learn the power of hope, recovery is possible. Find out how at startwithhope.com. Brought to you by the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, Shatterproof, and the Ad Council. And we're back. And we wanted to talk about how Facebook is saving the news by fixing their algorithm. So our writer, Sam Raubman, talked about how, you know, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook talked a good game.

Like Mark Zuckerberg was at a conference with the editor in chief of the San Francisco Chronicle, I think just a year ago, was talking about how, you know, they were huge fans of what the newspaper, like all the journalistic work that the newspapers of America were doing. And they were, you know, trying to find ways to fix the problem that was identified during the 2016 election. And they appear to have just punted on that whole thing, because their solution now appears to be to let users rate their news sources, essentially. It's basically like letting the users themselves whose judgment was the problem in the first place use their judgment to fix the problem. Right. So their tactic against – their tactic to combat fake news is to ask people, how do you rate this news source and this one? Right.

And then from there, figure out if – what is dubious or what is less trustworthy. I actually think that makes it worse. It does. That's what we – yeah. It definitely seems like the worst way to figure out – like how to figure out what is fake news because their whole thing is they want to do that to avoid – right? In the utopia or in our bubble maybe we would say, well, of course, these other websites, they're garbage. They're just pushing like fake facts, their propaganda to keep like their people in line or just to keep that sort of narrative going in people's minds that we would say, oh, that's all trash. And we have to get rid of it because clearly it's not backed by fact or it's based on conspiracy theories. theories and then the people on the conservative end of the spectrum will say facebook is being biased towards us without sort of really actually looking objectively at the news that they're

ingesting so to avoid that they're like well we don't want that so we'll let everybody decide and everybody can chime in and guess what they're gonna pick the news they like right right and that's insane right that's the problem i think that we first i mean could be i mean we don't really know how this is going to be implemented. But literally pick the facts you like. Right. They – I mean that has been the problem is that it is a self-selecting news-finding mechanism is Facebook. And I mean they put –

So zero oversight now. Well, they're – I think they're – it's not clear exactly how they're going to implement it. But I mean, the statements that they've put out. So this is Mark Zuckerberg explaining their rationale. We could try to make that decision ourselves. What is fake and what is a trustworthy source? But that's not something we're comfortable with. We considered asking outside experts, which would take the decision out of our hands, but would likely not solve the objectivity problem.

We decided that having the community determine which sources are broadly trusted would be most objective. Now, keep in mind, like Facebook is well aware they have put tons of newspapers out of business in the past decade. Like there are so many out of work fact checkers that like that, that would seem to be the obvious solution is just get people who for a living check facts, who like fact check stories and, you know, create a huge, I mean,

there's been presumably conservative and liberal newspapers that have been put out of business. So why not use the huge – I mean, there's also Wikipedia, which is a bunch of people doing this stuff for free. 350 billion dollar company uh you know find a way to you know put a fact-finding group together that was just like a division of their company um they're going to create a new group of people instead of the alt right or alt left there's going to be alt universe right right right you choose what you want to believe yeah Yeah. Right. It's like a form of virtual reality essentially. Yeah. I think the big leap that they have yet to make is that they don't want to admit that they're at all responsible for the veracity of the information that appears on their website. They're still claiming we're not a media company.

We're just a platform. And this gives them deniability. This allows them to say that – I'm sorry. They're not just a platform. They're broadcasting. Right. Yeah.

And everybody is held to standards. Right. CBS would not be allowed to just spout whatever they want and if you want to believe it, you believe it. There are standards. Right. Human beings have standards. Right. Right. They're not – that's baloney. to just spout whatever they want and if you want to believe it you believe there's standards right human beings have standards right right they're not that's baloney it's not the telephone where it's a private line where you and i can talk about whatever we want to talk about this is broadcasting to people to children for god's sakes and that's i think that's like the next evolution and how we're trying to view these platforms is like wait you actually have a responsibility now

like i know you're calling it social media but now we have to really view these platforms is like, wait, you actually have a responsibility now. Like I know you're calling it social media. But now we have to really look at this as like are you spreading information on a massive scale that we can say that you maybe need to fall in line with things that like the FCC or something would have oversight over. But we're yet to kind of – I guess it's one thing at a time. And this is Facebook's way of saying like, hey, look, we're trying our best to avoid being a news source. But who knows? There is a law against yelling fire in a crowded theater. Right. The same law should apply to Facebook.

Yeah. Definitely the equivalent of that has been happening for sure. Yeah. I mean over in Western European countries, they are further ahead legally on this. They're starting to regard Facebook and other social media networks as, you know, like broadcasters rather than like phone companies, which in America, I think, because of how powerful corporations are and the way our system works, they're just still being viewed like phone companies, essentially, like they're just providing a platform for people to communicate on. But phone companies didn't put like the entire news industry out of business like that. People are clearly coming to you for facts. So I don't know. I would have a lot harder of a time holding them accountable if they weren't making $350 billion.

And they also make it look like news. Right. Which should also be illegal. Right. Yeah. And I mean they say the reality is there is too much content for us to check and we imagine there's plenty more material in need of fact checking that we aren't seeing. And,

you know, that's just giving up before you've tried. So the genie's out of the bottle. There's nothing we could do. Right. Right. Not even trying, you know?

Yeah. This survey just falls so short. I mean, the first question, do you recognize the following websites? Yes or no. Second, it's only two questions.

Second question. How much do you trust each of these domains? Entirely? A lot? Somewhat? Barely? Not at all? Fox news. A hundred percent. Yeah. Right. And it's like, you know, question, how much do you trust each of these domains? Entirely? A lot? Somewhat? Barely? Not at all? Fox News, 100 percent.

Yeah. Right. And it's like we were talking before. It's like you already live in this echo chamber on Facebook. So if you're conservative, it's unlikely you're going to encounter many liberal news stories because the algorithm will keep you like, oh, we're just going to serve you things we know you're receptive to. Right. We're just going to serve you things we know you're receptive to. So is that survey going to just then be people existing in their echo chamber, like giving their survey on this thing?

Or is it every news source and they're appealing to the broad spectrum of Facebook users? I mean like I guess there's not enough information right now to know how exactly they're going to apply all this. Right. If it was just a at random survey that, you know, they were just asking a random sampling of the population on Facebook, how do you rate this news source? Then you might get some sort of analysis or a useful flagging of incorrect news sources. But that would entail Facebook giving people a bad user experience. Nobody likes taking random sampled surveys, right? I mean, unless I can win a free iPod. Right. Then I will. Yeah, that is Miles' main thing. He's still stuck on iPods. Hey, I'm telling you. You've won an iPod Touch.

The web browser told me that, and I haven't got my iPod Nano yet. I'm just telling you. I read that underneath this all is the problem that people don't ever want to admit they're wrong. Yeah. That's why we are where we are. Right. That's why I don't think the objectivity problem isn't with the objectivity of this study. It's with the objectivity of the people they're asking.

Right. I don't think – to be handcuffed by the idea that like, well, then they're going to – a lot of conservative users are going to say we're being biased towards them. That isn't a good enough excuse to not really hire like real journalistic fact-checkers to do their job because you could tell that they're more in the business of being objective than maybe someone who reads Drudge every day or who reads Daily Kos every day or something like that. Well, but even if you're very religious and I have great respect for people who have deep beliefs, how much proof do they need that this particular human being is not your pro-Christian values? Right. How much proof? What are you waiting for? Yeah.

