The Daily Zeitgeist - No Trend November 11/1: Halloween, Hyper Caffeination, HBO

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

In this edition of No Trend November, Jack and Miles discuss their respective Halloweens, the hyper-caffeination of America (feat. Panera Bread), and HBO's thin-skinned C-suite!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine 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 Costavetto, 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 four 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 iHeart on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast presented by elf beauty founding partner of iheart women's sports hello the internet and welcome to this episode of no trend november except for today except for today we're gonna we're gonna try that no trend yeah i can't i can't help myself, man. You know? Shout out to somebody. Large adult son of Frankenstein

tweeted, November sucks. Can't shave, can't nut, and you have to write a 50,000 word novel. And somebody replied, The Shining. Which, I guess, yeah. Anyways. All work and no play? Yeah. Fanboy Werson Wells tweeted The Shining, which I guess yeah. Anyways. All work and no play?

Yeah. Fanboy, Wilson Wells tweeted The Shining, which I think that was the reference, wasn't it? No beer, no TV, make Homer go something, something. Something, something, something. I'm Jack. That's Miles. This is our first post Halloween recording. Yeah. How was your Halloween,

Miles? Bro, we took the geist child out dressed as fucking gray goo or grogu the child from the mandalorian baby yoda um you're gonna say gray goose no i was i was thinking about i i wanted this is here's the thing i got my first costume idea got vetoed by her majesty i wanted to be quatto from total like i wanted him the geist child like yeah i wanted to wear your belly exactly because i'm like oh you could use a carrier and just kind of put like a skin colored shirt over and cut it out and then he looked like quatto just growing out of me god across the belly indeed didn't like that one so we went with grogu okay um but yeah it was cool i i noticed some new someone gave handed out was handing

on mr beast branded candy no this is too much yeah and it was called uh d's nuts was one of them oh miles it was a that's why i felt like such an old head i was like what the kids these days man this nonsense don't get me started on their fucking work ethic. Am I right? I just want to lay down all day. What did you... So, you know, we had a lot of trick-or-treaters as usual. As usual. I like got a lot of candy. And then by the end, I was like, just handfuls. Just giving them handfuls.

Just please, just take the candy. I need to be done. But so we got a lot of costumes through the candy. I need to, I need to be done. Um, but so we got a lot of costumes through the house and the ghost face from scream. Yeah. The most popular Halloween costume by a lot, I think. Oh,

wow. Like by a lot. I don't know if it's just an easy one or what, but man, it like that scream six really caught the attention of the youth then yeah the youth them i saw the youths i saw were so much bluey actually and i saw a lot of bluey a lot of a lot a lot of army shit too i saw it was kind of wild yeah i see like little kids in tack gear and shit i was like this is kind of yeah i did see like yeah and also my seven-year-old is like star wars has been

a feeder for him into like being really interested in the military which i couldn't tell words jack tell either from where i saw this going um but yeah now we're a military family now we're uh super conservative yeah we salute one another um also adam's family a lot of great uh family-wide adam's family costumes um which was lovely um we did we did all full star wars it was a blast total recall thing was right there the baby's quatto her majesty could have been the lady with the three boobs from total recall i can't believe she rejected it i i didn't even i didn't even bring up that was the coup de grace i didn't even bring that up first i was i was had that in my pocket first i need to make sure we got quado for the line and when we did it i said well then you probably don't want to hear about the three-breasted lady you're probably not gonna want to hear about

my next idea then you're always finding yourself saying that then you're probably not gonna want to hear about my next idea then you're always finding yourself saying that then you're probably not gonna want to hear about my next idea the second one i want to do is krang from teenage mutant ninja yeah also really good it would have been a lot of like like pink paint like he he's too cute to look like too too beautiful uh i don't know why i thought wato was like fine but yeah both of them rely on one of the most beautiful uh humans i've ever seen to look ugly just like i feel like you got to play to your strengths a little bit here you know yeah yeah exactly yeah but anyways hope everybody had a happy safe halloween let us know any trends you picked up in your Halloween costume observation. Any great ideas you saw well executed?

Oh, you know what I like, though? And I wish I don't really have trick-or-treaters in my neighborhood, but we went to this part of town where there were. And I like when people have an adult, something for the adults. Doesn't got to be alcohol alcohol but like someone's like hey i got like y'all want some food like i got bags of chips like like as if it were like a marathon where they're like hey need some orange slices because i know you're like you're just gonna be walking around with kids eat candy yeah would you like a hot dog like someone was grilling and shit i was like you know what that's a nice community service i like that dimension of sharing

the out i was giving myself is nobody wants something outside of a package. They're not going to trust it. No, for sure. I mean, trust me. That was my first instinct, but I was like, man. As the night wears on, you're like, yeah, actually give me that shit. Yeah. I'm at the will of people.

I'm trusting people every damn day. So fuck it. If you got a hot dog and you're flipping lucy glizzy's out here fine yeah and they also were like kind of grossed out because i had already taken a bite of it before i offered them a bite you know um you're like actually i don't like it but here you can have it back um all right let's talk about the hyper-caffeination of America. Dude. So this coincides with something that happened.

I was recently at a Panera Bread, and I was getting soup in a bread bowl, as one does on a hot Los Angeles day. You have to. But when I was at the fountain trying to figure out what to drink, I saw a bunch these like charged lemonades and the flavors were like interesting it was just like it was like mango yuzu citrus strawberry lemon mint although lemon seems redundant because we're dealing with lemonade here but anyway um and then when i looked at the description it said it had added caffeine and that made it a no for me dog since energy drinks aren't my shit and also like i they're not like i don't think of caffeine caffeinated shit as being refreshing but then i really looked at the amount of caffeine in the servings and i like there are a lot of people have posted this isn't a picture that i took but i

posted in the doc just to get jack's take on yeah what we're looking at here in terms of milligrams per serving so if you get a 30 ounce version of this drink it has three almost what 390 milligrams of caffeine yes 390 milligrams of caffeine that is a spicy meatball of caffeine that is a crazy making amount of caffeine man that is seven mountain dews in a single that is two starbucks tranta the 30 ounce cough like that the starbucks tranta i've always assumed is like that's got to be the most caffeine that like one can consume in a single like with one hand you know right keeping one hand for one steady hand no we are we are beyond that we're it's it's almost two of those in what looks like a non-caffeinated beverage like this is you know those circulator fountain things like where you can see the liquid it's not coming out of like a tap behind like you

can see the lemonade in the clear container like oh this one's pink okay it's it's two no-dose pills exactly that's they just i and it feels like they probably just ground up no-dose pills and put them in there like that's it's so much caffeine i've never taken a fucking no-dose but that sounds like a nightmare i did at a uh sleepover when i was in middle school and uh like we were like we're staying up all night and one kid one kid took two and lost his mind and also threw up like okay yeah good to keep in mind that it will put a child into some kind of terrible state so anyway i just read a story in rolling stone about how a young college student this woman died after drinking this and now the fda is looking into it now obviously these are this is what is being alleged by her family um but they are they're basically saying like

they're suing panera because they felt her daughter had quote a reasonably comp like was reasonably confident it was a traditional lemonade or electrolyte sports drink containing a reasonable amount of caffeine for her to drink because i don't know if it was labeled to this extent um the lawsuit also said tragically the reason why most likely that this could have brought on the death of this woman was that she had like a very specific heart condition um that can cause arrhythmias or like abnormal heart rhythms when you have a huge amount of caffeine or doing a lot of strenuous exercise so you're like oh my god that sounds like the perfect storm for tragedy and it seems like it was and panera responded not by pulling the product

they just put up a little fucking placard that's like hey this thing has caught caffeine consuming moderation not recommended yeah for the softies i almost got caught in a uh elevator because they had a similar they had a this elevator is broken sign but it was like off to the side on the wall like i almost i i did get stuck in an elevator for like three minutes with uh on my way with my uh one of my kids to go pee so he it was a real nightmare and like that you can't just put up a sign to the side of a thing and assume that it's going like when it's a a thing that could like endanger people yeah and this is again like there's too much institutional memory of drinks like this that aren't hyper caffeinated right people you know like it's like when you're like

oh lemonade okay charged yeah like yo turn up on this lemonade but yeah no i already paid for it yeah no charged lemonade but i remember when i went in like on that side it just says like like with like with added caffeine for energy never told you the milligrams but again that was enough to put me off of it um and it's wild because people on tiktok have been like pointing out that these drinks are a fucking hell-spun mixture that has some people just like having the jitters all fucking day or people literally saying quote i feel like i was like like dying from this thing and you know like the panera bread like the subreddit like there's employees that are like honestly we should

be keeping this shit behind the counter like this is not like anything they're like i see kids drink this shit all the time it just seems super wild and at first i always figured these kinds of drinks were like just our capitalist jet fuel to like help people get through their work day but like the increasing amounts, like we were talking about prime and now this, like there just feels like there's something like darker going on. Like, like these are just becoming cheap drugs or something that we can just get

anywhere. I think that's right. Like, I think it's obviously a combination of the two, like a jet fuel to get us through the day, but also like the, the fact that we need something to get us through the day but also like the the fact that we need something to get us through the day is kind of dark like it's a fucked up day yeah we're

i feel like we are we have been for a while but you know we're a nation of addicts and we just want something to deliver us from feeling what we're feeling at all times you know like deliver us from feeling the baseline human condition we either want noise we want um you know the characters we worship are always like triumphing over feelings that like they just don't feel vulnerable yeah they they're not drinking energy drinks no they don't need it they're just yeah and like so we just pursue an escape through drugs or you know caffeine or consumerism or you know fighting each other on social media or you know just an unhealthy relationship with guns you know just yeah there's something for everyone yeah but it does feel like one of the cheat codes for capitalism is by selling

addictive or mind altering substances like that. It seems to really help like get them hooked. Yeah. And yeah. Down your 390 mils of caffeine in one go. Oof. Yeah. It's a,

it feels, it feels unhealthy where if like we're in a i feel like people don't want to admit that we're in this like kind of dark and meaningless eddie in the course of like human history and so we just need something to make us just make us get to the next day else yeah to the next sunrise and just maybe it'll be different that's yeah grim yeah i mean like the history of capital like the sustainably profitable things a lot of them have like addictive substances behind them like the the tobacco stuff like a lot of the like unhealthy foods and shit there's always something that's like coming forward just like i was i was

just thinking about nicotine addiction like now that i have like a little distance personally and like historically i think from like the peak of my personal nicotine addiction but like also you know when people just smoked everywhere right it's truly wild that like we spent so much time addicted to a drug that doesn't even make you feel good it suppresses your appetite a little bit there's just like this like it can like give you a momentary feeling of relief but like it's i don't know it gives you i think for me i'll just speak for myself the thing that it gave me was like something to focus on besides the middle distance yeah like you know besides the human condition it gave me like another thing to be like well it'll it'll all be all right you know i didn't think that out loud

but that's what i was thinking at some level is like as soon as i can get a little nicotine like that yeah or like better i started smoking like especially like in college and at certain jobs because it gave me a reason to get the fuck out of the the space i was in yeah where it's like if it was class i'm like man the second get i'm gonna have a cigarette yeah and then or it's like a second i have a break i'm not gonna have a break in the break room i'm gonna go fucking outside in the alley and then at least like do that like ben affleck meme where i'm like looking at this looking at the sky yeah um but anyways you can well there's one thing you can always leave even even if you don't aren't smoking just walk out of the fucking place you are and go outside and take a take a lap around the block i know but see that's how it's like sort of built in because a lot of times

you're like shamed at a job we're like where are you going yeah and you couldn't be like to sit on a bench out so what the fuck is your problem but then but if you go oh you're going for a cigarette you're like yeah and then suddenly we're fine yeah anyways maybe steer clear of this i don't i don't see it like i i was my first thought was like well i've got to try this shit and just like see what it does to my brain and body and i still probably do for the purposes of science and this podcast for sure no try vietnamese iced coffee before you have this i know i got a lot there's a hierarchy of caffeinated beverages you need to experience before you ruin your life off this yeah me my heart and my central nervous system have a lot uh ahead of us in the coming months

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We sit down at a great restaurant for a meal and the stories start flowing. Our second season is airing right now, so you can catch up on our conversations that are intimate, surprising, and often hilarious. that are intimate, surprising, and often hilarious. Listen to Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi 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

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back. And there's a pretty wild story about HBO that was just published in Rolling Stone. Shout out to Rolling Stone. Still doing some good work out here. Yeah, telling us about the narrow drinks. So apparently HBO are being sued by a former employee who's claiming that he was harassed and faced retaliation and discrimination after disclosing a mental health diagnosis to his bosses. Uh,

HBO denies it. It's in court. Um, but the case and the discovery, the evidence revealed, um, some things going on at HBO, um,

specifically with, with like some of the executives who have since been promoted. Like one of these executives has been promoted to CEO, uh, at HBO. Um, but HBO allegedly, the executives who have since been promoted like one of these executives has been promoted to ceo at hbo um but hbo allegedly got this employee to quote perform menial tasks not related to his work duties which included creating fake online accounts to respond to critics yes yeah baby oh shit back on my skinned ass motherfuckers there's a it's a normal sized collar yeah i love that energy love that big it's a normal size collar find a new angle energy um

so it all started in 2020 when uh then president of original programming casey bloys recruited an employee to quote go on a mission um and they they were miffed at a vulture tv critic who criticized a single scene in a reboot of perry mason which that was a show that was like pretty well reviewed right i believe my my guess is that this scene was pushed for by this executive and they were like no that was my baby not you asshole not not today so an annoyed bloys hit up hbo senior vice president of drama programming uh kathleen mccaffrey suggesting they find a mole to post something that could make the critic feel bad that's in quotes quote feel bad like that's the length like we wanted to feel bad oh yeah wow yeah um they didn't ultimately go through with that one but then they did when uh alan seppenwall from rolling stone gave a middling review to a joss whedon show that literally does not exist nobody remembers it coming out at all

um yeah so nobody remembers joss whedon to be fair anyway um joe whedon by the way uh his name is just joseph whedon and he was like i'll go to joss oh my yeah baby we did it joss um joss a bank and joss whedon together at last. Joss Biden. Joss Byron. But they hired a low-level employee to create an account under the name Kelly Shepard, a Texas mom and herbalist who just went after Alan

Sepinwall. And then they got mad. They just used this to just have thin-skinned clapbacks against people for daring to criticize like various pet projects of theirs and bloys who is now the ceo you love to see hbo got upset about a comment from an anonymous user on a deadline article complaining about the cancellation of the show Run.

According to the article, he texted McCaffrey how dare someone write that! Double exclamation point and suggested more online retaliation. This is someone randomly commenting on a fucking website? Like not a journalist. Someone like in the comments saying quote

fucking why did they why can't they bring it back are you for real isn't that amazing that yeah and this is just a again like somebody being like i really like the thing that you once made and wish you brought it back and he said how dare they write something like this and then went on to say i want to say something along the lines of, LOL, okay, they're just counting their Emmys or something like that. Later, he suggested, maybe we say we must have passed on their development

and they are bitter? What the fuck? That is so fucked. That's such an L. I'm sorry for everybody involved here. There's no way you can make compelling television if you cannot even hear any kind of criticism not even criticism just yeah the observations of people who are interacting with your product

that you're like oh they're just fucking haters yeah okay yeah that's a really good energy to have when you're thinking about what kind of the next thing you're going to develop or market well fuck off wow yeah come for me casey you know i mean use your fucking use your handle though right and you never passed on anything i had because i could you got kicked me out oh my god the shittiness of the like proposed well, they're just counting their Emmys. To a random internet commenter? You think they're going to be like,

oh, they do have Emmys, actually. Yeah. Oh, my bad. Shut up. Oh, that's right. I'm not counting Emmys. And they are. You're right. It's so funny. You could just tell which decisions he was involved

with because like these are relatively like minor criticisms like these are not the like i wish that show wasn't canceled the thing that the vulture tv critic wrote katherine van arendonk this is this is what she wrote about perry mason that got this guy to fucking blow a fuse this is what wrote and this is about there's like flashes of him being in world war one and this is what she was directly talking about i said quote dear prestige tv please find some way to communicate male trauma besides showing me a flashback to the hero's memories of trench warfare that's fair that seems interesting i get that that's like an overused trope that you know like these like male protagonists like their trauma only comes from combat or whatever like

that's the only dimension of it but then to that he's like fucking just go fucking ham on her now she's she's over in this town but then we cut to casey and there's like a flashback and he was in world war one and like that's where he gets his you know but he like clearly he greenlit that scene and it was controversial and like very expensive you know right right right like this is a detective show and it has a scene of like trench warfare and it like that couldn't have been inexpensive um and so you know my grandpa was in world war one really and i think that's why he never talked to me or hugged me so maybe we can do that for perry yeah but clearly like did he ever go online after game of thrones finale like that probably like some of the meanest shit i've ever seen written about anything look at this picture of david zaslav and casey bloys together love them though

just just absolute titans of industry with yes skin made of asbestos um all right well those are some of the things that are trending on this wednesday november 1st yep uh we are back tomorrow with a whole ass episode of the show until then be kind to each other be kind to yourselves yep get the vaccine don't do nothing about white supremacy no and we will talk to you all tomorrow bye bye Bye. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine 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 Costavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil,

the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball. And on this new season, we'll cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio apps, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke.