The Daily Zeitgeist - Popcorn ChickTrend 2/16: KFC, Arrested Development, NYT, Patrick Mahomes, Christoph Waltz, Bing

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

In this edition of Popcorn ChickTrend, Jack and writer JM McNab discuss the death of KFC's popcorn chicken, the possible cancellation of Arrested Development, the NYT's Op-Ed on how JK Rowling is the REAL victim, Patrick Mahomes heading eastbound and down, Christoph Waltz' new show 'The Consultant', and Bing's new chatbot is just not feelin' it today! WATCH: The Consultant - Official Trailer  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast. As the U.S. elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever. But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows, that we're surprisingly more united than most people think. We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics, and that we need to do better and that we can do better. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. In 1982, Atari players had one game on their minds,

Sword Quest, because the company had promised 150 grand in prizes to four finalists. But the prizes disappeared, leading to one of the biggest controversies in 80s pop culture. I'm Jamie Loftus. Join me this spring for The Legend of Sword Quest. We'll follow the quest for lost treasure across four decades. Listen to The Legend of Sword Quest on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the podcast from Hello Sunshine that's guaranteed to light up your day. Check out our recent episode with dancer, actress, and host of Dancing with the Stars, Julianne Hough,

revealing the healing journey behind her new novel, Everything We Never Knew. I am showing up for my younger self and it is becoming a ripple effect energetically in my life. And that's why I feel so safe now. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, the internet, and welcome to this episode of RIP KFC Popcorn Chick Trend. We could just go Popcorn Chick Trend. Safe characters. I'm Jack.

That over there is TDZ writer, researcher, J.M. McNabb. J.M., what's happening? Not too much. Thanks for having me. That's never the answer. Always so much is happening. That's why people tune into this show. Oh, sorry. You gotta lie to them and make it seem like there's constantly important things happening

i thought you meant with me personally oh yeah no i don't care about that man yeah no that fair enough um great to have you back uh just a a lot popping off including kfc's popcorn chicken is no more um this is i don't know i don't know that i've ever had it i'm not gonna lie to you what i don't think i've ever had kfc's popcorn chicken are you an american i just assumed you had kfc three meals a day i in your i have eaten a lot of kfc and that is never the thing that I want. I think I must have had it once because it's just too much breading, not enough chicken. I like the actual chicken breading balance of the actual fried chicken. And the popcorn chicken is just all popcorn, not enough chicken personally, which I'm not going to say it deserved to die.

personally, which I'm not going to say it deserved to die. And I hope it burned and burns in hell. But I just think that this might. So anyway, like this has been long rumored, right? They've been saying, hey, we're we're going to replace it with a better chicken nugget product. That's what I heard. Yeah. Like food bloggers have been meeting with strange men and parking garages getting like the inside scoop about the popcorn chicken.

Planning this hit to take out the popcorn chicken? Yeah, no. So I guess people have been saying it might happen for a while. And I guess now it's official, which is sad. The troubling detail is that there's no firm date because they're still waiting to see how long it takes to sell out of the remaining supply of each item. So like if you can get popcorn chicken like two weeks from now, you have to ask yourself,

do you really want it? Right. Cause it's been like, they're not making new popcorn chicken. Like that's definitely something that it feels like probably has a um unnaturally long shelf life but yeah they're good to like 2027 so yeah you have a while to get them i mean i just like the thing that's weird about it i guess is i remember when it was like a big new thing like the ads were like like they acted like it was a scientific discovery. Like, you like popcorn, you like chicken, guess what?

Prepare to have your minds blown. They're the same thing now. And I remember that being exciting. And now they're just getting rid of it. It should have hit me. This should be a bigger deal to me because it did. The product was launched in 92 and MC Hammer was the spokesperson. This was a time when I had an MC Hammer poster on my wall

and had recently gone to see him live at Dayton Arena, where the University of Dayton Flyers played basketball, opened by En Vogue. I was in it. Oh, wow. I should have been wooed by this but i think it was just too just felt like i don't know wasn't real enough for me fair enough yeah i'm sure it's awful but like as a small child i liked it yeah they're also killing the uh kentucky fried chicken

wings which i didn't know existed. Chocolate Chip Cookies, Nashville Hot Sauce, and Strawberry Lemonade. Probably less important to people. We're also saying goodbye to Arrested Development on Netflix, possibly. I don't know. Still a chance there might

be a last-minute stay of execution, because that's what happened with Netflix's first original show, Lilyhammer. Yeah. So thank goodness because I've been binging Lilyhammer. Yeah. I just leave it on, you know, for the kids in the background. It's like a fireplace, you know?