Right. Again, yeah. And they still – they are not going to – Can't admit you're wrong. No. Yeah. That's really what's underneath. It's a human thing. waiting for yeah right again and they still they are not gonna can't admit you're wrong no yeah that's really what's underneath it's a human thing that's like when my dad bought one of these weird exercise machines from the 90s that just looked like a weird like it wasn't a bike but it was like this thing where you would just pull the thing and it told you would give you six-pack abs

right he did it for the longest time and i was like i don't know this i don't see six back this looks like some snake oil yeah you just buy but for But for a long time, no, no, no. It's working. It's working. It's the same kind of thing. You never want to admit that you've been duped. Right. And then sometimes you'll go great lengths to be like, I'll show you how right I am because I will not – I'll keep using this.

Everybody, we now have that bike in the White House. Yeah. They've – yeah, they hook people's brains up to like brain scanners while having political discussions. And they found that the thing you are looking for is not to find the truth. The thing you're looking for is a victory essentially. Yeah. So that's – wow. That's right.

That's sad, right? Yeah. And further sad news. So we also wanted to talk about this Google selfie app where they like take – you take your own picture and then they find a match for you. I just did it. Oh, who did it say you were? St. Paul. Oh.

Nice. 40-something percent. 60 percent Mr. Bean. Oh, really? Yeah. No. Oh, nice. 40-something percent. 60% Mr. Bean. Oh, really? Yeah. No, no. A painting. Van Gogh's Mr. Bean.

I think that was a Rembrandt, actually. One of the masters. Yeah, I just wanted to bring it up because I disagreed with who they found. They said I look like a 19th century Italian woman. I think a nun. And I just disagree. A lot of it's based on your hairline I found. They said mine was – I looked like Martin Luther King and I looked – I think all it said was it was going off my mustache.

That's it. But I don't know. But again, that's why we're like trying to find out like what are they doing? All these things are great in theory. Right, exactly. Like the iPhone itself. Exactly. But our writer, J.M. McNabb from Canada is able to look at our culture from a slight distance and point out that this is basically a Black Mirror episode sort of waiting to happen, right?

Yeah. Who knows? Probably millions of people, maybe. I think it's safe to assume maybe millions of people have used this app, if not hundreds of thousands, where you're just possibly contributing to their machine learning ability to begin face-matching technology. So you give this machine enough reps with enough faces, it can start really zeroing in on a more sophisticated way to begin face matching. They're watching you.

Yeah. And the one thing was like in the beginning people were concerned of like are they storing these pictures? Am I going into a database? And Google is like, no, no, no. That picture is only used for the time it takes for us to analyze it against our database of all these paintings to see, you know, who you look like. And if they decide to turn on us. Right. And so that's, I guess that's the thing.

So like in Chicago and Illinois or in Illinois and in Texas, they have very strict like biometric laws of sort of like, you cannot give up like your fingerprints or eye scans or face scans unwittingly and without knowing like how it's going to be used. So if you're in those states, you can't actually use these apps. But wait a minute. You just brought up a very good point. I unlock my phone with my fingerprint. Yeah.

So that means they have my fingerprint. Well, Apple will say, well, that information isn't being sent to us. That's stored locally in your phone. But if somebody should suddenly take charge of Apple. Yeah. That wants to use my fingerprint for some reason. There is a way to probably access that information remotely for sure. It has to be.

It's in there. Yeah. They are reading it. It's going to the cloud and unlocking my phone. Exactly. Well, and it's crazy too because they already say, I think – what was this? This show is scaring the hell out of me. Yeah.

I mean not to mention my iPhone I have to look into to unlock now. So now they have your face. So now they have my face. But there's a report already that Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology found that more than 117 million American adults are captured in a virtual perpetual lineup, which means law enforcement offices across the U.S. can scan their photos and use unregulated software to track law abiding citizens in government data sets. So there's a very good chance they're saying nearly over half of Americans' faces are already in a database anyway.

Right. And that our phones are recording us whenever they want to be recording us. Yeah, I think the – On or off. Exactly. And if you have an Amazon Echo, who knows? You're already broadcasting to the CIA or whatever, however, whatever conspiracy you want to subscribe to. Yeah, the voice recognition.

