The Daily Zeitgeist - Racist Ads, Gun Buybacks And Why Engineers Should Scare You 10.10.17

Episode Date: October 10, 2017

In episode two, Jack & Miles, along with special guest comedian Jamie Loftus, discuss problematic soap ads, Russian managed YouTube accounts, gun buybacks, gun silencers for millennials, SNL's 'it's a New York thing" excuse & more. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. woman had done before, tried to assassinate the President of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson. 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nicknamed Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer, this season on the new podcast, Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content

by subscribing to iHeart True Crime Plus only on Apple Podcasts. Hey, I'm Bruce Bozzi. On my podcast, Table for Two, we have unforgettable lunch after unforgettable lunch with the best guests you could possibly ask for. People like Matt Bomer, Emma Roberts, and Colin Jost. Did you say a Caesar salad with lobster?

Yeah. Whoa. Our second season is airing right now, so you can catch up on our conversations that are intimate and often hilarious. Listen to Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Renee Stubbs, and I'm obsessed with sports, especially tennis. Tune into my podcast each week to hear me and my friends in the community Get your podcast. can win a grand slam. Listen to the Renee Stubbs Tennis Podcast every Monday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Elf Beauty,

founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. You rat soup eating honky motherfucker. Hello, the internet, and welcome to the Daily Zeitgeist for Tuesday, October 9th, 2017. My name is Jack O'Brien. It's October 10th. I'm joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray. Thank you. Contrary to popular belief, I am not a Russian-backed propaganda account, so just want to set the record straight on that.

Yeah. We did deep background on that. It is true. And we are joined in our third seat by the hilarious jamie loftus how are you jamie hello i'm good good uh all right so our quick getting to know you session uh what is uh the strangest thing in your search history oh uh recently is twerking mummy twerking mummy yeah it's i already knew what it was but i wanted to see if there were videos of it. It's like this novelty toy at CVS right now, with a

little mummy, and it plays a song, and then his butt shakes and he smiles, and he wears sunglasses. I've come so close to buying... I was in CVS last week, literally buying Plan B. I'm like, I can't get Plan B and Twerking Mummy and have that be the purchase. Yeah, that would look crazy.

I've got yeah like it would it would imply that the two were related in some way but uh i do want to i'm gonna wait to like november 1st i'm gonna be at cvs first thing i'm gonna get twerking mummy 75 discount yeah 21st century big mouth billy bass or whatever right kind of fish that sang on the wall why has everything got to like like sort of reinforce these stereotypes, right? Like, Big Mouth Billy Bass is sort of like a country singing fisherman. Sorry, like, mummies are, like, African and they're twerking. Twerking mummies.

You know what I'm saying? Oh, I hadn't thought about that part. Kind of problematic for me. I'm going to pass on that one. Wow. Well, I'm still going to get twerking mummy. Unfortunately. No, of course you should.

You should. I have to. I won't buy it at full price. I don't know what that means. That probably says more about me than it says anything about twerking mummy. No, that makes you should. You should. I have to. I won't buy it at full price. I don't know what that means. That probably says more about me than it says anything about working money. No, that makes you woke. All right. One overrated thing, one underrated thing, Jamie.

Overrated. Blade Runner slash Harrison Ford. Ooh. I know. Every man hates me. Yeah, I did actually see that the demographic breakdown of the, you know, I thought they were saying it was like, didn't do well. It made $30 million, which I think is a lot

for a Blade Runner sequel. But their break even is like 170 or something they got to hit. It's brutal. But yeah, it was like 78% male. You look at the poster, you're like there's no way this movie passes the Bechdel test. There's no way this movie is progressive for

literally anyone. But I mean, I especially dislike the first Blade Runner movie and all Harrison Ford characters, like most of his popular characters. I watched this really cool video essay recently about how he's just like really good at playing predatory characters. There's like you can make a 20 minute montage of like, Han Solo, Indiana Jones, whatever the guy in Blade Runner's name is. Steve? Who knows? Steve Blade Runner.

I think it's Blade. There's Mr. Blade. Like, making unwanted advances on women and having it be like, look at this cool guy. Like,

there's a rape scene in Blade Runner. Yeah. Scored to saxophone music. You're just like, this is, this is gross um yeah the han solo uh han solo predator princess leia seduction scene we'll call it is just her

being like i don't want to kiss you and him like pressing her up against a wall yeah you can't go anywhere there's like she says no 11 times before and uh and then at the end of Indiana Jones where one of the female leads is like, I'm actually done with this. I'm going to go and get on a bus and go somewhere else. And then he's like, no way, bitch. And then he ropes her, literally ropes her, pulls her back to him and starts making out with her. And everyone's like, woohoo, he got her.

She's kidnapped. And't realize how much harrison ford has messed me up in my relationships that's the end of the movie it's like oh yeah i'm gonna capture you with a rope and now you're my girlfriend not that i'm roping people in but no the thing i'm trying to say is like the first time like someone tells me they love me like he taught me you don't have to say i love you back because she's like i love you he's like i know i know i'm just like now i'm like he's like i love you maz i'm like i'm blaming harrison ford for my intimacy issues harrison ford like i don't i don't know anything about his personal life but toxic male icon not a not a fan right okay underrated underrated the four for four special at wendy's what is the 4 for 4 special at Wendy's?

Dude, best fast food deal in the game right now. I don't know. Because I used to be a big advocate of the McPick 2 for $2.50, which is you can get two McChickens and you're like, well, there's rules. But the 4 for 4 at Wendy's, you get a junior bacon cheeseburger, you get small nuggets, you get small fries, and you get a medium drink. It's a great deal. I had it just yesterday.

How many times have you had it this week? Or in the last two weeks? I don't live close enough to a Wendy's. Oh, so it's like a treat. It's a treat. I was in the right area, and then my friend and I parked, and we're like, we can't wait to get to a second location. We have to eat it in the parking lot.

So we ate it in the parking lot. We're staring at a billboard for Young Sheldon. It was like the darkest timeline, but it was great. It was a great deal. Best way to use $4. And just to set the record straight, you are not sponsored by Wendy's in any way. This is you coming out as an independent consumer.

I'm currently dressed in a Wendy's. I didn't want to call that out, but yeah. No, no, no, no. I just love food that's bad. I just love food that's bad. I will openly acknowledge it's bad. I eat the sushi from 7-Eleven, and it's bad. But I love it. You should start a podcast about your crazy eating behavior.

About how I'm dying. About your garbage can of a stomach. Goat stomach. James also wearing a Chuck E. Cheese t-shirt with an evolution of the Chuck E. Cheese mascot. All right, guys. Let's get into our two sort of top stories. So there's this dove ad that is at best confusing, but it seems really like wildly, aggressively racist. boldly, aggressively racist. If you haven't seen it, I've heard that it's a video, but the versions of it that I've seen so far are, it's like a four panel, four pictures. First picture is a black

woman, then wearing a brown shirt, the black one. In the second picture, she's like taking her shirt off. In the third picture, it's the shirt is like off and it's revealing a white body and then the final picture it's like ah it was a white person underneath the black person all along there's no video available of it though i haven't seen it was taken down but they are saying that it actually came from a three second video clip okay and i think the last level was her becoming another non-caucasian okay okay but light skinned my question female yeah at the last level was her becoming another non-Caucasian. Okay, okay. But light-skinned. That was my question.

Female, yeah, at the end. I was like, is that the only time? Because it would be extra disturbing if that's the only time that happens. But I was like, is it a weird infinite? I don't know. Right. Like the black and white video in Michael Jackson's black and white video. But that was great.

I mean, you could shake your hair out and turn into anything you wanted. A Jamaican guy. Right. So the white woman does turn into a non-white person? This is her final form, as we say in the Pokemon community. Got it. It is still like to have a black woman in brown turn into a white woman in white is problematic for like when you look back at soap ads throughout the early 20th century and late 19th century, you have like ads where a black baby is washed and turns out to be white underneath you.

And then there's also just like if you look at soap ads in India, India has a whole bunch of things for like skin lightening. And there's been a controversy with L'Oreal when they brought Beyonce on as like their spokesmodel. They really whitened her up. Like the picture of her doesn't really look like Beyonce. No. Like a white woman. doesn't really look like Beyonce. No. It's like a white woman.

So yeah, it's just, it's part of a sort of ongoing conversation with the beauty ads, or with the beauty industry. And Dove in particular has this lotion. It's called Dove Summer Glow Nourishing Lotion. And when you look on the bottle at who it's for, it says normal to dark skin. Why can't they just say anyone can use this? Right. And it's especially from Dove who they're like constantly giving themselves, like patting themselves on the back for how open and accepting they are of all women.

Like that's just especially like, come on. You know, if you're touting yourself as the company that gets it, then actually attempt to get it. Right. Well, it also just shows you like what's going on in these ad agencies where they're like putting it together. Like, yep, that looks good to me. Let's go with it. Like, no, you think someone might have spoken up to be like, hey, is it a little weird that the black woman transforms to a white woman? And then, OK, well, anyway, I guess we'll just we'll air that.

Yeah. And Dove really I mean, there's something even pretty obnoxious about their like woke ads when they're trying to be woke and they're like beauty is only skin deep or whatever. Because ultimately they're trying to sell you soap. And, you know, it's still I don't know. And it's the same thing with always. And they're like, fight like a girl thing where it's like, I see. Yeah, I don't know. Right. Commodified, like, commodified.

Yeah. Yeah. Piggybacking on feminism in order to sell stuff. Yeah, there was this really dark Dove ad where they had women describe what they thought they looked like to a sketch artist. A sketch artist. And then the drawings were ugly. And then they were like, now look what you actually look like or something. And the women were like, oh, my gosh, I really do have a horrible self-image. Anyways, buy soap.

What? To get that dirty feeling away. A another unsuccessful marketing campaign going on right now is where I guess it was more going on in 2016. So as all these different tendrils of Russia's pro-Trump, anti-Hillary marketing campaign are being revealed from the 2016 election, I mean, Facebook has just revealed some. I think even Yahoo was getting some spend, which is crazy. Google Ads got a big spend, and we have this YouTube campaign. So, Myles, can you explain what was going on? Yeah, so in the Daily Beast, they kind of confirmed what some people looking at Russian managed accounts were kind of talking about there was a youtube page and a facebook page for williams and calvin uh who are these youtube stars and diehard donald trump supporters and crazy anti hillary uh you know rhetoric spitters um that claim they're from atlanta um but as the investigation

became a little more uh solidified and they looked into it it turns out that this was actually a russian backed propaganda account um and i mean i guess we can just play a clip they're saying solidified and they looked into it, it turns out that this was actually a Russian backed propaganda account. And I mean, I guess we can just play a clip. They're saying they're from Atlanta. Yeah. So just black dudes from Atlanta, according to them, just kind of talking U.S. politics. Just two brothers from Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia.

They're wearing a beanie that says Vogue on it. Right. Yeah. Just to give you a kind of a sample of what they were kind of talking about on this account. Hi, it's your boy, Georgia. They're wearing a beanie that says Vogue on it. Right. Yeah, just to give you a kind of a sample of what they were kind of talking about on this account. Hi, it's your boy, Karen. Today is going to be one of the worst elections in America. And we have one of the worst candidates. And the candidate is Hillary Clinton.

Most of the black people in America think that Hillary is the one who is going to protect them. And Hillary is the one who is going to fight for them. But hell no. Hillary Clinton is one of the deadliest liar all she wants is power all she wants is to rule over america she doesn't care about anyone hillary is being found by the muslim and she is going to stand for the muslim you know this woman is very very deadly and she's evil she's a old witch she's an old witch yeah uh so turns out uh i mean again just a couple guys from atlanta just a couple guys from atlanta nigeria uh you know it's and what's funny is like on their like people found their other accounts like they're they're saying they're from nigeria uh but yes this is another example i guess i mean this is kind of a big thing

because now it's gone from just sort of like faceless accounts to like real life actors trying to push this like really aggressive anti Hillary pro Trump agenda. It's funny because they don't mention Trump because the way they describe Hillary could be so easily applied to him, too, of like he just wants to own the world he doesn't care about anyone i'm like oh isn't that you know well they do like they do big trump they do big up trump and they're like he can't be racist because he's a businessman and like that was like oh okay cool c dove yeah right uh so yeah this is uh i again i mean it sort of shows like how deep this uh this russia influence campaign goes i mean but to be fair like nobody was really checking for this. Like this was definitely, I think, kind of a goose egg for Russia. But it just shows you like, yeah, how far they're willing to go, even prop up like fake

ass YouTube accounts with like, you know, nobody, nobody. I don't know anyone who would probably watch that and was like, oh, shit, the old weech. Right. anyone who would probably watch that and was like, oh, shit, the old weech. Right. Yeah. I feel like they tried 30 different things and a handful of them worked right. Like there wasn't there a Facebook group that was actually successful.

No. Yeah, exactly. I mean, like they they've they've had a few successes. Obviously, they had that blacktivist account that had more followers on Facebook than the legit Black Lives Matter account where they were just kind of stoking the flames of racial tension. So, yeah. But, again, even with that account, there were some things that tipped you off that this might not be Americans behind it. And just like with this account, I mean,

one of the things they thought that Baton Rouge was in L.A., like as in Los Angeles. Wait, is that not true? Wait a second. I've been telling people things. Who knows? They're probably getting a script and they're seeing Baton Rouge like Louisiana because Louisiana is LA on there and they're like in LA rather than like.

This neighborhood Baton Rouge. Yeah, in Louisiana. And then they call it LeBron James, the best basket player of the year. So a couple of things, you know, don't quite check out. But, you know, Williams and Calvin. But what's crazy is their account was up until I think Monday morning and then it finally got taken down like after this article broke. So Google YouTube shout out to you guys for not being on your shit. And they've specifically said we're taking this down because it's a Russian-backed propaganda. Well, when you go to their articles, it says, like, it's been, you know, their account has been associated with, like, one who violated their terms of service.

Got it. So it's been terminated. I don't know who terminated it, but that's probably because I think it was a little bit embarrassing for YouTube to now have this kind of content on there. But, I mean, it's YouTube. There's a bunch of shitty content. Right. Yeah. It definitely wasn't for being shitty.

There's a screenshot of her as the Wicked Witch of the West. Yeah. Also like the clip art they use in their videos as B-roll is like so pretty rough. Yeah. Like first grade, like using like Sony Vegas, like editing software. Like it's, it's pretty bush league. But it's the same messaging that you see in the more sophisticated campaigns just filtered through.

Yeah. A second grader, uh, whoever they had in charge of this, but yeah, it's all about making Hillary look bad, uh, to the black community, trying to suppress, uh, voter turnout on the day of the election. And clearly like Russia doesn't understand like black culture. Cause I mean, like they were trying to basically like blame like, trying to say Obama's legacy was police brutality. Okay, come on now. I don't know where you got that.

Right. But, again, you know, nice try, Russia. They're also not a very effective use of misogyny either. No. Yeah. You're going to want to step up your misogyny game. What, calling her an old witch? Yeah.

Like, that's a few waves behind. It was a rough translation from a Russian script. Yeah. All right, we're going to go to a quick break. And when we come back, we are going to get into

our main story about the Las Vegas shooting. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the

plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. wherever you get your podcasts.

This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today.

And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer.

This is Rip Current, available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not.

What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people.

There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, former Packers star Kabir Bajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation. KGB explaining what he

believes led to the arrest of his friends at a children's Christmas play. A family man, 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 from what I think was probably an ad. So our main story that we wanted to talk about is the shooting in Las Vegas and just sort of the state of that story at this point. just sort of the state of that story at this point. I was traveling last week and found myself personally triggered by old, fat white men. I was nervous around them and also kind of hostile towards them, which obviously isn't fair. But yeah, that's where I'm personally at. I mean, not a great year for big, fat, old white guys.

Yeah, it's been a tough year. What's up, Weinstein? The media's main focus right now seems to be a sort of desperate, visceral need to find a motive. They're just like, wow, we can't figure out why this guy did this.

And, like, they need to attach this to some narrative. When you look back at our history of mass shootings, we don't even usually get the motive right. Like, in retrospect, Columbine, I think everybody thinks it was about the two guys were nerds who are getting revenge on jocks who picked on them. And I think it like sparked this whole anti-bullying movement. And that wasn't true at all. They weren't like bullied. They one of the guys was just a genuine like psychopath who just wanted to

hurt and kill people and then the other one was just sort of peer pressured into it um the uh austin tower gunner uh i think people generally refer to that as like being a guy who just like snapped under a bunch of pressure right um but he was – that story is actually really interesting, and I'm curious if this is what we're going to find about the Vegas one. So he was just a normal guy. He had a military background, which is I think how he had access to guns. But he suddenly out of the blue started – he was just overtaken by this urge to hurt and kill people. And he would say to his wife and the people around him, he was like, I don't know why.

I just really want to hurt and kill people. And he talked to a therapist, and the therapist was trying to help him. And even when he went to shoot all these people, he left a note being like, Hey, could you please look at my brain to figure out like why I'm doing this? Right. And they ended up finding a huge tumor that was like affecting the area that causes aggression in human beings. Um, but yeah, we, we generally get that story wrong and claim that it was, like, about some dude who was, like, really tightly wound. Yeah, angry at students or something. Right.

Yeah. This one, the narrative seems to be we don't know what the narrative is. Right. Which kind of causes people to, like, freak out a little. I was like reading this old story from 2014 in Pacific Standard about how the human brain responds to narrative. And it's just like, you know, our instinct to want to find a narrative or any sort of rationale now, especially there's like a physical response and you feel a little bit better even if it's like you know just receiving an answer why for something just automatically physiologically makes you feel better and not getting that sort of narrative rationale is a negative physical response yeah right well especially with something so horrible like a

mass shooting it's so hard for people to process like why, like, especially with this, like it's so horrific. I mean, even on my Facebook, I'm seeing people like clinging to some really out there conspiratorial shit. I think just for that need to sort of make sense of why someone would do something like this. And like there are people I guess it's easier for them to think that it's like a Manchurian candidate type situation or this guy was like, you know, some kind of puppet of like the state to carry something out to distract the public. So, yeah, we're definitely I think the thirst, the need to find like a reason to explain all of this is very, very intense. And it's it seems like we're just kind of coming up empty. very intense. And it's it seems like we're just kind of coming up empty. And it's kind of dangerous because like the simpler the rationale, the easier it will be for like people to latch onto it. Like the like the Columbine narrative of like, oh, losers who didn't fit in where the real answer is so much more complicated and kind of and scarier. So everybody, when they were hoping to find out what the motive was, there was this note that you could see in a photograph of the crime scene. And scarier. to like arc the bullets to specifically hit the people he ended up hitting.

And I read that in the context of an article about how he was like a real numbers guy, which made me think back to I read a Princeton study that found that the only really predictive detail of personalities of like who is going to become a terrorist or a mass murderer is that they're engineers. Engineers are represented nine times as much as you would expect based on chance. Is that just because they're looking for order in chaos or like what is what is the rationale is there any like theory behind that i'm looking for a narrative here yeah i so i spent a long time thinking about this and couldn't come up with anything and then i finally read uh a explanation and it was what you just came up with on the fly so So that's really impressive. But yeah, that engineering, like people who are numbers people strive for specific clean cut answers.

And when they don't get them in reality, it like bothers them and they try and sort of make reality conform to the clear cut rules that they have in their mind. Because there's no ambiguity with math. Right. Like it is what it is. Right. You can't mind. Because there's no ambiguity with math. Right. Like, it is what it is. Right. You can't sort of, unless you're Terrence Howard. Right.

Who has his own form of mathematics, Google Terriology, guys, if you don't believe me. Just to sum that up, I think he believes that one times one isn't actually one. Right. But it's two. No, but think about it, though. Yeah. That's sort of interesting to think that people with, I guess, that need for order find their way to extremism or just that it's a violence or. Yeah. And there's nothing there's nothing to do about it. We can't start profiling engineers or numbers people.

I think I just like this people who are good at math. So one thing that I do think is useful in this context is the story of the Australian buyback, which is like basically Australia overhauled their gun laws after a mass shooting that killed 35 people in 1996. the Australian Prime Minister who was a conservative actually which I think helped basically in response to this mass shooting was like we need to have fewer guns we need to get rid of semi-automatic weapons people were outraged when they introduced this idea

Australians love their guns, too. They do not have nearly as many guns. That's one difference, obviously. They also, they had had, like, many mass shootings, but they had had, like, 11 in a decade, which is still way too many mass shootings. But I went and looked and America has had 11 since August 21st of this year. So it's a it's probably a more pressing problem and a bigger issue in America than it is in

Australia. I don't think that's a reason to then say so we can can't even think about consider the solution because we're too far gone. But basically the way they went about getting fewer guns is they instituted a buyback where they would pay people as much money as it took to get their guns back. And they essentially took a number of guns out of circulation. I think it was like a pretty large percentage. And they saw immediate results. The number of people who the number of gun crimes went down, but also the overall number of crimes went down. down, but also the overall number of crimes went down. For instance, the firearm homicide rate fell by 59 percent and the firearm suicide rate fell by 65 percent in the decade after the law was introduced. And there wasn't an increase in non-gun homicides and non-gun suicides. So it's like those crimes that would have been committed or suicides that would have been committed with guns just didn't happen at all. Right. Without the opportunity. Right. Without the opportunity.

Because you have no access to the guns anymore. Which is kind of counterintuitive. We tend to think that and this is an argument you tend to hear in the aftermath of a mass shooting that like evil will find a way. But that tends not to be the case when you look at statistics, especially if it's like a very impulsive decision. Right. And these decisions are tend to be actually more impulsive than we like to believe. There's this thing called the British coal gas study that I love talking about, but it's about suicide, so it makes me not very fun at parties. But basically, coal gas was how people in England heated their stoves for the first half of the 20th century. got the people where you got the idea of people stinging their head in the oven to kill themselves because the gas was highly, uh, right. Sylvia Plath, uh, was highly toxic. And so a person

could just, you know, if they were feeling bad, turn on the gas and put their head in the oven and, you know, be done with it pretty quickly. So, uh So at a certain point, not because of the suicide problem, but just because it was more efficient, they switched to cleaner natural gas in their ovens. And so coal gas had been responsible for a third of all suicides in England prior to that switch. And after they made the switch, the suicide rate just fell by a third. It wasn't took away that mode of suicide. Right. You took away like this convenient mode of suicide.

And so people were less likely to make that decision. Like they just didn't end up killing themselves, which isn't how we think about suicide. Isn't how we think about suicide. And I mean, the Australian buyback suggests that the same is true of homicide, that if people don't have access to, you know, guns are like you press that button and it's final answer. Like that's there's there's no taking it back. Well, I think that the Australian buyback is interesting, too, because it offers, you know, it incentivizes giving up your gun, too, which I guess is a little bit different from the British coal gas situation. But, you know, like replacing one vice with another of like, oh, well, we'll pay you to not have a gun.

We'll pay you to not be a danger to society and the networks. Yeah. Well, there are even quotes from people who at the time sold their guns and like, why did you do it? And some people were clearly just said that, like, I just want to help society. Like, it's not about me having to own a gun. I just feel like it's for the good of society which is just tough in this country because we look at guns as being like fundamentally part of the american identity like it's in the constitution

you know it's the second amendment it's like my god-given right as an american is to bear arms and not just wearing sleeveless tees and i think think like if, you know, if we're going to go stick to the letter of the Constitution, like, you know, just give people muskets then. Right, right. Like you don't need these crazy ass assault rifles. And I mean, when you look at the gun ownership statistics in the U.S., like it's crazy. I mean, there was one study that came out that said anywhere between 35 and 50 percent of civilian guns in the world are owned by Americans.

Right. That means guns that police or the military aren't using, like just the guns that are available to civilians. We own nearly half of them. Right. And like a statistic, that's also a statistic people bring up when they talk about why the Australian buyback wouldn't work in America, because in 1996, there were 17 and a half guns per 100 people in Australia. And in America, in 1996, it was 91 guns per 100 people. And now it's up to 101 guns per 100 people. So there are more guns than people. But when you actually look at the ownership, like those guns are spread across only like 22 to 29 percent of the population, only 20, like less than 30 percent of the population actually owns guns. Right. And, you know, 55 percent of people say gun laws should be more

strict in a Gallup poll. Only 10 percent say less strict. But you have this really strong lobbying group. And Miles, I wanted to hear kind of your take on this. The NRA is this crazy, far, far right wing lobbying group that gets sort of incorporated into the mainstream conservative viewpoints. Like it's almost like their PETA. I feel like like I on the left, like I know PETA is fucking crazy. Right, right. I'm able to admit that. But I feel like the NRA is sort of, you know, gets incorporated into the whole sort of right

wing ethos. Yeah. I mean, they are so powerful. to the whole sort of right wing ethos. Yeah. I mean, they are so powerful. I mean, like just in terms of like, so the NRA spends so much money influencing campaigns or donating to candidates that help push their anti-gun control agenda. Like it's really for their thing.

Like there's no nuance to what they're about. It's just like any kind of gun regulation we're against. Like we're not even here to talk about solutions. It's like, don't try and regulate guns in any form or fashion which is only 10 of the u.s population agrees with right exactly and it's but this is how they effective they are because they're built on this idea of like hey they're taking your freedoms or whatever they have a very active grassroots arm so like if there's any kind of gun legislation on the books they can can flood the offices of congressmen and senators with calls being like, don't vote for it, don't vote for it, don't vote for it, even

if the public polling says a majority of Americans are against it. And beyond that, I mean, like when you really think about how lobbying works, like, you know, these politicians, they count on donations to keep their campaigns running, because if you get outspent, you can lose very easily just on how much you spend. So you're kind of beholden to these different lobbyists or industry groups who will give you your donations. They're so effective that after Sandy Hook, gun laws got less strict. Exactly. You know, they also have a very, they have a pattern of whenever there are these mass shootings,

they keep their mouth shut, let the outrage die down, and then come through with something like weak-ass gun legislation. Yeah. You know, they've done everything they can to make sure that Americans don't really address the issue of gun violence. I mean, like in 96, they did everything they could to gut federal funding for the CDC to actually research the effects of gun violence on the country. And nearly every study that looks into gun violence draws a direct correlation that guns equals very bad things or more crime or more violent death. Again, because they have a lot of politicians in their pockets, they can actually like they'll literally write legislation sometimes and they'll just say, hey, you know, slide this into the bill. And because we've not really looked at gun violence in this country through the eyes of the CDC or like a huge sort of organized study on it, we don't really have reliable gun statistics, which allows this sort of debate to always get derailed by saying like, oh, the stats are imperfect and things like that.

That's because the NRA has been behind delegitimization. Perfect. Yeah. I mean, like looking at the Australian buyback, it wasn't even ambiguous. Like, the rate in states where the buyback happened quickly fell quickly. The suicide and homicide rate in states where the buyback happened quickly fell quickly. In states where the buyback happened slowly across the decade, the homicide and suicide rate fell slowly across the decade. Like, it's not ambiguous at all yeah by the way the nra just posted a picture of your head photoshopped on a woman's body so oh

cool wait i got hacked uh you just have a bunch of those yeah so australian buyback uh that that would not work in this country right yeah because miles's head was photoshopped into a woman's body yeah i mean so essentially when you look at it the nra has basically taken our ability to actually study gun violence away from us uh they have taken away the ability for candidates to just sort of run on something they believe in because they donate so heavily and also pay so much to run attack ads against people who are against gun control that they, you know, they control the entire gun argument in this country. And, you know, I think that a lot of that has to do with the fact that they're able to spend millions of dollars sort of unrestricted, whether it's through their actual PACs or

their PACs or through, you know, outside spending using dark money groups. They basically are just, they have us hamstrung. They have us unable to really have a constructive dialogue about gun control. And these attack ads that they run against the candidates, they're not necessarily about gun stuff, right? They just might attack the person based on their character or whatever they want. Yeah. I mean, there's no way to know, because sometimes if you look down, I'll say paid for by Americans for, you know, freedoms, you know, and those are, those are like, those are like those are 501c4, like dark money nonprofits where you don't know where the money comes from.

And yeah, it can it can and who knows, they could be funded by the gun lobby. Yeah. And then other ones are more straightforward. They're like, they're coming for your guns. But yeah, they're able to attack people in many number of ways. Yeah. And they're actually doing a thing now that they've never done before, but it seems to be sort of a new, pretty successful tactic with they're actually coming out and saying we're willing to accept a ban on bump stocks, which are these sort of hacks of semi-automatic weapons that the shooter in Las Vegas was using. weapons that the shooter in Las Vegas was using.

But these are I guess they're willing to oppose them because they're not made by any of the gun manufacturers they represent. Right. Pretty much who are funding them. And yeah, it's not it's not really going to help many things, but they have been able to control the story, essentially, like when you hear about the story and gun control right now, the thing that people are talking about is bump stocks. Right, right. And all suddenly people are like, oh, the NRA has a change of heart. It's like, bruh, this is not gun control.

No, it's just not profitable. It's just not profitable. Like that's what the NRA is all about. Yeah. And when it comes to the buyback, I guess we should say that this has been tried in America, just in very specific localized cases. And so in Australia, they made the semi-automatic weapons illegal. So they were doing both things. You weren't allowed to have the guns.

And when you brought them in, they would pay you money. Obviously, they're not making any of the guns illegal in the United States, but they have tried just paying people for guns. Los Angeles is actually doing this right now. And the police say that it's actually been effective. It's taken a bunch of guns off the street and they say that there's been less gun violence. But, of course, thanks to the NRA, there's no real good statistics on this because like Miles said, the CDC, which would be the branch of the government that would typically do studies into this, had all of their funding removed when they started talking about gun

violence. Yes, specifically, they are forbidden to use any of the money from the federal government to actually do any kind of public health research into gun violence at all. So there's no real unimpeachable evidence that could really kind of affect the conversation around this because we're only getting statistics like raw statistics from the FBI about like homicides and suicides. And then stats that are either from like the pro-gun NRA or pro-gun control stuff from the Brady campaign. So, yeah. Yeah. And there are a couple of studies that say like buybacks don't work in America. But those studies are based on a lot of times these localized examples. Some of them are rural buybacks where, you know, you just get old guys selling you back their old revolver that doesn't work anymore. And so, I mean, you need it to be intelligently done.

And, you know, the best example is still the Australian one where you pair more strict gun control laws with the gun buyback. Right. So it's not just sort of like, hey, if you want to bring your gun by, we'll give you a target gift card. It's like, you know, if we catch you with these guns, it's a problem. So you might as well come bring them in and get some money for it. Right. And focus on specific models. So it's not just like any gun. Well, we'll take it. Yeah. And if you Google like American gun buybacks, things, a lot of them are just like these crazy opinion pieces from like pro gun websites or websites that clearly are like right leaning. from like pro-gun websites or websites that clearly are like right-leaning.

Three on the first page of results are about how like arguments that the Australian gun buyback didn't work and was actually like worse. A failure, right? Yeah, yeah. Despite people in Australia being like, no, there hasn't been a mass shooting since. Americasfirstfreedom.org. Sounds legit. Right. Sounds legit to me.

I mean, I like freedom and I'm from America. So, all right. So we're going to go to a break real quick. We're going to come back, talk really quickly about gun marketing and how they're marketed to people and then go out on maybe some more lighthearted stuff. We'll be right back. investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state.

And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman.

The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current. Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, former Packers star Kabir Bajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation. KGB explaining what he believes led to the arrest of his friends at a children's Christmas play. A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian, now cut off from his family and connected to a strange arrest. I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite.

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marketing campaign from the gun industry that caught your attention. Yeah, this was a story that was in Playboy magazine about a year ago that I did some work on. It was about this company called Silencer Co. that is a really big disruptor in terms of marketing gun silencers to millennials, which is, you know, I don't need to say extremely dangerous. But just the tactics they use, where it's like, I think we have such ing ingrained like NRA attack ads are a very specific thing that almost in a weird way, I think, feel dated. And like, you know, you don't see that and you're like, oh, that's for people in their 20s, you know, whereas companies like Silence or Co. last year was based on this like miami vice style aesthetic and they released a bunch of goofy videos of them dressed up like my miami vice things and then uh putting on gun silencers and you know shooting and um they also have worked with steve aoki extensively i know it's like

oh djs with guns like after i do a fucking hot set i I had to go home and shoot stuff quietly. Even though I'm a DJ, I'm all about volume, except when it comes to my guns. So in conclusion, guys. Yeah, I mean, look, obviously the gun lobby is very powerful. But, you know, like I think people sort of need to look at it like this. The NRA is spending a lot of money to prop up candidates who will help push their pro-gun agenda. But there aren't many groups that get the same kind of donations who are gun control advocacy groups. And I think people can – this is a moment for a lot of spent as much as the NRA there, we might be able to see some kind of sort of evening of the scales in terms of what the influence is.

And some people have even floated the idea of approaching candidates for Congress or Senate and saying, look, if you don't take the NRA money will match actually what the NRA gives you for you to not take their money. But you can still have that in your coffers for your campaign. So I think, you know, not to, you know, a lot of people do feel a little defeated by it because every article you're seeing is like the NRA is so powerful and there's nothing you can do about it. I mean, Massachusetts is a great example of a state that has not, you know, bowed to the power of the NRA. California, great Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the state of California also as well.

Yeah. But I think, you know, it's important to know that there are there are there are solutions out there aside from just clearly the first reaction is like, well, let's take all the guns away. I think this also can be framed around a conversation around the money that's going into politics and also becoming aware of how we can counter that with our own dollars as well. Right. We're not an anti-gun lobby at the Daily Zeitgeist. This is just an example of politics and democracy not working. 55% of people want stronger gun control and are just like, well, the NRA is not going to let us.

Right. And that's my impression of you listeners, a bunch of pussies. Sorry. And that's my impression of you listeners. Pussies. Sorry. No, I mean, yeah. And again, I think people need to go back to Citizens United when basically it was ruled that corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money on campaigns. So, yeah. Stay woke. These are actionable things.

Stay woke. Call your congresspeople. And let's move on to Lorne Michaels.els sorry ass excuse for why snl didn't talk about the weinstein thing uh he claimed it's a new york thing so he's he's arguing like oh this is too inside baseball to joke about right it's too too much of a thing only new yorkers care about right pastrami sandwiches and harveystein's sexual misconduct. To New York! Right. Yeah, and there are jokes on SNL constantly that if you're not from New York, they will

fly over your head. I feel like that's almost every Weekend Update segment. Right. Is a lot of New York in jokes. You know, I mean, it's an excuse to not talk about powerful power, that like, it's an excuse. My favorite part of SNL thus far this season, there's only been two, but the weekend update characters, the guy who just bought

a boat and the guy who just joined Soho House were fucking hilarious. But it was like chock full of like insider New York stuff. Right. Like you're not going to get that joke if you don't live in a city that has a Soho House. Right. And what is that? Just L.A. and New York?

I don't even know what that is and I live here. Boom. But yeah, it's a very weak ass excuse, Lauren. Come on now. And also it's so ripe. Like they're so ripe for material. Like how could you? Yeah.

That's a stupid comedy decision too. Also, I'm kind of mad that like they're constantly just framing like some of these instances of like his alleged sexual harassment when like they're women straight up talking like he was masturbating in front of me like is that i think that's a step beyond harassment at that point like forcibly having someone watch you masturbate i think it's close to a potted plant yeah right very strange nobody's talking about plants' rights. And then, last of all, you guys, I'm worried about the Avatar franchise. Oh, now we're getting into the real issues. I feel like so. I really enjoyed Avatar for the runtime of Avatar.

Like, from when it started to the end, I was like, man, this is amazing. And then it just totally disappeared from my mind. I think culturally a similar thing happened. Like, you don't hear people talk about Avatar really all that much. No. It's not even a DVD you get high to and watch. Right. Like, some films, like, you'll still watch, like, The Matrix.

You'll be like, man, what was The Matrix? But you're never like, hey, man, let's watch Avatar real quick. It's fine. But it's a goofy, it's a doofy little movie. I don't know. So I am pro film industry in that I like movies and I don't want the film industry to completely crumble. And so I'm a little bit worried because they are apparently investing a billion dollars in the Avatar franchise. Why?

That's no one's favorite movie. Right. And they just, so I was already worried because it just didn't seem like a franchise that people were going to really keep going back to. But they just released a photograph, like hyping the next movie. And it was a bunch of child actors standing around. Like it's apparently, uh,

as if there's anything more depressing than a child actor. Right. It's going to be like Jake and, uh, whatever her names, uh, children are going to be main characters. Oh,

the Navi character. Right. Which, so they're doing like the Muppet babies for avatar. Like, yeah, I mean, like there's no better marketing than to have a poster full of people you never fucking heard of right oh shit uh that kid i've never seen before is in it and they're child stars so they might be really hard to watch amazing yeah i mean go back and watch terminator 2 which is james cameron's

greatest movie uh i'll fight you jam Jamie. I'm a Titanic fan. Oh yeah, we've talked about Titanic. But go back and watch that. And it's a great movie despite Edward Furlong's performance. I loved Eddie Furlong. He was just shouting and nagging the whole time. My mom helped him

put out a CD in Japan. Nice. Hell yeah. The album is terrible. It's trash, but shouts to Eddie Furlong. Miles has the coolest parents in the world, by the way. Nice. Hell yeah. He had, yo, the album's terrible. It's trash, but, you know, shouts to Eddie Furlong. Miles has the coolest parents in the world,

by the way. You should ask him about them. Child actors, man, I don't know. They've gotta go. They're troubling.

You're not always gonna get Haley Joel Osment. You're not. You're just not. Yeah, even when you cast Haley Joel Osment. He's the best. He's the best.

I have a big crush on him, He was really good. I thought Jonathan Lipnicki really crushed the game. Jonathan Lipnicki. Yeah. There are some good ones, but he didn't prove that he could keep doing it. He just,

yeah. He just had that one film. Maybe he didn't want to. Right. Yeah. Live your life, Jonathan Lipnicki. Yeah.

You know, he was like, the game's changed. All right. Thank you so much for joining us, Jamie Loftus. Hey, thanks.

Where can people follow you? You can follow me at Hamburger Phone, or you can listen to my podcast, The Bechdelcast. It's about women in movies. And it is wonderful. And you can follow us on Twitter, at Daily Zeitgeist. We're on Instagram, at The Daily Zeitgeist. We also have a Facebook page, The Daily Zeitgeist. I'm at Jack underscore O'Brien.

Miles. I'm at Miles of Grey. Twitter, Instagram, PlayStation Network. You know, holler. And we'll be back tomorrow because that's what daily podcasts do. Bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was assassinated. Thank you. Mathias State. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In California during the summer of 1975, within the span of 17 days and less than 90 miles, two women did something no other woman had done before, try to assassinate the president of the United States.

One was the protege of Charles Manson. 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nickname Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer, this season on the new podcast, Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content

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