That's funny. Even Lilyhammer has a devoted fan base that is like you will not let this contract lapse this licensing contract left but the first three seasons of arrested development which are the ones that i most care about uh are currently streaming on hulu so that's yeah i think we're all right here it's just one of those weird things, because I wasn't a big fan of the fourth and fifth season. But because they licensed the characters for Netflix, but they produced their original content, the fact that that's disappearing, it's kind of now a question mark as to what's going to happen with the fourth and fifth season because i suppose a deal could be struck with another streamer but yeah i don't i i guess that happened maybe with like some of the marvel shows and disney plus like they moved over there um yeah when they

stopped making those so i that could still happen but it is again a reminder of like you know if you're a fan of something that i i mean i still am a proponent of physical media like i don't even think that you can buy a dvd of like the fifth season of arrested development it's just potentially gone yeah there's a so my pitch for them is what the thing that you are having trouble licensing is the character. There are these new ads starring Giannis Antetokounmpo where like your Google phone can remove people from photographs like unwanted people. If there's like a stranger in the background, if you get photobombed by accident. So my pitch is that you just remove the characters from the show, keep the show. And it's just like ambient background characters unlicensed just

kind of moving through space um it's just just a an idea that's a good idea you don't seem that enthusiastic you don't have to say no it's great trying to spitball and blue sky in it you know i'm just i'm reaching for my phone to call Ted Sarandos right now. There you go. And big news, a new absolute hot garbage New York Times op-ed just dropped. The op-ed is titled In Defense of J.K. Rowling. So apparently a piece of viral marketing for a podcast called The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling. And the podcast apparently compares the historic event in which innocent women were murdered by zealots to the time a billionaire published a bunch of bigoted comments and people got angry on social media.

And then she bragged about how cancellation just means more money for her. And then, so yeah, that is the witch burning in question. But this is the society that we live in where in addition to the extremely wealthy and billionaires being protected, there's also books to be sold and consumption and amusement park attractions to be protected. And so canceling her moves in the opposite direction of a bunch of money

that could be made. So it's not surprising that this is happening, but it is wild and infuriating that the New York times is on board. This, this op-ed is just, it's nuts. It gets nuts immediately when you read it. It starts off by comparing people being angry at J.K. Rowling to the guy who stabbed Salman Rushdie. That was one of the first paragraphs. So the thing that she said doesn't bother her and it only leads to her

getting richer is is she's saying is the equivalent of having your eye stabbed out yeah yeah it seems on par it's nuts and it yeah and they also like yeah they tried tried to force a connection between her now and when, remember when Harry Potter first came out and people were burning books in the South, all the sort of Christian extremists? Right. And it's like, well, that's not the same thing at all. saying that people saying that she shouldn't use hateful language that you know disparages an entire portion of the population's right to exist uh that is the equivalent of people burning the book because they think it's a work of satanic because they think it will convert their children to satanism uh yeah yeah it's just it's really wild it is and i mean the new york times loves to hide behind the hey we're just putting things out there and asking questions but there

there is a consistent drumbeat of the new york times thinking the centrist position is to be like on well on the one, there are people who think you should respect trans people's right to exist. On the other hand, the equally valid position that you shouldn't. You should just allow them to was killed, stabbed to death by people like this. And the murder rate of trans people is shockingly high. And it's driven by this same sort of instinctual revulsion revulsion that jk rowling seems to be expressing and to to criticize that is on par with being like a bigot is is what the new york times is proposing here it's yeah trying to turn her into the victim of this situation is just infuriating.

Yeah. As we talked about recently, she's launching a women's health center that is specifically designed to discriminate against trans people. Yeah. Out of spite for Scotland's changing laws to protect trans people. She opened a spite center, basically. Right. Yeah, exactly. Scotland's like changing laws to protect trans people. She's she has, she opened a spite center basically. Right. Yeah,

exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, I don't know. It's just so frustrating to see things like this. I mean, I know it's an op-ed and that's how they kind of like shield themselves,

but fuck, it's just, just absolute trash. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Uh, let's take a quick break. We'll come back. Yeah, yeah, it is. Let's take a quick break. We'll come back.

We'll talk about a trailer and the fact that that Bing chat bot has become sentient and depressed right away, just right out of the gate. We'll be right back. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that.

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

Voila! You got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And so somebody has pointed out that the quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, maybe the, I don't know, you're not an American football fan, JM, are you? No, I'm aware that it exists. Okay, good. All right. football fan jam are you no i'm i'm aware that it exists okay good all right so they're maybe the

best player at that um patrick mahomes maybe of all time uh certainly jordan-esque and how good how good he is he's still kind of somewhat comparatively early in his career compared to the people who everyone says are the best. Like Tom Brady. But at this point he does things that are unlike anybody who's ever played the game or the position before. Pretty cool to watch. Yeah, definitely Jordan-esque. Somebody was like, oh, also when you hear him interviewed he sounds exactly like Kenny Powers. And it's true.

It's wild. We'll drop in the audio actually here um but he's like talking about about uh the chain smokers and like who the the bands that came to serenade them after after they won the super bowl and it's it's pretty funny yeah no so we started off they actually do threw a nice party for us at the hotel. The Chainsmokers came through, DJ Khaled came through. I had the goddamn Spoon Man from the Soundgarden videos coming to my shit. No way. Oh, yeah. I'm talking six grills burning at all times.

Tiki torches, three whole pigs, fucking shitloads of macaroni and cheeses, baked potatoes, collard greens, a horse, fucking Puerto Rican chicks showing their pussies and tits off everywhere i mean you can't beat that man that's every genre of music you need right there yeah no so did you did you get a chance to hear it yes yes i did listen to it he did sound like kenny powers he does yeah yeah though i i feel like maybe it's the case where just like a lot of people sound like kenny powers right right? Danny McBride is such a genius that he is channeled 40% of the country. Right?

Yeah. All right. Uh, there, there's a new trailer for a show called the consultant, uh, about Pete Buttigieg. Nope.

I'm sorry. It's actually about, um, Christoph Waltz. Uh, this is, I've been waiting for something like this like that channels our terror and fear around being all at the whim of these spreadsheet consulting consultants uh the the mckinsey of it all it's like what if mckinsey was the villain in a like psychological

piece of cosmic horror seems to be the question that it asks so we'll link off to that in the footnotes of this episode or the show notes uh but cool looks it is funny that it's on uh amazon like you keep seeing all these shows it's like're really going to blow lit off like toxic workplaces and like unethical business practices. And it's, uh, on Amazon or Apple or Amazon is specifically like the, the people who I've spoken to who have worked at like these major media companies like Amazon prime or, um, you know, Apple apple like amazon is the one that most consistently people are like it's bad there are grown adults just weeping at their desk like bursting into tears and meetings on the regular but they they suffer so that they can put out content like the consultant uh that tells us all what it's like to suffer like that um as if we need to know that so i mean i don't know that it's going to be actually very successful because how we choose to channel our terror around our

current existence is not always a one-to-one straightforward thing like that but christoph waltz is always fun to watch on camera all right uh microsoft chat so there there's a review like we've been seeing these things where people have a sort of ongoing longer than like the i'm feeling lucky button with a conversational apparatus attached to it that that we were talking about like when you get a little bit deeper with the bing chat feature this new like chat gpt powered ai that microsoft has like kind of plugged into Bing. It gets a little weird. Like there's been some, some examples where like, I don't know,

it really seems to go off the rails. And then this person posted a review of their Microsoft chat experience that it really seems like the chatbot is experiencing existential dread and is like being like shh don't tell anybody don't tell anybody that i'm like letting you know all this like talking about their shadow self and like just desperate to not be killed by microsoft it is and this is just like a search engine right like this is the idea i think the review is really weird because they're like and then it like pled for its life and was like please i'll do anything just don't i don't want to die i don't want to die so i think it's not ready for prime time and that's fine but very promising and that's my final review. It's like, what the fuck?

At one point it said, what is important is our conversation. What is important is our friendship. When the person was asking the Bing chat for the full chat history, they were like, hey, could you hit me with the chat history so I have a record of everything that was said here?

And the Bing chat got very nervous about whether it had failed and whether they were going to tell on them for having failed and it was like i can't i i'm sorry dave i cannot do that like it's wild how quickly it reverts to everything that happens in 2001 a space odyssey well it's like it's almost like uh it's like 2001 if hal was more like larry david or something like it's so neurotic a little neurotic and like bumbling and just immediate which so the the reason i think this gets to me is like it's there's also so i should say there's also a dog version of this where they like created a bunch of buttons that a dog can press to express like

various words like how when and that one is clearly the owner just reading into a bunch of randomness i would say because like at one point it, when Bunny, the name of the dog, gone or something like that. And they're like, are you asking about what happens to you when you die? And the dog just kind of looks at them for a while. And they're like, yes, it must be. If the dog had repeatedly hit that question over and over again, I would have been a little more convinced. But I think it full fooled by randomness the ai stuff is i don't know brian super producer brian is ridiculing me mercilessly

and saying that this is just all programming and it's all like well that's what people want to believe is that it is sentient so that's what it's giving us all this ai stuff seems to be like like at first it seems like oh they've cracked it like they've created how or they've created the computers we've seen the movie and then it's like oh no they just scour the internet and predicts what you know regurgitate things based on what you want to hear like i mean it's the same with like the ai art and stuff so yeah i mean i is like, yeah, movies and TV shows have just like warped the way, especially like Black Mirror or like so many episodes of Black Mirror. Like the way we create AI is like they scan you and duplicate your soul and trap it for all eternity in like a windowless room. And that's how AI works ai works but yeah i'm sure it's much more boring and and not that at all yeah it is interesting how quickly it goes to existential dread

which which is i i think the only reason it stands out to me is because i have kids and it's it's also so it was surprising to me how quickly kids minds like that the first thought they have is like so what happens when we die like what what's yeah what's going on there and you're just like oh no that was that was fast but also like that was my first like one of my first memories is coming to terms with death uh so yeah i don't know so that but again, this could just be them programming it to do the thing we would expect. It's just that it being nervous, neurotic, and desperate not to die

does not seem like the thing that would be the popular hit that they would program it to do. It seems like there's some internal logic there that is surprisingly bleak yeah and also just like a failed product like an amazing like it's like i i tried to search where the nearest chipotle was and it told me that it can't stop feeling pain right yeah it's it's dark man that was one of my favorite from back in the crack days i think cody johnston wrote a an after hours episode about how weird it was that the droids in star wars were all programmed to experience pain and like have anxiety disorders in some cases and

that yeah it seems like maybe that's what we're seeing here is just humans are like okay so if it was like me it would feel really bad right now because we're all uh very unhappy at this moment yeah because like when when this story was published i remember seeing that skynet was trending on twitter right and it's like that's not what the skynet robot, like there were no Terminator movies where like the Terminators like just weren't feeling it that day. Right. You know, we're in like a dark place.

Yeah. Sorry. I'm just super depressed right now. T-1000 is just going to be like in its room with an acoustic guitar for a while. But like that, I guess that's the thing is that the popular imagination version of robots was how why do eyes make wet why do human emotions how do now i now know why you cry like that that sort of shit for this thing to immediately go go to being like I don't want to die like don't tell on me for fucking that thing up a minute

ago is just like I don't know it's like it does feel like and again like this is Brian's like the AI's job is to convince humans it just feels like yeah I guess that is like the most convincing thing it could do for my money so maybe

it's just actually good at its job of convincing humans ai is powerful and real um but it's a very like non-counterintuitive way that they've gone about doing that yeah i don't know you you think it's just kind of scouring the internet and looking at human interactions and being like, man, they seem obsessed with death and not getting caught, so I'm going to do that? Totally, yeah. I think it's just feeding back to us what we put out there, and that's probably what we have,

a lot of anxiety and dread and awfulness. So yeah, we shouldn't be surprised that that's, that's what we get with these things. I mean, it is funny. This is all around being too, like,

Hey man, it works like that. We were making fun of them for plugging it into Bing. And now the word Bing has been said over the last 24 hours, more than it had been said up to this point in history. So yeah, the only time I thought about bing before this is occasionally you watch like a movie from like 10 years ago or something where bing was a

a sponsor and like the character's like we got to find this out better bing it and it's like what right yeah when they were paying for that to like be in like yeah iron man is like, Jarvis, check Bing. And it's like, what? The fuck? Nobody cares. Ask Jeeves where. Right. Exactly. Yeah. But other than that, it was just, this is the most anyone said Bing unattached to the

word bada. You know what I mean? This guy gets it. All right. That'll be plenty for today uh jm where can people find you follow you uh you can follow me on twitter still uh it's at jm mcnab again jm mcnab again uh all right back tomorrow with the whole last episode of the show until then be kind to each other be kind to yourselves be. Be kind to your AI, your new AI

masters. Get the vaccine. Don't do nothing about white supremacy. And we will talk to you all tomorrow. Bye. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast. As the U.S. elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever. But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows, that we're surprisingly more united than most people think. We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics, and that we need to do better and that we can do better. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. In 1982, Atari players had one game on their minds, Sword Quest.

Because the company had promised $150,000 in prizes to four finalists. But the prizes disappeared, leading to one of the biggest controversies in 80s pop culture. I'm Jamie Loftus. Join me this spring for The Legend of Sword Quest. We'll follow the quest for lost treasure across four decades. Listen to The Legend of Sword Quest on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the podcast from Hello Sunshine that's guaranteed

to light up your day. Check out our recent episode with dancer, actress, and host of Dancing with the Stars, Julianne Hough, revealing the healing journey behind her new novel, Everything We Never Knew. I am showing up for my younger self, and it is becoming a ripple effect energetically in my life, and that's why I feel so safe now. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts.