The Daily Zeitgeist - Target’s Fake Smile Mandate, Elon Would Fail Turing Test? 11.12.25

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

In episode 1963, Jack and guest co-host Andrew Ti are joined by comedian and host of The Faucet & Broccoli and Ice Cream, Myq Kaplan, to discuss… More Emperor’s New Clothes, Target Is Forcing Employees To Smile and more! Bezos's Evil Sci-Fi Fantasy World (Clip) Great Job, Internet!: Joyce Carol Oates ethers Elon Musk on his own platform Target is now requiring its employees to smile more Target has a new approach for its employees - smile more! Shoppers were already leaving Target behind - now half employees say they have little faith in store Target distribution center is so large employees say they spend 30 minutes walking to their station and should be paid for it Target Workers Reach Nearly $2 Million Deal to End Wage Lawsuit Myq Kaplan's new special "Rini" coming November 19! LISTEN: Sunset Canyon by FoxwarrenSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

so we've been watching alien earth for a few weeks behind the curve there but my husband said the words said the phrase because i was like did xenomorphs always just look like a guy running around in a xenomorph suit and he's like yeah he goes xenomorphs are part human and i was like well obviously i understand the provenance of alien DNA and xenomorph DNA And I'm like, well, they share DNA with humans. Yeah. But he said they're part human, which I disagree with, and I need your, your, your, oh, I think originally it was that their part like whatever got face hugged.

But now with Prometheus, I think they're just straight up part human. Yeah. All right. All right. I think, I think, because that was what, that was what happened. That's what, um, poor, uh, new. was it, Newmie of her pace? Yeah.

Yeah, was she, was it, whoever it was, whoever it was at the end of Prometheus, basically, you only see her corpse in Alien Covenant, but yeah, so her corpse's DNA, I guess, presumably it's, it's implied that it's her eggs

got turned into the alien eggs. But you know what I mean? Like, I'm pretty sure that's, that's now just like part of it is like every alien has I believe Numi Rapace I could have looked

this up but I'm not going to yeah it has a little bit of Numi repase DNA in them okay and she's a human

so that's because of old David but she's also though a straight up creationist who somehow

believes in zeno biology so the character or the yeah there's multiple points

in Prometheus where they're like we're doing this for you know how okay for God with a capital G

since we're letting me bring my Yeah, you can keep talking. Oh, I mean, continue. No, and multiple points in Prometheus, they're basically like, oh, God did this. And it's like, you're a goddamn biologist. What the hell are you talking about?

Hi, Mike. Hello. Hi. We're furious over here about a phenomorph biology. Prometheus. I'm really sorry to hear that. Yeah. We're so pernicious, too.

Thanks for doing the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. Are you an alien fan? Aliens in general, yes, the alien movies and stories specifically. I've seen some, and I would say I have enjoyed. But if you're an aliens fan, then you are, then maybe I'm not one. I'm not, but I just know too much about this shit. Ah, that's very interesting to know a lot about something that you're not a fan of.

Not really. I got, I got, I got, I got really, people got really bad at me over the things I said about Alien on the last promo clip these guys put out. Oh, really? Did they? Yeah, what guy was pissed? Because, wasn't our point just that they're not a good weapon? They're not like the perfect killing machine? My point, the point that I thought was being made was the freaks in the alien movies who are like, yeah, what a, what a amazing organism.

Those guys are wrong. That was my point. Yeah. I'm sorry, you got Twitter bullied for that. I liked it. Is it possible that when you try to make a nuanced point on the internet, there might be some people who respond as though they don't understand the exact nuanced point you're trying to make? Is that ever happened to you?

It's definitely a theory, Mike. It's definitely a theory. You're good and they're bad. I get it. It has to be something else. Can't be that. This is an IHeart podcast. In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down. Unlock elite gaming tech at Lenovo.com.

Dominate every match with next level speed, seamless streaming, and performance that won't quit. Push your gameplay beyond performance with Intel Core Ultra processors. For the next era of gaming, upgrade to smooth high-quality streaming with Intel Wi-Fi 6E and maximize game performance with enhanced overclocking. win the tech search power up at lenovo.com What do you get when you mix 1950s Hollywood, a Cuban musician with a dream and one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time?

You get Desi Arness on the podcast starring Desi Arness and Wilmer Valderama. I'll take you on a journey to Desi's life, how he redefined American television and what that meant for all of us watching from the sidelines waiting for a face like hours. on screen. Listen to starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderrama on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business. First episode, How Southwest Airlines Use Cheap Seats. and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline is.

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in our new episode, Game 7. No way! Out now. Listen to Dodger Blue Dream on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, the internet, and welcome to season 414, episode three of Dernetely's Ageist. It's a production of IHartRadio, is a podcast where we take a deep dive into American Share Consciousness, and it is Wednesday, November 12, 2025. My name's Jack O'Brien, a.k.a. Potatoes O'Brien. And I'm thrilled to be joined in our second seat today by today's special guest co-host, a hilarious and brilliant producer and TV writer. You know him from the Yo's This Racist podcast, a new Star Trek podcast that I'm thinking he'll probably tell us about. It's Andrew T. I'm guessing he's contractually obligated to tell us about. I'm doing, AKA, come up with one, but I'm just, very clearly, I am the way to obsess with alien biology, alien of all kinds.

So I'm just, the fucking scientist is in the house. What's up? The fake scientist is here. That's right. Creationist scientist, Andrew T. Andrew, we're thrilled to be joined by a very funny comedian, who you've seen on basically every TV show that has ever featured stand-up comedy, doing stand-up comedy. He's a very funny stand-up. His newest special is out next week on YouTube.

His two podcasts are The Fawcett and Broccoli and Ice Cream. Please welcome Mike Kaplan! Yay! Hey, so happy to be here. Mike Kaplan, aka a guy whose last album that came out was called A.K.A. And a guy who will point out that Andrew T. and aliens have the exact same vowels in there. Just an A. An I and an E.

So we're not so different. You and aliens. That's right. Thanks so much for having me. A pleasure to be here. Thank you for being here. An amazing eye for the vowels in people's names. Got to.

Vowal expert. That's right. You know all five? And sometimes. Sometimes six. Why? And even sometimes double you in certain situations. Why?

How come single you gets to be a vowel all the time? But double you, double the single vowel. I'm coming here to ask questions that no one cares about. No one wants to answer because no one cares to answer. Some comedians say the things that everyone's afraid to say. I say the thing that everyone, it's similar, but for a different reason. They're afraid of what it would do to their career. Wait, is W really sometimes a vow?

Is that a... In the English language, not so much, but in other languages, sometimes... Here's the way that I did... I studied linguistics in college and... Oh, fuck yes. So, the way that Y is sometimes a vowel is that it's basically the same as the letter I or the E sound in consonant position. So, you know, the word starts with a, with a Y.

It's as if you just said E, like, yes is yes. You just say, yes, it's like an E. And anything that starts with a W... I mean, when I'm doing my poor ad impression that does, yeah. Yes. Exactly. And it is basically the same when anything starts with a, with a W sound, with a W sound. It's basically you're starting with an ooh, you know?

Yeah, like, what are we talking about? Ooh, what are we talking about, you know? Right. So it is as, it theoretically should be as much. But for whatever reason, you know, we put wise in vowel position sometimes like in a trist. or a myth, you know. The Y is the only vowel. I don't know if there are any.

Here's the place. I figured it out as I was talking about it. Here's the one place in the English language, at least, where W acts as a vowel, no other vowels in the word, and it is the verb, P-W-N, P-W, when you get it. P-N-N are consonants, W. I just, anyone thought that I couldn't name it, you just got poned. You got poned, asshole. I was going to say, if you're a graphic designer from the mid-2000s, V is also a vowel, just, you know.

That makes a lot of sense because V is for vowel. There you go. My God rules. You dropped such a great amount of knowledge. What a universe of information that we've just learned here. You guys talk about the zeitgeist, but I'm like, we're going to do my zeitgeist, okay? The Kaplan Zeitgeist. We're going to get to know you a little bit better in a moment.

First, we're going to tell the listeners a couple of things we're talking about. We've got a broad theory that I'm working on that, like, as billionaires and people in the Trump administration become more and more isolated, we're just getting like a more and more entertaining look at what the inside of their brains look like, like what everybody thinks is cool. We got Jeff Bezos entering some, like, stadium Amazon pep rally through a laser tube flanked by lightsaber wielding guard. And then more importantly, Joyce Carroll Oates telling Elon Musk who he was on Twitter and him having a really hard time dealing with that. So we'll talk about that. It's a little update to the new emperor has emperor's new clothes era that we're living in. We're also going to talk about Target is forcing employees to smile. And they have new rules around this.

Like if you're within 10 feet, you have to do this. If you're within four feet, you have to do this. And I think it's good. No, I think it sounds terrifying. And I want to just talk about the phenomenon of the artificial smile, because it's been exported from America to other countries with varying degrees of damage and, like, surreal weirdness. All of that plenty more. But first, Mike, we do like to ask our guests, what is something from your search history that's revealing about who you are?

Sure. I, in preparation for this, I opened up Google.com, and I'll tell you, here's the first several things. Stop me anytime. The most recent thing that I searched was literally my own album, AKA, because I wanted to get a link for it to put in a newsletter where I was mentioning it. So a look into my head is like, what's in there? Me. But next up is Pips, New York Times, the new game, I don't know if you guys are familiar with the new game Pips in the New York Times suite of app, yeah, the game, the game, the app games that feature like Wordle and Spelling Bee. Pips is a new one, like Pips refers to the dots on dominoes. And so it's like a game where you, it's like a game where you, yeah. Yeah, it's like Ken Ken, but with Domino's.

So it's like, or like Sudoku, but with math, but with dominoes. So that's a fun game that every, every midnight, a new one becomes available. And my girlfriend, Rini, and I, if we're, you know, whatever, we're usually watching something. And one of us will note, oh, it's Pips time. So we'll pause. And I will, for whatever reason, I don't just go into the app. I just go into Google and search. It auto completes Pips, New York Times.

So that is there. Then I put in Panda Kitchen, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, which is a restaurant. Of course. No, no. My mom and I, we live, my mom lives in New Jersey. I live in New York City. We both love the comedian Paul Reiser. His special was the first one I ever saw when I was 13 in 1991. We saw him lie.

I opened for him about it. I only know him from aliens, just FYI. That makes sense. Of course. It's all connected. But his, I mean, he's been in whiplash. He's been in stranger things and the boys. Like, his acting career is really thriving.

And his stand-up has been solid for as long as he's been doing. He's wonderful. Saw him live a couple years ago. And my mom and I were driving with our partners to go see him in Pennsylvania, just like an hour and a half away. And my mom, I was tasked with locating a restaurant where I, a vegan, and my girlfriend, a vegan who is allergic to gluten. can eat in Pennsylvania.

And that place turns out to maybe be Panda Kitchen Stroudsburg. There it is. Then I also looked up Nikki Glazer's SNL monologue. She is a friend who I love, and I was so excited to see her on there. And then also, House of Dynamite, White House Press Lady, because my girlfriend Rini and I watched House of Dynamite on Netflix last night, and she was like, I recognize that. that person. Where else do we know her from? And so I looked her up and found out where we knew

her from. Do you do the guessing? Do she like, don't tell me yet. Don't tell me. Oh, absolutely. She is, she's incredible at it. Yeah, my wife too. She is amazing at like, even just if it's the eye, like we were watching the Superman movie a week or two ago. And she had never, I saw it in the theater. And I did not recognize this guy. But she's like, is that bald guy Hank? And at first I was like, Lex Luther, Hank from Breaking Bad? No. No, not at all. But the bald guy who was the element man, you know, the guy who could change part of his body into kryptonite and such. He is the same guy who played Hank, no-ho Hank in Barry.

Oh, yeah, of course. So much makeup on, even when she said who it was, I was like, I still almost don't see it. I mean, Rini has incredible powers of observation. I'm friends with that guy. The guy who plays NoHo Hank, he's like a, you know, family friends through. And I didn't know he was in Superman until you just said that. That's how deep he is under makeup. That's crazy.

That's incredible. That's no-ho Hank character is so, he's like one of my favorite beings, my favorite characters in any, any art. He's so fun. So tell your family to tell his family to tell him that I like it. Yes, we'll do. Wait, Mike, going back real quick, not real quick, to the, to the, to the, And this might be a thing you already know, but it's a thing that I was told when I went to Asia that I really liked, which is that if you're in Asia, especially in China where they do have a lot of trouble, like, really, really understanding, like, no, I seriously don't want any meat in this for real. You can tell people you're Buddhist. Ah. And that's, I am more Buddhist than many people.

Yes. Like, here's how Buddhist I am. I don't want to say that I am one. Because previously, I would have said Buddhist as well, like a chump, you know, like a chump. But I love, I've read a lot. I have a good friend who is a practicing Buddhist who's taken, you know, layperson vows. Like, I have not taken the vows myself. I would not claim to be a Buddhist because I'm worried that people would say, oh, you're a Buddhist. Name three of their albums.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do love, you know, I've read a lot of Ticknod Han and Pema Shodron. And Suzuki, Roshi, one of my, you know, favorites, like, you know, teachers. and I have this book of things that he has said that his students have reported and one of them he said for a non-Buddhist

there are non-Buddists and Buddhists. But for a Buddhist everyone is a Buddhist including bugs. You know, just like, we're all in this together, even the bugs. I'm realizing as you say this because I was told this advice

and I'm not vegan, but it was just given to I was on like a trip in college and da-da-da. And this was given to a white person who is a vegetarian who is having trouble not getting pork in their stuff. And I'm realizing, I think the corollary to that is if you're a white person who says you're a Buddhist, you're not going to get follow-up questions, but they'll still serve you vegan stuff because they'll kind of roll their eyes and be like, okay, we get what they want.

I appreciate it. I'll share one more plug for a Buddhist teacher who began life as a, and continued life as a Jewish woman, a culturally Jewish woman, at least named Sylvia Borstein. And she has a book that I believe is entitled, That's Funny, You Don't Look Buddhist. So, perfect. That's the perfect. Yeah. Amazing. But thank you.

Thank you for the tip. I will use it. Like, what's something you think is underrated? So, I know that I saw, I remember that this question was going to be coming. I have a few answers. My first answer is a thing that I love. That I feel like it's so interesting to talk about things that's overrated and underrated when I feel like all of things are relative, where, you know, especially today when your algorithm will, you know,

propagate and perpetuate the things that you like or that maybe you don't even know that you are clicking on and engaging with and you say to somebody like, why are, why is my computer, why does my phone keep showing me this? It's like, well, because of you, you know, you have revealed something about yourself. And there's less of a monoculture today. So like, I mean, one answer that I would say for myself personally, I love advice. columns. And I think that most people don't think about or care about or read or engage with advice columns or podcasts as much as I do. We're out there. I'm not the only one. I'm not innovating it. But I think based on my tastes, I love advice columns and would love to and think that they are

thus because of that underrated. Yeah. They're definitely having a resurgence of the podcast space. Like, it is a type, like a format that has been coming back, I think, because it's a way to engage with other people that isn't the news, you know, like, which people are just like, ah, I want to hear about, like, messy drama that, like, isn't about the fact that the world is dying. And so, let me hear about the politics of your workplace. You know what I mean? Oh, absolutely. And there's some that are so specific, like specifically with the politics of work. workplace, like there's a podcast, I think she used to have a podcast, but definitely has a column, Alison Green, and her column is called Ask a Manager. And like, I'm not even, I don't work

in a quote unquote workplace. You know, I don't have HR. I don't have, you know, a boss and a grand boss. And yet, ultimately, at the, at the root, all of these questions are like, you know, questions about guidelines of how to live as a human being, how to get along with other people. like there's you know relationships it's all very human and relatable even if the question is like you know my boss did this specific thing shouldn't i get paid more for like i know one of the questions we address later oh also just real quick uh do you think that i know we're going to get into this later do you think that jeff bezos is following the target model of like hey everyone when i come out surrounded by lightsabers smile if you're within one million miles of me smile or is he like

like, look scared. What bowed, tremble before me. Because the way, like, everything I've heard about Amazon, like being an Amazon executive, is that people are openly crying in their offices, like,

because of how, like, brutal it is to work there. Like, at the high level, not just, like, on the, you know, factory floors. So I wonder if he has, like, a different kink, where he's like, you better not smile. What the fuck is that?

I think the key is knowing which side. I think, he makes no rules. It's just like everyone who doesn't do what he already wants gets a little fired. Yeah, yeah. People get fired so quick at Amazon. A little fired. That's funny. But yes, advice columns, yeah.

I mean, I just think that we all, you know, in life at various points are trying to figure out what to do in, you know, in general or in specific situations. You know, some of us have friends that we go to. Some of us, you know, might look to various community

enterprises. You're a part of be it, you know, a religious affiliation or, you know, just your group text or what have you. And, yeah, I think, and I'm not saying that I get all of my, how I live my life from Advicecoms. I just, I do love, there's some element also of sometimes a person writing in is the unbeknownst to them villain of the story, you know, the am I the asshole without realizing that they might, in fact, be the asshole. and sometimes to see, you know, a person who is the wronging party, the more harmful person in a situation complaining, you know, the 1% being like, hey, the 99% has taken 1% of my 1% in my mind, like, what can I do about this? And to see, you know, come up ins delivered or just, you know, a deliver. It's just, yeah, it's, there can be, it could be, I have to be careful because I don't want to. just slide down into a realm of judgment because I want everyone to live their best, happiest, most productive, most peaceful, healthy life.

And sometimes, for me, that involves a little bit of Schadenfreude. But I'm much more into Freudenfreude, which is taking joy in other people's joy, which is I like to see when people figure out, what to do and learn and improve and atone and make amends. So yeah, advice columns, like, you don't have to be into them, but I, I'm not advising anyone, but I advise myself to continue enjoying advice columns, the underrated answer to your question. And that's like the, the best advice columns do, it's not the specific advice, right? It's like the train of thought.

I feel like the best advice columnist can even just get to the point where, like, I might be wrong, but and then oh absolutely i mean my i feel like the for many people like the og advice columnists were dear abbey and anne landers and so certainly i did read them growing up but at a certain point i feel like there's so many people occupying the space like dan savage was my first like advice columnist who i loved uh reading as like i think i found him in college and so i've been reading him for you know two and a half decades and listening to his podcast and he brings on experts when the question if the question is about something relating to dress he'll bring on, you know, a drag performer.

If it's about trans rights, he'll bring on a trans guest. If it's about, you know, racial issues, I don't know. Like, Andrew, have you been on the show? I have not, but I feel like, you know, he'll bring on people who have expertise in a thing. If it's like, he's like, I'm a white person. I'm a man. This is a question about, you know, not my lane. I'm going to bring somebody in whose lane it is.

And there's just some people who have expertise and, like, are really, like, adults in that they've put in the time and work. and effort, and so it's a really, it's a really cool thing. And then every once in a while, like there will be, I mean, obviously, sometimes the advice will apply. Like, I remember, I don't remember who the guest was, but I was listening to the Dear Prudence podcast several years ago. And this is, I've seen this other places, other times, but they offered this idea, which is just never compare your insides to someone else's outsides. If, you know, if you're looking at somebody's social media feed and be like, wow, why are they, why is everyone, happy except for me. Well, because you're looking at the photos that they took 1,000 shots to get

the right one, and you're comparing it to your, like, you don't know, every time they were like, damn it, didn't get that one, damn it, didn't get that one. Just standing there, smile on their face, going checking the thing, stone faced, going back, smile on their face, going back, checking stone face. They're doing the target thing to themselves. They're like, okay, smile, we're in four feet of this phone, smile, you can do it. Let's get it. But yeah, We know our cockpit. You know, we see every dial and lever and button and, you know, emergency light. But for everyone else, it's just the outside of the plane.

We're like, that plane looks like it knows what it's doing. That's a fighter jet. Look at that thing. Wow. I'm a lover, not a fighter jet, but you know. Also, alternately, if you're a, if you're probably not listening to this if you're this kind of person, but if you have the exact opposite personality as Mike, you can also find advice columns that just tell you women are the problems for all of your

problem. So that is also available. Also available. It is an art form like many others. Like I'm a stand-up comedian and stand-up comedy is not a monolith. Obviously, you can find people, you know, there's obviously the alt-right comedy verse, which is, you know, who's the forces strong with them these days, you know, the Darth Sith lords of comedy. And, but then there's also, of course, you're Maria Bamfords and Aparnanachurlas and Tigna Taros and Sarah Silvermans, you know, the kindness bosses of comedy, you know, the self-reflective, you know, discussing their own mental health and how we can all sincerely, I mean, humorously, like hilariously address things, you know, from the inside, the people who are worried about having imposter syndrome who

shouldn't have that versus the people who don't have that worry, who could stand to wonder if they have it possibly. But yes, and advice columnists are, I'm sure, No different. Certainly, if you want, I bet there are some alt-right podcast advice columns out there as well. I myself have not stumbled across them yet. You know the thing that needs to be distributed more than even money, I feel, is self-doubt. We just need, if we had an even distribution of self-doubt in the world, it would be everything would be so much better. Yeah. You know, there's this, there's this, absolutely, there's this thing that I love from the Talmud. which is, you know, a collection of Jewish teachings and wisdom and what rabbis said about what other rabbis said. And there's this one thing in it where a rabbi says, I have a piece of paper in my pocket that says, this world was created for you. And I have a piece of paper in my other

pocket that says, you are nothing but ash and dust. And so this world was created for you, you're nothing but ash and dust. Those are both true, valuable things to remember, like, if your head gets too big, remember, you're also in the grandest scheme of the universe. You're you're not the center of it. You're not everything. There are other people. There are other beings. There is a whole world, you know, an infinity of universe that you were not a part of until you were born and won't be a part of for another billions of years. You are, if you think you're everything, maybe consider that you might be also a little bit closer to nothing. Whereas if you grow up and have the messages given you, you are nothing. You are not worthwhile. Be like, well, this world

was created for you. You are the center of your own conscious experience. You deserve to be heard if you like you know i don't mean to not to make this only about gender but certainly people in our society socialized as uh women girls female people in our society you know the the the the ideas like oh you know you're rewarded for being quiet for acquiescing for going along for listening for not taking up too much space whereas you know little boys and men and boys to men of course are uh are taught the opposite to be like yes yes exactly not boys boys to men. But, you know, the, especially, and it's not only, I'm sure it's every privileged group. It's not just men. It's also white people. It's also straight people. It's also able-bodied people.

It's also cisgender people. You know, when you are the majority or the salient appearance in society, like for myself, I am many of those things. I am, you know, I am straight, cis, white, able-bodied, you know, an American citizen from birth. You know, I have many privileges that I wasn't aware of until, I started learning about them. And so for me, I was given growing up by my family and society, the thumb really pressed down hard on the side of the scale that said, this world was created for you. And so when I started doing comedy and being an adult and meeting different people and who had different perspectives, I was like, oh, listening to other people also valuable for its own sake to have other people be heard and also learn more myself about experiences that are not my own. And so, yeah, if you're, if you have started your life somewhere or if you're at a point in your life where you are like not heard as much, then it feels it's important for you to learn to hopefully advocate for yourself and speak up and find people who affirm you and value you and support and endorse and celebrate. But for, you know, for I'm a man and there's a lot of us out there who could stand to learn the lesson. And not, again, not just men and not all men. But yeah, the, the self, if you've never self-doubted, consider self-doubt.

Try it. Try it. Try it. You'll like it. Maybe. Just a Super Bowl commercial for self-doubt. Like, yeah, we got the Jesus one from the past two years. What about maybe some self-doubt?

Let's take a quick break. We'll come back. We'll do your overrated and get into some news. In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down. elite gaming tech at Lenovo.com. Dominate every match with next level speed, seamless streaming, and performance that

won't quit. Push your gameplay beyond performance with Intel Core Ultra processors for the next era of gaming. Upgrade to smooth high quality streaming with Intel Wi-Fi 6E and maximize game performance with enhanced overclocking. Win the tech search. Power up at Lenovo.com.

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In what seems to be, a plot ripped straight out of breaking bad. Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people. There are people out there that absolutely know what happened. Listen to paper ghosts, the Texas teen murders on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History,

about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want. First episode,

how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The most Texas story ever. There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons.

So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business geniuses, along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked. Like Thomas Edison and the electric chair.

Listen to business history on the IHeart radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. And we're back. And Mike, we do like to ask our guest what's something you think is overrated. Yeah. So I guess my shortest answer could be sports, but I understand there are many beautiful stories and families and friendships and connections people have to it. just personally, that's not where my understanding and connection to, you know, to society and

humanity live, absolutely. But I'll also say sort of as a combo, overrated, underrated, I would say overrated is comedy that other people like. Underrated is comedy that you yourself like. Like, truly, that is what I say with respect, like, whoever it is, whoever they, like. And here's It's not to say that there's some really popular comedians who are great and I love, and yet they're even at a certain point, like, probably, you don't stop when you're rated exactly the right amount. Like, you know, if Kevin Hart's your guy, like, maybe you love seeing him in every commercial, you know, but maybe you don't. And if Kevin Hart's not your guy, if you're like, oh, you know, if Joe Firestone's your favorite comedian or Nick Vatterot or Baron Vaughn or James, A-caster, you know, there's so many comedians who certainly my mom has not heard of yet, and your mom may not have heard of yet.

And so there's, I would say, that's another, I guess, underrated. I guess what I'm saying is overrated is talking about what's overrated. I'd rather talk about what's underrated, you know? Oh, yeah. So talking about the underdogs. I do think that's a good point. Like, I was just talking to somebody who was like, I really like, you know, I think you should leave and the chair company and they were like yeah i've been like trying to get into i think you

should leave and like i just it never worked like i watched every episode and i was like why did you do that like it's clearly like i was that show the very first skit i was like had tears pouring down my face laughing and uh the people i was on a plane with like thought there was something wrong with me and like that's so just like find that for yourself like if it's not happening don't try and Like, it's not that, like, somebody else is, like, you know, right and you just need to, like, work to get yourself that. It's just, like, there's something wrong with me that's not wrong with you, or, you know what I mean? Or right with me, but, you know, like, that is just, like, that shape. If I may, my girlfriend, Rini, who is that we have a lot in common, you know, we're not the exact same person, but we have similar taste in a lot of things.

Like, a lot of comedians that I love, she loves, and vice versa, we're not the exact. same, but I watched, I think you should leave before she did, and I was going to share it with her. And like the first episode, we turned off because she was like, too chaotic. Like I can't right. I don't understand. This is not a flavor that I need or want. But then I shared Detroiters with her. And Detroiters, she loved. And by the end of watching all of Detroiters, she was like, I think I have a greater understanding, a greater context for like what is going on with Tim Robinson's comedy and brain. And then we did, she's like, I think I can, I get it now.

And we started watching, I think you should leave. And with that context, with that framing, she loved it and loves it. And we saw friendship and we love the chair company. So yeah, he is now, he has basically invented a new flavor that like when, like when a baby tries something, a new food for the first time, it's always like, Yeah, and then, oh, yeah, you know, like, when something is unknown, when something is mysterious, it often can be frightening or weird or we don't get it, but then once you're like, it doesn't mean that you don't like it, like, it just means you might need the, like,

when Steven Sondheim wrote the musical, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum, when it first came out, it bombed, and nobody, apparently people didn't get that it was a comedy. So he went back and wrote a new opening number called, comedy tonight, which basically delivered the message that this is a title. You want me to add a song up front? Maybe the original title was a thing happened on the way to the forum,

you know? It's like, who knows what kind of thing? The forum, ancient Rome or Greaser, wherever, boring, couldn't be common. But truly, having the framing of it being comedy led people to get it. So having the right framing for, I think you should leave, led Rini to discover it. So, I'm not saying that whoever this person is, like, absolutely. Like, I wouldn't recommend, I think you should leave to everyone.

But as a gateway, do try to, if you like Detroiters, try Detroiters, which I think is really warm and sweet. And if you then enjoy the weirdness of Detroiters, then dip your toe in, I think, I think you shouldn't leave. Maybe, maybe that's a better ramp in. I was going to say the sort of opposite thing to Jack's friend, which is that like, I feel like so many people get the advice, like, oh, you got to give it, like, a bunch of episodes or whatever. And I actually think it's fine to just tap out immediately. There's just so much good comedy. There's so much good comedy.

Yeah. Everything. I have a friend who never got into Breaking Bad. I think Breaking Bad is, I mean, it's, I watched it myself. I watched it with friends. I watched it with Rini. You know, we watched Better Call Salt. Like, it's amazing art.

Like, it's funny. It's dramatic. It's really weird and cool. and great. And also, I have a friend who's like, I watched the first episode or two. Eh, not for me. And I think I said or somebody else said, they're like, oh, you got to give it like, you know, six or seven episodes. And he's like, I got to give it like three movies worth of time before I can decide that this isn't for me. And so I think that's completely valid. Like there obviously are things that take time to like get the tone or get, you know, get into the vibe. Like

Every work, every great work of art, many of them teach you how to experience them. Like if you've never read Dickens or you've never read, you know, Moby Dick is weird, you know. But if you get like truly, yeah, any, Moby Dickens, you know, anything like that. And I say this, not as somebody, I have not read all of Moby Dick. I have read some Dickens. Rini, my wonderful partner has read, like she started a project like seven years ago to read all of like the agreed upon great works of classic literature start she started with moby dick she uh then went on to anna carina and a bunch of dickens and like then i i had just had a memory of it being like in school like uh no thank you

homework i don't think so but like if you don't have to read it like actually you know there's some funny dickens out there and it's like just but it's a different thing and so like every but yeah i guess the main message is try something if it's not for you that's cool. Yeah. I'm at the age where I kind of every, like every so often I'm like, I would really like to take a literature class,

like a college literature class now, and I would do all of the work this time. Yeah. I graduated with a philosophy degree, and as I was like trading in my philosophy books, like after graduating, I was like, man, like I could just like read the stuff that I always wanted to read,

and it became like so much more interesting to me just like outside of the content. of homework. Yeah. You're turning in those books and you're like, oh, man, I could have just been

looking at a tree this whole time. Stack him up. You ever tried that? All right. We should get into some stories. This is just more, so we talked on yesterday's

episode about the guy conducting the national orchestra who is like just a Trump appointee who is trying to be, I think, Secretary of State and then they like put him in charge of the Kennedy Center. And he,

like, he just did a make-a- wish thing, where he, like, went up and conducted the, like, best musicians in America and, like, didn't know what he was doing. And I think just, like, had the assumption that he, like, this is not really a thing. Just waving your arm. Yeah, exactly. Like, the thing that we all assumed when we first saw conductors when we were, like, four years old, a billionaire last year bought his way onto the USDA tour to play professional tennis and get rinsed. And then also, to a lesser degree, like Donald Trump thinking, he was going to get, like, a call response level response from the NFL crowd when he went there.

He was like, repeat after me and did like a, you know, swearing in oath thing with the crowd and was just like drowned out by booze. So I just feel like there is a lack of awareness, a lack of just like connection to reality that is happening both with this administration and with the extremely wealthy. And then this morning, one of our best. a.k.a. Writers and a favorite guest, Christy Yamaguchi, Maine on

Twitter, shared this video of Jeff Bezos, entering a stadium through a laser tube that was, like, coming up out of the earth, flanked by lightsaber wielding guards with these, like, wraparound.

Is it Jordy from Star Trek? Jordy LaForge, maybe. Yeah, Jordy LaForge, sunglasses, staring straight forward, and, like, doing, like, trained soldier movement. And he, you know, rightly pointed out that, like, you couldn't write this level of evil billionaire in a movie. Everybody would just be like, what? No.

All right, Zoolander. Right. It's really Zoolander, Dr. Evil coded shit. I mean, at the end of the day, these people are rich and evil and powerful, but, like, they can kill you, but they can't make you think they're cool. Right. Like, they can literally murder you and whatever. but for all of their power, they just can't.

They can't make you think they're cool. And like with the guy who paid money to get to, quote unquote, be a conductor, you know, do conductor cosplay. Like, I can understand why the organization was like, we could really use that money to like make good art. Right. You know, a lot of comedians have been like on a sitcom

that might not have been their favorite sitcom, but that, you know, I don't, I think Paton Oswald is, wonderful, and he was on the King of Queens, and he used that money to, like, fund the comedians of comedy tour that launched the careers of, like, Zach Alphenakis and Maria Bampford and Brian Posein. And so I think that, you know, if you, for an arts organization to be like, yeah, like, give a thank you. Like, obviously, everybody gets it. Everybody's not like, wow, this guy is as good a conductor. Like, he's on our stage conducting. Like, you can do the thing

You can go through the motions, but it doesn't make you have the experience of, like, you know, you can memorize words in another language, and it doesn't mean that you are fluent in the language. You aren't able to communicate if you don't actually take the steps to do the work. And so, yeah, I mean, obviously anything, I feel like I'm a fan of anything where money goes from the people who have too much to people who don't have enough or could use it better. I mean, like, Elon, you know, has so much money that he got, he can go on stage with Dave Chappelle at a certain point. And, and, and it, but it doesn't mean that people will like the things that he's saying. And he can't, like, it doesn't make him good at stand-up.

Like, it's, it's fascinating. Like, something else makes him good at stand-up, I guess, because he is funny as hell. He's good, I'm just saying, it's not a funny as hell, dog. He brought that sink into his workplace. Right. I know. I know. Billions of dollars letting you actualize your shitty ideas is the hardest thing for them.

That's right. It's that they can do it, but that doesn't make it good. Yeah. They're so in their own world, too. Like, they're just in, like, they haven't taken a breath outside of the biosphere of, like, yes, men and people who work for them that they exist inside. And so, like, at least with an artist, they have to be in touch with them. their audience, but these people are just, like, so far off on another planet that we're getting a really accurate snapshot of just, like, what they think is cool, like, without any input

from the outside world. And it's really sad. It's really sad. I feel, you know, I hope that everyone discovers the truth, you know, and is able to, you know, grow and change and learn. But here's, like, an analogy that I think goes along with what you're saying. When I was in college, I had a friend who didn't like cream cheese. She's like, anything with cream cheese in it, I hate it, I don't like cream cheese.

And then one day, as part of her personality, one day we're at lunch, and she's eating a carrot cake, and it has cream cheese frosting. And I say, hey, just remind me, you don't like cream cheese? And she says, yes. And I was like, are you enjoying the cake? And she says, I am. And I say, do you know that there's actually cream cheese frosting that you're eating? And then instead of saying, like, oh, then I guess there's. some situations where I do like her. She just pushes it away from her and says, then I guess I don't

like it. I was wrong about what I like. And I think that's what's happening with, like you said, a lot of, you know, rich, powerful, monetarily people spend time surrounding themselves with yes people, many yes men, in fact. And yeah, a lot of yes. And the fact is that they could love like an artist. They could love a comedian. They could love someone. But if they love, someone who can't be bought, and they say, I love this person. And then if that person says, actually, you know, like Bruce Springsteen saying, like, don't use my songs, or like any other artists being like, you know, you want to use their art. You, because you love their art for whatever reason. And then when they speak out and say, actually, I'm not a fan of what you're doing

in these ways for these reasons, then they're like, well, then I guess I don't like it, Actually, I was wrong about it when, I mean, the way to grow and connect with other people is to like, truly, I mean, I admit this. I know that I am, I don't know everything. I know that I don't know everything. No, no, no, no, no, Andrew, Andrew, I know, I know. I won't, I heart. I can almost not admit it.

Dude, don't admit that. I do a bit on stage sometimes now where I ask an audience member to ask me if I know something that I couldn't know about their life or their job or where they live or anything. And so if they say, like, one guy, he was a forensic pathologist. And so he said to me, do you know how to identify the time of death when a body is dead? And I said, probably. Because that's what I say. That's, I'm like, it's a thing that can be known. I probably know it. But there's people, like, so I think everyone, you know, the wisest people, your Socrates's, your Confuciuses, they like, they're famous for saying, I know what I don't know or I know that

I don't know. I don't even know what they said, but I know that they said they admit when they don't know things. That's right. It's a wise, powerful strength to admit when you don't know something. You can grow, you can only learn something if you didn't know it. So if you're closed off to information or ideas that are different than the ones you already think, like that's the, it's weirdly, like the, it's the dumbest. To think that you're the smartest is the dumbest. Yes, exactly. I also want to get to Elon Musk,

who got called out by Joyce Carol Oates on Twitter and then spent, like, 72 hours trying to prove that he is a human with human feelings and, like, taste in film. So her original post was so curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates. Scenes from nature, pet dog, or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book, but doubt that he reads,

pride in a friends or relatives accomplishment, condolences for someone who has died, pleasure in sports, a claim for a favorite team, references to history. In fact, he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty and meaning in life than the, quote, most wealthy person in the world. And he, you know, called her, like, mean. Oates is a liar and delights in being mean, not a good human. was his clapback, but then he spent the rest of the day talking about, like, movies he likes.

So clearly he was, and the movies were like, man on fire is great. Fifth Element has great style. I mean, Fifth Element does have great style. The Fifth Element is great style. Yeah. It's so interesting. I heard this thing, I feel like this might have been Confucius, but it was like, it's not, to paraphrase, It's like, it's not good to try to be liked by everyone because you won't be liked by everyone.

It's good to try and be, like, liked or respected by people whose opinions are of value to you. You know, like, if you, like, as a, you know, obviously, as a comedian, like, audiences are one metric of how good a comedian is, like, how much people, but people can make people laugh with stolen jokes or older unoriginal jokes. And, like, I think the best comedians are the ones, I mean, my favorite comedians are my favorite comedians. But if you ask, you know, me, my favorite comedians, like, I'll name people like Maria Bamford. And if you ask Stephen Colbert, he'll also name her. And so many of your favorite comedian, whoever your favorite comedian is, like, who are their favorite comedians and who are their favorite comedians? Eventually, you'll get, you know, you'll get a lot of Dave Attells, you'll get a lot of Mitch Headbergs, you'll get a lot of Reggie Wattses, you know. you'll get you'll get a lot of really great like agreed upon you know kind of like not the popular

vote and not even the electoral college but sort of just like the the experts of you the experts opinions and so in like the way to live life like i have a friend who this is an experience she had where she was working at a college while she was getting her degree and so she was working an administrative job and she had dreams of like you know she's an artist she's a poet she's a a comedian. She's a performer. She's like maybe thinking about opening a cafe that's also a performance space and you know getting to be like an artist collective. And she was talking with a fellow worker who's on, you know, her level. And the worker was like, you know what you should do? And I think my friend is a kind person and didn't say this to her face, but said to me, she's like, I don't want

advice from people who are where I am. I want advice from people who are where I want to be. And so So, like, for a person to, like, who's reverence do you want, if you want reverence? Like, who's approval, who's appreciation? Like, I love meeting another comedian. And, I mean, even like yourself, Andrew, like, we've been, we've known each other on social media, at least for many years, you know? And I be, when, because I think I saw you because some of my friends were either on your podcast or were interacting with you or had retweeted you or you had shared them. and I was like, oh, my friend likes this person, let me have, I'm not going to just like this person because my friend likes this person, but I'm going to use that as a cue to look at your stuff and be like, oh, now I, from the inside, also like this person's work. I like what they're doing. And like now I'm like, oh, and you also now know me and know what I do and like what I do. That's cool. And that's not what's happening for Joyce Carroll Oates and Elon. He wants to be elected by everyone is essentially like it does feel like he I mean he's like

speed running citizen Kane in public which is I guess what Twitter and the internet has done to people but it's just like how bereft of any like joy it's incredible I mean he he made that prompt like the day that she said that he made a prompt using grok the image AI generator There was just a woman with the words, I will always love you underneath it. It's just like dark, man. Dark. Not even the best use of the words I will always love you in media.

What's wrong with you, man? I, as a comedian, like, when you start out doing comedy, for those that don't know, you do a lot of open mics and you get a lot of silence. You know, you get a lot of, there's a lot of a big learning curve. And, you know, for some it takes, you know, some people are great out the gate, but it's much more common to not be great out the gate. And you spend months and years of, you know, honing and editing and listening back to sets and, you know, theoretically, quote unquote, failing in public and eventually discovering, like, what you, what you enjoy that other people enjoy, what makes you laugh that make other people laugh. And I feel like that is, like, what Elon is trying to do is what the equivalent.

of an open mic comedian is trying to do just throwing everything at the wall to see what my is this what everyone would like is this what everyone will like is this what everyone will like and as a new comedian in my 20s I was like I don't know what people like I don't know like I know I know what I think is fun and good and interesting but there's a lot of stuff I think that I've I've written for every joke that I continue to tell on stage because it works there are I can't even tell you probably thousands, tens of that, however many thousands of jokes that I have tried to write that maybe I could make work today if I put in enough time, but it's just, in the beginning, it's a numbers game, it's quantity, and eventually you settle into like, oh, this is what I want

to talk about, this is like what I care about, this is what's meaningful to me, this is what I'm going to spend my time on, but it seems like, and there, a lot of people, when you're new, want a shortcut. And there's there is no shortcut. There is only putting time and work and effort into it and not just paying to be on

stage with the conductor of comedy. Elon is like an open mic community who bombed one time and then bought every comedy club and also every performance venue on earth in response. And then it's trying to do the

open mic winnowing honing process into a galaxy of sycophants who are just like go, but it's impossible. It's impossible for him. The problem is he gets enough feedback that he likes it, but humanity

still can easily see he is not funny. Yeah. No, anybody who's not coming in just being like, I want this guy to like me, maybe he'll make me rich to like is, yeah. Own the lips. Oh, no. That's true. We did do that.

He did do that. We should take a quick break. I wanted to talk about Target forcing employees to smile, and we'll be right back. In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down. Unlock Elite Gaming Tech at Lenovo.com. Dominate every match with next level speed,

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Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She said, Johnny, the kids didn't come home last night. Along the central Texas plains, teens are dying. Suicides that don't make sense. sense, strange accidents, and brutal murders. In what seems to be, a plot ripped straight out of breaking bad. Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people.

There are people out there that absolutely know what happened. Listen to paper ghosts, the Texas teen murders, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want.

First episode, How Southwest Airlines Use Cheap Seats and Free Whiskey. to fight its way into the airline business. The most Texas story ever. There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons. So many robber barons. And you know what?

They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business geniuses, along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked. Like Thomas Edison and the electric chair. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get it, your podcasts.

and we're back and there's a there's a new program at target called the 10-4 program good buddy uh which follows similarly creepy rules enacted by walmart and disney so store employees are now required to smile if they are within 10 feet of a shopper uh they also must make eye contact with and wave to or greet the customer if they're within four feet the employee should ask how the customer's day is going, or if they need help. And this is, first of all, they should, like, pay their employees a little wage. That would be one thing, or pay them for all the time they're working. Target warehouse workers had to take legal action to actually get paid for the 30 minutes.

It takes them to walk from the entrance to their workstation. Yeah, Target is bad at this. But I do just find this interesting. Like I've definitely been to Trader Joe's and had the experience of like being lost in thought and somebody like the checkout person starting a mandatory small talk conversation with me and like being kind of thrown and feeling a little weird

and alienated by it. But I just think it's an interesting, like that, It's a thing that if people came down or like outside of history, if people from other eras were able to look in, I think it would be one of the things that everyone thought was weird about our culture is like, because there's, I remember there was a either radio lab or this American Life episode from the early days of podcasting where they talked about the phenomenon of when they first opened the McDonald's in Russia after the wall fell. And everyone was like, the people who worked there were just like, what the fuck do you mean smile at them? Like what are you talking about? And they had like the hardest time getting them to do it and ultimately like gave up on it. There's also something called smile mask syndrome,

which was diagnosed in Japanese young women who like work in the service industry where they have to like smile so much that like this psychologist was like they were still smiling while relating like really stressful or troubling experiences, which I think is like the movie, the horror movie smile.

But, and like it's, again, they're like, this came because of Tokyo Disneyland, which opened in 1983. And then throughout the 80s, they found this thing of like the obligatory smile in the workplace, creating this sort of psychological

or like existential weirdness that people have a hard time dealing with. Do you know, I co-sign everything you're saying, and I obviously like capitalism is this is a feature of it you know not a bug this is it's a trap and it's unfortunate and would be better if you know people all could be more self-directed in how they want to live their life and not need to be beholden to these massive corporations like my girlfriend used to work at a you know a big department store in the fine jewelry

department and you know like there were times when if you didn't like some people if you didn't sell as much as others in one month like if you didn't a couple months in a row your job was potentially at risk but there were times when if she sold enough in like the beginning of the month then the rest of the month she could relax and she would actually sell she would be a better employee then because she was relaxed and not you know constantly masking and constantly right you know on her toes to be like I got to do this I got because it's ultimately I would say at best it's I it's like acting you know like you get a job as an actor like well in this scene maybe smile because the character is happy you know and maybe a director could be you know as you know

difficult to deal with if it's a difficult director but ideally if you're making art it's going to be here's the i don't want to i don't know that i even believe what i'm about to say but i want to present this as as an option i do think that there's like this the guys of familial you know, happenstance in workplaces like, we're a family here, you know, like, hey, which they, like, it's not a family, it's your job, they, you agree to do something and they agree to give you money. And like, hopefully you get along with your coworkers, you get, hopefully your boss is a kind human being, hopefully. But they sometimes use that to say like, hey, maybe put in some extra time because we're all a family here. You don't just back out on your family. But so

with it in, in opposition to that, I feel like there is something. nice about saying the quiet part out loud or saying it, saying it explicitly to be like, look, we're paying you to be the face of this company, which involves, like, here's definitive directives, like, as opposed to just being like, hey, when people around, try to be cool, try to make it seem like they're happy. You'd be like, look, we're hiring you to smile when you're at this particular trajectory, at this juncture. Hey, you're 11 feet.

I love that. If you're 11 feet away from people, go nuts with your face, you know? Just like, shut it down. Go offline. That will make them not come within 10 feet of you. Just sort of shuffle away as they get closer. Just keep that 11-4 race.

You're running a zone defense in basketball. You're like trying to stay in between people. That's like there's, I think this is somebody's joke. It might be the comedian Tony V in Boston, who's an incredible comedian. I know he had some jokes about scientists who study dolphins. And so this might be from his bit, or it might just be a fact that I learned somewhere along the way or somebody else's bit, but that some dolphin was trained to, like, get litter out of its enclosure. Like if there was, like, pieces of paper or debris, it would pick them up and then it would get fish.

You know, get food for each piece of paper that it delivered, each piece of trash. So dolphins, I don't know, they're smart. So dolphins would then start after they realized the system ripping, crash in half. They would start ripping the pieces of paper and being like two pieces of fish, please. Like, I got you two garbages, so give me two foods. And so I feel like

that also, I wonder how target employees are going to gamify it. They're like, where's the 10 foot mark? Like, nothing in the rule book that says I have to move into the zone. This is a big corporate game of I'm not touching you. They're just fucking running.

I mean, obviously, like, this is just poor, even if you want to just be shackled with the strictures of capitalism. This is just poor management. Like, you shouldn't need to define this if everything else was being managed correctly. But I do think this has like a really nice letter of the law, not spirit of the law opportunity

for some enterprising target employees. Absolutely. It's, you want to address the, not, this is addressing the symptoms, like the external, like, hey, your face isn't doing what we wanted to do. What do we do to make your face smile? order you to smile.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Super producer Catherine asks if they're trying to combat the Gen Z stare, which I think is a personal thing. But that is a big news story. We were like, Gen Z look at us,

like they don't know what we're talking about. Yeah. Ha. This is, all I'm reading here is this is a nationwide fakesest smile contest for all a target employee. Yeah. He said just most unnerving smile.

Can I help you? They should just hire everyone to wear a mask that is the target bull's eye over their face, you know? Oh, my God. That's kind of like a smile at the bottom. I would love that, honestly. I do personally just feel like set on edge. Like, anytime someone is starting an interaction with me, like, I feel like you can tell the difference when it's like enforced and when it's not.

And usually any sort of forced social exchange is like, you know, someone trying to con you or sell you something or something like so I just like have an immediate like detection of like yeah fuck you get away from it but also target management you know maybe you could also just not loudly trumpet

how you don't support DEI or right you know like not lock up all your all your remotely valuable things maybe that's why people don't like shopping and targeting for not not the lack of fake smiles from

children of the corn What do people like? Friends. We're going to be their friends. That's, yeah. Mike, such a pleasure having you on the daily zeitgeist. Where can people find you, follow you, catch your new special, all that good stuff? Yes, of course. So Mike Kaplan is my name, spelled this weird way. M-Y-Q-K-A-P-L-A-N. That's my, at Mike Kaplan on all the social media, Mike Kaplan.com. I have a newsletter at Substack. That's Mike Kaplan.com. dot com. I've got podcasts of my own. You mentioned them. Thank you so much. But yeah, I've got a bunch of comedy albums and specials out there on the various streaming platforms, the latest of which does come to YouTube, New York City Time, 8 p.m. on November 19th, and accordingly, the rest of the world. So that'll be on my YouTube, collaborating with the producer's blonde medicine. So like and subscribe their YouTube channel and my Mike Kaplan YouTube channel. And I'll be in there interacting with people for the debut.

So if you can watch it at exactly the time that it comes out, that will help the robots tell other people about it. So yeah, but if you remember anything, I appreciate it. And it's the new special is called Rini, name for my girlfriend Rini, with whom I created the special Rini. So yeah, Rini on YouTube, November 19th. Thanks so much for having me.

Love the name Rini, by the way. I have an Aunt Rine. You don't hear it enough. Is it short for anything, your Aunt Rini? More Rien, yeah. Oh, nice. Is your partner's name short for anything? It's short for Catherine.

Catherine, as a child, could have gone so many different directions. Rini, Catherine, so yeah. Yeah, that's really cute. Rineas are not a monolith. Is there a work of media that you've been enjoying? Many. And I will say, you know, I take, we watch,

we've already mentioned many of them, obviously the new Tim Robinson works and the Nathan Fielder, the second season of... The chair company fucking destroyed me. We might be one behind, I just realized, so that's exciting to think about. But I will say one piece of media that I've been really loving, I don't know if you guys read comic books, but the DC universe has a new universe of comics that they call the absolute universe, the absolute DC. They've begun again, you know, your classic heroes, but with a slight tweak to their origin story, like Superman comes to Earth as a teenager instead of a baby, Batman only has one parent die, and Wonder Woman gets raised not on the Amazon Island, but by Circe in the underworld, the realm of Hades. And so that's the one, they're all really great.

I really like Jason Aaron is an incredible writer who's writing the Superman one The Batman one he's also not rich right isn't that One of the pieces of it? Oh God, that's so much better He is not rich It's real there's so many distinctions It's really cool like the art is incredible The writing is incredible

The of those three like I love them all But the Wonder Woman one is really The art is so beautiful And she's such a wonderful pure character I'll just share here's one interaction she has That I think is like you know not representative of the entire story. Like, the entire story is, like, gigantic and beautiful in many ways.

But she's talking to Steve Trevor, I believe. Steve, like, you know, the main, in the original story, he, like, washes up on the island and she, like, helps him and protects him and becomes, you know, friends with him, lovers with him. And he's, like, a good, a good man from the real world, the one good man from the world outside of her island. But so in this one, she meets him, and they're about the same height. and he's like, wow, you're really tall.

And she's like, you're the same height as me. And he's like, oh, yes, but where I come from, I'm really tall, and women where I come from, like, almost no one is as tall as me or you. And she says, is that important? And he's like, I guess not. And she's like, great, will you tell me more things about where you come from that are important? I was like, what an incredible, like, you know, it's funny, it's like pure-hearted, it's

compassionate. It's about, you know, commenting on women's bodies, commenting on people's appearances in a way that, like, it's so simple and effective and funny and cool and beautiful. So, yeah, I would recommend my piece of media that I've been really enjoying is absolute Wonder Woman by, I believe, the author, Kelly Thompson. Nice. Nice. Andrew, where can people find you as their work in media you've been enjoying? Oh, God. Andrew T. Everywhere. I have I have a new podcast called Starter Trek, that is a premium podcast on, you can get it on suboptimalpods.com, which is our yo's just racist thing. Doesn't matter. But yeah, my podcast co-host, Tony Newsom, Trek royalty, and she's basically walking me through. We're doing all the pilots

for the Star Trek episodes right now. I don't know. You can see clips on our social media. I'm really happy. It's really fun to do. I like Star Trek, but I don't know jack shit about. It's where I am. There you go. Sounds great. Oh, and piece of media. Piece of media is it's Persimmon season in Los Angeles and I'm eating the shit out of the Persimins are so good.

Yeah. There you go. Some of my favorite media, Persimins. You can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien on Blue Sky at Jack O'B, the number one. I enjoyed a tweet from Respectful Huff that said, comedians in cars, eating cars, they have to eat the cars, they have to eat their way out. their way out. I'll capitalize. That's the name of the show. So that's a work of media that doesn't exist. Great tweet. I'll tell you one damn thing. I'd be enjoying it if it did. You can find

us on Twitter and Blue Sky at Daily Zekegeist. We're at the Daily Zekegeist on Instagram. You can go to the description of this episode wherever you're listening to it. And there at the bottom, you will find the footnotes, which is where we link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode. we also link off to a song that we think you might enjoy. With Miles Out, we usually ask super producer Justin Connor, is there a song that you think the people might enjoy? Yeah, this song is called Sunset Canyon by Fox Warren, and it's really fun to listen to because in my view,

there's two ways I've seen a steel guitar applied to music, and it can either add like a rustic feeling to a song or a relaxing vintage surfer vibe. And this manages to do both, in my opinion. If someone lives in like a seaside log cabin, this is the song for you. It's a nice, chilled out mood for a sunny autumn afternoon for anyone else who doesn't have a seaside log cabin. But this song is called Sunset Canyon by Fox Warren, and you can find that song in the footnotes. The Daily Zykeyes is a production of IHeartRadio for more podcasts from IHeartRadio Visit.

The IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That's going to do it for us this morning. We are back this afternoon to tell you what is trending, and we will talk to y'all then. Bye! The Daily Zykeyes is executive produced by Catherine Long. Co-produced by Bay Wang. Co-produced by Victor Wright. Co-written by J.M. McNabb.

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