The Daily Zeitgeist - The Amazing Invisible Hit Show, What Strikes Are Saving Us From 08.15.23

Episode Date: August 15, 2023

In episode 1531, Jack and Miles are joined by producer, TV Writer, and co-host of Yo, Is This Racist?, Andrew Ti, to discuss… The Strike So Far, What’s It Actually Like for the Average Writer? History of F**kery--Reagan Also to Blame For the Current Situation in Hollywood? The Current Situation is F**ked and more! Here are three of the biggest demands striking actors are asking for Shawn Ryan Opens Up About WGA Negotiations, Netflix’s ‘Night Agent’ and How ‘Terriers’ Was Ahead of Its Time Corporate greed, low unemployment, housing crisis: That’s the recipe for hot labor summer Hollywood has been in a double strike for a month. Where do things stand now? LISTEN: Spiky Boi by Surprise ChefSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese.

Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have

changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Hey, I'm Gianna Pardenti

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

then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello the internet and welcome to season 300 episode 1 of This is Sparta!

And this is a production of iHeartRadio that was the first, other than when we mentioned it last week, the first time it has crossed my mind. But this is season 300. This is Sparta. Yeah. We're going to have special stuff planned.

Jack, this should be the most. AKA four episodes. This should be the most significant season because 300 is like the genesis point of everything. Yeah. It's like our favorite movie. We saw each other in line for the movie 300 shirtless i remember oiling up you greased my back i remember that's how i was like hey bro you mind getting my back a little bit and then you told me my push-up form was off and then

i went to the bathroom sobbing but then you came back and you said hey buddy i didn't mean to say it like that you look great you look great man we should really try and hit a 90 degree angle if you're going all the way down because Because I was doing a real shallow like. But then I told you about negging and how, you know, how impactful that was and how you could use it to control the world. And you looked so cool with that boa, like feather boa around your neck, like with your chest out, dude. And then at the time, I remember you introduced me or you introduced yourself to me as Cryptic. You're like, hey, I'm Cryptic. And I was like, whoa, what?

Like that was your pick up line. Cryptic O'Brien. Cryptic is so good. Oh, shit. It's Tuesday, August 15th, 2023. Yeah. It's National Relaxation Day, National Leathercraft Day, National Lemon Meringue Pie Day and VJ Day. Something about the war ending. Cool. There you go name is jack o'brien aka get your shit get your whole shit bit

hey hey get my shit get my whole shit bit that is courtesy of christy amaguchi main to too legit to quit there were like four words in that aka and I forgot them for the first half. But that's all right. Thank you for the AKA. Great to see you again, Chris. I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray! Mr. Miles Gray

AKA. Crispy wonton rolls filled with avocado chicken, tomato and Monterey jack applewood smoked crisp bacon with house made ranchito i love these egg rolls i get them each time and obviously that's rhcpk we're bringing it back, obviously, right to post under the bridge, talking about Jack Evoked CPK. And we had to bring up RHCPK again. So thank you.

Thank you. It hits different. Once you've had a long-running bit about RHCPK, going to CPK hits a little different. Does it? Yeah, it's good. It feels good to have heartburn in a place like this. Well, Miles, we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by one of the very faces on Mount Zeitmore.

A hilarious and brilliant producer, TV writer. You know him from the Yo, Is This Racist podcast. It's Andrew T. Andrew T. Solidarity. Forever. Solidarity. Welcome, man. I've been having trouble with some of the union songs man

it's a little the union song canon got a little white and then briefly I was like playing like communist party Chinese music on my hype up to this picket line that got a little weird a lot of killing motherfuckers in those songs.

Wow. You could sing like Bella Ciao. You know, there's like that one good old yarn from the Italians. That anti-fascist anthem. You know what? Yeah. There's a bunch of that. You know, and there's probably a bunch of stuff in Spanish that's my fault that I went to Chinese. Hey, you go with what you know first, you know then there's probably a bunch of um stuff in spanish that is that's my fault that i went to chinese communist hey you go you go with what you know first you know

so is everybody out there singing rich men north of richmond the yeah i it's it's not it's the that was more of a beginning of the strike thing i think that was when we were all like try to like try to be serious try i think what it was was we were trying to impress the teamsters like we're cool right we're down they're like and now it's now it's just kind of now you've all thrown out your backs just not picking up the signs and oh my god it's really it's really it's been uh it's been a good strike i haven't seen you guys in a minute but you know strike it yeah i mean that's. I haven't seen you guys in a minute, but, you know, strike it. Yeah. I mean, that's why we wanted to have you on because just there's it's constantly changing.

And I think also our understanding of the industry, I think, especially for like people outside of California or outside of L.A., have like a very like a perspective on what's happening. It's not fully formed. like a perspective on what's happening that is not fully formed. And I think, you know, the purpose of today is to really like roll our sleeves up, give some perspective and talk about like what's at stake here truly, because we definitely got a good intro when Adam Conover came on. And now that like things are slowly developing,

we know a little bit more, we kind of wanted to come back because this affects like 80% of our listeners, favorite guests, like most of y'all realize all the comedians that we have on a lot of them spend time in writers rooms because that's the yeah they ain't like marcella said she's like it ain't happening you're not getting it from stand-up so i get why all the homies end up going to write because that's a way to carve out a life for yourself so anyway yeah looking forward to talking i get it you guys have

eaten at california pizza kitchen you think you understand what this strike is all about yeah yeah i mean you've had in and out once right you get it you got you now you got amcpk right you could bash those amcpk yeah we should amcpk yeah yeah I don't know. We'll work on it. Are you sounding that out? Just to make sure. I'm not sure where the RH comes in. Oh, oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's tough.

That's tougher. That's a tough one. AMRCPK. There we go. Yeah, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. We need a bigger room. We need a bigger room to work on that.

Yeah, you know what? If we had enough minds to do this, we could come up with it. Give you the proper product. Sorry about that. That's right. Yeah, exactly. Well, Andrew, before we get to all the strike stuff, we do like to get to know our guests a little bit better and ask you, what is something

from your search history? Alright, this is going to be... I think this one was okay, and it didn't really give me the results I was looking for exactly, but I searched earlier this week, is Splinter a weeb in the new TMNT movie?

Because there are two ways you can go with classical depictions of Splinter. One is essentially like an actual Japanese rat, or sometimes a Japanese person who's been ratified. Ratatouille'd.

And then, I believe the newish depictions are he's just like a weeb, essentially. Just a New Yorker who loves Japanese culture so much, he decided. He's not Hamato Yoshi anymore?

I don't think he was named in the current one, but no. Is he like talking? Yeah, what's his accent like? What's his voice like? Well, okay, so this is where it gets even weirder. So I did not realize what this was until I, I didn't really get a satisfactory answer, and I just went down that rabbit hole of sometimes he's a weeb.

But even weirder, and I guess I probably could have known this if I paid more attention to the advertising, he's voiced by Jackie Chan. And, like, pretty clearly... So they split the difference. He's an Asian rat, but he's still a weeb they how you do that they basically are just like he just liked ninja shit like the way american you know well-meaning kind of racist drives a trans man like yeah like ninja shit he's just

like he's like i don't know we needed a way to learn how to fight and ninjas are cool yeah so it's like kind of like wu-tang adjacent like the rizzo yeah we're just watching kung fu movies like that's how it basically is exactly that so it's the same way wu-tang got their whole shit yeah like i don't know it was on we liked it but it's like he's he is Asian. It's definitely not Japanese. Right. There's no point played for Japanese. It's very like I don't I'm choosing not to think it through too hard because I really like the movie.

Right. Right. Right. I haven't seen it, but I will be taking my. Oh, my. Dude, so many of my my friends are like, yo, you should go see it. It's not bad, actually. Because a few of my friends are doing the millennial thing or like millennial parent.

We're like, hey, I'll take my kids to see some shit I fucking know about. And they're like, I don't regret it. Or that was the main thrust. It wasn't like, it wasn't bad. I don't regret it. I'll throw this out there. And maybe this is, I'm childless but old. So I'm both a teenager and basically a dad.

It is maybe my favorite movie since Everything Everywhere All at Once. It is so, so good to me specifically. Wow, okay. That's a heavy fucking stamp of approval out here. I genuinely, I walked out,

I was like, I watched it with a group of fellow tv writers on strike because we were like fuck it we'll go after the picket line in the middle of the day my friend turned to me like four minutes in i was like i think this is the most beautiful movie i've ever seen just one tear coming down it's like it's the animation looks really cool yeah yeah the animation yeah the animation looks amazing it's like perfectly like dudes our age new york kind of like like that kind of like slightly backpackery vibe plus real teenage shit plus real like dad shit it's incredible wow it's i'm not saying it is the best movie. I'm just saying to me,

it is my favorite movie. And I love that. It's like designed for me, but I suspect you fellows might find many of the same traits. Very appealing. Hey, you know, be on this Zoom call if you have daddy issues.

Okay, great. Great, great, great, great, great. And you liked it that much despite the fact that Splinter admits that his entry point to ninja culture was these six samurai swords that he has framed next to his book but i i think on the balance that's better than the other version right like yeah the version of japan i was sold as a child i I was like, this ain't, what the fuck is this? Yeah. Just the shit where whatever version of him being a quote unquote actual ninja is fucking wild.

