The Daily Zeitgeist - Piracy Pretty Chill? White Women LOVE Melania! 02.05.26

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

In episode 2002, Jack and Miles are joined by comedian and co-host of The Worst Idea of All Time, Tim Batt, to discuss… Everyone Is Stealing TV, Everything Else Soon To Follow? MELANIAAAAAAA and more! Gadgets For People Who Don't Trust The Government Everyone is stealing TV LISTEN: Mideval Times (feat. Curtisy & Ahmed, With Love.) by Rory SweenySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, give a tour, Jay. Caw, do you know, Cock, do, do that, cock, do that, cock, do that, cock, do that, cock, don't know what Cair is even hair in the medieval turns. I'm going to pull up in a minivanile turns, pull up in a limo going Zimbo in the medieval turn. I'm going to pull up on that Zimplean. Hey, I'm going to pull up on them lean. I'm drinking lean in the medieval turns. What is this?

I might pull up in a car in the medieval times. I'm going to pull up in a car in a media times. They're a car what they are in the medieval times. I'm going to pull up in a car in the medieval times. Top of the morning, top of the morning, top of the morning. Fuck it. Irish rap, baby. Miles is having fun. Yeah.

It's a good vibe to enter a Zoom too. I wish all Zoom meetings were like this. You enter and you're just fucking viking on some gay like rapist. Hell yeah. Might have been driving on the car. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. It seems like just yesterday that the Two Guys Five Rings podcast was in Paris for the Olympics.

And now we're heading to Milan for the 26 Milan-Cortina Olympic Winter Games. I'm Bowen-Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers and we'll join athletes from 93 countries as Two-Guise Five Rings hits the Italian Alps for the 26 Milan-Cortina Olympic Winter Games. Open your free, I-HRah. radio app. Do we mention it's free? Search two guys five rings and listen now. Black history lives in our stories, our culture, and the conversations we still having today. This Black History Month, the podcast, I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either. Diggs into the moments, perspectives, and experiences that don't always make the textbook. Let me tell you about

Garrett Morgan. Brough had to pretend he didn't even exist just to sell his own invention. Listen to I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either. From the Black Effect Podcast Network on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or simply wherever you get your podcast. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move.

These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King's Senior. It's the true story of protests and rebellion in Black American, that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm in a Licklamoombo. Listen to the A-building on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the unpurposed podcast. On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar. I went blank. I hit a bad note, and then I couldn't kind of recover. And I built up this idea that music and being musician was my whole identity. I had to sort of relearn who I was if you took this thing away. Who am I?

Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, the internet, and welcome to season 424, episode four of Dernelie's Eye Guys! This is a production of IHard Radio's podcast, we take a deep dive into American Share Consciousness through the day's news. And we just celebrated our 2000th official. full episode. Yep, yep. I don't know if we emphasized how arbitrary that number. I mean, we emphasized that we counted wrong.

So it was arbitrary in that respect. But we also didn't include the trending episodes we do every day. We didn't include any of the holiday episodes we do. Yeah. I just went into our CMS. And including everything that we've uploaded, it looks like we've done over 4,000 total episodes. Hold on you carry the three and four.

Yeah. What do we have four thousand? Carry the three and four thousand. Four thousand. Four thousand forty eight. Oh my gosh. It appeared to be the number. We're humble.

You know what I mean? We could have really started, because it's funny too. I love reading the comments from the sort of commemorative post with the 2000 episode. I can't believe it's been that minute. I'm like, y'all, it's really been like four thousand more. But if we went that high with the official count, people would start to understand. how much time they're wasting on this show. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's only 14 episodes. We make us how more reasonable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We also have a new weekly history version of the show, also not in the official count, dropping each Monday morning where we do a deep dive into the history of a different icon, started with Einstein and Erkel, and worked our way down from there.

We just did St. Dali Parton with the god Lydia Popovich. At the end of the episode, we dropped some crazy stuff I missed from the eldest episode. mess, you know? It's like I'm going to be giving you icon facts from all over the place. But yeah, Elvis had a chimp, just like Michael Jackson had bubbles. And the story is fucking crazy. So you can look for that Elvis fact at the end of the Dolly episode. You can look for those episodes on Mondays with the iconograph logo, got a whole different damn logo for that shit in medieval times. It is Thursday, February 5th, 2026. Oh, man, what a day.

What's the, let me fire up the old calendar. Oh, National Chocolate Fondue Day. Hey. A national weather person's day. Shut up for people reporting the weather. You know, Dallas Raines, was the famous L.A. weather person. National shower with a friend day.

Okay. Yeah. Also, it could be related to weather people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Whatever you want. Whatever you want. Make it your own. Make it your own. When were we like going over and saw, oh, that was on the comedy dev meeting where somebody pointed out that like there was a massive controversy in Florida because their most popular weatherman like got shit canned.

Were you on that call? No, I think I was sick or something. It's like a deep dive. It was like a real mysterious. Everyone was like he's he's the heart of the local news. Oh, shit. He just got axed. This would be a great thing to mention if I had his name or any of the details. Yeah. My name is Jack. My name is Jack O'Brien, aka, don't you wish your zeitgeist was hot like me. Oh.

Don't you wish your zeitgeist was daily and free? That one courtesy of Charles Anouin-Fromage. Don't you? And the Lackaroni offered this alternative take on the same song. Pooh, poo, pee-pee, poo, pee-pee, poo, pee-pee. It's a bit of an airworm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I do have to admit.

Anyways, we're sundown and over here. I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray. It's Miles Gray, okay, do you want to wreck a snowman? I'll drive my car up on the lawn. I think this family is overdue. I start revving up my engine, then I'm off. Shout out Snarkfiel for that one. Guess what?

The Geist Schau-Fucks were frozen, so I knew that one. I was like, let me fire that one up. I was wondering if you had to go and love. learn that shit. No, no, bro. He calls it Elsa. He's like, yo, let me see Elsa. Let me check Elsa. That is an alternate theory that we hadn't gotten into for the, we covered a story where a guy was complaining online. So stupid. Somebody had put cinder blocks into the snowman that he drove his car through, which suggests that he was so consistently driving his car. His car. His dad wasn't a Dodge charger?

He's like, it's my new Mustang. New Mustang that he was driving so consistently through the neighborhood snowman that somebody laid a trap for him. To the parents of the children that thought it was a good idea to put cinder blocks inside a snowman, I've already contacted the police. It's so dumb. My brand new Mustang is damaged. It's like, first of all, asshole, how did you discover with your car there were cinder blocks in? Yeah. It's a cinderblock finding machine.

I have a right to have cinder block-free snowman. But maybe this is, maybe he's just a gad hater, you know, Josh Gatt and maybe was just snapped one day. Olaf. There you go. Enough of Olaf. He was like never again. He was going to terminate her, Olaf, and just kill all the snowmen before they could magically be bestowed with Josh Gads. Can't stop Josh Gad.

Miles were thrilled to be joined in our third seat by one of our favorite. it's a multiple award-winning comedian, podcaster and producer, who co-hosts the podcast The Worst Idea of All Time with Guy Montgomery, where they're currently in the middle of a season-long method film reviewing of Joker 2. Welcome back to the show, the hilarious and talented. Tim Bat! Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, guys.

How you doing? Oh, great. Great hearing your voice. Great seeing your face. Great knowing the things that are happening outside of our boys. orders, hearing things like, you know, you guys sorted out abortion rights. Yeah, we did that a few years ago. Oh, a few years ago, a few years ago.

Literally only a few years ago, not like ages ago. But yeah, I know you guys have got a little bit of catch up to play on that. Yeah, yeah, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. How is it down there? How is it down there? How is it in New Zealand? Dude, it's, well, let me start with this. It is the most humid I've ever experienced Auckland being.

It's like being in a tropical zone. It's like being in Ecuador or something. Is it normally like that? I'm worried about my computers and stuff in this house. It's our humid of it. I'm like everything is going to break. You're putting like plastic sheets over it and shit. Yeah.

Your computer's sweating. It's soupy. But no, we're good, man. The economy is still fucked. Very few people like the government we've got at the moment. But then we look over at you guys and we go, you know what? Things could be worse. Let's go to the beach.

Yeah. But then actually we can't go to the beach because all our infrastructure is pretty screwed and they keep pumping poo out into the bay. And we keep getting all these warnings going to. Again, I will ask what's that like? Yeah. That's earnings? Pretty standard. Wow. Warnings.

Wow. I was raised in that shit on the Jersey shore. And I think every, I think it's everywhere, right? Like Santa Monica Bay, full of shit. Santa Monica, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't even look out of the water in Santa Monica. Would we stop paying for infrastructure?

It feels like there was a decision in the Western world. Everyone was like, ah, it'll be fine. Pikes to take care of themselves. I feel like in the U.S. It was like after everything, like just all the investment after World War II, they're like, all right, we can wait like 100 years now off of this. Yeah. Yeah.

We're coasting off of the new deal. Yeah, still. Thank you. It's got new in the title, you know, just because it happened to the 30s. It's new to me. How is it? So how many views are you at on a Joker 2, Follyad, do,000? So we just realized, okay, so we actually just released the absolute apic.

of the whole season. So what we did to do a method film review, so we try and like enter the world of the film to review it on its own terms. We lived inside of a comedy club for a week in all play. And we just kept watching it. Wait, don't you, aren't you parents? Yeah, it was not a popular decision in our respective households. Okay, okay, for the art.

Just had a baby too. Yeah, yeah, I know. I was going to say. So we just extricated ourselves away from our lives for a week, lived at a comedy club, and we watched Joker 2 three times a day. We've just released episode 12, which is where Guy, it was our fourth viewing of the day, that day.

And Guy actually figured out exactly how to fix the movie, which is insane because the movie has brought us so much pain. Right. And it's made us sick in the head. and we hate it so much. It's actually, like, fascinatingly bad, Joker Follier. It is a very interesting, and nor should you, to be honest. But it is, it's like, it's bad in a very fascinating way.

But it's been an incredibly painful experience for us. Yeah, and your families. And the podcast. Yeah. Did you learn anything about comedy clubs? I mean, obviously, you're comedians who've spent some time there. There's no comedy club in the movie. So we hadn't seen Joker to him.

We were like, it's about Joker. You know, he wants to be a stand-up comedian, so to make it method film review, we'll go to a comedy. And then the first watch of it, we were like, oh, damn, we should have been watching this in a prison. In jail, right? It's a jail movie. It is. Wow. Amazing.

But we've got good guests on there who come and visit us in the comedy club and do a watch with us as well, some of New Zealand's best comedians. And it's just, once again, Guy and I losing our minds. We performed a set, which we, we. filmed and you can see on our substack of us in full Joker makeup doing a comedy set just about Joker 2. So there's a lot

of goodies there for people. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm looking at your face. You Joker up real nice. Yeah. Oh yeah. Thanks for Madison. I got the cheekbones for Joker. You got some you got some Joker

cheekbones. Just the little diamond eyes. I can see that working. This thing, I'm looking at this screenshot from your substack of just guy in his joker makeup. It's pretty scary, huh? Yeah, like, it's terrifying because also I'm like, oh shit, this movie I think is breaking them mentally on something. Oh, dude.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely cooked. The worst? Is it that, so the movies you watched so far for worst idea of all time include grownups, too? Yeah, that's what we started with. We've done both sex and the city movies. And I have to say, even though the Joker 2 thing, very mentally destructive, nothing, I think, will top doing a year of sex in the city too.

Sex and the City 2 is still Queens. Still number one, baby. You can't get SJP down. That's right. And we've tried. We Are Your Friends, which is a Zach Efron becomes a DJ. Oh, yeah, the EDM one. It was like the human heart rate beats at 120 beats per bit.

But watch, when I take the BPM up a little bit. Why is this in your heads, man? Like, there is valuable data that could be it. I'm amazed that you've got quotes for that to hand. Trap memory, trap memory for the most meaningless shit. I think also because I DJed growing up. So, like, I remember being like, other DJ friends being like, this movie is so stupid. I'm like, I have to see it.

That open, I think that's like the opening line. I was like, this is the, I was instant. Like, this is so fucking stupid and I'm in. Yeah. Yeah. And what, yeah, it was kind of, it was dumb fun. Yeah. Sex and City, too, forever.

Joker Toe living inside a comedy club is pretty grim. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it seems like a grim, at least Sex and the City too, bad in a way that maybe not so grim, maybe trying to have fun. Whereas Joker 2 seems to be like, first of all, that guy's fucking twisted. So I don't even want to know what that does to your psyche. But then it's just trying to be like so real, like say something in a way that can't be fun. Miles, is that you who's pulled up that clip? Yeah, I can't recommend the substack enough

because aside from the episodes, you guys upload all kinds of BTS clips like muck-bong videos. But just this one, BTS 10 fed up, guys simply cannot take it anymore. It's just pacing around the room while the movie's playing. Oh, my, he is pacing.

It's not good, man. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so we're putting the comedy, I'm going to put the comedy seats up there like today or tomorrow, Right. Hit the substack, y'all. Hit the substack, get behind it. All right.

Well, Tim, we're thrilled to have you here. We're going to let you know how things are going over here. It's looking great from what I see in the news. It looks like you guys are killing it. Literally. We want to talk about the economy. There's a new trend emerging where, like, Americans can't have nice, like, the nice things. I think Americans pride themselves on being able to be like, we got the best stuff.

at least from capitalism. So there's a new story in The Verge about how everyone is having to steal TV because it's illegal to not have the most aggravating fucking TV viewing experience in the world via like streaming or cable bundles. Like they want to bankrupt you. So people are stealing cable.

And I just, it feels like we're in a prohibition era of like better stuff. where everybody's being made to just, like, give their money to corporations. So I want to talk about some of those trends. And then another trend, the way that the U.S. is being turned into one big company town, comes to us from Cracker Barrel, who has just demanded that any employee who's traveling on business has to take every meal at a Cracker Barrel.

Not allowed to eat anywhere. Besides Cracker Barrow. All of that, plenty more. But first, Tim, we do like to ask our guest, what is something from your search history that's revealing about who you are? Oh, I looked up Denims recently, which I think is instruct.

So she's a streamer, and I think it's just instructive of my stage of life. I'm 38 years old, and I'm desperately trying to keep my fingernails on relevancy, but it's eluding me. I'm like, who is this person? What is this trend? What is this thing going on?

What is this new platform? So, and don't ask me what the denims is, but I was going through my Google history. I was like, what the fuck was that about? I was like, oh, that was that woman who's like a political streamer who's beefing with Hassan or it loves Hassan or something. There is a galaxy of personalities that if you're under the age of like 30 and you're quite online, you have a knowledge of. It's like a pantheon of Roman God. or something. You would just know this whole mythology and their connections

and when they fell out and when they came back in. But if you were, you know, above the age of 35, it is impenetrable. There's too much law. You're like, denims and Pokey, Maine were what now? Yeah. You know, sentences that have never existed before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think it's

just more about me being like desperately trying to cling on. And I think within the next six months, I will accept my stage in life, which is just not knowing any of this stuff. The way I keep my fingernails barely on is like through Reddit because there's a subreddit called LiveStream Fail. Oh, yeah. But that's where I end up intersecting with these characters.

I'm like, what the fuck is this? What's going on? And they'll have like two million followers as well. Someone I've never heard of who's the, respectfully, a fucking loser. Being a loser. And they're like making tons of money. got millions of people watching them. Yeah. Yeah. The way I keep my fingernails on is asking our guests, what's something from your search history is revealing. And then pretending I know

what that what Denims is. Did you know what Denims was? I thought that we were about to learn that in the same way that like in England they pluralize math, different, they say maths. I was assuming that in New Zealand you guys called multiple denim. Denims. I wish I had something more useful for you, but I don't. I can't even tell you about denims. This is very useful. My brain is Swiss cheese. So I'm like, yeah, I googled it.

She's the largest female political streamer. But there you go. All right, there you go. Live Friday. That's why I Googled her, everyone. If you're always asking why Google Denims,

it's because she's the largest female political streamer. There you go. No further questions. Your honor. Your honor. What is something you think is underrated? Underrated, three coffees a day. Had, um,

underrated is three copies. Yeah. You've got to do three coffees a day. Okay. I also, I just, I think people are like, they're trying to do one coffee day, they're trying to do two coffees a day so it doesn't upset your sleep. Just, you know, listen, rules ending, give yourself a treat, three coffees a day. It's the most legal way of getting that cocaine high in your work weekday.

And I watched a YouTube video recently. This guy was going through the science of how there's this claim that coffee dehydrates you because it's like a diuretic and he's like, that is not. True. Coffee hydrates. Right, right, right. It puts water on your body because it is mainly water. And I was like, this is great news because I was doing three coffees anyway.

So very affirming and validating for me. That's interesting. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it definitely, it is, caffeine's a diuretic, but when you're taking it with that much water. Yeah. All right. It's, how you're spacing, how you timing those coffees out? So glad you asked, Jack, wake up in the morning because I've got a toddler.

I mean at like 6 a. Yeah. Like it up in the morning. Sorry, it's a vocal stem that we have to indulge in. Hey, can I ask? A quick little side track. When did the vocal stem thing rise to popularity? It's been a TikTok thing forever.

And now it's like, I hear it so much. I'm like, oh yeah, that's what I call a thing I have to incessantly say all the time. Yeah, it's a thing. And apparently it's like very a way that people with ADD like self-sooth. And I have been doing it my entire. life and didn't, yeah, I just didn't have a word for it. So that's why I'm suddenly saying it all the time. There's a dude, and again, sorry for the side track here, but this feels important to me.

Andy Arthur Smith, I don't know if he's a guy who you've seen on TikTok and Instagram, who, the algorithm has delivered him to me as the first siren call of the vocal stem. He was the guy who just would pop out of nowhere with these little, it's like vocal stem of the day. I had never heard of this guy. I'd never seen this guy. In November last year, I flew to your beautiful country because I wanted to see her one last time before she falls over. I went to mainly kind of see a band that I really wanted to see in Los Angeles called Noah.

And they brought him out, Andy Arthur Smith, to scat over some of their songs that had massive instrumental parts to it. And he was phenomenal. Wow. Seeing it's actually like a doo-wop, you know, scat artist in 2025, dressed in from memory like SpongeBob Squarepants, pajamas just come out of nowhere.

It was. And I was on, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this on the show, but quite a lot of magic mushrooms at the time. It was just such a delightful confluence of unexpected delights coming together. Oh, yeah. And it rocks.

My back's tingling right now. It was so good. So I guess, magic mushrooms, as always, but three coffees a day, the feds are listening. And one in the morning, one in the afternoon? Sorry, yeah. We got distracted by Andy Arthur Smith's vocal stems. And we said waking up in the morning, that's what it was.

Wake up in the morning, slam that coffee pot on, get one in you as soon as you can. Then I'm going to say, 9.30 a.m. Then I'm going to say, give yourself a breather, 1 p.m. Get that after being going. You are absolutely fucked by. 4 p.m. though, you've got more plans for the second half the afternoon.

Yeah. You better, your plan better be a two-hour nap. Yeah, your plan better be to pace around a comedy club while watching Joker folly a two. Absolutely. Sit down.

Has anyone ever done a like power hour with espresso shots? Oh, how many would that be? 100, 100 shots of, 100 shots, yeah. In an hour. Oh, damn.

I think you would die. Yeah, I think that's too much. Don't do that. Can kill you. Hey, new live, live show idea. People in the Discord are excited about live shows. Which of these people will survive the longest. Jack died at 25.

I feel like you would start glowing and levitating because I feel like you're, I think your DNA is 70% caffeine. Oh, yeah. I feel like you would just. Oh, yeah. But I'd also, it would be bad. The after effects would be bad. I'm just so caffeine insensitive.

So that would, I think my heart would just stop unexpected. from like the chemical amount of caffeine. But you wouldn't even notice. Yeah, yeah. Just fine, fine, fine, fine, dead. And then dead. Yeah. And then back.

Mostly fine. What is something you think is overrated? Goal sitting. Stop doing it. Why we're not setting goals this year? We're not setting goals this year? Say that again, Miles? I said, we're not setting goals this year.

Yeah. I mean, I don't do it myself. You've done the right thing. Yeah, yeah. What do you mean by a goal setting? Well, the way I like to approach and you, year's resolution season is pick some themes for the year. Like pick a couple of words of something you want to focus on.

I just, I worry about this generation coming up at the moment. I think they're very focused on money and they've got very rigid advice for how people should be living their lives. Yeah, yeah. You know, make your financial goals. Do this. Buy a house at the stage.

Da-da-da. Just fucking. I think people are under indexing, vibing it. Sometimes vibing it is completely. fine and good actually. Because you can kind of allow more possibilities to unfold

in your life. And I just think everyone's got such a bonus for goal setting and like constant self-improvement. And just calm down. Just let's take things as they come a little bit here. And you are by definition where you're setting

goals working with old information. I like that. Nice fun. Check. We're in a world that is constantly changing and updating and you got you got to update those expectations but if you're just like my goal for this year was this and I'm definitely going to do that got to got to improvise a little bit exactly and I just I wanted to represent the other side because I think every there's so much people forces telling you to do goal setting and you have to do goal setting goal setting is what's

going to set your life up I don't know man try vibing it for a little bit try walking out outside smelling roses, connecting with humans and, you know, just see things to work out with a good attitude. I definitely noticed that becoming a parent. Like, because there's, I feel like, because there's so much information, people think you have to use every bit of information to inform how you live your life. And I feel like child rearing books are like a real, like, bad influence a lot of the time. Because I remember when my kid was first born, we're like, what's the book say? Did you log how many shits he took? How many ounces of milk did the, and I'm like, bro, we, We've been doing this for fucking millions of years without this.

And I'm like, then I had to be like, it was stressing me and Her Majesty out. We're like, I feel like we're smart enough to know when our child is hungry, when our child is tired, not get too caught up and like logging everything and saying, well, these are the wake windows that it needs to be for this time. And that was so liberating. And we became such better parents and we trusted our human instincts to be like, I know when a child is in need or what it needs. the other information is useful. I'll use that to kind of dial in my vibe scope. Yeah. Vibing out is, I think, very important because I think we're so...

Yeah, I'm 100% with you on the job. Everything feels so out of control, too, that I also understand the impulse to be like, does someone just have like a set of steps I can do to fucking have a job or go up in my career? And I think that's definitely something I see a lot more in younger people. And I think just because of my age, I've had the benefit of still being in. in a world where like you could kind of vibe stuff out, but I also totally understand, like, feeling like everything is so fucked up.

You're like, is there some kind of list of shit I need to do because none of the old shit works anymore? But in the end, trust the vibes, you know, deep down, trust them. Yeah, I feel like we're generally getting in the habit of, like, giving over personal autonomy to other things, you know, whether it be like, ask Google to tell you the information and or, you know, chat, TBT, which is not for lunch. But yeah, I think that is probably not a great thing to do,

especially with the important things like parenting. You know, Miles, the thing you were saying about, like, we've been doing this parenting thing for so long. That's why I follow the paleo-birding parenting method where you... Alicia Silverstone, I think. You raise your kids like they did in the Stone Ages, but also you chew up their food for them like a bird. Premasticated food.

pre-masticated. Let's use the clinical term. It sounds gross. Some will say, yes, that's a different method, but the book is so good. You've got to read Ms. Silverstone's book. You've got to check it out. You've got to check it out. All right. Let's take a quick break. We'll come back and get a second opinion on how things are going in America. We'll be right back. Welcome to the A building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm in Aleclimoma. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. had both been assassinated and Black America was out of breaking point. Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia at Martin's Almemata, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history, Martin Luther King's senior

and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people would die. In 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which trauma everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it

should, and it will blow your mind. Listen to the A-building on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Seems like just yesterday that the Two Guys Five Rings podcast was in Paris for the Olympics, and now

we're heading to Milan. the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games. I'm Bowen-Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers, and we'll join athletes from 93 countries as Two Guys Five Rings hits the Italian Alps for the 26 Milan-Cortina Olympic Winter Games. Open your free IHartRadio app.

Did we mention it's free? Search Two Guys Five Rings. And listen now. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the Unpurposed Podcast. On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar. The thing I would say to my younger self is congratulations. You get to marry Priyanka Chopra Jones.

And also, you know, your daughter is incredible. That's beautiful, man. Yeah. Thank you. That's so beautiful. I can see that got you a little. Yeah, for sure. Our daughter, she came to the world under sort of very intense circumstances,

which I'd not really talked about ever. Growing up on Disney in front of a million, how did that shape your sense of self? I went blank. I hit a bad note, then I couldn't kind of recover. And I built up this idea that music and being musician

was my whole identity. I had to sort of relearn who I was if you took this thing away. Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of wife would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings.

Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology.

Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, NLP might actually work.

This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. We're back. And Tim, we talked on yesterday's episode about how there are much better cars being made and sold in China that America, like, doesn't know shit about. Because they're not allowed. Like a Wall Street Journal columnist got to drive one for a week. Yeah.

And was like, what? They were fucked up after. They were like going to withdrawals. Yeah. And that mixed with this. story that we're talking about today just has me feeling like America is in this weird prohibitionary period where it's just like everything's set up so that you aren't allowed to have like good stuff, you just have to have like mediocre bad stuff and pay corporations

as much fucking money as possible. I'm going to need to give you guys another pep to. I've done this, I think, in previous appearance. The vibe, Jack is dire. Okay, I'll let you get into the story and explain this. And then I'm going to tell you guys later in the episode why, you know, you can have a little bit of pride in being an American and there's light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe I'll see how it go. All right.

So they have this article about Pirate streaming boxes that allow you to access cable and other services for free once you buy the box. So you like, buy the box. And then you don't have to subscribe to anything because it allows you to steal it. and they're a lot of them, this article says they're not being sold at Walmart. Miles found them on Walmart. Yeah,

they're on Walmart. I mean, they're selling the technology and I think it's like Walmart, you know, it's like sort of like Amazon too where it's like they were selling like Nazi shit that they don't have in the stores,

but you can use Walmart.com as like a marketplace for it. You might order this and then get a picture of the technology. Right, right, right. Like in the mail. But they're being sold at like farmers markets and like just, you know, there's like dealers. Barbershops.

Yeah, Craigslist. Yeah. The article says, Superbox and its main competitor, VC Box are gaining in popularity is consumers get fed up with what TV has become. Pay TV bundles are incredibly expensive. Streaming services are costly or every year,

and you need to sign up for multiple services just to catch your favorite sports team every time they play. The hardware itself is generic and legal, so these boxes are generic and legal, but you won't find them at mainstream stores, because everyone knows the point is accessing illegal streaming services that offer every single channel show and movie you can think of. Sounds like a great deal.

And our, Brian the editor, we were talking about this today because he's always been a, you know, hypothetical advocate for piracy. And he was just saying that, like, it's actually easier to pirate things now than to, like, figure out where to stream something and then, like, buy it on that streaming service and then have it disappear. And like, pirating used to, the issue used to be that you had to like do work to let go find it.

But now it's like, no, that's actually, it's the easier way to do things. For sure. People forget we've been through this before as well with the music industry in the early 2000s is everyone was pirating everything. Yeah.

For about a little under 10 years. I was, super, super hot. Napster took off. I was part of the lime wire era. Hell yeah. Cazaar. You know what I mean? And then all the record companies went, this is unacceptable. And then Steve Jobs went, we got a product that could, you know, solve this. And that's how iPod took off. And it's like they've completely forgotten that if you make things easy enough for consumers to get, they won't pirate ship. But all these TV networks are so, so greedy. They can't work together to figure out a way. Yeah, and it's the consumer.

So confusing the like overlapping agreements they have. They're like, well, if you get one month of Netflix, you actually get three months of Hulu and you're like, what the fuck? I thought, I used to. As a parent as well, I'm like, I just need to know where Paul Patrol is and they'll be like, okay, well, season one to five is on Disney Plus, but they've got to go over to Netflix. Power Patrol is every one. Yeah. It's like, what? Why?

Paw Patrol is scattered across the, like, streaming services, like caught like a plane wreckage. Like it's like, okay. You can get the third episode. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But yeah, it's almost like the U.S. is a massive scheme for extracting wealth from people and giving it to corporations. Almost. Almost as if it's almost like that. It's almost like we live in a world like that.

Like if someone made a movie where that was the case, it would almost be like that. Yeah, kind of, kind of a little bit. Miles, we were talking about this years ago with the rep sneakers like industry where you can get basically identical sneakers. for cheaper in like from other countries. Yeah, from China basically. Yeah, there's just like a lot of ways that now the corporations for so long in the U.S. have been in the game of like not thinking about the consumer whatsoever, just thinking about how do we capture this audience and like fucking twist their arm

on their back and make them pay us as much money or like trick them into paying us as much money by like offering them three free months. and then like no ability to cancel. Like it's just going to be more and more like prohibition where everyone is just going to be like, fuck this. And like also as everything else gets more and more expensive. Sure. It is like that.

I mean like to Tim's point like millennials, we grew up pirating shit because a lot of time we were like kids who couldn't afford to buy the album. So it's like, fuck it. I'm going to use BitTorn or whatever. I learned how to edit video and make music through way, that I allegedly downloaded, like a final cut or logic or whatever. Don't say allegedly when you're saying the illegal thing you did.

Allegedly, I may have. I think the allegedly came too late in that series of sentences. I may have allegedly. Now, I don't know how. But anyway, but like to that point, it's like we have this reflex in us to be like, shit's too expensive, bro. I can get it. And I'm not going to pay full price for it.

And I think that's naturally, yeah, it's now it's natural. extending itself to like to your point jack also of like they keep twisting your arm twisting your arm and they don't think the reflex from consumers is going to be like well what's the path of least resistance now some guys just told me at a farmer's market i paid 200 bucks for this box and i'll have everything forever for free yeah it is crazy to me that there is um this sort of i don't know american belief that you can just keep twisting the arm twisting the arm on a like biggest scale i just finished reading this book um i didn't finish reading it i finished a book which for me huge.

Huge update. Tim, anytime I read a New Yorker article, I talk about it no less than five times. You should. Get your money's worth. Did you read the whole magazine? No,

just one of the articles. No, just the one article. I got to the end. I got to the end of the article. This book called Apple and China, which charts the, like, you cannot really overestimate

the influence that Apple has had on China and now the importance that China has on Apple. But Apple basically came in and there were all of these entrepreneurial tech manufacturers in China who just went, look, we don't need to make any money ourselves, but we need to learn how to make high tech stuff. So if you kind of allow us to make your gear effectively at cost with, you know, pretty low labor costs to put it kindly, and they were bang up these factories, these huge factories that were like, you know, multiple football fields big inside of a month,

there was the story of like Tim Cook walking around a rice paddy and the guy who's in charge of Foxcom being like, yeah, so in six weeks from now, this will be pumping out iPods for you. And it fucking was. Right. It's crazy, just the scale of it all. And I think America hasn't really had a big competition for a while. And now that China is a capitalist country that now has taught itself through.

Apple how to do all this high-tech manufacturing. It's like you said with the cars, like finally there is some competition. And I think these companies are going to have to wake up to the fact that they can't. It's too late, though. You know, they can't keep getting away with this. But I think it's like American companies have been so popped up on American exceptionalism that they completely lost sight of the fact that the rest of the world was like really beginning to creep ahead in a lot of these certain areas.

Because like even with the EV thing, Jackie, I was talking about. the Ford guy that went there and he came back from China. He's like, oh, fuck. He was like, we're fucked. He's literally so fucked. Tim, the CEO of Ford keeps being like, we are so fucked. They're so much better at this. Their cars are so good.

They're so fucking good, dude. The latest thing. I heard this yesterday, apparently, this was on the news. China is going to make it illegal to have those Tesla-style door handles that are recessed into the middle of the car because they're too dangerous. Dangerous. They keep catching fire and then locking people in the vehicle because they're not mechanical. They're electric.

Right. And so they're like from now on they're going to, that's great. Good on you, China. I fucking hate those door handles. It's so stupid. It's just having at the like a idiot. Yeah. It's just having at the like C-suite level the beginnings of a thought of the consumer.

And they that is the reason that the U.S., because I agree with Miles that it's not going to happen. America is going to go through a long losing streak before it bounces back and like starts competing. And the reason that we're going to hear in the mainstream media is, well, our failing schools and like, you know, with American kids are lazy or, you know, shit. Like it's going to be blamed on the people. But the real reason is that everything in the corporate world is focused on wealth extraction and not focused on serving the consumer in any way. hasn't been for a long time.

It's the inshittification boomerang, basically. Yeah, it's just an inshittification. Sure, maybe you got a lot of money out of all the inshittification you've done to consumer products and apps and things like that. But in the meantime, other countries have been knuckling up and in the fucking lab trying to be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, it's time, it's time. I was going to say not New Zealand, but I just remember we do have something. We've got Rocket Lab.

Oh, what's that? We're making rockets here now. We're like, I think the third biggest rocket. launcher in the world, which is insane because there's only five million people who live in this whole country. Oh, I know. We got all those New Zealand. Don't fuck with me, guys. We make rockets now, okay? We're in the way. Yeah, we're in the mix. That's legit. That's legit. Yeah, we're only exporting the worst shit right now. So good on you. Yeah, which includes rockets. Yeah. J.M. Our writer pointed out that a lot of older people have these boxes for the exact reason we're talking about because

it's it's too confusing for us to like find where everything is and like navigate all the fucking subscriptions like you know figure out when to cancel the ones and you know just juggle all those things and like for old imagine being an old person so like getting a box where it's just like one streaming service that rhymes with ubi on it you know like they're just gonna do that shit yeah i mean i think also it's i feel like a lot of like immigrant diabolian Aspera communities, fuck with this technology too, because it's the easiest way to see shit from your home country, too. Yeah. And they're like selling it to each other, like Tupper.

Yeah. They're like, how do I watch that shit from back home? They're like, yo, bro, get one of the fucking skyboxes or whatever the fuck they're selling. Yeah. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah, they go through like the different people. They're like, the economy paints a full picture of America and characters abound. And it's just like Christian conservative from Utah who pitches them as like a way to drain the swamp.

Idaho-based smart home vendor, Midwestern church ladies in Illinois, Indian uncles in New Jersey, MMA fighters, wedding DJs, special ed teachers, just modern-day bootlegging scheme, where they're like selling them out of their car trunks. Yeah.

Because, yeah, like, why the fuck not? I just feel like more of the economy is going to become this. It's just like that the U.S., like the corporations are going to become easier and easier. to be because they suck at their job. The same thing with like rep sneakers, right?

A lot of people like, oh, how could you buy replica sneakers, bro? They're not the real thing. And you're like, I don't give a fuck of the real thing anymore. Like, that's a weird illusion thing for you. Like, I like the shape and color of this thing. If it's that, that is fine for me. I don't need it to be quote unquote real. And I think as, especially as the cost of living goes up, less and less people are going

to be like, oh, you don't got the real Netflix subscription? It's like, no fucking idiot. I'm saving $7,000 a fucking year with my pirate box, each shit. By the way, getting rep sneakers, I was made to realize how good an idea it is when Miles and I were in Las Vegas for this NBA convention and I wore my best, best sneakers. And a teenager walked up to me and was like, hey, nice reps.

Yeah. And now it's almost like, he might have been big and you up. Yes. Oh, Miles saw. Miles saw howl. He spiraled. He spiraled before we were. boarding. He's like, what do you think he meant by that?

And I was like, I was like, who gives this shit, bro? He don't even know the real real like that. And it doesn't even fucking matter, bro. Like, yeah, they're not reps. Yeah, no, I know. Like, let it go. Wow. Should I go tell him they're not real? Let it go. I can show him where on my phone where my wife got me these. Hold on. Let me text her so she can send me the email confirmation. Look at this receipt. Look at this receipt 15 year old. There's a rips. Excuse me, why are you talking to my son?

He thought my shoes were fucking reps, lady. That's why. What? I'm sorry. Can you stop yelling, sir? And then just another detail from like back in the day American capitalism is this Cracker Barrel story. This was the top U.S.

Google search at the beginning of this week was Cracker Barrel because it leaked that they're now stressing that employees are expected to dine at Cracker Barrel store for, all or the majority of meals while traveling, whenever practical, based on location and schedule. Can I float a balloon here? Yeah. Yes. Cracker barrel is engaged in esoteric public relations strategies.

So you think this is part of it? I'm just, after watching all of the bullshit with the full circle, we're changing the logo. We've changed the logo. For some reason, conservatives care a lot that we change the logo. We've changed the logo. go back. And it's, it was an expect, everyone kind of got focused on how much it cost to do the rebranding.

But in terms of the exposure in the media, the, you know, the conversation that Cracker Barrel got to be a part of for how much they spent, it was invaluable. I would, maybe I've been reading too much Epstein shit and I'm just connecting every conceivable dot, whether it's there or not. But this smells to me like Cracker Barrel has really figured something out about being part of the new cycle, uh, to have mine share. among the American consumer. And I'm wondering if they're like,

what if we like a memo saying that we only let our employees eat our food? What if people thought we were a really shitty company? Maybe they'll come back. Well, that's interesting. I mean, like, you know, from their like last earnings at the like end of last year, they were, the sales were down, like revenues down. Really? It wouldn't surprise me.

Yeah, I know, color me, cracker, but I don't. Don't believe it. Also, I've never been to one. What food do they have there? What is Cracker Barrel's deal? Southern home cooking. Like, stick to your arteries good. Yeah, yeah.

The thing that I had there, that was pretty good when I was like, you know, in high school, that's, I think the only time I ate there when I lived in Kentucky was biscuits and gravy. I think it was the first time I had like biscuits and gravy with like sausage gravy. Oh, wow. That shit was, it hit. Poor deprived child. How old are you when he first had it? Like 17.

Oh, no. Oh, God. Fuck out. Yeah, I mean, it feels like they're like at the same way like, you know, Sidney Sweeney, like with that bra thing. Like everyone's kind of doing this sort of like asymmetrical marketing thing. Is it a, is it a, is it a, or just sort of like, was it a controversy? Or is our name back in the news?

Right. You know. I could see. I'm delighted to hear it's not. not translating to sales for them. I'm delighted to hear that. Yeah, yeah. They're trying to be too clever by half.

It's like alternatively, make better food that you can afford to eat. And also that. Just make affordable food. It feels like the lowest hanging fruit business ideas. Like, if you just made a little less money on the food, the volume in sales would probably go through the fucking roof, like how people just eat Costco pizza all the time. It's just like, they're like, dude, we're not making a ton of money, but we sell a fuck ton of these. we are in a weird moment, right?

Because you guys are kind of like, all the things you've mentioned so far, it reminds me of what's happening with AI at the moment. Like, there are problems to solve right now, both, you know, big problems and consumer there are things that people want. There are products. There are things that people want their products and services to do that they're not currently doing. But instead, like, these absolute dickheads in the C-suite are just coming up with the craziest shit that no one wants.

AI being the ultimate example of that where it was like, okay, everyone would like a stable video platform to do their meetings on so they can do their work. And Microsoft's like, oh, cool, you want an AI, you want clippy on methamphetamines to just watch every screen and basically be a key logger

inside of Windows 11? Like what Microsoft has done recently to Windows is got to be in history books for business classes and taught for the rest of time that they had absolute market dominance and essentially got bored and so went all in on AI completely fucked their operating system

that everyone has to the point where everyone's now going like, okay, I guess I've got to learn Linux now driving them to their competition because they got bored and inserted this AI thing into every part of their operating system. No one wants this shit. Because I think again, it's like all those ideas are just, they all circle back to the

just greed aspect of it. They wouldn't have integrated, like all these companies wouldn't be integrating all this AI into shit if they weren't all super over leveraged in investing in AI because they were told like,

this is a fucking next wave, man. How does it make money? We'll put ads in it. Stop trying to make infinite money. People used to be called just making an amount making some profit. Great. Everyone was,

you know, we had shareholders getting a cut. Employees were getting paid. CEOs would get more than the employees. Okay. everybody's going home to their family. It's very nice. Everyone's now trying to chase an infinite money glitch. Yeah.

But unfortunately, like the biggest assholes who actually have the resources now to enact the craziest version of trying to get it done, making all these data centers. It's maddening. The money and power has been concentrated at the highest levels for so long that they've just completely, they're like, what if we can take the consumers out of it? They're mentally ill. They're so convinced that now, like, B, 100. Having that much money has rotted their brain.

You're not a human being anymore. You actually have become some kind of like zombified automaton who only chases like more and more wealth extraction, more and more profit at the cost of everything. It doesn't matter if the fucking earth you live on dies. Yeah. Because your end game is like line go up. And yeah, like I think for all those people, especially who are insulated with that kind of wealth, they don't they're not actually even living. the form of like day-to-day life that the majority of people on this planet do. And like, yeah.

We should be institutionalizing these people. And I am dead serious about this. Like we're worried about you guys. We're not trying to do a guillotine. We're worried about you. No, no, no, no. Oh, my God. You're behaving in a, in a very crazy way.

You're obsessed with numbers. You're obsessed with graphs. We're going to put you in a rubber room for six months and try and get you reattached to your humanity. because we're right now, you're a danger to yourself and society. So we've got to remove you for a little bit. So, yeah, don't worry, Jeff Bezos. We're not coming with a guillotine.

There'll be about 7,000 of us with folding chairs just right outside your door. You're going to come out and go, hey, Jeff, we're really worried about you. All of these people are really worried about you just want to sit down and talk. We're all here because we care about you, Jeff. And also, yeah, don't set the guillotine up yet. But anyway, let's see what you said. But when the, like, I feel like we've been on this path. for a long time. I first realized like how fucked it was when the pandemic happened, the economy

took a shit and Wall Street just stayed up, just magically stayed perfectly still. It's just like they've figured out how to insulate all that shit from what's actually happening in the world to people. Yeah. They can keep their money. They've figured out like the financial models and shit. And they call that economy. Yeah. And so now that has been. totally broken off from the actual consumers, the actual people who the economy is supposed to serve and like, you know, be a part, like you make a great product that people want, that helps people's lives. And they've, they don't, they've lost sight of that on purpose because they don't need it anymore because they've, they're just paying each other back and forth a bunch

of money. Could we all pitch something? Could we come up as an invention right now off the top of the dime of what people actually want? Oh, I mean, Yeah, let's do it. I'll give you one. I'll give you one right now, top of my head. Here we go. A consumer need that's not being met. Here's the thing.

It's the thing that attaches to new cars. So like, especially EVs that have got those huge screens and everything's like a touch control. Oh, my. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Put something on the steering wheel that turns it into buttons, tactile buttons that I can push to do the things that the touch screen. supposed to do so don't crash the car. You'll never guess who's already thought of that, mate. Oh, really? Bloody China. The Chinese car that we were talking about yesterday the Wall Street Journal reviewed was like, and they have this amazing thing

that magnetically attaches under the thing. So you actually have buttons instead of the fucking, yeah, I swear to God. They're in a magical world where they're still paying attention to consumers and making products for them. Yeah, yeah. That's what I'm saying.

I was saying this on yesterday's episode, dude, like we are in the village, the M-night Shyamalan movie, the village where they're like, don't fucking even, you don't need to learn about what's happening outside of here. It's all fucked up and spooky. It's so modern and futuristic.

Yeah. That bit couldn't have gone better. Wow. Yeah, perfect. Congratulations, China. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. Welcome to the A building.

I'm Hans Charles. I'm Minnick Lamouba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. had both been assassinated. And Black America was out of breaking point. Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's Al-Mermata,

Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history, Martin Luther King's senior and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. to be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people would die. In 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest.

It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind. Listen to the A building on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Seems like just yesterday that the Two Guys Five Rings podcast was in Paris for the Olympics. And now we're heading to Milan for the 26 Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games. I'm Bowen-Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers and we'll join athletes from 93 countries as Two Guys Five Rings hits the Italian Alps for the 26 Milan-Cortina Olympic Winter Games. Open your free IHart Radio app. Do we mention it's free?

Search Two Guys Five Rings. and listen now. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the on-purpose podcast. On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar. The thing I would say to my younger self is congratulations. You get to marry Priyanka Chopra Jonas. And also, you know, your daughter is incredible. That's beautiful, man.

Yeah, thank you. That's so beautiful. I can see that got you a little. Yeah, for sure. Our daughter, she came to the world under sort of very intense circumstances, which I'd not really talked about ever. Growing up on Disney in front of a million, how did that shape your sense of self?

I went blank, I hit a bad note, and then I couldn't kind of recover. And I built up this idea that music and being musician was my whole identity. I had to sort of relearn who I was if you took this thing away. Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?

Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

It's about engineering consciousness. Mind games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild.

Listen to Mind Games on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. We're back. And one thing that they did make for consumers, that the consumers are gobbling up. There's a little movie by the name of Malia. A new film, right? Is the subtitle, a new film? Yeah, that's right.

A new film on the poster. That's what it says on the. new film, Melania. Yeah. Melania. Gotta check in with the movie. Maybe Jack, that's our worst idea ever is. Just going once?

No, Jack. Three weeks straight. Yeah. Yeah. I got to see. I have to see if my brain is strong enough. And I think I'll find out tragically it's not. But I think a lot of the speculation that we thought of like around Melania, it seems to be

happening. Like first off, old white women to the rescue because the red states showed out for Melania, Texas, Florida, Tennessee, where the country's top grossing states also enlist Louisiana, Georgia, Arizona, Alabama, Oklahoma, Ohio, Nevada. According to Hollywood reporter, audiences were 72% female, 83% over 45, and 75% white. But we knew that. Now imagine she was white. Yeah, thank you. Time to kill.

I put a picture in here. There's a photo of, like, church ladies who all came in their, like, Melania-inspired gowns together. That is a fucking Jordan Peel movie, man. That is a terrifying. Yes. Yeah. It is so scary.

It's all these, like, just plastered on smile, like fake smiles being like, ha, ha, ha, we love this thing. We're all wearing our men. I mean, again, it's the, these are the same people that are boosting the Rotten Tomato scores because it still has something like a 99%. It's Gen Xx. boomer and white women. It has a 99% on the user score, which is driven by you have to confirm that you've bought a movie ticket.

So you're already fucked enough to buy a ticket to Melania. Of course, like people are probably buying the ticket just so they can leave reviews. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, God. But anyway, everyone knows by now that this entire production is a bribe, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or the, they made it. Yeah, a way to get Brett Ratner.

Do you, have you seen the speculation? There's that photo of Brett Ratner with Jeffrey Epstein and there's like a redacted face. And people are like, that's, people are like speculating. That's Melania Trump with Brett Ratner and Jeffrey Epstein. Because they're like, look at the hair color. Look at the bracelet. Again, this is internet stuff. But I was sort of like looking at what they were trying to get at.

But because that's also in the emails, again, the, the allegation that Jeffrey Epstein is the one that set Malania. up with Donald Trump. That was the, the access point for women for these, for all of these people. So the box office, right, a lot of you're like,

that's going to make a million. And they're like, it actually made eight. So God bless Melania for doing that. But some box office trackers seem to think that, and this can't be true, that Melania was actually the beneficiary

of bulk ticket buying. I don't, I don't know. This is from an article, quote, according to Brookman, who's like a box office tracker, there was, quote, some outside group ticket buying that helped elevate the film's performance. He caveat, he caveated that the documentation on these claims is sketchy because the industry never puts out information about bulk ticket buying. But industry sources say there were signs that blocks of tickets were

purchased for the weekend, then distributed to senior citizen homes, Republican activists, other interested parties for free to help boost audiences. And I think there seems to be like a lot of circumstance on anecdotal evidence, but there are all, there were also emails. That's all there's ever been in these stories, like, when Sound of Freedom was like number one to the box office and people would, like, go and be like, I, this is a picture of a sold-out theater, and there's like nobody in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But, like, you know, there were emails being sent by the very MAGA-friendly National Faith Advisory Board that was not so subtly telling all the white Christian ladies that they need to get it together and start buying tickets to not upset the Lord

Trumpova. Okay. And the messages, this is from like Midas touched at an investigation, the email had a link to purchase a, quote, group of tickets or set up a private screenings, and then the customer service email for the group sales page has an Amazon domain. I don't know how much that's really a smoking gun there, but there's an FAQ page that's even saying, like, hey, you can buy a whole theater out for typically around $1,500 to $3,000, and they're like, get quotes from your theater. So, I mean, this all feels like very much. They're trying to put it out there.

This is how you're going to support. Yeah, this is a political act to go see it. And there are enough people who still fuck with Trump that they're going to, like, be, be well. Like, they made her book a bestseller. Like, we knew that, we knew that was going to happen, even though nobody has read her book and been like. I need more.

Yeah. Very easy to just buy, yeah, like a surprisingly low amount of books. I can give you some stats from my part of the world on how money is done. I've been looking at that. Yeah, go ahead. In New Zealand, it did $688 on its opening day, which in American, it's like $20, I think, about $20, US, 688, New Zealand. And then in Australia, it did $988. to per screen actually.

So less than $1,000 per screen. Oh, that's the whole opening weekend, though. It's not great. It looks like the White House. They forgot that there's some other countries in the world where this was coming out and they forgot to get a bulk ticket buying there. What a fucking sci-op, man. Getting a director with like multiple, credible accusations of sexual impropriety

to create a piece of political propaganda. and mass buying tickets and giving them to rest homes. And then. Fuck, man. Like, that is beyond dystopia. That's funny. That's pretty funny. In the UK, it did 32,974 pounds sterling.

Per. For the whole first weekend. For the whole country. 32,000? Yeah. Yeah. Not great. Yeah.

Not great. Did you say 32,000? Yeah. Why? We've put everything in America. That's not good. That'd be like $25,000 for the whole opening. Sorry.

And how many miles is that? I think we've only got one on the show. Tim, such a pleasure having you, as always. I was going to ask if, I don't even want to ask, I don't even want to put it into the universe. that this could be a future worst idea of all time because it's too, like that would do damage.

It definitely occurred to me though, just talking about it now. Yeah. I think it, like, the secret to a good worst idea movie because normally what we do is we commit to watching a movie every week for a year, so we'd say 52 times, is it's got to kind of be like punishingly average,

as I think the best ones, because they're my psychologically damaging. Maybe this does fit the bill, though. I've heard it's just like incredibly, you know, bland. Yeah, that's just thing. It might not be enough to sink your teeth. There's nothing there. She's just like goes around and kind of looks, looks kind of like Melania Trump. Yeah, I mean, that sounds bad. So it sort of does fit the criteria. I shouldn't have been brought it on, Tim. I'm sorry. Listen, your heart's in the right place,

Jack. I actually think this is a, this is a contender for our modern times. This is our resistance. When you watch Malamia once a wait for a year. Yeah. What is the process like? for choosing that. Is there like a community that votes or whose input you take? It's just you and I is in the lab. Well, okay, going back to my goal setting is overrated thing and we need to vibe it more. At a live show, we were many, many years ago, I'm trying to, oh, I think this was maybe when we were ending sex in the city too.

And so we were backstage at a live show in America. I think this was in New York City. finishing our watch and then it ended and we had to be on stage in about 10 minutes to start our live show and Guy and I were like

okay what are we going to do for the next season because that was our final episode and we were like I don't know if we started Googling some names and stuff and we settled on we are your friends and so we did that in about six minutes

so it's to not overthink it just get something that you might have a vague awareness of but you haven't seen before that looks quite average and then just see where the wind blows you is there any chance of the music they were playing to hype the crowd up for you guys to come out,

like was a certain number of beats per second that like got your heart rate, like going at a certain level that influenced you into choosing we are your friends? Yeah, I think that's highly likely. They infected you. Tim, such a pleasure having you as always on the podcast. Where can people find you, follow you,

all that good stuff? They can find me at, I'm double checking my Instagram handle. I'm back on it. I'm back using it, though. I will say that. I'm pretty sure I'm Tim Bat, NZ. Congratulations.

But let me double check that. I'm putting content out because I'm about to do a whole bunch of New Zealand and Australia comedy festival shows for the first time in about three years because I've decided my kids are old enough for me to abandon them again, which is great. Yeah. So I'm out. I'm out for a bit. So you get to reap the rewards of me making content.

Nice. Timbat, NZ. Timbat NZ. 120 B2. A minute is the human heart. heart rate, their magic number. What the fuck are they talking? Dude, if you're moving, you're dancing, you're not going to have a whatever. I don't know, I'm done. Depends on how many espresso's you've had. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For me, I like, I like that shit going

at like 170. Anyway, go ahead. Is there a work of media, Tim, that you've been enjoying? Dude, so much so. There's a guy called Ben Jordan. I don't know if you've encountered him on anywhere, but he's like an amazing dude making videos. on YouTube. So he's a musician, and he kind of wasn't making enough money from that. So I think he might have become like a trader or something, because he's basically a total genius. He's got a very, like, technical mind. And he released, his videos are amazing. He's kind of risen to prominence recently because he discovered all of these vulnerabilities with these things called flock cameras, which are these, yeah, yeah, computer, sorry, like IP cameras that

police departments are using around the country in America, and they are wildly vulnerable to attack. You can basically just log into them and see what they're saying. It's not good. So he's on a bit of a mission to get them shut down, and predictably a lot of people with a lot of money are sort of coming out to attack him. He released a video in December.

So once again, Ben Jordan is the name you're looking for, and the video I'd recommend is gadgets. Gadgets for people who don't trust the guys. government. And it is a 40-minute video, which he features like four different products, devices, that you can use to sort of get yourself off the grid effectively. But he intersperses it with these brief history lessons in anarchy as like a social and political movement. And it is just chef's kiss, man. He rocks. So that is a plus recommendation from me. Gadgets for people who don't trust the government. And we'll link off to that video in the footnote.

Notes? Miles, where can people find you? And is there a work in media that you've been enjoying? Find me everywhere at Miles of Gray talking about 90-day fiancé, a 420-day fiancé, talking about football on Ain't It Footy with Jamel Johnson and Chris Martin. Check that out to the new show. Let's see. A work in media I like is also the song actually we're going to write out on.

It's this Irish rap group I stumbled upon on the internet. Is that in the cold open, too? It might have been in the cold open too. Yeah. I'm, dude, I can't stop talking about it. Got the car in the medieval times. Because this is from the rapper. The rapper is called courtesy, C-U-R-T-I-S-Y, but it's on an album with another, I guess,

the producer Rory Sweeney. I don't know who is who, but I believe the person rapping is courtesy, but I just want to give you a little taste because the swag is crazy and the beat is so simple, but it goes pretty hard. But here's just a little taste. In the medievalist, I just had a baby. a tree some million times. Drive a car in the medieval times. What the fuck even is that in the medieval times?

They don't know what cars even are in the medieval times. I'm going to pull up in a car in the medieval times. Anyway, this shit, it goes. So we'll write on that. Ride out on that, too. Okay. So I won't even ask at the end of the show. Well, I'll say it again.

I'll tell you again. Yeah, yeah. You can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien, Blue Sky, Jack Obey, be the number one, Instagram, Jack, O, underscore Brian. who knows on upscroll. It'll be something different and hard to say. Work of media I've been enjoying. I enjoyed a tweet from Tony Pesta on Twitter,

said James Harden telling Janus how to demand a trade. And then it's this clip from Goodwill Hunting. Does you know how easy this is for me? Do you have any fucking idea how easy this is a fucking joke? And I'm sorry you can't do this. I really am because I wouldn't have to fucking sit here from watch you fumble around and fuck it up. Oh, shit.

James Harden, one of the best players in the league of the past 20 years, just got traded again. It's like he just decides he's done with a team and like gets traded the next day. It's kind of impressive. I mean, I wonder what the strip clubs are like in Cleveland because, you know, that's a big drawfram. My friend is from Cleveland. He had his bachelor party in Cleveland. So we were all like, yo, this is big news for Christie's, the only strip club in Cleveland. Yeah, legendary strip club.

Yeah, it's like V-Day there. They're fucking just celebrating. And then I like to tweet from a drizzle at 36 Chambers who tweeted a little bit of prose from a romance novel. Her cheeks were flushed red

like Cartman's coat. Her eyes, a striking blue, like Cartman's beanie. Poetry's not dead. Poetry is still hit. You can find us on Twitter at Daily

Zykegeist, Twitter and Blue Sky at Daily Zykeyes. We're at The Daily Zykeist on Instagram. You can go to the description of this episode wherever you're listening to it and there at the bottom you will find the footnotes. Which is where we link off to the information we talked about in today's episode we also link off to a song that we think you might enjoy.

Yeah, baby. Miles, I'm not even gonna freaking ask. There is a song you think that people might enjoy y'all already know what it is. Fucking Rory Sweeney featuring courtesy and Ahmed and with love called Medieval times. Dude, pull up in the car in the medieval times.

Pull up in the limo doing Zimbo and medieval. Bro, he's talking about doing lean in the medieval times. It's just so out there. God bless him. So pull up in your car and the medieval times. Army of darkness coded. I love the movie where he goes back with a machine gun and death medieval times. I get his boomstick.

The Daily Zike guys is a production of IHeart Radio for more podcasts from My Heart Radio. Visit the IHart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That is going to do it for us this morning. We're back this afternoon to tell you what is trending, and we will talk to y'all then. Bye. The Daily Zite Guys is executive produced by Catherine Law. Co-produced by Bay Wang.

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