The Daily Zeitgeist - Internet Poisoning (with Jason Pargin) 07.23.24

Episode Date: July 23, 2024

In episode 1712, Jack and Miles are joined by bestselling author and co-host of Big Feets, Jason Pargin, to discuss…  Assassination Conspiracy Theories, Cyber Attacks, Psychological Impact Of Being Online, Entertainment vs. News & more observations from Jason's new book, I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom. LISTEN: It Was A Good Day (Footsteps in the Dark) by OMASee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

wait justin you were saying you watched sprint did you watch that netflix i haven't seen it i was just aware of it i'm just i saw i saw receiver i saw sprint i saw like i know golf hot dog man every single part of sports i know wait is it good is it worth it? Is sprint enthralling? Because I think the egos that are in F1, I find it hard to have that mapped on into other sports. Well, it's a little bit different because at the end of the day, there is no car except your legs. Right.

You know what I mean? And it's like the purest form of competition is like, all right, dude, who's got better reflexes and stronger legs and that is the track and field association of america's tagline there is no car except your legs there is no car except your legs the u.s olympic and that is how i need them to make sense of it too there is no car only your feet wait where's the car that what I did. That's what I say as I'm watching a 200 meter. Yeah. Getting into the blocks. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Runners on your marks. Hold on. Where's my car? Sorry. Sorry, guys. I think you forgot where the car.

Dude, I'm telling you right now, I'm going to get smoked by this dude, unless I'm in a car. So what are we doing here? This isn't even fair. This isn't even fair. Oh, what are we doing here? This isn't even fair. This isn't even fair. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadson. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.

There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult.

And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me for I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese.

Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports listen to the making of a rivalry caitlin clark versus angel reese on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast presented by capital one founding partner of iheart women's sports hello the internet and welcome to season 348 episode 2 2 of Dirt Daily Psych Guys! Today, production of iHeartRadio.

This is a podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness, and it is Tuesday, July 23rd, 2024. Woo! Of course. There is some weird shit happening on July 23rd. It's National Vanilla Ice Cream Day. That's fine. National Lemon Day.

And also Gorgeous Grandma Day. So shout out. Sounds like it was written by somebody who was horny, unfortunately. Just all the gorgeous grits. Look, it's a day where we recognize all the women who embrace the age of a grandma, whether they're grandmothers or not.

Gorgeous Grandma Day embraces and encourages all women to front their granny attitudes with purpose and style. Look at you. You're gorgeous and you don't even know it. I just erased myself out. You're like this bear with these big fucking claws, baby. Wait, you're from Swingers? I guess so. Yeah.

All right. My name is Jack O'Brien, a.k.a. I guess so. Yeah. All right. My name is Jack O'Brien, a.k.a. Kama, Kama, Kama, Kama Kamala is now in. No longer Joe.

No longer Joe. Winning would be easy if your platform was like my dreams. Health care be free. Health care be free. That is courtesy of the Blake Rogers, the Ohio State University. Also Halcyon Salad. Took a crack at a Kamala Karma Chameleon AKA, but I couldn't get the phrasing

right on yours even though it was first. I'm so sorry. Halcyon Salad. Shout out to both of you though and shout out to Kamala. Kamala? I donated to her.'t like her folks he did i'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co-host mr miles gray oh man it's miles gray aka one two three it's miles gray and jack go b e we look at hummingbirds and cast pods News explodes when Jack takes off

Why though? I said one, two, three Zeitgeist legs are plumperly Our pants rip at just the sight of our quads Boosted up to dunk sick lobs Ayo That's also a Halcyon salad contribution So shout out to you, Halcyon

Got on the board Despite Blake Rogers stealing on mine Doing your thing Love to see you contribution so shout out to you halcyon got on the board despite uh blake rogers stealing on doing your thing love to see you you do love to see it miles and you know what else you love to see love to see what tell me is when we can have this guest on a best-selling author of books like john dies at the end zoe punches the future in the dick and the new standalone novel which you can pre-order now i guess i can i say it's a standalone i mean it's not part of a previous franchise but it's one that i wouldn't mind seeing a sequel to or more from these characters also one of the hosts of the podcast big feets which if i'm reading this New Yorker review correctly, is, quote, the only Mountain Monsters podcast officially endorsed by Big Feet.

Yes. He's my former coworker at Cracked.com, a co-creator of the Cracked podcast. Welcome back to the show, Jason Pargey! Jason! First of all, I'm not dying. Don't tell the papers that I'm dying. If I start coughing in the middle of the show, I realize that in a movie or TV show drama, if a character starts coughing, that means they're going to die.

You did just pull back the napkin that you coughed into. It was a speck of blood. And then quietly hid it from you. You looked around, your eyes darted back and forth, and then you tucked it into your waistband for some reason? But no, I'm just recovering from a cold. If I start clearing my throat, I am not trying to get their attention and demand

that they let me talk. I am trying to clear mucus from my throat. Just the way that you do it tends to be, ahem. That's all right. We'll just power through like we do all the time yeah if we see if we hear that horn take at the top we know you're not doing a dj cool let me clear my throat how are you doing we're excited to have you back i I'm excited about this new novel, which I blew through in a single weekend. It's a good one for fans of Jason Pargin novels. I think they're really going to enjoy it, but it's probably a distant memory. Writing it was probably a distant memory to you at this point. How long ago was that?

And yeah, but the dozens of interviews I'll have to give about it means I have to keep in mind what I wrote in it. But for listeners who are in the middle of the total world chaos, we're doing a book review here. The book is relevant to what's going on. I promise you, you'll see why. And in fact, there's going to be at least one very annoying review, I predict, in a couple months that says, wow, this is so prescient. very annoying review, I predict, in a couple months that says, wow, this is so prescient. How did he predict that there would be an event that triggers all sorts of misinformation

and chaos? That was not hard to predict at all. How did you know that? That was my first question, actually. We can just get right in. Who's your psychic, man? I love seeing the people with the little screenshots of The Simpsons from 20 years ago. It's like, wow, they predicted that elections would become stupid in the future.

Yeah, that's... Let's not take Nostradamus. The one where Cypress Hill, though, did actually perform with the London Symphony. Oh, really? If you remember the Homer Fest thing, he's like, someone ordered the London Symphony. Did someone do it when they were high and forgotten?

Cypress Hill was like, oh, shit, did we do that? And they're like, yeah, yeah, they're actually performing with them now and they're like we kind of had an opportunity and decided to make the simpsons prediction right so i mean you hear those violins on uh some of the early cypress hill stuff you can man yeah it was it was inevitable all right jason well we are going to talk about some of the ideas in your book. I'm starting to worry about this black box of doom. Is that what did I say that right? Yes. I didn't say it.

Did I not say the title in the well? This is the first time you've mentioned the title. I'm a pro, folks. But first, we do like to get to know our guests a little bit better by asking you, what is something from your search history that is revealing about who you are? I have a whole series of searches over the last few days trying to figure out what CrowdStrike is. Because it turned out all of modern civilization ran on it. I'd never heard of that company. It's an $80 billion company, apparently.

And I still don't know what it does. And before the show, I tried to Google, is the CrowdStrike thing over? Is that old news? Are flights still grounded around the world? I can't tell because Google's search is broken. So I don't know. Does anybody at home know? Email me.

Let me know. Yeah, I think it seems like there's still reports of flights being fucked up mainly like you have to go to the like the markets to see you know like it's like people reporting on the financials and they'll be like yeah our our reporting indicates because they have to get that right because money is at stake but it does seem like it's taken a while to untangle crowd strike and there it was just like an update that was ill-advised and somehow that took became one of the biggest technology fuck-ups yet to this point in human history a company that sounds like just a a board game from the 1980s.

Yeah, that would have been fun to play. Yeah, from the makers of Crossfire is CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike! There's, I mean, like, the stat that I saw that I was like, oh, right, because everything's just consolidating

is like they handle like these IT services for like 538 of the top 1,000 companies. Yes. So like, yeah, that chunk of like that kind of critical software going down. Yeah, will cause a lot of chaos. Unless you're like a Linux person,

in which case you were fucking laughing because you're like, bro, I'm on Linux. Fuck that. I think it's the range of things that went down that shocks people because it's like, okay, flights got grounded. Also, when we tried to buy coffee at Starbucks, their point of sale software was dead because of CrowdStrike. And then also, it's like a whole range of things across all of society.

911 service went down for some people for a while. Yeah, hospitals. It's like, oh, so this all runs. It's like, hey, it all runs on a computer somewhere. And if those computers are running Windows and if they're using CrowdStrike to do whatever CrowdStrike does, I apologize, audience, I still don't know. Then, yeah, they pushed out that update. It bricked the computer. They could not simply push out another update because the only way to fix it was to manually install and delete a file because the computers were stuck in a boot loop. Yeah.

So they couldn't just push out. So, yeah what but one i don't know one string of code crippled much of the world's economy instantly the the solution was ultimately the solution to all tech problems which is just like restart throw it on the ground yeah throw it on the ground well no because like the one version was like you'd have to go into every individual computer and like take this file out which you're like oh yeah like this this you can't just do this over the waves or at least at the time i the last i was like looking for videos i'm like please explain to me like i don't know what a computer is what the

fuck is going on and i still i came away with a very vague understanding yeah but it does feel like this becomes more and more possible the more we turn everything over to the machines and we're just like yeah they'll they got it we don't need humans on the ground doing you know local deployments that then if those work get deployed to more places it's yeah or yeah yeah or shout out to the i don't want to update my software crowd because they also may have like just inadvertently gotten around things too yeah and some of the like anecdotal stuff i heard uh in the early days was or in the early hours i guess was that the airlines that were actually functioning were the non-major carriers.

And so it could be a situation where CrowdStrike is the expensive, higher-end option that sells for millions and millions of dollars that only a major corporation can eat. And so they got fucked. Oh, yeah. Our services, we go through Cloud Clown. I think it's affordable. But yeah, we don't have any problems. It's the open source. Cloud Clown. What's, Jason, something you think is underrated?

mass shooters, terrorists, assassins just want to be famous as opposed to having some kind of ideology? Because we're now enough days past, which I don't know if you guys remember, but somebody almost killed Donald Trump several days ago. I know that's been long forgotten from the headlines. But that guy,

Thomas Matthew Crooks, by now, we're far enough along that the FBI, they cracked open his devices that day. We're not far enough along by now. We should have his manifesto. We should have his social media. We should have everything he had ever posted.

No indication that he cared much about politics at all. He had on his phone, I guess, photos and Internet searches for various politicians. And it may be that Trump was the one that came closest to his house. which is for various politicians. And it may be that Trump was the one that came closest to his house. Yeah. Like he literally picked the one that was in driving distance because he just wanted to go out with, wanted the world to know who he was.

Right. And I don't know if that is a distinctly modern phenomenon. Like you don't think of like John Wilkes booth, trying to boost ticket sales to his next play. Like that was about Lincoln and slavery and ideology. It wasn't just like, yeah, they'll know my name after this. But these days, I don't know. It seems like you see more of them where it's just, no, I want everybody to know my name.

This is, this will be my, the mark I leave on the world. Right. Lee Harvey Oswald was also like this, like to the degree that people still aren't sure that he was trying to shoot Kennedy. He may have been trying to shoot the governor. He had already like tried to shoot a different Texas politician like weeks before or I guess it was probably months before. Yeah, he didn't appear to have any big ideological ideas other than that, like he should be famous and he was going to do something big. So, yeah, but it's it's hard to get your mind around that. I mean, we have an entire over 60 years at this point of Kennedy conspiracy theories that and I'm not like here to say none of those are true or there's nothing suspicious about that but it is uniquely unsatisfying for people to hear now it's just like some incompetence on the side of security and then somebody who wanted to be really famous like a school shooter when his search history is literally stuff like Donald Trump's near me.

And like, that seems to be kind of like, yeah, like he was looking at any one. He just went into Google Maps and searched Donald Trump

and then looked at where all the flags were. All right, Joe Biden's near me. Okay, yeah. On my way. But I feel like we've had a number of mass shooters

in a row where when they tried to figure out, like, well, why did he pick this as his target? What grievance did he have? And unless they were shooting up their workplace it's just this is where they thought they could get the high score this is a place they yeah it was easy to get into and a lot of victims all packed you know packed together in one spot and that was it

just this is what will get my name and ironically i can't remember any of their names at this point yeah i had to look up Steven Paddock, the Vegas one. Cause I remember that was another one where everyone was like, what's, what's, what's, what's going on? What was he trying to say? To this day? We don't know. He left nothing behind. It's all we know is that he planned it for like a year in advance. He looked at different targets and there's some that think he was mistreated by casino staff or disrespected by the casino. They weren't treating him like the high roller he was, so he decided to try to kill hundreds of people. I'm not trying to make light of it, but every time you look for some mission or it's like, no, because you want to be like a Batman villain. Like they've got an ideology. My job is to tear asunder the fabric of society in the name of some stupid movement or whatever.

And so often it's just rage or frustration or more likely just I'm not going to get famous doing anything else. I have no other skills. I've tried going viral multiple times with my wacky YouTube pranks. Nobody cares. So this is the only thing left to me. It's one thing that guarantees I'll get on the news. But if they believe they'll be remembered by history, I mean, I guess crooks would have been if that if that shot had been a few inches the other direction. But yeah, man, that's nuts.

That seems like a uniquely modern American sickness. One hundred percent. Yeah. What is something, Jason, you think is overrated? Apparently, the resilience of the Internet. Because those of you who were not around back when they first invented the Internet in the 1960s in the Cold War era, the entire concept was that it was supposed to survive a nuclear war. Because all of the computers are networked to each other. If you take out this half,

the other half continues working. So it was originally about how you could continue communicating after the system we've built can go down. There are so many single points of failure because people have largely forgotten like there was the Nashville bombing in 2020, Christmas Day 2020.

The guy blew up an RV that took out an AT&T office. And that's largely been forgotten. That knocked out internet across parts of seven states. It knocked out 911. It knocked out air traffic control at one airport. It was that same thing because it turned out it wasn't. It was an AT&T switching station, but it turns out the other ISPs like rented out.

So we had Verizon, our Verizon internet went down because they just, so there's all these single points of failure because you look at a map and it's like, well, now hold on. That kind of makes it look like with, I don't know, seven or eight bombs, you could make the whole country go dark. Right. Because it took them a while to get it back up. It was not as easy as just rerouting the traffic elsewhere. They had to like get generators and bring them into the building and try to fire up the servers from within the rubble to try to get people connected again.

It just seems like such a fragile system. And this CrowdStrike thing is like far more widespread than that. But there are all of these single points of failure. And I'm surprised that's not a bigger complaint or priority or that you don't hear more about why are there no backups? I mean, how many thousands of flights got grounded by this thing? How many people missed appointments and whatever? I don't know. It feels like there should be congressional hearings. whatever.

I don't know. It feels like there should be congressional hearings. And I think if they do something like that, it would just be for show where they get like the CEO of CrowdStrike and they yell at them for a while. And then it's just, it's like, yeah, but we all depend on this.

Everything we do depends on this. Hospitals could not do surgeries because their system went down due to CrowdStrike. Like lives can be lost if something like this goes down for a prolonged period of time, and it does not seem like it takes much. Yeah, yeah. Like, to your point, you'd think there

should be some kind of, like, you know, inquest into understanding. It's like, this is critical infrastructure, and is it just because every company's like, well, I'm a Fortune 1000 company, and all the other Fortune 1000 companies use this, so I'm mindlessly just getting, like, what do you do? Yeah, we're doing that, well, I'm a fortune 1000 company and all the other fortune 1000 companies use this. So I'm mindlessly just came about. What do you do? Yeah. We're doing that too. I could, you know, like some people pointed out, like you could hire consultants to actually help sort of replace what CrowdStrike would do. Again, this is from my very cursory understanding, but

there's just a momentum where like, this is just sort of seen as like the default company to use. And here we are yeah people writing paper tickets now for airlines i saw that like in india where they're just like writing it down to be like i don't know man we're just having to go back to full-on analog it's like a bar fight where like the in the in a 1800s movie where they have the tickets and people are just running up and be like oh yes exactly like a bar fight yeah it's troubling it does seem like the sort of thing that this version of capitalism is just uniquely bad at addressing right like it just feel feels like when a problem happens it's so quick to be on to the next thing that there's not there's not a ton of people you know including like the global financial meltdown of like 2008 like that we still haven't

really solved or like that like addressed to any real degree like a lot of the problems that caused that yeah we just i mean i guess it's well that people got bailouts that needed them you know it's that financial mess except for like the people that you know really like people that needed them the companies did and i wonder if because of the actual amount of losses that the airlines experienced they're like okay we're not doing this and like that was terrible and i think that would be the only way is like how much of an effect it had on capital for there to really be the kinds of things you're like, well,

you fucked my money up guys. So what's going on? That's really the only question. I think that. It almost feels like we're like addicted to the velocity of the emotion, you know, like the, how,

how much it's causing, like how big the feelings are, how big the story is more than anything that's like just coherently thinking through it and being like how do we make this thing work the best it's like people get a charge out of the intensity of the story there were viral twitter posts within hours talking about how this had to be a DEI situation, how it had to have been an employee who was not white, who was hired for DEI reasons because only that kind of mistake. Because you don't see white people making dumb mistakes like this. Nope, never seen that. Yeah.

Name one. That never happened. Name one. Yeah. All right. Let's yeah. So, I mean, that also makes sense that like people are so loud attributing it to the exact wrong, wrong things that it gets drowned out. So there's there's no reason or no real urge driver to get the thing actually addressed in any real way. actually addressed in any real way. All right. Well, I think all of this ties into some of the ideas in your book. So let's take a quick break and we'll come back and get into it. We'll be right back. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M

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and we're back we're back and i mean just to continue talking about the crowd strike outage because that i think is the most recent example that i've had of of this thinking but i mean first of all i should say you're like I said up top, the novel is very entertaining. It's called I'm Beginning to Worry About This Black Box of Doom. It's packed with very interesting ideas. And among other things, it's about how information stories evolve on the internet like in real time with people kind of focus grouping the story and and not not really focusing on what is the truest thing so much as what is the most entertaining thing or the thing that most kind of rhymes with their preconceived notions and that whatever that is seems to gain the most momentum as opposed to whatever the truest thing is and i just i had an experience on friday where i called a friend whose work was being affected by the crowd strike out, and they were too busy to do the Googling that I had done

because they were dealing with the CrowdStrike outage. And they were like, I don't know, everyone around here thinks it's probably some sort of cyber attack. And I was like, well, so CrowdStrike themselves are saying that it's not that. And it would be especially in their interest, you know, to not to have it even seem like it might not be their fault. And, you know, just went through the thinking of why it seems like it's definitively just a fuck up on CrowdStrike's part.

And they were like, I don't know. It's suspicious, which I don't know. I guess, I guess there's a reason the plot of most Hollywood movies don't hinge on someone accidentally fucking up or like vague incompetence or when that is the explanation like in titanic we need to like make up a sneering rich guy who is like i would rather kill you than let you hang out with

a poor person but yeah so i don't know is that like was that explicitly an idea you had heading in to the novel or did it kind of come out? And am I getting any of that right? Yeah. So just for context, the setup of the book, I'm starting to worry about this black box of doom, is that there's on the first page, there's a mysterious woman who hires a driver who she's never met before, says, I want you to take me across the country, me and this box. It's like a footlocker sized black box. She says, I will pay you $200,000 in cash, but it has to be kept quiet and you absolutely cannot look inside the box. So she needs to be driven from Southern California to Washington, D.C. She tells the guy, you can't tell anyone you're leaving. You have to leave behind any devices that can be tracked.

No phone, no laptop, no GPS navigation. So why this is relevant is that as soon as they start on this trip, a rumor starts online among like true crime types and just bored people.

Right. That this is a terrorist attack because she's heading toward the Capitol and that this box is part of it. So specifically, there's a theory that quickly goes around that this attack is carefully calculated to plunge the country into a civil war by striking it just the right way that will inflame people in just the wrong way. So there's this ticking clock where these strangers online have to try to coordinate to somehow stop this thing before the vehicle reaches Washington, D.C. as it goes across the country. can survive, that becomes the challenge because all of the incentives pull people in directions other than the truth. So the book is, this is me having tried to follow, because I'm the most

terminally online person you have ever met. I've, you know, going even before my crack days, I was just on social media. I basically never closed Twitter. I've tried to track many, many, many news stories online and I've watched this happen in front of me. So if I can be said to be an expert in any subject, it's this, because it's always fascinating to see how the human brain gravitates toward the most entertaining story and not just what what the what the facts seem to be in front of them yeah it reminds me of when we've covered like fan theories in the past like how fan theories come up with ideas of like what the plot should be of the movie or what the plot like for the sequel could be it feels like exactly the same thing like where it's they're pretty good at like spinning a pretty entertaining narrative you know like fan theories about movies like why is uh bella able to you know be in love with this vampire when she's allergic to that i don't know

and you know like twilight fan theories like get made up this way and they're the internet is good at like telling spinning a yarn but unfortunately they do it with the news and right is it i mean like yeah you know jason saying like watching story after story like evolved on one way on the internet and then ultimately finding out the truth and being like guys it wasn't it was not as you know spectacular or salacious as you thought it would be is that just like do you see that as just like a factor of like our boredom that would to make sense of our world like at times we we're like we're yearning for something to like mimic like the the like drama or the narratives that we see on tv or it's something to do with like our powerlessness, or what is it that's so intoxicating about doing the, yeah, I don't know. I mean, like, like the Occam's razor explanation is this thing, but I'm going to go with alien conspiracy theory

hit job. I just feel like the, and this is not scientific. I'm not a scientist. I feel like the part of the brain that wants to be entertained and the part of the brain that observes the world around you to make decisions are two distinctly different things. Because the part of you that wants to be entertained is just, we have evolution, right? Due to evolution, we have a need for novelty. We enjoy seeing new things, things we've never seen before. It's hearing new things. So, you know, we have, we like narratives, but those are things we seek out to distract us from, like our miserable, mundane, everyday lives. Ideally, you would not be using that part of your brain to browse the news because the news should just be,

okay, I have to make decisions from my household. Here's what I'm seeing on the news that's going to tell me what decisions I need to make. But those things have completely merged. And as there is more and more media, the difference between is this person talking to me, are they trying to entertain me or are they trying to inform me gets bored. And I realize I'm saying that on a show where your guys' job is to try to make the news entertaining because that's a way to engage people. Like, this is good. We want people, what John Oliver does is good because these people otherwise maybe wouldn't care about politics, but he packages it in a way that makes it fun to listen to and kind of takes you through it.

Bitch, the people doing that have to be very ethical about how they do it. Because otherwise, if you're Alex Jones, it's very easy to just make up a fiction that is more fun than the truth for the same reason a candy bar tastes better than an ear of corn. Like one of them was made to be, it's full of sugar and fat. It was made to be addictive. The other one is something that happens relatively naturally. So if you can make up stuff, it's always going to win in terms of engagement because you're not restrained by reality. I don't think our brains are very good at filtering the fact from the more entertaining fiction. And the economic incentives definitely are not set up to punish people we tried to do at Cracked sometimes is just, in addition to debunking, like, myths that get spread around is, like, here are the types of lies that our brain or the internet tends to gravitate towards. One that I would say that, you know, I feel like we're seeing this process of like, you know, Internet focus grouping and writers rooming a real event in real time with the attempted assassination of Trump themes that we're seeing there and also in the CrowdStrike story is like people have a real aversion to incompetence as being the explanation or, you know, accident. So somebody fucking up. It's just not a satisfying plot point in your movie. satisfying plot point in your movie like if die hard hedge just like the story had resolved itself because the hacker had accidentally like detonated a bunch of the bombs while the hans gruber was on

top of the bill you know like something like that and then it's it's just a fuck up along the way. That doesn't happen in movies, really, because it's not satisfying. The part of our brain that craves noveltyk assassination than we tend to think and i think it's probably a bigger part of the story of the trump attempted assassination than some people are willing to like i think it seems to be pretty surface level that there is a fuck up there but are there other do first of all do you agree that that's a? And then are there other kind of trends that you've noticed as you've kind of been studying this sort of – Well, yeah, but it's – Habits of misinformation? Like, I get that part of it is you just want to simplify the world. So, for example, I have one extremely unpopular political opinion, which is this is the perfect time to get it out when you're trying to sell a book and you've got it up in front of your eyes. Which is that I think most of the world's problems, most of the things that frustrate you in your life are not anybody's fault.

I think the world's an imperfect place, and I think it's hard to run a society in a way that's perfectly fair to every single person. a society in a way that's perfectly fair to every single person. I think, you know, it's lots of times when prices go up or whatever, it's not necessarily that some evil person has a scheme. It's just, it's market forces and it's a company that's trying to maximize revenue because the shareholders demand it. And like the blame for things spreads in so many directions that it just kind of disappears because it's just a system that we're all trying to survive in. And that is incredibly unsatisfying. We would love to hear that there is a villain. Because in a movie, if there's a problem like this, I don't know if you've seen the Jason Statham film, The Beekeeper. I have not, but I started watching it.

I've heard a lot about it. Yeah, it's a great boomer fantasy of everything that is terrible about the world, all the way going up to the president, there's like a cabal of just cartoonishly evil people

that if you could kill them, the world would finally be at peace. And that's very satisfying to think of because, yeah, every movie's got to have a villain, a human villain that is causing the problems. Like even a film like The Martian, which is supposed to be all about troubleshooting and smart people and competence porn, they still had to have the villain character, the one guy who refused to, was being obstinate and say no to

all of their plans because there's got to be a bad guy. And this is something that I think is true across the whole political spectrum. Everybody wants there to be a bad guy and not just sometimes like with the pandemic, sometimes pandemics happen. We exist in nature and we actually, I don't know, it's, I think most people did their best and most people didn't freak out and most people did what they thought was most reasonable. And I don't think we like that. I think we like the thought of there being somebody we can yell at and hate. And then if we could get rid of them, everything would be fixed. That seems to be to me the most common bias, which is I want to believe that somewhere there is a person, a bad person who has caused this because then I've got an opponent. And then if we could defeat them,

everything would be fine. And most things in life are not like that, I believe. But in that version, does that sort of like absolve people of any responsibility for like what the actions of like an organization that they come like, you know, are the figurehead of? Or how do you look at like that sort of piece of it? Like I get the sort of our yearning to be able to like say this is where it's all focused and that's like it's in these four or five people kind of thing. But how like at what point is there obviously there are systems that are, have the lives of their own, but are you saying that everyone is just completely powerless to those things or nothing can be done or how do you square that part? I think that, for example, I could go on Reddit right now and I could find memes talking about how the boomers ruined the world, how the boomers, when they were alive, jobs were easy,

lifetime employment, houses were cheap, They had everything, and then they intentionally screwed over the next employee or the next generation after them because they were so greedy and so sociopathic and narcissistic. If you could actually grab a random – That's the one I keep hearing recently. If you could go grab a random boomer off the street, somebody in their 70s, say, hey, why did you ruin the world? He's going to say, I worked at a muffler shop for 40 years. What are you talking about? I rented for most of my life. I got to take a vacation like once every five years.

You're talking about like the CEOs and the politicians. It's like, no, we've now distilled all of the boomers into one evil person. And guess what, gang? Whatever generation you are, let's say there's some Gen Z kids listening to this, a couple generations from now, they're going to blame you for what happens with AI.

And you're going to say, I didn't do anything with AI. I thought it was stupid. I barely used it. And the kids in the future are going to say, well, why didn't you stop it? They're going to say, I don't do anything with AI. I thought it was stupid. I barely used it. And the kids in the future can say, well, why didn't you stop it? Right. And you're going to say,

I don't even know who did it. I don't even know who was in charge of it. Every company just started doing AI and suddenly there was AI in all my devices and they're going to be like,

well, why didn't you vote to stop it? Why didn't you boycott those companies? Why didn't you? And you're going to say, I was just trying to live my freaking life.

I was trying to survive. No, I did not have time to go firebomb a server farm where they were operating Chet GPT-5. I was just trying to. And so what you find is you get that same answer all the way up to the president saying, look, I was voted. People voted for me to carry out an agenda. They could have voted for somebody else. This was the agenda.

This is what I did. I did what I thought was right. And this is the most terrible truth that nobody likes to face, which is that most people are doing their best. And the flaws that happen are because you have different factions in society with different interests. For example, like housing prices. Every time somebody talks about why housing is so expensive, they want to come up with this theory that like, there's like one corporation that's secretly buying up all the houses.

It's like, no, that they may be doing that. The issue is that half the country are already homeowners, and they like the fact that their house costs twice as much, because that's their retirement. It's not a secret cabal of guys in a shadowy room. It's an entire section of the country, and their interests are separate from yours, and they're not billionaires. They're just retired dentists or whatever.

And it's like, well, no, my entire retirement is based, I'm going to sell this house when I turn 70. I'm going to move to Florida and rent a condo. But yes, the fact that my house costs 400% more than what it did when I turn 70. I'm going to move to Florida and rent a condo. But yes, the fact that my house costs 400% more than what it did when I bought it in 1995, like, no, I don't want housing prices to go down. This is my retirement right here. So there's times when some people just want different things from you. And if you're always trying to look for a specific villain or a cabal or a conspiracy, you're going to be

disappointed more often than not. A lot of times it's just people acting out of short-term interests or out of ignorance or, you know, they're just being oblivious. Yeah. But is there, I mean, yeah, I guess in that's like, that feels like sort of like a bleak, like how in that instance, what, how would we solve things if we're willing to always say like, well, this person is just trying to do the best. Not that I think like, I get the point about like trying to find like this cabal or like darker angle as to explaining certain things like that. But does like at a certain point, like if how would that worldview, how do we try to change things like from that perspective?

But things have changed. None of us would prefer to go back and live in the year 1924. Think about what you lose if you go back. Think about how many civil rights get rolled back. Think about how much shorter people lived, how many more babies died in childbirth. Think about how much more contaminated the food was back then and how nobody had air conditioning. We have improved the world immeasurably because while everybody was yelling at each other, the normal people were just out doing their jobs and building houses and building safer cars. And there's bureaucrats that are just quietly passing, you know, ordinances that make things slightly safer. And, you know, none of us would go back and live a hundred years ago things were worse by i think in every possible measure i think some of the yelling at each other is part of that

things getting better right like not necessarily yelling at each other in the public square like on the internet as it tends to happen now but i mean that, the disagreeing and pushing for better at a systemic level and criticizing the way the system currently works is at least partially what drives some of that progress, right? So it does, I get your meaning, but I think taking that anger, that energy and focusing it on criticizing how the system is actually working or failing to work feels like it's still pretty crucial given that model of humanity where people are just doing their best, but their best is actually inadvertently harming other people, right?

And that's something that comes up in the book because the idea is, and again, Right. And that's something that comes up in the book because the idea is, and again, you can disagree with this or not, but in this particular era, in the social media era, all of the incentives are progresses toward a resolution and a consensus. What the system needs is for you to always be arguing forever and ever and ever. And that's why so much of what you're arguing about is not something that's based in reality at all. Like, ideally, if the system is working correctly when COVID happened and then they got a sense of what exactly worked, what, you know, what cures worked, you know, what treatments worked, how the vaccines worked. Once you arrive at that truth, it's like, OK, we have worked through it. We've been arguing the whole time, but we eventually figured out we have the data. Here's what we know. Vaccines work for most people. You know, a lot of the other, you know, systems did not necessarily, but this is, this is what works. That's not what you get. Now you get people still to this day yelling about

like that. What was the name of that horse paste drug that the conservative started? I'm fucking, I took a bath on that thing, man. Yeah. Don't worry. To this day, you'll get people in claiming that all of the deaths were actually from the vaccine. None of the deaths were. Like, they've got graphs showing that actually there was no pandemic. It was completely. That's the malfunction in the system because that is money. That is traffic.

That is engagement. And if you're a company that only cares that people are glued to the screen, you, by definition, are pushing people in the wrong direction because you're not pushing people toward a consensus. You're always trying to invent new things for people to argue about. For example, I'm looking at my Twitter right now and there is a meme that somebody posted where it's a picture of a guy with a beard and said, hey, ladies, if your boyfriend doesn't have a beard, you have a girlfriend. And people yelling over whether or not a man without a beard is scientifically a male. Like that's not leading anybody toward anything.

That is purely invented to get people to yell at each other and stare at their screen for just a few minutes more and nothing else. Yeah. Sure. So, yeah, right. So what you're saying is you're, as it's set up that we're not, there's no incentive to actually arrive at a conclusion because the dis the discord, the disharmony and the controversy is what's, is what sort of being brought to us and uh we're increasingly motivated to that because yeah there's just so many like engagement type tweets that just come out saying the wrong thing and being like watch this i think i'm gonna win the next presidential election for the democrats in the comment section of that tweet by pointing out that jd bantz actually sucks

right sure and this is i don't even need to talk about this in nebulous terms. The way X has run, the way Twitter has run since Elon Musk took it over, there are measurable changes he made. He unbanned specific accounts, all of the policies against spreading intentional misinformation, all of that stuff. He lifted that. I can watch this change happen in front of me because he thinks the only way to make it profitable is to bring back the BS that gets people yelling. Whereas before this, they at least felt some responsibility. Like they banned Donald Trump for a reason. Like they felt some responsibility that this is the public square.

This is where news breaks. I mean, freaking Joe Biden announced he was dropping out on Twitter. Like that's it still holds that position. The former owners took that responsibility seriously to some degree, but not so seriously that they would not sell to Elon Musk, who openly promised, I'm going to trash all of that. Like Google's whole thing, like the don't be evil slogan, that they're like, hey, we understand we have tremendous power here and we're going to try to wield that responsibly, even if we technically could make more money with nonsense and with whatever, with the entertaining lie rather than getting people accurate information. Well, it seems like corporations, there is a eventually the shareholders are like, hey, you're leaving money on the table. There's a lot of money in the evil stuff.

Yeah. Why are you and no one feels like it's their fault because like, well, I'm just a shareholder. You know, they could do what they want. But it's like, yeah, but you're saying you're not making as much money as you could be because, you know, if you allow the BS is profitable. Of course it is. It doesn't cost anything to research. You're just making it up. Yeah. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're

the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high control groups and interview dancers, church members and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine. Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new, chilling firsthand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives. Forgive Me For I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these types of abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed?

Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Sanner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss 100 percent of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. 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. When you think of Mexican culture, you think of avocado, mariachi, delicious cuisine, and of course, lucha libre. It doesn't get more Mexican than this. Lucha libre is known globally because it is much more than just a sport and much more than just entertainment. Lucha libre is a type of storytelling. It's a dance. It's tradition.

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the Mask as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. And we're back. And one version of this that was kind of interesting that i noticed following you on social media jason is people were angrily very seriously criticizing that so So somebody posted a clip from Jason and the Argonauts and was like, Luma, the AI video thing, basically is a game changer. Look at how much better it made Jason and the Argonauts and the special effects. The scene was the classic stop motion skeleton battle which is one of the most famous

effect sequences of all time because of the era it came out how amazing it looks and then it just the video is just looks like complete shit it's a very like i am such a sucker for this very it's extremely funny but you had to come in and retweet it and say, this is a joke. Like the person who's posting this is doing a bit like look at their profile. Just look at the, at the video. Yeah.

This is not a game changer. And people's response to you was like, Matt, they were, I think more mad at like the, like one you was like they were i think more mad at like they like one person was like if you need to explain to people that you're making a joke then you did it badly and it's like no this is they did it good they did a good job like this is actually a very funny joke another person was like it still sucks as all it is doing is wasting resources, generating it all for a simple joke, which, yeah, no, I get the like AI is wasting resources thing.

But like it's I don't know, they definitely didn't get the joke at first. And then I guess you were doing the online rage equivalent of like yucking a yum and that you're like calming a rage buzz and like that really seemed to anger people but yeah that i guess that's a new kind of thing where they're like angry instead of happy like instead of laughing anger is addictive even if you're not if you've not been diagnosed as a rageaholic which is a term i don't think i've heard in a long time but anger is addictive it's more addictive than cocaine it's all the chemicals are released in your brain because that's your fight or flight response right like that's your your body trying to charge you up to

go to go take on somebody and it's felt as pleasure of course it is you can see how badly people want to stay mad online if they're mad about something and it turns out it was a misunderstanding they don't stop being mad they just find they just find something else to put their anger and this is the one thing that i like the i hate that like the cancel culture discourse has been seized by the right and now you hear somebody complaining about cancel culture. It's always a sex pervert who's got some sort of charges in their past. They're trying to, why should I be blamed for that?

But the one thing that I've observed with this, that if you explain that they misunderstood or they took something out of context or you show them that the screenshot was faked, that doesn't calm their anger. It is once in a blue moon you would hear somebody say, oh, thank God, I thought you were, yeah, okay, you're right, I misunderstood, I thought you were. No, because it's all the people that already wanted to hate you or the people that liked you a while ago and that they've reached a curve where they've decided it would now be more fun to hate you. And it's so you can see that this is addictive behavior.

You can see that this is compulsive behavior because it's like you sought out something to be mad at just because you wanted to feel something and highly unscientific. I'm not a scientist. I'm not a doctor. I think this is a form of self-harm that people do. I think compulsively reach like refreshing outrage headlines and making yourself feel miserable or doom or scared or angry over and over again, I think it's a self-harm behavior where you're just trying to hurt yourself so you feel alive somehow. Yeah, I mean, I definitely got easily swept up like many years ago, like in that kind of sort of social media rage bait kind of stuff. And I could stay even when people like, dude, this isn't even real.

I would still pivot to like, but I actually just need to be mad is where I'm at. And it's really I'm realizing it might not be this thing. And having that realization helped me definitely to be like, OK, what am I? Is it because I'm observing something and I'm definitely to be like okay what am i is it because i'm observing something and i'm trying to be objective or is it it's again it's that sensation to be like they're fucking wrong i'm with these other people that are right and like you know i i don't care like how much uh it raises my blood pressure or my heart rate or whatever it's just like that sensation in some way just i needed it for whatever reason.

And you'll hear people say things like, well, the fact that this could have been true is just evidence of how evil these people are. It's just proof of how bad they are that we thought this was all true. Like, OK, because even like Donald Trump, you know, who produces three or four outrage headlines a minute, right, that people will still invent stuff. There's anti-Trump conspiracy theories that went around that if you try to debunk them, it's like, well, oh, here we go. You know, there's just another MAGA idiot. It's like, no, I'm trying to clean up our own information ecosystem so people will trust us. Because if we don't clean up that stuff from our own house, then people will think

everything we say is just a lie. So it's like, no, you've got to reject it. You got to say, no, actually, this is not what he said. That is a thankless task and nobody wants you to do it because no one is like happy that you took away their anchor. It's never like, oh, thank you. I'm in a better mood. I was mad all morning, but you have lifted this burden from me. It is very rare to hear that. I mean, like, as you talk about cleaning up, like the information systems, is your hope like, I mean, not that this is like the, you're like res on debt or something like that. I have to, I have to make sure our ecosystem, our information ecosystem is cleaned up. But

do you also, is there like a sense of nihilism that based on like the way our engagements are structured and controlled by these computers and the people that are able to sort of like emphasize certain things that it's like a futile effort or it's just something that maybe with increased awareness we slowly are able to sort of take some semblance of like parody back? I would like to think so, but I think it's a case where the technology has moved faster than the culture. You know, our rules in our culture around things like screen time, you know, there was a time where the culture didn't change for like a thousand straight years.

All of the rules you had about do the chores before dinner, do this, wash your hands. Like these things were, they were established based on their lifestyle, based on the world, based on what would keep everybody healthy, keep you from getting sick, what would keep you safe. Well, now the world changes so quick. If I suddenly had a child, I would have no idea at what age I would let them have a smartphone, what age I would let them on social media.

I can't give any advice on that because I have no clue. I don't even know what the science is in terms of brain development because I don't think we have the data. You would need to be able to study someone through their formative years on and offline and see, like, are they seeing greater levels of stress and lower levels of, like, self-image, that kind of thing. In the time it takes you to study it, the world has moved on from Facebook to Instagram, then from Instagram to TikTok, and then from TikTok to whatever it is now.

Yeah. And you can't, like, we just don't know. But I'm not a pessimist or a cynic. My whole thing, I have this weird sort of optimism where I just think that very few people in the world are truly evil. I think most people in the world are not very smart about things or don't have time to think about these things. They're busy. They're raising kids or working two shifts. No, they've not sat down and pondered the role of freaking TikTok in their child's life.

They've got, they're worried about trying to pay the bills or worried about trying to get them to a soccer practice on time. I think most people are doing their best. I don't think there are that many. There are some true villains in the world. I've read history books, but I think that number of people is very small. I think most people, including like most Trump voters, I think they've just been exposed to an information ecosystem. I think if you watched Fox News all day, if you only followed like these right-wing pundits, over time, voting for him seems like the only sensible choice.

I think all of us are more susceptible to that kind of thing than we like to think. But I think mostly it's just people not having the right information or not having great critical thinking skills or just not having the time. But I think the culture eventually evolves. But for example, one unexpected thing that's happened is people have stopped having sex

and stopped having kids. Nobody predicted that. As much. It's not been a complete blackout. Yeah, but you can see the rates dropping radically. The culture was definitely not ready for that to happen. We didn't have the data showing us that, oh yeah, if the teenagers, if you train them to just stay home and interact over a screen, then they're not going to be in proximity with each other.

And one side effect is you get much less crime because if you're not, if you don't leave the house, you can't do a crime unless it's like some lame cyber crime. That same thing, but they're also not dating as much or they're not, you know, they're not getting married. We will have to figure out how to deal with that. But the technology just moves so fast that the culture has to catch up. And you can see people

struggling with this. You can see right-wing media personalities talking about wanting to go back to the 1950s because that's the only way they can think to turn back the clock, is to turn it back all the way before the civil rights movement right

yeah yeah i mean i've spent my adult life writing for and interacting with the internet and but yeah when it comes to my children like my plan currently is basically just like no internet as as much as possible until oh really like i yeah i mean no like social media no phones like i mean it just seems like there's too many little shortcuts built into the system that are specifically designed to like hijack our brain's risk reward center but you know it's i think it's it's much harder and also i yeah it's based on just like a a sense that the net result on mental health is bad and the anecdotes about like the people who designed all this shit being like well my kids are never allowed to do that sort of thing like go use the products that i designed

for what do you know about it that we don't nothing just nothing just yeah you just shut up but i don't know it's definitely strange times uh i and i don't want to make people think like the whole book is just like dark uh you know there's a lot of, it's very funny, very entertaining, very edge of your seat. There's great observations about packing underwear before a road trip that really resonated with me. Great. Everybody packs

way too much. I pack so much underwear. It's like, well, yeah, but what if I poop myself four times in the course of the day? I'm going to be shitting myself constantly on this road trip. Yeah. And I like how we feel about pop culture references in our pop culture, like seems to be changing. And you have some good, interesting thoughts on that.

But you can find them in the book. Anything else before we say goodbye? in the book. Anything else before we say goodbye? I know just that I'm on TikTok as Jason K. Pargin

where I have 520,000 followers. You're an influencer. I hope I don't come across as a very elderly and geriatric Gen X being mad about technology.

I'm on here all day. Every day. I'm on here all day, every day. I need it. Amazing. Where else can people find you, follow you? Where can they pre-order the book, all that good stuff? The book is called I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom.

It is up for pre-order in all formats, including audio. I do not read the audio book. They hired a professional to do that. But yeah, you can just search that title wherever you like pre-order books. If you want to pre-order from an actual physical indie bookstore in your city, they will kiss you right on the lips if you do that.

That will make them extremely happy. But I know that 85% of you are going to order it through Amazon. So it's there too. There you go. And is there a tweet or some other work of media that you've been enjoying? Yeah, I had a couple. One is from Twitter user PeachyBlackGirl says,

We're really living in the most difficult section of somebody's AP government exam in 2053. most difficult section of somebody's ap government exam in 2053 yeah what explained the omni crisis of 2024 in america you're like there's so many there's so close together yeah yeah there's so many things that require so much explaining of context i would try to compare to if somebody like 600 years from now listened to that Kendrick Lamar song about Drake and then how difficult it would be to explain because it's so full of references to

scandals and pop culture and stuff that you would have to write an entire book. It would be like that. Every little thing that has happened, there's so much context it's going to be impossible to explain. It's going to be like entire academics academic careers built on explaining it amazing well thanks again for joining us great work on the book and uh yeah looking forward to having you back on again soon miles where can people find you is Is there a work of media you've been enjoying?

Yeah, find me at Miles of Gray, Twitter, Instagram, Threads, wherever. They got ad symbols. I'm there. PlayStation Network. You know, it's called consistency, baby. You can also find Jack and I on the Basketball Podcast. Miles and Jack, I'm at Boosties. You can find me talking about 90 Day Fiance on 420 Day Fiance.

A couple of tweets I like. Let's see. First one is at cuckoo kadu tweeted feel like a lot of women in their 30s are torn between sticking with their bf who's honestly not a great candidate but he's the nominee or risking the chaos of an open convention yeah that was like yeah no similar calculus uh another one is like this picture of J.D. Vance. It's from Appodlacia. Great accountant. It says, I can't explain it, but he looks like the guy at the bachelor party that doesn't know any of the other groomsmen.

Feels like big J.D. Vance energy. And also a very dear friend of the show, Jamie Loftus. Her father passed away over the weekend. And I just wanted to send all of our condolences collectively to Jamie. She tweeted on the 21st, We lost my amazing dad this morning, the funniest person alive, endlessly supportive, a massively talented and hardworking writer, a true friend.

I don't know what life looks like without him. Mike Loftus, 1959 to 2024 so jamie um our thoughts our love all of that is with you and your family uh but i just thought if if you guys hadn't heard you know maybe you know just send send some support send some love yeah all right some tweets i've been enjoying taffy brodesser ackner tweeted hurt people hurt people is what i think as i recline my plane seat because the person in front of me did. That's a perfect

metaphor. And at E-R-R-A-I I don't know how we're pronouncing that, tweeted, dude, don't be a dick. It's just a straw. Come on, your camel won't even notice it. You can find us on twitter at daily

zeitgeist we're at the daily zeitgeist on instagram we have a facebook fan page on our website daily zeitgeist.com where we post our episodes and our footnotes where we link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode as well as a song that we think you might enjoy miles what song do you think people might enjoy oh man i mean the title i don't know if it was a good day but that's the name of this song it was a good day uh parenthetical footsteps in the dark uh obviously a reference to the ice cube track but the rotten the isley brothers sample uh and it's by that band oma again oma they're just like that those Brits playing live

sort of hip hop instrumentals and you love to hear it it was a good day Footsteps in the Dark by OMA alright well we will link off to that in the footnotes the daily zeitgeist is a production of iHeartRadio for more podcasts from iHeartRadio visit the

iHeartRadio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows that is going to do it for us this morning. We are back this afternoon to tell you what is trending, and we will talk to you all then. Bye. Bye. Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese.

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

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