The Daily Zeitgeist - Shoplifting Wave Still B.S., Lunchables Replacing Lunch Ladies? 03.15.23

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

In episode 1441, Jack and guest co-host Alex Schmidt, are joined by writer and interdisciplinary artist, Denise "The Vamp Deville" Zubizarreta, to discuss… Shoplifting Panic Update: Still Bullsh*t, Lunchables To Be A Part of School Lunches? And more! Artists Discuss How Psychedelics Influence Their Work Shoplifting Panic Update: Still Bullsh*t BS Shoplifting Theory (A Thread) Lunchables To Be A Part of School Lunches? Find more work from Denise here! LISTEN: Fuzz Jam by The Lazy EyesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry.

Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour.

If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. around negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, the internet, and welcome to Season 279, Episode 3 of Dirt Daily's iGuys, a production of iHeartRadio. This is the podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness, and it is Wednesday, March 15th, 2023. My name is Jack O'Brien, a.k.a.

God, I want a carless Sunday. Whoa. Let's all just run day. Whoa. Cars are dumb day. Whoa. Don't drive your truck that weighs a ton day. That is courtesy of Chrissy on Gucci Mane.

Just referencing the idea of carless Sundays, which, you know, at a certain point in the Netherlands, they decided to stop having cars run their lives. I know there would be a ton of problems at first. And, you know, we would have to build up an infrastructure for people to get around if we decided to do that. But I still think it's a nice idea to aspire to. All right. Well, I am thrilled to be joined by a very special guest co-host. One of the best,

best podcasters doing it anywhere. An old friend from the crack days, a jeopardy champion, the host of the podcast, secretly, incredibly fascinating. It's Alex. Hey,

it's me, Alex Schmidt, AKA John Jacob, jingle trender Schmidt. There he is. Thank you. Thank you too. Their username John Jacob JingleTrenderSchmidt. There he is. Thank you to their username is LadyFeet on the Discord. I was telling Jack I just searched the name Schmidt in the Zeitgeist Discord.

That may not be for me, but I grabbed it. Thank you. It is for you now. And I took your a.k.a. because you wrote it into the doc. I took your a.k.a. to be you are both John Jacob Jingle Trender Schmidt and also known as Lady Feet

on the disc. I was like, Lady Feet? Interesting. I like that for you. A truly wild disclosure if that's what I want. By the way, really in defeat, ladies. Could use some pics. Thanks.

Alex, we are thrilled to be joined by an interdisciplinary artist and writer who's writing, you can read it, hyperallergic about stuff like Netflix forgetting to include Puerto Ricans in their reggaeton show and how psychedelics influence artists. Please welcome the brilliant and talented Denise the Vamp DeVille. Subi Sarreta! influence artists, please welcome the brilliant and talented Denise, the vamp DeVille. That's the best intro ever. It's wonderful to have you. How are you doing?

I'm doing really well. I need that intro, though, for like, that should be my morning alarm. Yeah, make it. We'll give you the download. There you go. Where's everybody coming from? Alex, I know you're on the East Coast. Is that correct? Yeah, we have snow flurries in New York City. Hey, watch out now. We're celebrating the Ides of March with snow. There you go. Fun times. How about you, Denise? I'm in Denver, Colorado.

Okay. So our weather is actually getting nicer, funny enough. So we're seeing some sun. It's a beautiful day out. Hey, did we trade weathers? Hey, give it back. Hey, what's going on here? Give it back.

Yeah, it's a rainy Manhattan day in Los Angeles here. That seems to be the new norm. It rains a lot, which I'm not complaining. I ain't complaining. You know what I'm saying? Denise, one of the things you wrote about at Hyperallergic, the psychedelic art scene. Psychedelics, I feel like, are having a moment right now or increasingly a big part of culture. And I was just curious to hear you talk about where you think or or do you

think they're having a moment have they just always been here i think when i was a kid psychedelics were associated with my parents generation as like hippies and they just like made it look bad and uncool and so like i i wonder if, that is just what happened is we've had enough separation from the baby boomers, making it look really silly and weird, that we can now like get back into the good parts of psychedelics. Yeah. And I think also for my generation, right, it's the dare generation. Right. So we caught a lot of like, just say no to drugs and really nothing else. So no one will offer them to you for free. So I think there was a disconnect there with psychedelics. Now, I don't think that they're

having a moment. I think they've always been there. I think that the conversation has just become a little bit more open, right? We're open to having larger discussion about the impact of it psychologically, mentally, and where we're kind of going to go from there. And I think it's kind of amazing what's going on in so many of the states now as we're discussing, especially like mushrooms, you know, and more natural holistic quote-unquote ways to get high and to tap into other parts of your consciousness so i'm completely fascinated like yeah the whole process yeah yeah i don't mean to imply i just found out about psychedelics like when joe rogan started talking about them but like yeah they they've been around for a while. I do feel like they're getting like somewhat more even like mainstream cultural purchase than they've had even in the recent,

fairly recent past. So your article is really fascinating. We'll link off to it in the footnotes, but everyone should go check it out. Yeah. I'm curious with reporting something out like that, like are people down to talk about it and share about it or are they still kind of don't use my name or don't share details about me? artists that are already pretty open about that conversation and that are really like have dived deep into the whole conversation and how what they're kind of going to do with it in the future and with their work so i got really lucky like with alex and allison gray you know who were amazing like they were just like here's all of this information on psychedelics. I was like, dude, I should do this sometime. Sounds cool. Yeah. So I was purposely looking for artists that were open.

Yeah. And you yourself are an artist. Can you talk a little bit about something you're working on right now or something you recently completed? Yeah. So I'm mixed media interdisciplinary, which is always weird to say. Sometimes they just say like, I'm a very highly hyphenated creative. I'm everywhere and all over the place. And that's part of my neurodivergence as well, right? Like, I cannot sit there for more than a certain amount of time on one kind of project. So I have to jump all over. And for me right now, I've been focusing a lot of my work on kind of reclaiming, reconnecting, and healing the imagery of the Taino people of the Caribbean with my work and kind of retelling their stories through like tarot and, you know,

framework that looks really Baroque and lots of gold and stuff. I'm like, give me my gold back. So that's been a lot of what i've been working on right now and i should be doing an exhibition soon with redline contemporary art center it's still very hush hush but i guess it's not so much because i just said it yeah oh yeah bleeping all this out yeah yeah yeah uh we're gonna get to know you a little bit better in a moment first we're gonna tell our listeners a few of the things we're talking about today i'm seeing the shoplifting panic story bubble up again so i just wanted to offer an update to our

listeners on that that it's still bullshit still. It's even more real than you thought. We're going to talk about Lunchables. So big, big win. There's this story from abc7.com that reports the fact that they're going to be serving Lunchables as like school lunches going forward starting next year.

And it's reported reported like the story is told as a like success story for Kraft Heinz. It's like an underdog success story about how they got in line with the nutritional requirements to have this victory. So I want to just talk about that, get your thoughts on Lunchables in general, your experiences. This was apparently one of the biggest business success stories of my lifetime that I wasn't aware it was a business success story. I was just eating the Lunchables as a child. But Oscar Mayer saved their bacon, so to speak, by inventing Lunchables. And it was like this

massive success and probably very bad for everyone. I do. I like that figure of speech because they probably withheld the good bacon for other products. Like Lunchables had much worse meat than bacon. Yeah. Yes. Saving their bacon and providing meat paste to the rest of us. Yeah. Even in the ingredients, I love how it's like meat hyphenated, meat alternative. Yes. Okay, I don't need to know what it is. Hey, it was the 90s. Alternative was huge. Alternative music. So we were down for some meat alternative, some grunge meat.

Wearing a little flannel. Yeah. wearing a little flannel. Yeah. Yeah. All of that, plenty more. But first,

Denise, the Vamptaville, Subisareta. Do you have something from your search history that is revealing about who you are? It's so funny. My search history is,

and I know I can curse on here because I've heard it, right? So I'm super excited because I'm still a Puerto Rican girl from Jersey, right? Like I have a dirty potty mouth. So I'm super excited because I'm still a Puerto Rican girl from Jersey. I have a dirty potty mouth.

I'm a former sailor as well. So it's like years of stuff. Sailing boats? For real? No, I was in the United States Navy. I'm a veteran. That's for real. Thank you for clarifying. It's not wooden ships, but that's for real. Thank you for your service.

Fantastic. Yeah, thank you. Actual sailing? I have no idea. But my search history is pretty much a clusterfuck of shit. I'm constantly Googling everything because I am just dying to be a useless vat of information for some strange reason. But the most recent thing I Googled, I think was probably partly frightening and then partly just pure scientific curiosity where I was like, can I do this in my own home? Where scientists found out that there was a, they found a zombie virus that spent like 48,000 years frozen in the permafrost. Whoa.

Okay. The virus doesn't make you a zombie, right? The virus itself is a zombie because they brought it back to life. Good. Good thinking, first of all. I just want to thank them for doing that. Yeah. There's so much of the permafrost.

We haven't had enough of crazy viruses in our sci-fi plot decade. So apparently we need to add some more. And that was kind of insane. melting of the polar ice caps but they're bringing back zombie viruses that's something right they're yeah getting to work there yeah it sounds like more life not less yeah more life forms so basically good sorry and are are people worried about it are they is it is it going to increase our scientific understanding of what it was like to have a cold in the Paleolithic? What's the end goal here? To be fair, the virus is very large, which is interesting. You could see it under a regular microscope instead of needing all sorts of other technologies to kind of zoom into it.

But it's specific to single-cell organisms. So they're not trying to bring back a virus that's going to kill the entire human race and then make a movie after it. But it's specific to single-cell organisms. So they're not trying to bring back a virus that's going to kill the entire human race and then make a movie after it, right? With the five people that are left behind, probably Joe Rogan will be one of them. Yeah, Joe Rogan, Chris Pratt. I haven't settled on the other three, but yeah. Yeah. But it is to try to help us learn a little bit more about how kind of viruses develop where we are in that process you know and dissecting all of the things that they're kind of finding as these perma as the permafrost starts to melt yeah and i'm fascinated but at the same time like i don't

trust anyone enough to be like yay dig deeper science've got this. You haven't fucked us yet. We'll let you take this one. It's funny to me to think about viruses that are big. You can see. It'd be much easier to avoid the common cold if it was just a thing that was hanging out on the surface of everything that my six-year-old touches. Because animals were so much bigger in the Ice Age, right? Like it's a woolly mammoth equivalent of a virus. Or like a saber-toothed tiger instead of a house cat.

Yeah. The virus eats you. They have really cute personalities too. That's the thing. They're like little wookies. They're so hard to resist. That's how they got you yeah what is something you think is overrated i was it's so interesting because i was looking at these and i was like man this is going to be difficult for me because i actually have a list

of things that are annoying nice let them know no i was like what's the first thing on my list and i think overrated the first thing on my list? And I think overrated, the first thing on my list definitely is the term Latinx. I'm so tired of hearing it. And I just did a talk on it also at Redline where I kind of had to like share some information where I'm like, I really don't understand why we're kind of persisting in this space. And I don't think a lot of people really are having that discussion.'re kind of persisting in this space. And I don't think a lot of people really are having that discussion. The majority of people in the community don't really use it. So I find it's absolutely annoying to me that it's still here, it's sticking around,

and it's everywhere. I can't escape it. Right. Is the word that you prefer is Latino? Is the word that you prefer is Latino, like for broad, or what is the preferred word for you? For me, I prefer to just be called Puerto Rican and Cuban. Sure. It's much more descriptive, right? So that you understand what my cultural nuance is, right? My milieu. Yes, totally. And so the term Latino in general to me or hispanic or all of

these other kind of terms that jumble us all in together just continue this process of us being all seen as the same right continuing that monolith so for me it's kind of like latinx it's like you you know you've heard it right you can a turd, but it's still a turd. You're trying to modernize a term that's already like super offensive and messed up. So like, I really don't understand the need for the hegemonic like nature of it, right? For it to now have an English ending. Have the woke version of the hegemonic insult in turn. Yeah.

We're good here. Okay. I put okay i put yeah well that's good yeah i think informative yeah i've it's good to hear about that because i've heard a little bit about it in general yeah that it's sort of been imposed from outside or brought in by people who didn't ask for new words or additional words that aren't as helpful. Right. And there was already like a gender inclusive word in Spanish. So Latine already existed. So it was interesting to see the X kind of get thrown in where you're like, dude, we don't use the X ever. Like it's there, but shh, don't talk about it. Like, how did you put it at the end of the word like this is so confusing and it just seems like english now is really starting to meld in and we've kind of moved from a new level of spanglish uh to just the bastardry of these languages together

yeah wow what is something you think is underrated? Underrated for me definitely is the Puerto Rican independence movement. I think a lot of the times it's always about statehood and everybody wants to talk about statehood. And I'm like, nobody wants to be a state. Right. Read the room. So I think the talk of Puerto Rican independence is often pushed aside, even in the major movements that it had throughout time. Right now, especially, it's definitely not getting the push that I think it really needs to have because there's not a lot of background in how it can be something that's functional. So I think it's definitely underrated. The guy who invented Latinx is like, fine, we'll let you be a state. That's, you owe us. Okay.

How many favors do I have to do you? Jeez. You don't like debt? You don't like debt? That's right. Wow. All right. That's right.

Wow. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back and we'll talk about the wave of shoplifting that is taking over the country and making it hard for our favorite people. They're people, too. Walmart is a person. And we need to admit that and take care of our Walmart. We'll be right back. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult.

And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths

between high control groups and interview dancers, church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine. Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new, chilling firsthand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives. Forgive Me For I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these types of abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app,

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Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Every great player needs a foil. I ain't really near them. Why is that?

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And we're back. And I think it's since the last time we covered shoplifting, we talked about the wave of shoplifting being out of control that was used to try to get Chase Boudin out of office in San Francisco and like helped lead to his successful recall. And just generally, that was a favored talking point on the right for a while and in the mainstream media. The New York Times is not immune from a story decrying the crime wave that's out of control and writing an op-ed that says all we need to do is hire one million more police officers and america's problems will go away so since the last time we covered this there's been a couple big stories about shoplifting focused on the walls both mart and greens walmart and walgreens and And the news story that I'm seeing everywhere in the past week is that Walmart is saying that they... Don't call them their name.

They're Walmart now. We don't like it. They're Walmart. Walmart claims they've had to close every single Portland store because of shoplifting. That is how I've seen it quoted on Twitter. They've had to close every single Walmart in Portland. Are there stores there still? Every single Walmart? It turns out there were two Walmarts in all of Portland, It turns out there were two Walmarts in all of Portland, and they had to close these two stores for reasons that. So at the end of last year, their CEO got on an earnings call and decried theft. It was around the same time that the Walgreens CEO was getting on an earnings call and being like, we were exaggerating. There really wasn't this massive theft problem. But anyways, I think this story is getting traction because people want to believe that Portland is a city that's out of control like San Francisco.

They just want the entire West Coast to be liberal progressives who've lost control of their societies. And that's the problems are coming home to roost. The wild liberal West. That's right. The ocean turns them crazy. The wild liberal West. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure that has been a chiron on the tucker

carlson short show like the wild probably not liberal probably more like the wild marxist west or something like that yeah i that's easily one of my least favorite conservative tropes that's a heated competition there's a lot of bad ones. But being from Illinois, they just demonize Chicago that way. And Wisconsin just demonizes Milwaukee. Conservatives just want to argue that we should remove cities as if they are not part of the country, even though they're full of people from the country. There's actually a lot of Americans in there. No. Yes. How dare those people count? Yeah. departments of commerce or you know lobbying groups and the statistics are always super vague when it comes to what you know how much shoplifting has grown it's always anecdotal as

fuck and but even on this walmart story which is gaining so much traction. Even the industry groups are like, this doesn't seem to be what's going on here. So there's this article from Oregon Live that says, theft and other crime, the Walmart watchers said, is surely a concern for the chain, but the impact is rarely enough to close an otherwise successful store without warning and especially without appeals to local officials for assistance. That's the other thing. They never actually want to do anything about this problem other than, you know, get the media on their side by complaining about it. And then they say the decision to close down a store is typically linked to sales, said Neil Saunders, managing director of

the retail division at Global Data, which often has nothing to do with thefts or shoplifting. And then they point out that Walmart just has never had success in Portland because the people of Portland prefer established stores like Fred Meyer, which that's just a guy's name, but apparently also a store in Portland. And it also sells general merchandise alongside groceries. And they say Walmart typically needs to be where they can be a big player and capture all the shares. There are some locations where they've struggled to gain a strong foothold and they've left those places. So this, yeah. those places.

So this, man, yeah. I just, it drives me so nuts when any highly automated, highly mechanized business suddenly loses track of all the numbers when they want to. Like, how could we track shoplifting? We're basically a bodega. Stuff is just on our shelves.

I don't know. We don't know. We have a security cat. That's right. Well, you know that if this was a problem that was causing them to have to close stores, they would be working with Boston Dynamic to create some manner of robotic security cat. Like every Walmart would have a greeter that was also an Ed 209 from RoboCop that could just turn around and light people up. Like that's that is what would happen in America if this was as big a problem as they claim it is. the companies account for this is they lump theft in with shrinkage is what they call it which includes problems they have tracking inventory right so like and people who work at walmart

are like no that like it's a small part of that it's most of the problem is that they lose track of inventory because it's a massive store and things get lost or they over-order and the orders are under-delivered. And it's just like general businessman fuck-ups. And of course, they don't want... First of all, that's more boring than showing videos of an isolated incident of a shoplifter, you know, doing something awesome like shoplifting. Yeah, exactly.

Banana theft is out of control. Yeah. I feel like it was a corporate ploy. Like, from the top of the top. Like, they had a meeting, they sat down, and they were like, how can we get away with making people think that we're losing money? I know. Have them check out themselves. How do we make ourselves the victims in this narrative where we just like parachute into the middle of a community and put all of the businesses out of business by just, you know, using our massive scale. I know we claim that after we've put all those businesses out of business and people are so hungry, they have to occasionally

shoplift. We blame the shoplifting for rising prices. Yeah. And then they put in that prime option. Right. So it's like, here you go. Check out just there you go it's okay don't worry about it we're not gonna arrest you later stop it that's the other thing we talked about is that a lot of the shrinkage that's happening is because and a lot of the theft is driven by the fact that they have switched to automated checkouts right automated checkout systems make it much easier to shoplift. It's not like they were not aware of that when they switched to automated systems. They just made the calculation that the theft was not going to cost them as much as they were saving by not having to pay human employees. Yeah, they just built it in. And now they're like finding one video of one guy.

Right. And especially, honestly, shout out to anybody shoplifting food. Keep it up. There is humongous food waste all across America all the time. We have a community fridge here that we've been like getting stuff for. And it turns out you can just because stores are like, we don't sell all this stuff, have it. So if you're shoplifting it, you're basically doing it that good. You're putting the food to use.

Like, you know, legally, I did not tell you to do that. Legal hand wave. But, you know, wink, wink, wink. Alex did put brackets around the whole thing with his hands. So legally, you cannot sue him. It's official.

It's so official. And they throw out so much, too. Have you ever seen the dumpsters behind a Walmart? They push it to the end possible degree of like, this is still kind of good, but not really. But I would rather throw

it away than give it to you. So it's like, they're purchase orders. And the whole thing is just such a mess that it's just kind of hilarious to me that they're confused i was reading an old i was reading an old i i forget what it was but it was like an old work of non-fiction like from i think it was like the 80s or 90s oh i think it was city of quartz actually about la like the really great history of la and everybody should check it out but the author is writing about this new thing that they're seeing and he like can't get his mind around it

and it's that they put locks on their dumpsters too and he's just like how dystopian is this world where they're putting locks on their dumpsters? And that's something that I've like, Mike Davis is the author. So Mike Davis is like writing in the about Los Angeles in the early 90s, like late 80s. And it's like they've started putting locks on the dumpsters to prevent people from getting to the food that they're wasting, like what is happening? And that's something that I just was like, had taken for granted a long time ago. That's just something corporations do. But it's interesting to like, see, see somebody see it again with fresh eyes and just be like, oh no, what, what are we becoming? And then the guy from the corporation is like, not only could they get food out of this, they could use it for shelter. Imagine that horrible event if someone did that. If they had somewhere to be.

During a snowstorm. Like, yes, because this is my top choice, right? Like, I definitely want to be in the meat dumpster behind the Walmart in the middle of a blizzard. You know, that's a Friday night for me. Oh, is that where I know you from? Were we in the same? This is what kids are doing these days. This is where they party is at the dumpsters behind Walmarts to get free handouts. The other article that I was seeing a lot of a few weeks back is a

supposed deep dive by New York magazine that like goes into the seedy underbelly of these crime rings that are supposedly driving this out of control problem in New York. And it like definitely starts from the position of hey you're in new york you've seen that all of your like all the things that walgreens and duane reed are locked in big clear plastic boxes what's up with that and so they're you know use that as the starting point and they're like crime is out control. And they get listened to these people, you know, the industry experts who are like, they're actually big organized crime rings. There are these people called boosters who just nine to five take stuff from store shelves. It's an organized crime wave. And they find no evidence of that. Like all all the shoplifting is bit. He doesn't find a single example of somebody who's a shoplifter, like a regular shoplifter who's not trying to support any addiction, like a drug habit. Like it's just desperate people. it's just desperate people. Yeah. All of these stories are like almost just

Scorsese movies or something. Just get your entertainment that way, folks. You don't need to read these fakey news stories that claim this is going on. Just consume crime fiction. There's so much of it out there. Just go all the way. They're coming for the couponers next.

Yeah. I'd see that at the Arclight or whatever. Sure. Yeah. Totally. Like, is this at South by Southwest? They openly acknowledge like their statistics are impossible to come by, but they don't acknowledge that the fact that statistics are impossible to come by is because the companies don't want you to know like that it's not as big a problem as you

as your story wants it to be and then there's just a lot of language like this to the extent that there has been a nationwide spike in shoplifting and the problem likely got worse during the pandemic so it's just a lot of those words that if you have taken a journalism course or something, you're like, uh-huh. Oh, okay. So we're just supposing that there is this problem that this entire article is predicated on. It's clunky enough that it sounds like they forced the anti-shoplifting robot to write it. They sat him at a computer and made him beat their big metal hands at it. If you tell them what's right, you tell them.

Yeah. This is a quote from the article. Every generation goes through a shoplifting panic and comprehensive data on this frequently unreported crime is nearly impossible to come by. That's like, yeah, there's a reason why you're getting

the scoop on this one. And other journalistic institutions have not done their big shoplifting article yet. But it doesn't stop people from writing about it. The New York Post had a headline, Walmart to close remaining Portland stores as crime-ridden city battles shoplifting wave. So it's, you know, it's going to keep going, unfortunately. And that's frustrating. But as long as we know, you know, as long as we know the truth. I feel like I'm talking to like a five-year-old. Well, you know you have friends, so don't listen to them. They're bullies.

Yeah. I do always kind of hope this story will, this kind of story will wear itself out, you know? Like every election, they've been doing a conservative story about a migrant caravan, and you would think there's not enough juice in that to do it eternally, you know? And so hopefully this one wears out too.

Yeah. Everybody owns a thesaurus over there, right? Like they're just flipping in every way. This headline again, different words though. Same thing. Noose. And by the way, if you're shoplifting a thesaurus,

almost as good as shoplifting food. Keep it up. That's just going to teach you stuff. I honor that. We support the shoplifting of food and thesaurus-i. Th thesauruses I don't know thesauruses of all the time to not have one oh boy

oh geez does thesaurus have thesaurus in it does it have the word thesaurus in it it just creates a black hole when you look for it reality collapses that's right yeah this is i don't know there's i'm reminded a lot in covering the news these days i'm reminded

a lot of the documentary hyper normalization and just the the concept of that which is that we created this massive global economy that is too powerful and has too much inertia for anybody to do anything about so we're all and have been for the past like since the 80s just been sitting back and watching whatever it chooses to do, whatever this massive hyper... I wouldn't call it a hyper intelligence, but it's making decisions that aren't controlled by any human. And we're just sitting back

watching it and trying to tell a story around it at this point. Did you just describe the shit monster from Dogma? Yeah. Yeah. Well, Dogma? Yeah. Yeah. Well, Dogma got to it first. First thing that popped in my head. But yeah, I mean, with climate, with anything, with prices changing, prices going up and people needing to steal to eat. And it's all just sitting back and trying to tell stories about this thing that, you know, we talked yesterday about this massive drilling project that Biden just approved. And it's like this vast chunk of land in Alaska.

in order to make it possible, they have to put chillers into the earth to make the earth cold enough for them to be able to drill into the earth to get the oil out, which will then exacerbate climate change. And it's just like, you know, he ran on stopping these sorts of things, but it's, there's just this massive machine that's out of everybody's control and everybody's just posturing around it basically hopefully yeah burn it all down i i see the next story here it's about lunchables just humongous economy forces i'm imagining like a lunchables pizza over the earth like the independence day ship yes like we're just yeah it's coming for us cheesy launching pepperoni yeah you know yeah i'm ready welcome to earth and he takes a bite out of it you know yeah all right let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about good news such as that lunchables will now be a core part of school lunches. We'll be right back.

I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades.

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And we're back. And speaking of the extra, extra cheesy, because that is one of the flavors that made it into, like made it through the school nutrition filter and is going to be on offer. There's the turkey cheese crackers and the extra cheesy pizza is the other version of Lunchables that children will be able to buy for school lunch next year. Did you guys ever eat the cheese pizza version of Lunchables? That always grossed me out so much.

Far too many times, my friend. Far too many times. How does it not feel like you're eating a pizza before it's in the oven? Or is that what it feels like? To be fair, I was living in Florida at the time. So if you just left it outside for a little while, you were good. There you go. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Warm it up.

Nature play a role. Yeah, sure. Exactly. Exactly. And nothing else would eat it. So it was great. Like you could put it on the sidewalk, put the bottom, you know,

ants wouldn't touch it. You're like, this is, this is totally good for me. I'm going to put this in my pie hole today. Super, super gross. The ants just move out of the neighborhood.

So the story is framed as, you know, as a story would be in the United States as a success story for, I mean, we're like, you know, as a story would be in the United States as a success story for, I mean, we're like, we've been talking about how the new go-to movie protagonist is like brands that we like, you know, the, the Air Jordan, one of my favorite, most beloved brands. There's a movie coming out that is where that's essentially the protagonist. They didn't even cast anybody to play Michael Jordan. It's just the story

of like people coming up with the marketing idea that people like people i've heard of who saw it say it's good it's directed by ben affleck who has made things that i've enjoyed in the past but like when i was growing up in chicago i had a lot of posters on my wall of the shoe company executives who did develop that film yeah that film Knight poster where he's just kind of leaning against a wall in a brown blazer. Yeah. But this ABC News story is kind of written from that perspective, the opening sentence, Kraft Heinz has succeeded in getting its ready-to-eat packaged Lunchables into school lunch programs starting this fall in a major new initiative. So we know who our protagonist is.

It's the Kraft Heinz Company. And they've apparently been trying to do this for a while. Like, that's what I got from that whole line. Yes. Like, oh, this isn't new. Yes. It's been a long effort of just having honest conversations and probably no lobbying efforts or anything like that. No, it's probably been, yeah, this is the problem with having a society that is run

by massive multinational corporations who are ultimately making the decisions and have the power to bend regulatory agencies to their will. So in what seems like a major admission of guilt in order to get their food for kids served alongside burnt rectangular pizza, sloppy joes, the stuff that is normally in school lunches, they had to reformulate the ingredients to meet the guidelines of stuff that you should be allowed to serve to kids. You have to actually put food in it. Yes. Yeah.

What? We can't just give them salt? Dang. It would be funny if these are amazing now. I do want to see one where like it comes out and it's this amazing gourmet pizza or something. Just beautiful. I would just watch all the kids squirting that sauce onto that cracker yeah which is a pizza and i it just never looked great but oh man i've read the ingredients and i love that the sauce is that it says like red and orange vegetable paste and i'm like i don't i

don't know what that means i don't even do i want to know what that means that's that's always a real problem when they go from extremely complicated scientific terms that like make your brain hurt to even try and like figure out how to pronounce them back to something that is like extra basic, like natural flavors or red and orange vegetable paste is like, oh, why are you guys being so vague? That is, that suggests there is danger here. Hey, we disclosed both colors. Okay. We disclosed both colors. We're being very open about this. That's right. Yeah, you should have seen it first, okay?

It was a really horrible ship round. And we managed to make it work with some food coloring and some pureed carrots. Like, we've got this. And that is the act one break where they succeed in getting the brown paste to look red. And that's what gets people excited for that's like the inciting incident in the in the movie about lunchables getting in to be the school lunch directed by ben affleck but so it looks more like pizza every day i'm like i really want to see that.

That movie would be amazing. Obviously, you'd have to call them something different. But yeah, just a really straight-faced, triumphant tale of them trying to get these under the censors. Who are like, this isn't food. I can't, in good conscience food. Like, I can't. I can't in good conscience let you sell this to children. And they're like, go back to the drawing board.

It's going to be food. You better get on board. Yeah. If these things are up, they're like, it's food to me. Because then they win the Oscar. The musical. You have to break out his song. It musical. Yes.

You have to break out his song. It's so bad. Yeah. But they still will be selling the sodium bomb variety that I'm pretty, like when I eat something that is this high in sodium, I look the next day like my face was like bee stung all over the place from just the amount of water

retention that happens when you have this much sodium. Oh man, I have been giving your bees so much grief and now I have to go apologize to the whole hive. I know. Well, that's what I tell people. I said, sorry, I've been bee stung, but it's actually just, I ate four bowls of ramen the night before. Instant ramen. Choices. Can't open my eyes all the way but yeah so i i don't know that this feels like what we should expect this is what our best scientific minds are working on like now now that they've mastered the doritos like the mouthfeel of the nacho cheese Doritos and made them like as addictive as possible and still addictive enough to probably warp the entire like health of of these children for for years to come but i don't know the the other goal here

that they really by reading an article wherein craft heinz is the protagonist you get this they're just openly like sharing what their goals are like they said one of the main selling points for schools is that the lunchables for schools don't need to be frozen but kept refrigerated quote minimizing school labor needs and costs so it's just a way to cut out more labor to to fire lunch ladies essentially i don't know how they're saving costs so like does it it's going to create more waste right oh for sure so now you're gonna spend more in disposing of this waste that you're definitely not going to recycle right and right which even if you did recycle it probably probably wouldn't actually get recycled. Right. So like the cycle continues, you know societies so that all of the is just being like siphoned by these big central corporations right and so this is another way to just cut out any

spending that goes to the local community like in the form of chefs who come into the schools and make hot lunches for children. You got to get rid of that because that's wasted spending. We could just be getting that money directly here at Kraft Heinz and just siphon all the money directly to a publicly traded corporation. I also wonder, what are the pharmaceutical drugs that are going to come from this being advertised to children going to look like? Right? Like, here's for your hypertension, and it's in the shape of a, you know, it's gonna be like Flintstone gummies, you know, for hypertension and like seven-year-olds. Yeah. Don't worry, we used every color. Again, we are really big on the whole rainbow you know the rainbow right great we used the whole rainbow you don't know what a zucchini is but you know

you know what this color is right it kind of looks like something healthy yeah you don't know what zucchini is but you know green vegetable paste that you get to spread on your turkey and cheese crackers. We actually have to put the turkey in quotes on the box, unfortunately. But yeah, you get if we read it out loud, we have to say it in a really sarcastic voice. It's just it's the law. We follow the law. We're doing our best here. For the purposes of and by the instruction of our legal department, I will be making this entire statement in air quotes. Thank you. And then so I just want to read this other quote from later on in the article. But offering Lunchables in school cafeterias might be welcome in some school districts that are struggling with higher food costs and labor shortages, says Diane Pratt Hefner,

spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association, a trade group with 50,000 members representing school food service providers. So that seems like, okay, that person was on part of an organization that got lobbied to shit, to uselessness. But also just the higher food costs and labor shortages are also these talking points of like well you could lower the prices on food

because the inflation was really just a thing where fuel companies decided to raise money raise prices and get more get more money and then labor shortages is the thing where it's you know sorry guys we can't open the bar because nobody wants to work anymore like some school districts are struggling like in other words right marginalized communities that we don't want to feed properly. Yes. That's exactly what they're trying to say. Like we know these kids at like charter schools in like these really, really well-funded areas are not going to be eating extra, extra cheesy, lunchable cardboard pizza, right? They're ordering from like DoorDash for lunch. And they're like, mom, I'm having sushi. Don't care what's on this lunch menu. You're going to have it delivered for

me today. So I also find that that's kind of funny, like the way that they tend to word those things, make it seem like they're trying to really help in a situation where they're actually just making things so much worse for those children in those communities. Yeah. I also wonder if kids know how powerful this Kraft Heinz company is, right? I think I was a kid when they merged. Those used to be two companies and they were already huge. And then they were massive.

Yeah. Even and then they just decided we don't like to compete with each other and let's just be all of the food. Like there's so many levers for solving the problem they have described and it doesn't have to just be their favorite lever to pull. You know what I mean? We could, we can do other ways to do this. that we all saw instead of seeing like a problem that illustrated how bad things have gotten in our country they like saw an opportunity to like get some of that sweet sweet school lunch money they're like oh school lunch debt you say that's that's where it's at school lunches cost a lot of money anyways what did you guys have a favorite Lunchable? On the back end. Let's talk seriously, though.

Whatever was on sale. I do think Lunchables made me like crackers and cheese and crackers more than I otherwise would have. I still really love cheese and crackers, I think, because Lunchables. My brain lit up every time I got to eat. My parents didn't give me Lunchables, and I was mad at them for that at the time. Yeah, I wasn't giving them and I felt left out. But also, I think that led me to believe they're incredibly expensive when I don't actually know that they are or not. I was just like, why do the other kids have that?

But I had a lot of similar food. And I really liked Ritz Bits in a similar cheese and crackers way, where it's two tiny Ritz's and then a cheesy spread in the middle, which is probably Lunchables, essentially, and was great. Really good. Powdered cheese in between two crackers. Yeah. Yeah. But with quotes around it, and you have to say it real sarcastic. Yeah.

Right. Absolutely. I got whatever was on sale. So like. I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. My mom was like, here you go.

What's on sale? It's on sale in bulk. Yay. I think the day that she got like a, it used to be a different store, but now I guess it's bought, it got bought out by Costco. Right. So Price Club. So she's like, I have a membership. I so excited what am i gonna do lunchables in bulk like right yeah don't ask me for nothing i don't want you to ask me for snacks don't ask me for

breakfast don't ask me for dinner that's right yeah and the the when i like read the story about the tremendous success of lunchables it was in a book that was at least partially about the obesity epidemic in the country and how these companies, like it was basically the people who manufactured the smoking, like, you know, got everybody addicted to cigarettes, like once those became less and less legal and more and more regulated, they shifted their focus to food and basically used the same approach to, like, get people addicted to regulators don't stand a chance with Kraft Heinz. They wouldn't stand a chance with Kraft or Heinz, let alone Kraft Heinz, now that they're one giant conglomerate. We own everything. Yeah. Well, Denise, it's been such a pleasure having you on The Daily Zeitgeist. Where can people find you, follow you, all that good stuff? I am not a huge fan of Twitter, so you can find me on Instagram Daily Zeitgeist. Where can people find you, follow you, all that good stuff? I am not a huge fan of Twitter,

so you can find me on Instagram. There you go. At TheVampDeVille and on my website, TheVampDeVille.com, where you can find out what I'm up to and what I'm doing. That's pretty much the only place that I'm hanging out.

There you go. I wish I was more social media friend. Is there, I think that's probably healthy. Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah. I'm in one place. That's it. Is there a work of media that you've been enjoying?

It's so funny. It was so hard for me too, because I was like, I don't tweet. So there was no tweets. But then what I saw going around recently is the quote from peggy noonan's article in the wall street journal about ronda santos where she's like he carries a vibe as i've said that he might unplug your life support to recharge his cell phone

it was like i have never heard a human being described so eloquently, perfectly. Damn, Peggy. Bars. Fucking ethered him. It was great. It's everywhere. Especially interesting because she will eventually endorse him. That's so funny. Yeah.

But it's okay. It's okay. His phone is charged. His phone will be charged. Joe Biden would let my iPhone run out of battery or whatever. That bastard. Alex, how about you?

Where can people find you? Is there a work of media you've been enjoying? I have, I've been enjoying watching TikToks in general, and especially a specific kind where people take their house pet and then they play that old Mr. Sandman song under it, like bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. But then you split up the frame and so then it looks like a bunch of your cat.

You like lift it through like it's a synchronized swimmer in those Busby Berkeley musicals. It's great. That's the main media I'm enjoying. And if you go on TikTok, I hope the algorithm gives you one. It's musicals. It's great. That's the main media I'm enjoying. And if you go on TikTok, I hope the algorithm gives you one. It's the best. It will now. How are none of those

nominated for an Academy Award? There's so many categories for shorts. That sounds like art. Categories. I see what you did there. Okay, yeah, there you go. I'm feline like they got ripped off, right?

There we go. Boom. Boy, why did I do that? I'm going to transition into a plug. Folks, please check out my podcast. You can find more like that. I thought it was good. I didn't even know. I

only knew what the categories thing was referencing once you said that. I did not do mine on purpose. I won't tell you that much. Folks, please check out Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. We're newly on the Maximum Fun Network and newly with the wonderful Katie Golden co-hosting every week. There's other folks coming through, too.

But the great Katie Golden of Creature Feature. Of course, check out Creature Feature and just search Secretly in your app to find Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. Such a good show. And now even better. Two of the best in the biz. The best. Yes. Yeah. A tweet i've been enjoying i'm still riding

for elon over here at rsgat is that what that means if i still go to i'm just lazy i don't and i have followers it's the only place i have followers allow me to continue to lurk on twitter at rsgat tweeted everyone with student loan debt right now and it's the uh it's the willem defoe Allow me to continue to lurk on Twitter. At RSGAT tweeted, everyone with student loan debt right now. And it's the Willem Dafoe still. And he's saying, I'm something of a failed venture capital bank myself. I really enjoyed that. You can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien.

You can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist. We're at The Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook fan page and a website, dailyzeitgeist.com, where we post our episodes and our footnotes, where we link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode, as well as a song that we think you might enjoy. Super producer Justin has been absolutely killing it with the recommendations. I believe that somebody created a playlist with some of his,

if not most of his song recommendations. If we ever find that. Yeah, I hope that's true. I'm going to look for it. Yeah, I think I saw it in the Discord. If you did that, reach out to one of us on Twitter and let us know. And we will share that link in the footnotes. But Justin, what is the song that you think people will be enjoying today? Well, considering the discussion of psychedelics up top i wanted to suggest this

track please forgive me if i suggested this song before i truly can't remember sometimes just means it's extra good if you did you should check it out again yeah okay anyway i'm not a huge fan of the beatles but i do find myself liking the psychedelic rock that they inspired and this track sounds like if they took a lot of acid and scored a cosmic car chase sequence um it's it's a song called fuzz jam this is a band from australia called the lazy eyes they're very inventive i think their first album just came out last year so yeah check them out this is fuzz jam by the lazy eyes and you can find that song in the footnotes footnotes also somebody needs to just create a poetry book of justin's descriptions of the songs that he

recommends because they're always so good yeah that was great if the beatles took a lot of acid and scored a cosmic car chase, I think. Yeah. It's the first thing that popped in my head. I feel like people will agree with me. It's the only image that came to my mind. It's right there.

Everyone's like, yep, that's it. Amazing. Well, the daily zeitgeist is a production of I heart radio for more podcasts from I heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

That's going to do it for us this morning. But we are back this afternoon to tell you what is trending. And we will talk to you all then. Bye. Bye. I'm Carrie Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese.

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

Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary

series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.