It really does. Well, thank God we can trust the people in charge now not to change the law for their benefit. Mark Zuckerberg will figure it out for us. My phone makes me tell it my deepest, darkest secret before I unlock it.

But it has to be a new one every time. Yeah. And I mean, China is basically at the forefront of facial recognition technology because they have, you know, because their government is the Chinese government there. They have every citizen's face in a database, and they've been able to use that enormous database of faces to just – it's basically feeding data into an algorithm. So their algorithm has way, way more data than ours does. So this is potentially Google finding a way to catch up. Yeah.

Potentially Google finding a way to catch up. Yeah. And the ACLU also mentions like in the US, there are like major police departments here already have this real-time face recognition technology that enables surveillance cameras to like scan faces of pedestrians walking down the street. And in Maryland, apparently police have been using the software to ID people in protest photos and match them to people with warrants. So there's your Black Mirror episode. Yeah. So I mean I guess just have fun with the Google. So there's your black mirror episode. Yeah. So, I mean, I guess just have fun with the Google app.

I mean, I think the jig is up. I think the Google app is the least. We might as well. Yeah. You already have a Facebook, so you've already given up your face. Right.

I was a little creeped out by how much I looked like one of the like paintings. Yeah. Yeah. It was like, everything was off. Like it was like a, like my, the coloring wasn't close or anything, but then just in the face place, it was like

my face had been just pasted onto this big friar's chubby body. You know, if you make a different face, I played with this a little bit. Right. If you make a different face, an expression, or even the angle, you'll get something completely different. Completely different, yeah. We'll have to do the face app challenge. Yeah.

See if I can – I also wonder how racist it is because my Korean wife did it and it was just like a random Korean woman. Right. I was just like – Well, that's – yeah. That's not anything like – Yeah, there was also reading for people of color. There's not that many people – like there aren't that many art pieces based on classical art or portraits of like people of color.

That's what I feel like. Well, they couldn't just use paint on anybody. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So that's what I'm like. Maybe that's why I was Martin Luther King because it was like one of eight things. I had somebody who was African-American in there.

And yeah, the other ones, there were a couple spot on ones. I think one was like a weird guy in an opium tent or something. So I was like, whatever. They're still working on it. Yeah. Again, it's a couple spot on ones. I think one was like a weird guy in an opium tent or something. So I was like, whatever. They're still working on it. Yeah. Again, it's not perfect. All right. We're going to take a quick break.

We will be right back. 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 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. 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. It was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, former Packers star Kabir Bajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation. KGB explaining what he believes led to the arrest of his friends at a children's Christmas play. A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian, now cut off from his family and connected to a strange arrest. I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. I got swept up in Kabir's journey, but this was only the beginning. In a story about faith and football, the search for meaning away from the gridiron and the consequences for everyone involved. You mix homesteading with guns and church and a little bit of the spice of conspiracy theories that we liked.

Voila! You got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Substance use disorder and addiction is so isolating. And so as a black woman in recovery, hope must be loud. It grows louder when you ask for help and you're vulnerable. It is the thread that lets you know that no matter what happens, you will be okay. When we learn the power of hope, recovery is possible. Find out how at

startwithhope.com. Brought to you by the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, Shatterproof, and the Ad Council. And we're back. So yeah, as we mentioned yesterday, there was a school shooting in Kentucky. It was in Marshall, Kentucky. Yeah, it was a student. He killed, I think, two people and injured another 17. And has been taken into custody, a 15-year-old. Let me guess. Somebody got a gun that shouldn't have one? I'm guessing.

Yeah. I'm not sure how he got the – yeah, it was a handgun. So, I mean, imagine if he had gone in with like one of these assault rifles. It could have been probably a lot worse. If you read about – so this is 11 shootings just this month. Yeah. This first month. We're not even out of the month yet.

Just this month. Yeah. This first month. We're not even out of the month yet. If you read about a place where some of this stuff is going on that we're reading about every day from the top of our government to these things. Yeah. Would you come here? No.

You would say this place is a shithole that you wouldn't want to live in. And it's true, too. I mean, you can tell because even tourism is on the decline in this country, too. But let's not admit that anything's wrong no no no no it's the fbi is lying that's the problem so yeah i grew up uh being told like ah just be thankful you live in our country compared to other countries this place is like the best the best it's ever been anywhere and yeah i'm starting, only just starting to. By the way, that's true too. Both things are true. But one of the things that we always thought made it the best is that we could criticize it and try to make it even better towards a more perfect union.

Right. Right. What are we doing? Not that. What are we doing? Not that. In more upbeat news, Larry Nassar, I guess this is kind of upbeat that Larry Nassar, the doctor in the Michigan sexual abuse case with the U.S. gymnastics team and just Michigan State. And he was the team doctor for a number of different people, was sentenced.

They, after testimony from a number over a hundred women i believe yeah i don't know if it was testimony but they were victim statements victim statements from over a hundred women uh and he was sentenced to and girls by the way yeah yeah and he was sentenced to anywhere from i think 40 to 175 years. Yeah. How about the people who knew about it and let them keep going? Yeah, that's the other part. What happens to them? Yeah, exactly. Because there were still a lot of people complicit in that. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. We'll see if, yeah, it'll turn on them. But yeah, that whole sentencing, it was pretty dramatic. Like the judge was going to, like normally they would post the letter so people can see what the defendant wrote in their like sort of – their letter in the sentencing phase. And she was like, I'm not even going to post this because it's just garbage and I'm not going to re-victimize these women and girls for what you did. Because he was saying stuff like the judge is being unfair and hysterical. And at the end, he was like, I was manipulated into admitting that these – that the acts I committed weren't because of medical in nature.

They were sexual or whatever. And like you could hear the gallery just laugh that like he could somehow be saying that he was manipulated. He also used the phrase, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, which is just – Unbelievable. Yeah. Well, look. Is it that unbelievable? He's a monster right so we can't be surprised when the monsters also lie that's very true i guess it's just so very shocking you know

like is that because you're already confronted with the horrible horrible shit that he's done to all these these people and then on top of it to have that added level of you know denial delusion but i guess you know that as we've seen people do whatever in the name of self-preservation. Yeah. Yeah. But shout out to Judge Rosemary Aquilina, who, you know, I feel like didn't let this just kind of get swept under the rug and kind of made sure that this was a spectacle and that, you know know we were asking the

questions like how did people let this happen uh but those people have to be held accountable otherwise it will keep happening yeah especially when you read about like the corolli ranch and like how like where it's situated and like with horrible cell service and there's like nothing near it. It's just sounds just awful. I remember when I was a kid watching a like movie of the week about Nadia Comaneci and like she was being essentially abused by Bella Carolli. Like he was just so brutal to her. And then, yeah,

that guy ended up like being the coach of all these other, of all these other young women. And we were like, ah, tough love. He does good work. Well, I think the spotlight will be making its way towards these other people pretty soon. Or hopefully we can hold these people accountable too. Amazon continues to devour stores. Toys R Us is closing.

I think they declared bankruptcy a couple months back, and now they're closing 180 stores. It's like a fifth of their stores. That's too bad. Because, yeah, I mean, young people don't like to go out in public anymore, so we buy everything online. And I think, yeah, they've noticed, especially for toy purchases like Amazon, a lot of people just it's easier to order it because kids already know what they want and you can just order it.

And yet the Amazon physical store is crowded. Yeah, exactly. I don't understand. That Amazon ghost store, which is funny. Someone on Twitter showed us that we were talking about that earlier about you just go in, fill up your bag and walk out and you're charged or whatever. And now I was saying like that's probably going to be the easiest place to shop. I was saying like that's probably going to be the easiest place to shop. And then it turns out like one of the journalists who had gone in there, she went in, filled up her bag and walked out assuming that everything would be charged and like they forgot to charge her for a couple of things.

It wasn't quite perfect. So someone inevitably kind of shoplifted. We're going to continue paying attention to this and give you the hack for how to steal from Amazon, which is, I think, a just thing to do, probably. Take Amazon down. That poor giraffe. I just thought of the giraffe. I know. Jeffrey.

Jeff. You know, there are supposed to be monopoly laws that protect against Amazon doing what Amazon is doing. But, you know, because of the benevolent feelings towards tech companies among the public, and because of, you know, some pretty favorable interpretations of current laws, and you know, how they apply to these giant tech companies like Amazon and Google and Facebook, you know, they've been protected. But presumably that's going to start changing in the next few years. I mean, it needs to. We shall see. And finally, we wanted to talk about Mattress Firm, which is a company, I think I had seen a few of these signs here and there. Mattress Firm is a mattress store that as our engineer and producer Nick Stump called it, or described it, it's, you see them everywhere and you've never seen anybody inside one,

You see them everywhere and you've never seen anybody inside one, which I know of a number of stores like that. But I wasn't at least overly familiar with Mattress Firm. But apparently there was a big conspiracy theory launched on Reddit earlier this week saying that they must be like a mafia shell company or something. They must be like a mafia shell company or something because it was just – they were omnipresent and yet nobody had ever spent money in one before. Right, and the concentration of those kinds of stores like heavy is weird because it's not like you buy mattresses as frequently as you do like paper towels or something. Right. It's like a one in every, what, eight to ten year purchase? Oh, Miles. No. What?

You have to every couple months, man. You've got to burn through those things. What, are you wearing a mattress for? Yeah. But, you know, the company responded with a charming meme that was like, you know, Nick Youngface type thing. Like, what? Who, us? And everybody laughed it off.

But Nick pointed out that the retailer is owned by South African retailer Steinhoff, and they came under scrutiny at the end of 2017 after it stopped publishing, postponed publishing its full year accounts, citing accounting irregularities. So they do have some shady things happening. Their stock price has started tanking. So it's not just like Reddit was pulling this out of nowhere. They do seem to be a somewhat shady company. But I'm curious to hear from our uh listeners about any examples of this

what are some companies or you know businesses that you feel like must be mafia shell companies because uh you've never government yeah right there you go um all right well this has been a blast phil thank you so much i loved it and doing this. Thank you. This was a lot of fun. I never get political. This was, you know, I thought my show was just a humanistic show. And now suddenly it's a political statement to embrace other people and other cultures. It really is. That's just showing your liberal bias.

That's it. Your human bias. So what is this show again and where can people find it? Somebody feed Phil on Netflix. I've heard of this Netflix. Miles, where can people find you? Find me on Twitter and Instagram at Miles of Grey. Phil, do you have a social media?

Phil Rosenthal on Twitter. Phil.Rosenthal on Instagram. Something Phil Rosenthal on the Facebook. All right. And you can find me at Jack underscore O'Brien on Twitter. You can find us at The Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram.

We're at Daily Zeitgeist on Twitter. We have a Facebook fan page. Just search Daily Zeitgeist. And we have a website DailyZeitgeist.com where you can find our episodes and footnotes for each episode where we link off to the sources for the stuff we're talking about.

That's going to do it for today's show. We'll be back tomorrow because it is a daily podcast. Talk to you guys then. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. 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. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare.

Can K trust her sister, or is history repeating itself? 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. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.

Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, Now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. In California during the summer of 1975, within the span of 17 days and less than 90 miles, two women did something no other woman had done before, try to assassinate the president of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson. 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nickname Squeaky.

The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer this season on the new podcast, Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content

by subscribing to iHeart True Crime Plus only on Apple Podcasts. What happens when a professional football player's career ends, and the applause fades, and the screaming fans move on? I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. For some former NFL players, a new faith provides answers. You mix homesteading with guns and church. Voila! You got straightway.

They try to save everybody. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.