Right. So I, yeah, I think of the lesser of two evils choices, or I do think this kind of splits the difference. Because they're like, it's better if he's Asian, but it's better if he's not japanese right right right i don't again i'm i'm like choosing not to unpack any of this because i did like because you like this so much yeah yeah but you know that's me being a coward yeah but yeah he is he is both asian and a weeb the the rare is splinter the rare Is Splinter, is Shredder Oroku Saki still? Do they have that backstory with him? I'm gonna no spoilers this

and say, don't worry about it Okay, thank you I like that. Yeah, don't worry about that part I remember always as a kid, I was like that's not a real Japanese name It always bugged me as a kid. I'm like, okay Hamato Yoshi, like, okay, that works japanese name it always bugged me as a kid i'm like okay hamato yoshi like okay that that works yeah it's just one of those like it's really you know it's based

on a thing that is like sort of like well-meaning and it was a parody anyway but it definitely you know it's it's this like american take on japanese-ness that yeah yeah yeah that is bad right at its heart like no matter how like how much they they liked the idea of these turtles or these ninjas in general so yeah there's no it's very hard to imagine a good version where they're japanese like i guess right yeah yeah right is that true i don't know yeah that's my that's where i i'm sitting right they're not yeah because you want it to be like because they're like an analog for people who got like asian culture through the media or something in the early 90s ends up being these fucking turtles bro sorry these turtles fuck with nin ninjutsu okay not ninjutsu okay yeah anyway

that'll be me being annoying to my kid as we watch don't ignore yeah yeah just say real just lead over the ooze does not exist no matter how much you wanted to here's a little list no it it uh yeah look uh the movies are back for now and yeah i was shocked i had a great cinema week actually we're just i'm just gonna start we're since we're off on a tangent i watched uh no okay i'll make this my my underrated anyway okay it's just like the the fucking like yeah the big movies are are whatever they're you know they're good people like them this has been i watched talk to me the horror movie the australian horror movie that uh should have been called talk the Hand, but that's not my problem. It's about a hand, though.

Yeah, they find a cursed hand and it's like, come on, guys. And I also watched a movie that I think you guys would like a lot called The First Slam Dunk, which was the feature of an anime called Slam Dunk.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's a high school like basketball championship in japan and it is i'm not like a basketball head the way you guys are so maybe this is like more prevalent in the media and i had never watched the anime tv show right however it had like and also this should be should have been obvious, but they basically, because it's animated, they really take advantage of the fact that they don't have to use the standard camera angles that you experience basketball from. Like, you know, the game shit. Right, right. So there's, and I might be mistaken by this, the specifics of this, but I'm trying to remember exactly. There's like one shot near the, I guess it must must be there's a jump ball in the second half and the camera basically

is in the perspective of the ball and it's like fucking oh like it's going up and then yeah i'm like trying to go up for a while yeah yeah it's so gorgeous and but there's a lot of like first person stuff that like you know you kind of can experience but, there's a lot of it. And like the basketball, at least to my eye is played like very real. Like, it looks like it's almost like rotoscoped from basketball players maybe, or like, I don't,

I don't even know how you make this fucking animation. Right. Right. Right. That's so cool. Yeah. I highly recommend. I actually have up y'all alley.

I have no, I have a Sakuragi Shouhoku Jersey. Like that's because back in the, because like slam dunk was also like the like sort of injection point for sneaker culture in Japan too because that like the guy who was who like inouye the guy who started it was a huge sneaker head and like if when those early like mangas that he made of it you're like oh shit this is we're in jordan 3s he's wearing jordan 6s like he the amount of detail that went into their sneakers was like fucking next level so i i was i was drawn in from that too as a kid too don't quote me on this because i i don't i i think it's like one of those things where like most of the brands are like like kind of that anime style like kind of fake like analogs there's like green mart or whatever except for the jordan's look to my eye like perfect yeah we're not fucking around with that oh i mean everything else is like a little fake thing like there is a uh like there's a jordan 6 like an official slam dunk jordan collab because of the you know just the how deep that

relationship was it's very good the movie is very good it's for it is also like a lot of like teenagers to parents things so maybe that's like a little bit of a theme actually so is talk to me that's maybe i should have had kids um but uh you saw those three films instead it seems like yeah it really it really uh some it's a it's a very good movie i it is not it does not have a wide theatrical run but if you're in los angeles i believe it's playing at the edwards in alhambra which i'm unclear why that is awesome oh yeah yeah i know that one yeah okay it's right by even though it's in it's in the heart of some of the best chinese food in southern california it's also next to the burger place i like a lot called gorilla mall so yeah gorilla mall started off

amazing yeah yeah it's pretty good it's an aggressive burger place dude they had one that's like the burger like the bread was grilled cheeses right yes yeah that's that's the that's the what brought me out there the first time yeah listen it's it's a rough time out there and probably this is not the weather for that kind of food but yeah you do what you got to what is uh what's something you think is overrated uh that yes that's a segue to my overrated which is the thing that this strike has taught me is being comfortable mad overrated i don't give a fuck anymore i'm just like like slightly warm a little sweaty it's like you know because of so-called climate change at least it's humid now uh which i genuinely that was on my list of when i moved here it's like at least it's not humid

yeah now we're humid now we're humid and we have mosquitoes, like crazy mosquitoes. Yeah. Yeah. But I think I just, my brain, the part of my brain that gives a fuck about being comfortable, really got shut off somewhere around like day 20 of the strike.

So I've been very like, fuck it. Yeah. I don't care anymore. I, I went from what are the most comfortable shoes to who cares? