The Daily Zeitgeist - Short Show Zeitle 12/1: Bill Barr, China Space Program, Elliot Page, Arecibo

Episode Date: December 1, 2020

On this edition of Short Show Zeitle Jack and Miles discuss Bill Barr admitting there is no evidence of election fraud, China is testing a new engine that can reach anywhere on Earth "within 2 hours", Elliot Page has come out as transgender, and the huge radio telescope in Arecibo has collapsed on itself. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's so much beauty in Mexican culture, like mariachis, delicious cuisine, and even Lucha Libre. Join us for the new podcast, Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. In 1982, Atari players had one game on their minds, Sword Quest. Because the company had promised $150,000 in prizes to four finalists.

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

Check out our recent episode with Grammy Award-winning rapper Eve on motherhood and the music industry. No, it's a great, amazing, beautiful thing. There's moms in all industries, very high stress industries that have kids all across this world. Why can't it be music as well? Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister, or is history repeating itself?

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. Hello, the internet, and welcome to this episode of Short Show Zidle. That is meta, because that's what I'm always looking for when we start this. Meta world peace, indeed. I'm Jack. That's Miles. This is what's trending right now. Bill Barr is trending because

he admitted it. Uh-oh. Is this really Bill Barr? Yeah. He came out. He admitted it. He said Trump, there's no election fraud. None of that.

This man is full of shit is a uh subtextual reading of of his statement yeah i mean for him to say quote to date we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election i think he's saying look asshole i've already i've gone so far as to go along with all this other shit i even did that little announcement telling people at u.s attorney's office they could look into anything there's nothing there now let me go on to my regular life of republican goonery but i don't know bill i think you got in too deep already because the shit stinks uh and people always remember you as this enabler rather than the guy who stood up at

the like 11 59 and 59 seconds like oh okay uh so yeah i don't know it was that's that's cool to hear him say that there's another quote that he said um like even in reference to like the weird shit sydney powell and rudy giuliani he's been saying quote there's been one assertion that would be systematic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results. And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far we haven't seen anything

to substantiate that. Right. So it's just them, the absence of finding stuff. Yeah. Yes, they broke up. But apparently he was summoned to the White House, I think, like earlier today.

Yeah, so a lot of people are ignoring him. The way that Fox News is laundering this on the front page of foxnews.com is this is only the second story featuring Bill Barr. The main story featuring Bill Barr has Bill Barr and says, keep digging. Barr appoints Durham to continue Russia origins probe under new administration.

So Obama's not out of the woods yet, baby. Another one is a poll I see that says, what's a better name for Bill Barr? Bill Barr or Bill Barr Baggins? And I don't know why. They're really just trying to fill up paid space to not upset the president i mean newsmax on there they just says bill bar's canceled does it really no i mean that just seems like how they would do it they're like hell yeah i mean if i was again if i had no moral scruples i would probably be playing my trade being like yeah let me just uh be the brain stem of this whole

fuckery operation it just seems so easy. Yeah, yeah. Audience has no taste. There is news out of the China space program. I feel like more and more we're going to be just sitting back and marveling at... What China's doing technologically. The wild technological accomplishments of China. We were talking

before well we'll get to it when we get to the satellite uh but we were talking about the time that they built a dam that made the earth wobble on its axis and they're gonna fucking blow us up with one of their fucking weird experiments in their backyard you know it's like why the neighborhood burned down it's like you know that one guy in the corner yeah oh my god was he doing experience yeah fucking yeah hit a gas man you saw those barrels that he kept bringing in and out of his house out of his van anyway uh so this chinese team just issue at that point uh is trying to find an engine that can go that fast without the wind around it like the air drag tearing it to pieces and they created an engine that uh they think can get a jet to mach 16 16 times the sound of speed of sound and they tested it in a wind tunnel that uh

was able to get pretty close to mach 16 uh wind speeds and it did not break apart i'm gonna make a terrible dad fart joke about that, but I'll leave it there with the tease of a dad fart joke about a wind tunnel that goes Mach 16. I, it seems like, like what is there? Do we know what the closest next thing is? Like how,

by how much are they besting the next fastest thing? Like, it's like, we don't really need, we don't look, we did Mach three, you know, the razor.

That was all we needed. That seemed cool enough. They're like, we're going to take this up to 16. But anywhere on Earth within two hours is pretty wild. Fuck.

Also, what does the air traffic control shit look like at that point? Because I assume that you have to be very careful being like, yeah, man, let it rip at mock 16, like in shared airspace with things that are going very slow.

Like anyone who's played like a street racing video game knows like the slower cars can kind of fuck you up when you're trying to go very fast. Yeah. Or anybody who's driven around me, bro. But I get the fucking spikes coming out of the wheel getting a fucking road some road rash with me yeah that's that's a good look as being the guy who's like proud of how fast he drives uh the i mean being 16 yeah yeah i think the way they're

doing it is this would shoot up into extremely... It would basically leave the atmosphere. You got to be in your own lane at that point. Yeah, exactly. They'll be creating their own lanes. But yeah, wild, wild stuff. Wild stuff. Really wild.

Really wild stuff. Wacky wild. Elliot Page is trending. Yeah. Yeah. really wacky wild uh elliot page is trending yeah yeah formerly ellen page has come out as transgender and he recently posted something on their social media pages like this really like wonderful letter about just the letter starts off just very clearly saying like i want to share with you that i'm trans my pronouns are he they and and my name is Elliot. I feel lucky to be writing this, to be here, to have arrived at this place in my life, and just overwhelming gratitude for the incredible people who have supported me along the journey. I can't begin to express how remarkable it feels to finally love who I am enough to pursue my

authentic self. The whole letter is really touching, and i'm i feel very happy like to read someone's very sincere words about embracing who they are and being able to do that without fear and to do that with love and self-love um is really a nice nice piece of uh you know humanity to look at and be like oh that's a good moment and now saying like i will do everything i can this is a quote from the letter i will do everything i can to change this world quote from the letter. I will do everything I can to change this world for the better. Speaking to those who have, who have, you know,

firsthand dealt with harassment and abuse and threat of violence and things like that. Yeah. The last paragraph, I love that I'm trans and I love that I'm queer and the more I hold myself close

and fully embrace who I am, the more I dream, the more my heart grows and the more I, yeah, it's like, it's been, uh is a very positive and affirming letter like you said um yeah i think it's just like it's it's like you know just seeing anybody exhale positively right you know is like such a great no matter what how

you know how you might not identify in the same way as the person or whatever, but you know that feeling of being a human being and being like, I've arrived at a place that I feel is so much different than how I've been living my life or how I've been feeling about myself, and I can truly say I'm in this place. Shit, I'm still looking for that. I'll take a little bit of that. Yeah. And finally, Arecibo radio telescope um the suspension towers around the huge uh radio

telescope that you will recognize as an entire level from golden eye uh also i know it uh i know it from the contact video game uh that was one of my favorite video games where you just trying when you just try and recreate that mirror shot we're going up the stairs and then it's like what the fuck and at the end you're like wait faith is science science is faith um anyways that telescope uh had it has been basically destroyed yeah yeah i mean it's you know i i remember talking to a few scientists in my old gig about that uh satellite dish because around the same like a few years ago the chinese had built something that was like a half like just besting this one like previously you're like oh shit this is like the biggest fucking thing no no longer um but yeah i mean it's a monumentally important piece of equipment for all of these people doing this kind of research um so i i can def i definitely

see science twitter like mourning uh so i don't want to undercut that part but unfortunately my ignorant ass only knows it from GoldenEye. But with the same heavy heart, I will say, God damn. Yeah. Good to see it. You really do. But we were also talking about the fact that there's also a massive one in China. Yeah.

China's just on some next shit with their scientific developments and and also like sort of having a authoritarian government that can just, you know, make things happen. Yeah, just oust people. You're like, you know, like here, there's like eminent domain and things like that. There's processes. A lot of other places with autocratic, you know, governments, they can just be like, y'all got to get this step in.

We are going to build but it's become apparently like a like a monumental tourist site so there is like it's kind of arcebo or the no no the one in china and like it's kind of like getting in the way like they're sort of like i think it's kind of interfering with like a lot of their research uh because it just seems to be so many people like coming to check it out and things like that. They look through it and there's like a dude poking his head over the top. Right, right, right.

Is that the sort of thing? I think it's... Hello? Hello? Oh, darn it. How do I get back to my bus? It is big. It kind of looks like just a giant,

one of those things that you roll a penny down the side of. Oh, shit. Like those dish shaped things? Do you think that's what it is? Or like it was like the fun way to donate money to a children's museum. Yeah, exactly. Change in this fun funnel of just give me your cash. Yeah. That or like, you know, those other uh that like cheap ass toy you buy for a quarter that's like the

rubber thing that you push inside out like convex and then it reshapes it pops up yeah that one little poppy disc whatever you call it i wonder if this would be like the ultimate tony hawk level probably be a little boring because you drop in smooth. Do you drop in on that thing? Yeah, just drop in on that though. I don't know how. A little bit more. Yeah, can you stay on the board? I don't even know what that angle is.

And then, yeah, is it just boring? You're like, I don't know, man. Just going up and down twice takes three hours. Yeah. It's big. We'll leave it at that. Anyway, Neversoft Games, acclaimed developers of the Tony Hawk series,

think about adding this one. Please. To scale, too. To scale. I want that shit five. I want a half kilometer. Anyways, pour out a little for Arcebo Radio Telescope. Do we know if there's any plans to kind of rebuild it in the

i don't think so i feel like there was it's been in a state of like constant disarray like it's just been falling apart and then finally this shit just they're like oh there we go i'm saying like look we told y'all we weren't going to really do much with this thing i know there was a lot of push for people to be like we need to fucking maintain this thing. But now, I mean, when you look at the photos, like it's kind of, you're like, I don't even know anything about telescopes. I'm like, yeah, that thing's fucked up.

But it's got the vibe of sort of, like we were talking about this new Michael Bay movie called Hummingbird, I think, or Songbird, where like three years into the, it's three years in the future covet 21 is like ravaging or 23 is ravaging uh and like all these landmarks around the world are like just torn to shit like and it looks like we are started we have taken a step down that path uh but it's not the it's not the pandemic so much as it's... Well, it will look like that because the path of rampant capitalism is to let the state

completely fail and then privatize everything. So yes, every school, road, building that was government owned or operated, all that infrastructure will have to collapse. Then it will be privatized. And then welcome to the Donald Trump trump confederated consumer states of america but yeah neocolonialism is uh probably not the disaster movie that michael bay is gonna produce but no but neo's new cologne really great it's called neocolonialism sadly but you know it smells like empire y'all so stupid i don't know why look it's been a long day it's been a long day come on y'all give me a break on

that one we appreciate y'all uh that's gonna do it for this afternoon we are back tomorrow with a whole ass episode of the show. Until then, be kind to each other. Be kind to yourselves. Wash your hands. Wear a mask. Stay inside. Don't do nothing about white supremacy. And we will talk to y'all tomorrow. Bye. Bye.

There's so much beauty in Mexican culture, like mariachis, delicious cuisine, and even lucha libre. Join us cuisine, and even Lucha Libre. Join us for the new podcast, Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, Emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar.

Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. In 1982, Atari players had one game on their minds, Sword Quest, because the company had promised $150,000 in prizes to four finalists. But the prizes disappeared, leading to one of the biggest controversies in 80s pop culture. I'm Jamie Loftus. Join me this spring for The Legend of Swordquest. We'll follow the quest for lost

treasure across four decades. Listen to The Legend of Swordquest on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the podcast from Hello Sunshine that's guaranteed to light up your day. Check out our recent episode with Grammy Award winning rapper Eve on motherhood and the music industry. No, it's a great, amazing, beautiful thing. There's moms in all industries, very high stress industries

that have kids all across this world. Why can't it be music as well? Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. 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.

What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? 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.