The Daily Zeitgeist - Stan Culture The New Religion? Don’t Fear The Repo 06.13.23

Episode Date: June 13, 2023

In episode 1500, Jack and Miles are joined by culture critic, author of Wannabe: Reckonings With The Pop Culture That Shapes Me, and co-host of Pop Culture Happy Hour, Aisha Harris, to discuss… Stan Culture Is The New Religion? F*ck Oedipus Let’s Talk Psychological Archetypes of Pop Culture, Kristi Yamaguccimane AKA Will and more! LISTEN: Find An Hour by Wilma VritraSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? It's right here in black and white and prints. It's bigger than a flag or mascot.

Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. 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. Hello, the internet, and welcome to season 291, episode one, overall episode number

1,500 of Dirt Daily Zeitgeist. Thank you to Super Producer Justin for pointing that out. We are so bad at knowing about this. Half the time, it's y'all going like, hey, you know, that was like your 1,200 episodes. Hey, you know, that was like 1,000 episodes. And I'm like, is it?

And I know there's like trending episodes too that don't even mix in the mix. All that to say, Jack's 1500, man. Yeah, that's without trend. 1,500 daily episodes of... Yeah, we got a murder at 1,500. Yes. Okay.

That's correct. We do have a murder at 1,500. This episode is absolutely sleaze. It's still a production by HeartRadio. It's still a podcast where we take a deep dive into American shared consciousness. This is one of our very special daily Zeit guest episodes where

we have a couple guests on and kind of focus on their areas of expertise. We have the one, the only, one of our favorite listeners and the only listener who has been a full-on guest on the show, Christy Yamag full-on guest on the show, Christy Yamaguchi-Main, coming a little bit later to talk to us about his on-the-job exploits,

a man who wears many hats. And up first, we are talking to Aisha Harris, a pop culture expert. She just wrote an amazing book about pop culture. First, I guess I should. We've only done it 1,500 times. I'm a little rusty. My name is Jack O'Brien, a.k.a. Potatoes O'Brien. And I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray. Oh, thank you so much. It's Miles Gray, a.k.a. I was gonna declassify, but then I got high. I was gonna turn them all into the feds, but then i got high i was gonna turn them all into the feds but then i got high now i'm being indicted and i know why because i'm the guy that just wouldn't try to simply comply

and that's from reddit tv on discord uh said hey this is this is popping off on our politics and then like people this is this isn't even a listener but sometimes y'all are finding just fantastic aka's on there so shout out tv on the discord i feel like he would have a real mental health episode if he ever smoked weed donald trump oh he'd honestly and i don't want to say that i'm not interested in justice, but I would settle if they, if the feds would allow me, I would roll a blunt so potent that Trump's hair would fly off his head.

And I would like to just watch him squirm for that like 75 ish minutes where he's like, they hate me, don't they? What is this? I've been eating pizza all wrong or whatever is going on. But yeah, he's, there's no way you can be in like mentally on like a tight rope all the time like this guy is. And then introduce weed to the mix.

Not. Yeah. No. But yes. So special guest, expert guest up front, Aisha Harris. We're going to talk to her about whether Stan culture is the new religion. We're going to talk about pop culture like archetypes like i you know i've always said that freud should have just analyzed pop

culture like movies from the 90s right rather than like oedipus you are you are charlotte from sex and the city oedipus is the like pop culture figure that smart people bring up first when they're like, hmm, Dr. Freud, Oedipus, anyone. But I feel like all characters operate in that way,

especially ones that really connect and become iconic. Oh yeah. I managed not to talk for a half hour about Hannibal Lecter, but that is my number one example of like, you know, something expressing something in our unconscious as you do talk about jaws though true i do talk about jaws quite a bit i even reveal a very obscure character from film that i related to that got people yeah we'll talk about that after the

episode but oh my god yeah all that plenty more so dive on in? We'll get into it right now. Aisha Harris. The author of the upcoming Wannabe, Reckonings with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me. Yeah. Well, Miles, we're thrilled to be joined for our expert interview portion of the show by a renowned culture critic, podcaster,

who you can currently hear as one of the hosts of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Her new book is Wannabe Reckoning with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me. It's Aisha Harris! Welcome. That's the most boisterous introduction I've gotten ever. That's awesome. I love it. We're very boisterous here. Well, let us know. If someone does a more

boisterous introduction, call us. Because we'll have you back just to up it again. We'll come for that crown. Yeah, absolutely. It's given Oprah. I like it. I like it. The first time. Yeah, actually. We are getting a big O energy there. For sure. That is such a compliment. First of all, I have to say

I laughed so hard when you called out the DMX lyric. I'm not a nice person. It's such a great line. It's such a great line. It's just it's such a funny distillation of his whole vibe. But it just like drops all pretense, all dog metaphors go out the window. It's just I'm not a nice person.

Oh, yeah. go out the window it's just i'm i'm not a nice person oh yeah i mean that i remember the opening of the song is so intense when it's like see this is shit i fucking be talking about and then a certain part it's like i'm not a nice person wow it's the same thing i've always when my friends when that album came out and then there was actually we were like this is somehow the best line in all of hip-hop yes this is to the point it's a little like therapy like it sounds like i'm worried i'm not a nice person and yet he sounds so menacing and like oh yeah in that dmx way yeah but yeah wannabe is a great read very insightful i want to kind of jump around to some of the different ideas that it raised that we talk a lot about on this show. And I wanted to start off with Stan Culture. You have a really great essay, I think, called Kenny G Gets It? Yes, Yes. About Stan culture. So, you know, a story that we talked about recently on our show a couple of weeks back was that people are experiencing post-concert amnesia

after going to Taylor Swift concerts. And one of the more interesting like theses I've seen for why this is happening was Myra Fox and Forward comparing it to the Jews forgetting all of their time in the desert in the Talmud. know why this might be happening and it does seem to all kind of coalesce around this idea of their having this highly affected elevated experience at this show and you know the the article then points out that you know swifties kind of pour over her lyrics the way that like a Talmudic scholar would debate the finer points of their core text. And, you know, there will be an extremist offshoot that believes she's coming out in her lyrics or something, and then they will go to war with like, you know, some other branch of interpretation. But yeah, I just wanted to kind of you describe Stan behavior as, quote, a wave of cultish behavior that has threatened to overtake pop culture over the past few years, where Stan's originally a pejorative reference to a crazed violent fan like the one described in Eminem's song Stan.

But now apparently a badge of pride express a kind of unyielding devotion to artists, which mirrors zealous followers of religion. artist which mirrors zealous followers of you know religion so yeah like all right did you see the story about people experiencing post-concert amnesia are you buying that it's related no this is the first time i'm hearing about it so it's so like they're forgetting the show happened they were saying things like were it not for literal footage on my phone i could i was having trouble remembering the details of the entire concert yeah uh that just sounds like they want an excuse to have their phones up the entire time instead of just like letting themselves enjoy it it's for my memory oh my goodness like look i i have definitely been that person sometimes at concerts who puts her phone out and is like oh

my god i need to catch this experience and then like 10 seconds in i'm like what am i doing they're right in front of me right and i'm looking at it through my phone screen yeah and i and like i almost never go back and actually watch that video so like i don't know i don't think it's ever happened in recorded human history that someone has gone back and looked at the video of the footage they took at a concert. I feel like it's always just the act of taking it down to be like, this is so good for my evidence. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I don't it's it's dumb.

I'm actually going to see Janet Jackson this this weekend. And I'm very, very excited. accident this uh this weekend and i'm very very excited and i might pull out my phone but it'll probably be more to like film myself and my friends lip-syncing as opposed to like trying to film you know her dancing yeah right to me that makes a little bit more sense because like you're capturing the moment you want to remember who you were with like that sort of thing but um yeah stands stands are weird man i mean like you like you said in the quote from my book, like, this was originally a Stan was someone who murdered his, his, I mean, Stan was someone who murdered his wife, his pregnant wife, or girlfriend, and was writing crazed notes to Eminem. And somehow we've turned this into like a positive thing that's me right it's like it's such an American way of life like that's just like turning something that has really deep-seated like awful roots and like I think Stan itself is the song is a really interesting song I don't think it's a bad song I just think like the whole point is that it's sort of a

cautionary tale and now it's like something to aspire to right and that's just it's sort of a cautionary tale, and now it's like something to aspire to. Right. And that's just fucking weird. It's dumb. And so what I was trying to argue in the book was just like, we need to have a better way of being fans and thinking about what fandom means. And I think for me, one of the more insidious parts of stand-up is not just like that people are so into whatever artist or whatever franchise

they're into but it's that if someone else doesn't like what you're into then it's taken as like this you know the worst offense in the world you you hate this person and they hate you and it's very like jets and sharks sort of situation it's like this doesn't need to be that serious. Like, yeah, we should be able to like what they like, hate what they hate. And never the twain shall meet or whatever, you know. Well, I mean, but that that is also a thing that's been happening for millennia when it comes to religion. Right. Yeah. Like my interpretation of the religion. And I mean, we've we've talked about trends around

religion on the show and it's clear that for a large portion of the country like god and traditional religion are dead or dying or at least do not hold the central part of their life that you know they did a couple generations ago like and even that they did like a couple decades ago but the the human search for meaning and like having some broad significance to their life doesn't just go away and i i do wonder like your essay really made me wonder if this is what is coming in to fill that space in people's lives. Like you mentioned in the essay, the religious fervor of Star Wars fans when they're forced to confront a new trilogy that might move in a different direction than their worldview. And the amount of energy that they put that they put forth you know arguing about it and criticizing it and stuff i feel like starts to make sense to me if i'm thinking of it like

you know what if the catholic church was just like a new gospel just dropped like i feel like that would get quite the reaction from you know devout catholics and so this is like if these stories fill that place in people's lives then like i feel like i can understand the world it is a terrifying situation to you know a weird culture to exist in and also like really makes the position of these celebrities and these filmmakers like very scary right that's a lot of pressure yeah absolutely i mean there's something weirdly evangelical about the way that these fan stands approach things, whether it's like trying to wrangle as many streams of this artist's song or album so that they can get to the top

or, you know, trying to convince strangers on the internet why like, this is the best movie ever. Like, it's just, there is this weird sense of like, and I think, I don't think all social media is terrible. I think it can be great for actually connecting fans to to other people who they wouldn't normally interact with um you know and people have more of a community they can find and foster online but but then on the other hand it is it does have this weird sort of like religious bent to it that feels icky and the fact that in some cases these artists who shall rename nameless sometimes they foster this weird religious fervor by you know sticking having sticking their fans

on people who criticize them right you know or the studios are you know they really play into this or you know release the Snyder Cut. Like, oh my goodness, calm down. Let's calm down here. I definitely think the religious aspect of it is very accurate. I also think there's a comparison to be made to sports fans and how pop culture has in some ways become its own sport

where people take sides and like team, I don't know, team Issa, team Molly, team, you know, team i don't know team isa team molly team you know like all that yeah or yeah um so yeah it's it's really screwed up our our way of like relating to one another and also how we relate to art because at the end of the day it's like we should just like be able to enjoy it without having to add on all this extra layer of like meaning that i think can be harmful to society yeah just social media yeah because yeah i think everything's kind of like inverting in this weird way especially with celebrity culture being where it's at right someone had a quote i read like

years ago that was saying like prior decades you became a celebrity for achieving something that's what brought along celebrity to someone was because of an achievement and now we're in an era where merely being a celebrity is the achievement and it sort of ends there and i think through all that we're always if that's the case then we're also trying to find like who our heroes are and like it becomes this thing where now we're defending people tooth and nail over these criticisms of again like people were we always talk about how we're like deifying these people but it's starting to take on like quite a more like literal sense of that like where people are you know coming at each other with this same level of energy that you normally would be like, oh, is this some kind of religious, like a religion, like intra-religion battle or something like that?

But again, I feel like it's maybe just because, like as we slowly like losing touch of like what has meaning, what doesn't, then we just sort of like are left with these things and being like, well, I'm a Barb. So this is what like my life is. This is how we do it. You invoked, don't, be careful. I've already died a thousand deaths on the internet.

I mean, truly, like not to take it to too dark a place, but I mean, I feel like the Beatles might've been the first people to like fully get to this place. And like John Lennon commented on it by being like, we're bigger than Jesus, like in some ways. And then he was assassinated, you you know by one of his fans like you know so i do think there are like all sorts of dark directions that this shit can go you know john lennon was at surface level a pop singer who

sang songs about being a walrus and yet like he took on such meaning to so many people that like the the guy who shot him i think one of his like chief motives was that he didn't like the direction that his career was taking at that point and like wanted to preserve him in amber so like again it's just this religious fanaticism and devotion that has to kind of go somewhere and can go in like these really dark horrifying directions and before stan right yeah yeah exactly like for for people who like aren't familiar you know some people know kenny why did you use kenny g to sort of illustrate this point because like i for me as like a millennial like i i get it like yes because that was like the first thing that we were like kenny g sucks and get it out my face forever

i felt seen because i have a religious devotion to kenny g i have an idol to him show your ponytail that i just like kind of braid into the back of mine like a padawan but yeah i mean what about Show your ponytail. actually listened to Kenny G music while watching it. So that's like the bad, the downside of it. But like, it's really interesting, because he seems very, he's very aware of his reputation as like someone who's made millions and millions of millions of dollars, because a certain segment of the population at a certain period in time was obsessed with him and you know my my my mom she had several kenny g albums i had to listen to that shit in the car a lot especially during the holidays because like that was like peak kenny g season and like the mid to early 90s so smooth so i few few genres as a whole like just make my blood boil like smooth jazz i hate it so much like it's not it's not real jazz it's not oh no it's so sanitized yeah it's so but that's the point

of the documentary is that you have these music critics who are arguing like this is not he's like not playing real jazz and even he will admit look, I know some people don't like me and I realize I'm a polarizing figure. And he says, you know, when I'm paraphrasing here, but he says, you know, when someone says that you like something, I like something, don't you? And that person says, no, I don't. Then you take it really personal as though like they're saying something is wrong with you or something bad about you. And that's kind of like how I frame the essay, which is like, I talk about standup and all that stuff,

but I also talk about sort of how we also use these figures and these movies and TV shows to sort of like assign value to ourselves or make ourselves feel better about who we are. And so like, it's not just enough to really like Beyonce's music, but you also have to feel as though Beyonce represents your values, like as a as a moral human being. And so when she's called out for using the word spaz in a song, and then rescinds it, like that makes you feel good, because you're like, oh, she's listening. And like, she's

progressive, and she understands these things. Yeah you're like, she's progressive and she understands these things. Yeah. And like, same like with Taylor Swift, when like she finally stopped being, well, then she dated Matt Healy, apparently. But like, whatever. Before that, you know, she was supporting Democratic politicians and supporting queer rights. And when that happened, it made her fans, many of them feel better about themselves because they're like, oh, she also thinks like me. And I think that's just as much of a trap in some ways as, you know, being just a religious fan of anyone in part because it's just like,

yeah, I mean, sure. There are ways, there are certain ways where you can assign like if someone is listening to i don't know i'm trying to think of like who's the like are there any neo-nazi artists i'm sure there are like if they're like if you're listening to someone who has like neo-nazi traits oh i recently learned that like one of the members of ace of base was like connected to neo-nazi the whole thing is kind of a wink at nazism yeah yeah yeah yeah but apparently he was like a neo-nazi or i don't want him coming for me but like may have been associated or sympathized with that movement and if someone knows this and then like is like oh yeah i still love ace to base like then you might be like that's that's troubling right but i also don't think that like it's it's it's just kind of it's a slippery slope because

not every artist most artists most people are not gonna have the same exact line of values as you are so like i i think it's just like we shouldn't trap ourselves into like you know I guess R. Kelly would have been like if someone's like fully supporting R. Kelly like in this day and age I'm gonna look sideways at you and I'm probably not gonna like want to be around you but like at the same time you know I think most artists are more complicated than that and just the describing of meaning, it feels like play, like it feels like posturing. And I don't like it. I want to say just kind of like, like what we like and hate what we hate. And not always try to put deeper. Yeah, not not put too much deeper meaning into it than that. Yeah, because there's so many times to I'll hear a song and then like, someone's like,

oh, you know, that person like was, you know, is like actually a monster. And I'm like, I don't even know, like an algorithm suggested this song to me and I liked it. But I also get to a part of you is like you start thinking as a consumer, what's your role in that? But I think further the further point is like I think for some people, the experience of music is probably the closest thing we have to religion sometimes because people aren't. experience with music is probably the closest thing we have to religion sometimes because people aren't yeah we're so disconnected that i can tell like for me when i was just losing my shit to different music it was because it was i could like i was envisioning myself like living out the lyrics or like the beat was just like put me in a different zone and things like that and i think that's where it kind of gets slippery where you do begin to be like this person can give bring

this feeling out of me therefore i'm going to like assign like all these higher values to them or their persona because of like that connection and yeah i think it does get a little it can get a little slippery at times if you're also like you have to mirror every single value i have too because shit i mean i love jay-z but i hate capitalism and he's told me since day one, he's a capitalist. And so I'm like, yeah, you know, everything but that, you know, crossing picket lines and stuff like that. That's Jay, you know. Yeah.

And to be clear, I don't think we shouldn't critique those things. I'm just saying, I don't think it should be like burn it all down situation where, you know, I think we should be able to enjoy the music, but also say like, but this this aspect of whatever they're saying or whoever they are, like Jay-Z or even Beyonce, who look, I love Beyonce, but she's also just as much of a capitalist as he is. You know, that is worth noting because it also just it comes up in their music. So it's impossible to separate the two. Yeah. But yeah, I also don't believe that we should just be like, oh, well, if you like Beyonce, then you fully support capitalism because it's like, no, that's not how this works. Yeah, it's disconnected. It is that, you know, Kenny G's music gets me outside of myself, gets me outside of like time as normally experienced, which like that is something that is being that needs to be replaced.

Like people used to have these religious services where they'd all get together in community and, you know, listen to music and listen to pray and meditate. Yeah, meditate. And like, so if I, because we're in this like hyper capitalist, like cellular existence as like individual nodes and like there aren't that many opportunities to get outside of ourselves. So like if Kenny G does that for me, like, you know, and I didn't start listening to him because I knew that the G stands for God. That realization came to me later, like, you know, years after I started listening. Actually. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll come back. And I want to talk to you about this quote where you talk about inadvertent self-formation by way of popular culture,

which I think is brilliant. And I want to talk about some psychological archetypes. So we'll be right back. And we're back. We're back. Growing up, I've often said on the show that Freud fucked up big time by using ancient Greek myths instead of pop culture archetypes from the 90s. I think he could have really made a name for himself if he had just, you know, stuck to pop culture. Yeah, these are the things that we should be like as we're thinking about, you know, where does this weird urge come from to stand people, for instance, like these are the figures that I think actually exist in people's minds and like deep in their unconscious. Right. How would you how did you explain, again, this concept of inadvertent self-formation by way of popular culture? Well, I think especially when we're just kids or adolescents, we're not thinking deeply about what we're consuming, what we're viewing or watching. We are just, we're taking it in.

We're like a sponge, right? It's just everything affects us and we don't necessarily know how to name it or know how to identify it. And it comes out in how we talk to each other, how we think of ourselves, how we see ourselves. I mean, I think about, you know, growing up as a kid in the 90s and how casual homophobic language is just like the thing that everyone did and if you go back and watch the movies that we were all watching whether it was like ace ventura or like the teen movies of it like there's all this casual homophobia you know showing up there and so you don't realize until years later or at least mean, I'm sure plenty of actual queer people recognize it in those moments. Obviously, it was never right or okay, and it definitely was hurting people then.

But I think part of what growing up hopefully is, means being able to go back and sort of look at the things that you took in when you were younger and understand how they may have and may still be affecting how you view things today. And so that's where the sort of the idea of it being inadvertent comes from is because like it doesn't like sometimes it just happens to you and then you have to later go back and realize, okay, how did this happening to me make me who I am now? And a lot of it is sometimes like going back and undoing, trying to undo what has sort of calcified in your mind and brain and how you relate to things. Yeah, like it was, I'm pretty sure when I was a kid, I probably used the F word,

the homophobic F word a couple times, because that's what i you know grew up around so yeah it's it's a lot of undoing and and and trying to become better hopefully if you're able to go back and look at those things and recognize those things i feel like so much of that debate now where people are like, it's too woke, are like people who can't let go of like, but my favorite movie is this. And I'll have to say it's bad now if I agree. And it is so true.

Like how much we take on shit that we see in the media, especially in the age before social media. Like I was, everyone's like looking for something that might feel like them or could be them or something you could kind of just feel like aligned with. What were like the shows or works of media that you

kind of grasped and and sort of ingested to kind of become your personality you know i i write in the book about what i call my my hoe phase and and uh you know which lasted from roughly my late teens to mid-ish 20s. And how I kind of had this idea of what I wanted to be as a girl slash woman and how I related to men, boys and men. And I thought that, you know, I had to be sort of tomboy-ish and the type of girl who could hang with the guys, not necessarily like, I never pretended to like sports. Like that was never my, like sports aren't my thing. I never pretended to do that. Like it wasn't that, but you know, I'd use what I liked, movies, TV, music to sort of signal, oh, I'm like, I'm cool. Like, Superbad is one of my favorite movies. Aren't I cool? It really is one of my favorite movies. I love that movie. But like, I would play that up or

play, you know, play up the fact that, you know, I was really into, I don't know, Freaks and Geeks or The Wire or whatever as like, the thing I put on my dating profiles. And I saw like this vision of like wanting to be closer to this idea of masculinity in a way as a way of like shielding myself from getting hurt by boys and men. And so I was very much like Samantha Jones was my girl. I wanted to be like her from Sex and City, Nola Darling and She's Gotta Have It have it the 1986 film not the tv remake by spike lee like those were kind of my you know the badass women who fucked around a lot and like didn't like were anti-relationship anti getting too close to to men right that was kind of what i clung to and then over time i realized one that's reductive. And also like, acting, acting like a man thinking like a, I, once I realized that that was all kind of a false dichotomy and that even if you do act like that as a woman or as a person who presents as a woman, like you're still going to get the short end of the stick because like, you're, you're still going to get, you're going to be slut shamed or you're going to be you know you're it's

just there's no winning right and the idea of getting closer like masculinity is not something at least that i want to aspire to in the way that i conceived of it or that pop culture conceived of it which was often like the ladies man whether it's sam alone and cheers or not not that there's like actually what i love about it's always studying philadelphia is that it's sam alone and cheers or not not that there's like actually what i love about it's always studying philadelphia is that it's actually like critiquing those things but like i'm thinking of dennis and like the dennis system and how like that is clearly something to be that's like being critiqued this idea of masculine men and who are those guys the pickup artists or whatever like That whole culture?

Yeah, or the game or whatever. Yeah, that whole thing. I thought that's what I wanted to be. And then I realized it's all bullshit. It's all patriarchal. And I had to sort of undo all of that mindset about how to be a good person and how not to be an asshole because really i was just trying to mimic not just not really masculinity per se but just like being an asshole which is often assigned to men right and often seen as a good thing in men

jack deal with it what what tv people what media people shaped you over the years? Because I feel like I was always a loose collection of shit I saw on TV and film. Yeah. Kenny G. Kenny G, number one. First and foremost, obviously, influence. I don't know if you've seen pictures of me in fifth grade, but my hair was long, permed, and always looked a little bit wet i just wore uh you know suit dress shirts with a vest over top at all times perfect you know i was i watched jaws so many times before

the age of like six that i think i was like a combination of like sheriff brody and quint at various points or like wanting to be that and then also rocky and karate kid were the ones that i where i really saw it in like something about like the like i thought it was cool to get your ass kicked like i think other people like thought like you don't go down like yeah like other other kids would be like, I'm into Bruce Lee or somebody who is famously an ass kicker. And the two characters that I really loved were people who could really take a punch and just keep getting back up.

The underdog. Yeah, the underdog who is just losing fights repeatedly. I also liked John McClane, who, you know, is just dragging his like broken body across broken glass, like by the end of that movie, like something about that probably tied into the very strict Catholic upbringing that I had, you know, like some like weird Mel Gibsonian right the passion yeah yeah sadism or something was was probably tied in there but yeah and then Michael Jordan came along and I was like I want to be that I want to be Michael Jordan and then went to like you know early 90s hip-hop and then I'd say like pop intellectuals and writer like hunter s thompson even though i like didn't love his writing i was like man that guy's cool i want to you know drink and use drugs like the future doesn't exist while still being respected as an intellectual and the yeah i feel like those were kind of the main ones as i was like still forming myself. Yeah. I was just so addicted to TV and like films that like every time I saw

something I could like find, I was like always looking for like identity in like film, like the things I was watching. And like one of the earliest ones was like Goku and Dragon Ball as a kid. Like I was just like, Oh, this is like, I felt like it was teaching me things about toughness.

And then, then I want to be Michael Jordan. Like, I was just like, oh, this like I felt like it was teaching me things about toughness. And then then I want to be Michael Jordan. And then I wanted to be Will Smith and Fresh Prince. Then I was Ace Ventura for about two years with the way I spoke, like just like Pete annoying Jim Carrey. Every kid. Every kid. Every kid. I was I was all righty then all that shit. Yeah.

I had specific friends. I remember who were ace ventura for three years in a row and they in my memory the funniest kids i knew yeah funniest people i've ever met just do an ancient totally co-opted that shit and i was like this man is a genius yeah 100 and then i was the wayans brothers yeah probably marlin more than sean because marlin was a little more outgoing then i was tiger woods because that was the first time i saw a blazing person like me on tv and i was like okay so i'm that and i tried to play golf that shit i was i was never going anywhere then there was the rock shot on another like vaguely blazing person yeah then puberty hit

it was all rap i was like jay-z i was method man i was pharrell because people were like you you kind of you could be like for i was like yeah thank you thank you thank you thank you i will not wear trucker hats i was wearing trucker hats and she should have seen me in the early i mean i i i wore trucker hats too because it was it was the odds yeah you had to you had to and at least for me i was like that's a trucker hat i'm like but pharrell wears one so i guess it's okay yeah right yeah i wasn't wearing bond dutch quite yet then i was like i love tom sizemore and saving private ryan for some that is so weird so it's because jack to your point and the goku thing he kept getting shot and he kept getting back up in the movie and i was like yo yo and then my mom was like there was a monk in

japanese folklore called benkei who maybe you would be more interested in. So then I got into figures like that. But now I don't think I've moved on past Pharrell, to be honest. Yeah. But it is one of those things where like so much of my identity was being defined by the media, sadly. the media sadly and I was taking cues especially from like the blackness that I saw on screen as some kind of standard that I had to sort of uphold because I was being fed this very specific version of like what black culture was via like television and film then other versions from my family and then other times also being Asian I felt like I was just kind of like a punch line so I was always

kind of sifting through media to try and give me something i'm like well that shit's cool on tv oh man what was like the rush hour era like for you oh let me tell you how yeah my cousins my black cousins were immediately they're like i was jackie chan from the second the first rush hour came out or blackie chan was a lot of things a lot of people say um and yeah that was and at the time i was like or i would even you know the thing is you even point that inward and you're like telling other people you're like i'm like rush hour the person right you know what i mean and then take that out because you'd rather like you got laughs from that but it's always interesting how i was like i was always using media sort of like this touchstone to inform those things and again it was like out of seeking some way of like finding myself, but also like maybe inadvertent or maybe very intentional kind of personality formation the world and the cultural landscape as like these figures that people

that like resonate and you know they express some like you know that i read this book when i was young about like how movies are like cultural dreams they're like expressing some something from like our shared unconscious and you know so obviously they resonate and people pay money to see them but then they have this second life where they shape us in the same way that like linguists talk about language shaping everything we do because they like give us the color palette that we are working with when we're like trying to build the person that we want to be like how we talk what we wear how to like you, you know, hold our body posture wise. There's this crazy story about how like Marlon Brando characters, like nobody in the

mafia dressed like that until Marlon Brando did in a movie. And then they were just like, yo, that's me. That is who I want to be. You wear sweatsuits. And then they started dressing like that. And then that's, that's what we associate with, you know, people in the mafia. But it was like this invention by a great artist. episode about the godfather and um how italian americans reacted to it and i learned that where it was just like they were they the gangsters were imitating the movie version of themselves right yeah which is just such a great little anecdote and a great example of how there's there's just this back and forth, this cultural exchange between the language of the movies and then the language of the people and how they feed into one another. And sometimes they become so blurred

that you don't know. It's like a chicken and egg situation, like which actually came first? Like, was this, you know, did this exist? Was it, you know, was Marlon Brando basing the character off of a specific gangster he met? And then it just became sort of a template for all these other gangsters. Yeah, it's just so interesting to think about that.

Or even something like, I don't know, the Rachel haircut in the 90s, how everyone wanted that. It's just like, what a weird time. What a weird, weird thing. How ingrained pop culture is uh to all of us yeah and i feel like we see it now even more right especially like with in politics like every like especially with like when you look at the symbolism and like the the imagery the semiotics of like poly like political factions now like i feel like you see so many people on the right, like far right, who are just,

they like, they love the Punisher. They love the Joker. And there's like this weird, like, again, people are finding these archetypes again, do I think maybe give even their own like political battles meaning, you know what I mean? Like, because it might not be enough for them to be, sort of get the picture because they're looking at maybe their own situation.

But they like they're saying, like, OK, I'm on this side of the fence plus Punisher. Oh, yeah, I like this. This is me. This is me. The guy who is like just unhinged, violent and feels like that's the only way that can solve things to make people safe. To make people safe. Yeah. I think those two in particular are very like powerful, central sort of psychological archetypes that have really, you know, like back to Heath Ledger's Joker comes out at the start of the Obama administration. And I think the like resonated with people being like, not everything's OK okay here even though kind of the mainstream media seemed to be like we're good here everything's good right post-racial history is over and then like the joaquin joaquin phoenix joker comes out and like adds what i think are two

crucial ingredients that he is an incel and that he is like pointedly not funny but wants to be funny which i feel like are two of the key features of a lot of the people who identify with the joker and like that yeah i mean that character's been around and resonating for a long time but it just feels like it's really yeah in in the books that are written about our culture there probably won't be as many of them as we like to think but i i feel like that there will be a whole chapter on like the joker and the punisher and shit like that unfortunately yeah maybe just yeah again just shows how much meaning we like extract from like our like our popular culture because it wasn't like no one's like going in history. Right. Like I,

I want to like, I want to be William Tecumseh Sherman or some shit like John Brown. They're like, I want to be the punisher. Yeah. I want to be Batman. And you're like, oh shit.

Okay. So we've completely just exchanged one for the other. But again, I was like that same motivating force behind it, I guess. Yeah. Well well and also like the the meaning that is being extracted is often just like totally out of line of what the meaning originally was or really is like when i think about all the you know the bill maher types who complain about oh you could never get blazing saddles made today it's like okay but like blazing saddles is actually like a radical piece of like filmmaking and they're just and yeah and they're just like focused on oh well they you know they're they're using the n-word or

their whatever whatever right actually i don't even remember if the n-word is used it doesn't matter it's like they are taking the wrong takeaways from that movie to prove their point but really it's just like that movie was like maybe it wouldn't have been made today but also like most people who are actually like liberals the ones you are fighting against they would argue that blazing style is actually really great because it's way more transgressive than an episode of family Guy or whatever. Like, it's, yeah. We wouldn't let you, Bill Maher, remake Blazing Sands.

No. Because that would suck, and you would do a bad job. All right, let's take one more break, and we'll be right back. 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. Substance use disorder and addiction is so isolating. And so as a black woman in recovery, hope must be loud. It grows louder when you ask for help and you're vulnerable. It is the thread that lets you know that no matter what happens, you will be okay. When we learn the power of hope, recovery is possible. Find out how at startwithhope.com. Brought to you by the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, Shatterproof, and the Ad Council. 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, And we're back. And I wanted to talk to you finally about the chapter, This is IP That Never Ends, which you open talking about what I think is one of the more significant movies of the past couple decades, which is the Lion King live action remake. movie jumps out at me when you look at the list of the top grossing films of all time it's in the top 10 but it's like a movie that didn't really like all the other movies on there resonated and like had these cultural ripples and like you saw like halloween costumes or whatever and it felt

like the lion king movie like not a lot of people came away from that movie and were like great job no notes but it was it was a massive like it wasn't successful i guess this is this is the thing that makes it stand out for me from the rest of the movies and like the top 20 top gross movies of all time is that it was not successful as a movie but it was extremely successful as a marketing like event basically and like i i feel like we saw the same thing with like the jurassic world franchise where it's like the premise the promise of this movie the trailer are all like they're really brilliant works of marketing they make all the sense as a marketing offering to a consumer but like the product doesn't follow through in a way that is like

culturally lasting but because we live in a world of like you know where capitalism is kind of the ultimate score that we're keeping then we just like notch them as a w and kind of move on but yeah i'm just curious like what what what made you kind of want to open that chapter talking about the the lion king live action remake well i first of all i did not realize it was like now in the top 10 uh but but obviously that's account like i'm assuming that's not accounting for inflation and not the actual number of tickets sold. The thing about The Lion King is, unlike Disney's other live-action remakes, the ones that they have already made and the ones that they are going to continue to turn out, that movie has all animals. There are no human characters and so this movie was advertised as like look at how realistic this is look at how it basically it really did look like an episode of planet earth like that's how quote-un unquote good the animation, the CGI was. But good for who?

Because, you know, the 1994 version of Lion King is a classic in part because the animation is so rich, richly drawn. The animals have facial expressions. You can understand like they are connected. Their bodies and the way their bodies move are connected to their emotions and their feelings. It is animated. It is actually animated. And what we got with The Lion King was a sort of dead-eyed, reminded me of Polar Express. Like, why are we doing this?

There's nothing here. express like why are we doing this there's nothing here and i think to me i wanted to focus on that in part because it was so stark how much of a cash grab this was and how disney can you know say until it's blue in the face that it like wants to update these stories for new audiences and blah blah i mean you just know know that we already know this property exists. We know the music, we know the songs. You throw in Beyonce and Donald Glover and people are going to go see it. The artistic aspirations, whatever they are, they do not play out for me, at least on the screen. And so I wanted to use that as a jumping off point to sort of examine how we are just drowning in all of this IP and franchise BS for the most part in

ways that just feel suffocating and cyclical and as though we're like never gonna get off this hamster wheel. It's interesting because like that essay, I mean, this entire book goes through down a lot of rabbit holes, but I was not expecting when I started writing the essay that I was going to wind up quoting Nietzsche. But here we were in this idea of us not being willing to reckon with things ending and having an end. And I admire shows or movies that exist as a single thing without having to be resurrected in any way you know obviously pop culture has always had you know resurrections and reboots like not that this is a new thing at all and i explain that in the essay like i go

all the way back to the silent era where there were remakes of Cecil B. DeMille, the filmmaker made like three or four different versions of the same movie over the course of his career. So it's not like this is new, but it is definitely reached its like suffocation level of like, this is all Hollywood seems to be focused on is recreating and rehashing its old ideas because that's what's the easiest to get butts and seats and um i'm kind of sick of it and for every like spider-man across the universe where it's like hell yeah this is this is good like this is great even there's plenty of ghostbuster 2016s or you know the off-the-wall ghostbusters or arrested development like on netflix which was just like a terrible

like i just i've i couldn't even do that season four is my favorite season my favorite season i listen to that i listen to kenny g while watching that it's nice because the words don't clash with the music so you can kind of have just an overall yeah no it's it's a weird it's you you do a good job of describing like that what the experience was for people watching season four of arrested development and just being like this they're the same characters but like just everything seems like a little bit off yeah and way longer like they made those episodes longer than they ever needed to be because it was on netflix yeah like we can be wacky man what about a 45 minute one who cares it's also just hard as a consumer right because like we talk about this all the time on the show of like just how like in the 90s when development

people became all the marketing people at the studios, the emphasis just became about like raw numbers and like imagination was kicked to the curb. And even now, like knowing that I'm still susceptible to that, the studios basically be like, hey, the McRib is back. And I'm like, what? A new Jurassic Park movie? And I know it's not going to come close to the fucking the first hit of jurassic park i took in 1993 it's not even gonna come close but always chasing that high yeah but i'm chasing the proverbial dragon or dinosaur in this case yeah that one stands out to me as like a real like it could have if they had the right people like the dinosaurs at a park and like the park is now full of people or the last one the the third in the jurassic world trilogy where the dinosaurs are loose in the world like

those are amazing premises for films that it feels like they were just like yeah but the marketing's gonna crush so we actually don't have to worry about making them like great films you guys want to go to italy why don't we say they're in them like great films. You guys want to go to Italy? Why don't we say they're in the mountains in Italy? That sounds tight. I was like, what? They're in the Dolomites? Like, what is this?

Yeah. The other issue with like that specific example of Jurassic Park is that like the new one, the CGI, like it doesn't even come close to feeling as real and terrifying as the first movie. Like, I can still watch the first movie. And when those kids are trapped in that truck and it's like, literally, you can feel it breathing on you. Oh, yes. These new CGI ones just don't. I sound like such a bogey. Like, there are these kids these days, blah, blah, blah. But really, I think we reached a tipping point at some point

like maybe it was avatar where it's like it's just like you know he did james cameron did avatar and then everyone decided like we're gonna go all in but no one can do it quite as good or even close as good as james cameron so now we get all this really shitty cgi that like doesn't feel real and doesn't feel like you're experiencing. Like it's just so flattening and dead. The exact wrong lesson from that. Yeah. Yeah.

Like to your point, this has been going on for years. Like the theater world has been putting different versions of the same classic plays on for years. Nobody decries the cynicism of that. I have in the past been like what if we treated you know superhero movies the way that the theater treats shakespeare plays and like you know if it takes you 42 spider-mans to get to across the spider-verse so be it but it like yeah

the thing where miles as you said like the development got taken over by the marketing people, it feels like you're actually able to feel that. And now the movies in the top 10, top 20 are being taken over by these movies that, they're directed by the studio. It's all based on different moments that you can put in a trailer and we're trending in like a just a very flattened direction to use your word, Aisha. The art form going forward and all the artistry and storytelling is going to go into video games. But I will refuse to acknowledge that idea because I don't play video games that much. Except for your Switch that you love so much.

Except for my Switch, which I love and play all the time while jamming out to candy. And with the rest of development in the background, season four, five, six. I think, I mean, it does make me wonder, like, I think that's why everything everywhere all at once I think was such a tonic for people because I think so many of us at this place I'm like bro I already seen this movie yeah on some level we like I feel so many times even when I went to go see across the spider verse you see some trailers I'm like I already seen this like I mean I know I haven't seen this but I've already seen this and and like, it's just all about these like laser guided money making hits that aren't necessarily like, they just know that there's certain levers. It's like, I'll pull the celebrity lever because if I put the right mix of celebrities in this certain IP, which I know people just, they don't care whatever it is, they want to be there.

Then we have these quote unquote movies that do well while completely just you know they don't they don't satisfy like our appetite for something like imaginative yeah and like you'd think maybe now the cynical like the cynicism of studio would be like what if we just did like wacky stuff man like everything everywhere is like that just that blew people's minds but that might be a bridge too far for for i mean but I mean, but then, then of course that's, that's the problem though, is that often they, the studios will try to recreate in everything,

everywhere at once. Or like, think of all the, the, the movies we've, movies and shows you've seen post get out where I'm just like, right. No,

you're not doing it as good as, you know, the first, like, you know, so we're talking about the same stuff kind of yeah that's not it though yeah but that is marketing that is how marketing operates is by imitating things that already work you can't you can't invest in something unless you have like a proven track record and like a deck with you know metrics that show that this like connected with people and therefore you'll never get as long as marketing is running development you will not get anything

that has like a truly lasting impact you might have to start playing video games and get used to subtitles because the movies coming from non-english speaking countries are really great yeah have you seen i finally saw past lives this weekend so good so did i highly recommend yeah i really enjoyed that all right well aisha thank you so much for coming and uh talking to us about your amazing new book where can people find you find it and anything else you'd like to to mention about the book yeah go check it out it's it's everywhere everywhere you get books go to your local bookstore get it because i like to support the local indies also i have an audio version i recorded by myself and you can check that out i do a okay impression of dave chappelle so like look for that like, look for that if you're curious about it.

And yeah, you can find me, as I'm sure everyone says for now, on Twitter at craftingmystyle, on Instagram at aha88. And I'm now on Blue Sky, not really posting too much because like it's a place where things are still

figuring themselves out but i'm on blue sky it just aisha harris yeah that's that's it oh and of course on npr pop with your happy hour there you go yeah come listen to us well thank you so much for uh taking the time and for writing this book yeah thank. Thank you. This was awesome. And we're back. What a fun interview. Miles, the time size more revelation. I, I look,

I think I also, I too wanted to get my ass kicked and still be standing like you. Yeah. Listeners, let us know anybody else like just really fantasizing about getting the shit kicked out of you. I just like, there was that.

And also that Jet Li movie hero. There's like the, I i think the last scene he's like facing down a wall of arrows yeah and like it's like the last scene i think and obviously like he he dies but i was like that's tight bro i was like one of the most iconic figures of culture of the past like 30 40 years of scarface and he goes out in a hill like is taking like they they just invent a rule that you are impervious to the first like 45 bullets when you're the highest anyone's ever been on cocaine they're like yeah that's and i think everyone was like okay that makes sense so yeah i think there's something there that we've identified we'll keep mine always be standing always be standing we'll always take a punch.

But for at least 35 seconds and then we'll fall into a giant fountain and float face down. But that was fun. Another piece of information. So producer Justin, let us know that apparently the Sims video game now, like when you hit a certain you can you could be a celebrity in the game yeah you have unlocked stan like yeah it just shows you how that evolution went from like it's that's not a good thing to now like it's aspirational yeah yeah what i would do for a stan and also i wanted to we we'll have to have aisha back on i wanted to dig into like what who are the pop culture like icons right now like drake is mining some weird like sad fuck boy

energy that i feel like i see in a lot of people these days pete davidson is like an archetype that was like he spoke into existence or something. Like I feel like I see a lot of Davidsons out there around. But what a fun conversation. We are going to take one more break. We're going to come back and we are going to talk to Chris Yamaguchi-Ment. 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. Substance use disorder and addiction is so isolating. And so as a black woman in recovery, hope must be loud. It grows louder when you ask for help and you're vulnerable. It is the thread that lets you know that no matter what happens, you will be okay. When we learn the power of hope, recovery is possible. Find out how at startwithhope.com. Brought to you by the

National Council for Mental Wellbeing, Shatterproof, and the Ad Council. 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 And we're back.

We're back. And it's time for us to call up one of you listeners. It could be anyone. Right now. We don't know. We don't know. Let's pick from this pile of submissions. And would you look at that?

Easy top hat. Is it Christy Yamaguchi, man? Okay. I think we're going to call Christy Yamaguchi, man. Let's call Christy. Get this man on the horn. Justin, please get Christy Yamaguchi-Maine. Let's call Christy. Get this man on the horn. Justin, please get Christy Yamaguchi-Maine on the line.

Hello? Christy Yamaguchi-Maine? Oh, hey guys. What's up? Wow, this is so normal. This is so organic. This is so not scripted. Wow.

I actually knew it was y'all. Do you realize that it says the Daily Zeitgeist on the caller ID thing? Yeah, when we call from the big red phone in the studio. Yeah. I was surprised by that, but excited to see it come up. So thanks for giving me a call. Chris Yamaguchi, Maine, a.k.a. Willie.

You said we are going to use your government name today i told you i you know i'm more comfortable with sir yamaguchi main sire yamaguchi main esquire but i guess we will call you willie today um thank you for for an expert of the aka game christy yamaguchi main aka will feels like it's like brilliantly anticlimactic it's very it's very lackluster it's like when you find out like uh john wayne's real name or some shit you know like yeah like some some really cool stage name and then you find out their real name is bob or something yeah what was his oh oh yeah marion robert morrison yeah john wayne that explains so much about him doesn't have the same uh gusto as John Wayne in my it's a cool name it's a cool name on its own yeah shout out Marion though yeah but yeah

man we wanted to talk to you obviously because we're asking our listeners we wanted to hear from people with interesting jobs I I know you like from the what you you post, you wear many hats. Uh, and I, when we were talking before, I was like, well, I, you hit us up about a, your work at a car dealership, your time as a repo man, your time as a wedding efficient, which like car lot and wedding efficient are your two primary occupations right now. Right. Before, before you get me canceled or anything, I was the repo guy for like a year and a half, a long time ago. Damn near 17 years ago now. Yes, I do wear many hats. I'm a bald boy like you, Miles.

I got to keep the sun off of it, you know. But yeah, for the past 13 years or so, I've worked at a car dealership, detail cars, just full recon. Basically, if you trade your car in, it goes through me. I do everything to the car that needs to be done unless it's like heavy duty paint work and body work. Then we, we have an in-house body guy, but yeah, I'm, I basically try to make your car look as, as good as new before we stick it back on our lot so we can get as much money for it and ruin everybody's ability to go buy cars right now because the market is absolutely stupid. Oh yeah. Use cars. So, uh, and in addition

to that, I've, uh, been a wedding officiant. I think this is, let me do the, uh, this is going to be the 17th year I'm coming up on having done weddings. So, uh, a friend of mine, good friend of mine that I went to high school with, he was getting married and he asked me to be the officiant because of my beard, uh, literally because of my beard. That was, I swear to God, that was why him and it's just, no, it was, it was not that it was just, uh, basically they, they went and got the marriage license ahead of time and got married actually in a coffee shop that they met in. They actually exchanged the legal vows.

And then when they did the wedding for their friends and family in downtown Wilmington, they had me be the officiant. But they were like, yeah, your beard looks official. We want you to do it. We want you to stand up there. So that's why they asked me. And, you know, I've always played music. I've i've always been you know i love a good karaoke night i don't mind having a microphone in my hand and being in front of people and so it kind of was just a natural pairing i kept after after i did that first one i kept having people ask me about about doing theirs

and then there's just a steady murmur throughout the wedding with people being like damn look at that guy's beard we gotta get remarried exactly we need to do a vow renewal we need to do a commitment ceremony we gotta have this guy do this for us but uh yeah that's uh that's essentially what happened is my friends you know that that wave of friends you have in their in your mid twenties that everybody starts getting married and suddenly they all had somebody that they knew that they had a personal relationship with that was willing to do it. And so I went and got ordained and like made sure all the paperwork was squared away. And, uh, and there you go. It's just nonstop since then.

And it's, it's my side gig as most millennials have one of those, these, these days I do the car dealership five days a week, you know, it's kind of like banker's hours. And then on the weekends or in the evenings during the summertime, especially when people are eloping down here, I live at the beach. So it's a so it's blown up as far as a wedding destination over the past however many years. I stay as busy with it as I want to. I turn down just as many weddings as I accept at this point, and I'm at about 40, 45 weddings a year, I'd say.

Holy shit. And do you ever just kind of happen upon two people who look like they're in love, and you're like, hey, you know what I do for a living? Here's my card. Are y'all on Twitter? Uh, so I have, I have jokingly said that to people that I've met who I know are on a date or something. Uh, you know, Hey, just if you ever need my services in the future, you know, and drop my name to them. So, uh, yeah, I kind of have done that. So what would you say in your infinite wisdom of doing all these weddings? What kind of, what kind of advice do you offer people from your

efficient perspective? Like what do you see couples get wrong or what, what do you wish people knew going into planning a ceremony that just to give a little insider tips, wisdom. If you're going to have a friend do your ceremony, make sure the officiant gets out of the way for the kiss. Oh, yeah. That is the number one thing that I mistake that I see couples do are mistakes made at couple ceremonies who have like a friend of the family or a relative of theirs that they want to perform the ceremony. They stick their face in between and take a kiss on either cheek. Yes, that's exactly. And they're like, surprise, me?

It happened to me one time early on. My big stupid face was right smack dab in the middle of all of their kissing photos. Got to clear the frame. And you looked horny. I did. And that was a problem. Uncontrollably horny. My hand was on both of their asses that

i did not help uh did not beat those allegations but yeah that is the number one thing i would say is always remember when when your your guests are standing for the bride to come in always have the officiant tell them to sit down and always remember to step out of the way when you say uh ladies and gentlemen friends and families my unique honor and privilege to present to you for the very first time as husband and wife mr and mrs you may kiss your bride you get out of the way of all the photos yeah get the fuck out of there any anything from the repo man days or from car detailing like anything that is an easy way to spruce up your car and make it look like it's brand new? So I would say some advice I would give you is if you're car shopping,

there are some very easy giveaways to find it. First of all, the Carfax thing that you see on windshields, it's all bullshit. Oh, yeah. Like, don't listen to them when they say, oh, it's got a clean Carfax. You have no idea. A very easy way of, uh, there's, you can go online and see what I'm talking about, but there are clues as far as what the paint looks like. Uh, what's called the orange peel, which is the texture of the two stage paint.

You've got your base and then you've got your clear and the base is going to have this like texture to it. And if that texture is wildly different from the other paint, even if it matches pretty close in color, that's a strong, almost like a hundred percent sign that there's been body work done to those panels. So, you know, it's at least been in a wreck. So then you need to definitely have it inspected by an outside mechanic and say, Hey, I'm there's been damage on this quarter panel right here or this back bumper. Can you just take a look at the frame? Make sure, you know, spend the few bucks if you're in the market for something. That's what I would say as far as driving.

Crazy stuff that I've found on the car lot. I mean, I found just not I found electronics. I mean, I found just not I found electronics. You know, we found iPods and iPads and cell phones and stuff like that. But that just the typical stuff that people forget in their cars when they go to trade them in. Found money in there before, like wads of cash hidden in like little compartments. But nothing crazy good. You know, no, no serious drugs that I could have flipped and made any money off of, you know. Right. I feel like that's good advice just in general is like I'm always way more confident that I'm going to remember where I hit something and that I hit something.

I'm like, well, got to be safe. So I'm going to put this thing like in a side panel we're not we're actually not very different from the squirrels isn't that the whole thing they like they hide stuff everywhere and then that's how trees grow because they find like 20 yeah they can't remember that shit uh from the repoing days so again i have to reiterate i'm not this person anymore don't't cancel me. I didn't have the class consciousness. I used to work for the Democratic Party. Okay. You know, we fucking, we grow. Exactly.

Exactly. Me and Miles are on the same page. He worked for the Democratic Party and I used to legally steal people's cars. Okay. Wait, but first break down, break down though, the repo, the connection between like in your specific situation, you were telling me earlier about like the business of this car lot and where you come in as a, as like a repo person. So the economics of this specific car lot, this car lot had like a bad rep. It still does. It's still around. Uh, they're still wildly successful. And this was again, like 17 years ago, I think

going on, I was around 20 years old that, uh, that I repoed. But essentially when you would go, you know, you see those, these little rock lots and it has like, you know, $2,200 down, $3,500 down, drive off the day. Right. That's all the money they have in it. So the moment you make that down payment and you drive off, they have broken even. So any payments you make after that, it's just profit. It is just money. It's just gravy from then on. Then of course the financing, it's not just the payment, but they're making money off of the financing. And there was one of those buy here, pay here situations. And so if you got your car repoed, if you stopped making payments and you got your car repoed, you either showed up the next day or the next few days and caught all the payments up, which

again is just pure profit, or they just turned around and sold the car again. They still held the title. So they were selling the same car over and over on multiple occasions where people would buy a ride, not make the payments after a few months. And then they would, you know, we'd find it, bring it back. They would clean it up, you know, maybe pay like a small detail fee to someone and then stick it back on the lot.

Wait, how would you take the car? Like with the tow truck or did you, you were like busting windows and shit? There was a, towards the end of the time that I was doing it, he did get a snatch truck. One of those that has the, you know, the little boom arm on the back of it. It goes under the front wheels. You lift it up.

You crawl underneath it. Make sure it's in gear. For the most part, though, we would get keys cut. So we would go, like, say you drive a Mazda. We would take the VIN number, go to the Mazda dealership, give it to them, and they could cut a key based on that VIN number. Whoa. So then you're just riding around.

You've got the file. You know what their references are. You know where to look for the car because if it's not parked at their address, if they're trying to hide it. Yeah. A lot of times it would be at one of the three references that they would put down on the application to buy a car. So then we would, if we found it, we, we just wrote around the guy I worked for. His name was, he drove this, this Fleetwood Cadillac, you know, like, like villain ass looking car.

And so we would, we would scope it out and we did not want any confrontation because it's dangerous as hell. You know, you, you, those, those. You're stealing somebody's car from their, from their mind. Yeah, exactly. That, that, uh, that lizard towing shit like it's it's not it's not like that at all those reality shows that you see right we would scope it out and we would repo from like 10 o'clock at night to three o'clock in the morning and then either i was driving the getaway car i was driving the cadillac or i would walk up you know make sure there's no lights on in the house, nobody's moving around.

And then it's just a mad dash to opening the car up, hoping an alarm doesn't go off, hopping in, cranking it up, and peeling out, essentially. And again, I have to reiterate, it is the funnest job I've ever had. I hate that fact. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. Right, right. But there's something about it. Yeah, where you're like,

I'm going to call you a car thief. Yes. You're 20 years old and you're not in trouble for stealing cars. You get to, you know, go out late at night and, like you said, steal cars. It's, unfortunately, it was a blast,

man. But then, yeah, you kind of come around. You're like the economics of it too. It's like, it's wild how predatory it is to the part. This is the best business.

You bring them in. Cause you say you can put pay with vert. You can bring virtually nothing down. I get the financing deal. Then when they inevitably can't pay, I just rinse and repeat with the same vehicle, baby. Bingo. Bingo. Wow. I'm like, that's when I'm like, that's, I always like wondered about lots like that in the

business dynamics of it. And I'm like, that makes perfect sense. And I can't think of something more American than that too. Right. Right. I kind of wondered too, I've, I've caught up with the guy that I worked with at the time. It was a very weird dynamic because I saw him show like empathy to a lot of the clients that he, whose car he was looking for. And there was a few instances where they were older people that got behind on their payments and he refused to repo their cars, like genuinely refused to take them.

And he would, we got on this, this cycle where we would stop by a few people's homes. He would take their payment for them because this was, again, this was before you could pay online or anything like that. And he would literally bring their payment back to the dealership to keep them out of trouble with, you know, with, with the, the lot. And so I actually found out years later he got out of the business i don't think he was built for it long term i think he probably had that kind of uh eventually you know eventual awakening as well yeah yeah he moved out of town and i think he opened up like a

comic book shop or something there you go so yeah much you know opposite ends of the the business spectrum i feel like. And I think because you were the repo man, you got to give us the Zeitgang a tip, man. If you're behind on your payments, how the fuck can you hide your car from the repo? Stay away from those four references, I guess. Yes, that's my number one. My number one thing is always like wherever you hide it, always back it in because the first thing they're looking for is the the license plate number um but don't park it at your house and any of the references that you put down do not do not park it there mike had uh another thing which i don't know how you avoid

this really he had uh if he knew a car was like going to be in a general area, he had people from like dominoes and pizza hut and delivery places. If they spotted, he would give them a finder's fee. And we're talking like 50 bucks. And this was like 2003, 2004. So it's like a nice little chunk of change. And so he had like,

he had like spies everywhere and shit. It was pretty wild, but we got chased by one guy one time we we uh repoed his escalade and he jumped in another car and took off after us and it was a wild ass chase down this two lanes yeah essentially until called the off-duty sheriff's department number and they set up like a roadblock into downtown where we were headed and uh and so we flew through it and then this guy like the they pulled in after him and uh and and the next day he came down and called his payments up and so it was it was uh it was a wild wild couple days for that guy but yeah he might not have even known that you were repolling he might

have just thought your car that's exactly right. That's exactly right. He genuinely just thought that his car got stolen. And we're trying to avoid confrontation as much as possible. You don't want to open up a dialogue there when you don't know what somebody's got behind their back when you're on their property. Yeah. And all of a sudden we get surrounded by cops, like seven or eight car sheriff's deputies. They all draw their weapons. You know, they weren't completely aiming them at us. But we get out with our hands up and starts explaining, you know, basically the guy whose car we were trying to repo. He called the sheriff's department and said that we were threatening him with guns and baseball bats, which we didn't carry any weapons on us. It's just a recipe for disaster. It's going to escalate things into a bad area. So yeah, he explained it to them and they all put their weapons down and let us go. And you're like, no, I'm stealing this on behalf of a car lot and for a financing company. Oh, oh, oh, of well then please on the uh on the degrees of awfulness i feel like we were not very high above the sheriff's department but just slightly

just slightly enough that i felt better that i wasn't a full-on cop in that situation right because like it is like you're in that group of people who can like legally steal someone's shit you know what i mean it's like yeah i'm sorry man miles you used to be a hoodlum i know it you you said enough around yeah i've done uh jack you used to hang out in the sewers of kentucky or wherever ohio yeah oh no that's right yeah the cops went into the hallmark store we know about that yeah the hallmark store yes yeah how could i have forgotten you almost got you uh it's a blast doing bad shit is so much fun that's why people i mean if it's not a crime of of like needing to feed yourself or something it's just fun doing fucked up shit unfortunately it sucks that's the human condition right yeah

that that's never the explanation given like in law order when they're like, why'd you do it, son? And it's like, I was fucked up. They're never like, yo, this is fun as hell. Fun as shit, man. It's an adrenaline rush. Some people skydive and some people do motocross whatever shit. And some people repo cars, I guess. Yeah. Pays better than motocross.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Christy Yamaguchi, man, a.k.a. Will. Such a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming through, talking to us about your career. You're one of our favorite listeners and guests to have on the show. We really appreciate you, man.

It's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. And this was a, was this a collect call? Hey, man, why are you saying that on air? Why are you saying that on air? So if you could actually just not mention that. Yeah, we cut that out. Justin cut that part out.

Say that again and say, actually, why don't you take that again, Will, and say, thank you so much. And I can't wait to foot the bill for this call. Guys, it was an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be. I'm a two-time guest now, I believe. Two-timers club.

So two-timers club. And I cannot wait to pay the long-distance bill on this phone call. Not that we need to. It's not a collect call or anything. But it's just a... Oh, not that we need to. No, no, no. It's not like it's a collect call or anything, but it's just good to know that you would. Of course.

I insist because this was my pleasure first and foremost. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you guys. Appreciate you. All right.

That's going to do it. That's going to wrap it up. Don't leave your car at the places you leave as references, which feels like kind of obvious, but I get how people

get lazy yeah i'd be like well it ain't my house and then forget that like i think about that shit all the time like how like do i have people that like the government wouldn't know i'm friends with because i'm not friends with them on facebook type shit that's yeah if you have any expertise on how to like drop off the grid or evade your debtors just hit me up privately we won't talk about on the show but yeah just got some things going on uh no that was super interesting and you know crime not only does crime pay crime is fun is i think i can't wait to play this episode for my seven-year-old when he when he hits age eight and then show him new jersey drive that's right about boost the car

all right but that's gonna to do it. You can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien. How about you, Miles? At Miles of Grey. Wherever there's at symbols. Go there. You can find us on Twitter 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. Won't really be happening as much in today's episode. But there is a song. There is a song, Miles. What is a song that you think people might enjoy?

There's a duo called Wilma Vritra. V-R-I-T-R-A. And the first track on their album Grotto. I was listening to this album Grotto. The first track just blew me away. It's called Find an Hour. And they're like this, like one guy's like one of the people in the group's a lyricist. The other is like a multi-instrumentalist.

And it's just got this like very cool, like live hip hop feel, but kind of lo-fi spooky sounding. Like the recording's very like sounds very DIY in this track. And like great string arrangement too which i was telling jack i was like this feels like when miri ben ari the hip-hop violinist was like blowing it up in the odds but like in a classier way you know more like isaac hayes type of shit yeah so anyway this is find an hour by wilma avritra i'm getting losing my breath check it out yeah and i totally got miles's Check it out. Yeah. And I totally got Miles' reference

and didn't need it explained to me at all. I know. Look, it reminds me of when Marcel was like, what kind of fucking Tumblr ass explanation? I'm like, I'm sorry.

I only speak in Tumblr. All right. Well, the Daily Zeitgeist is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That's going to do it for us this morning. Back this afternoon to tell you what is trending, and we'll talk to you all then. Bye.

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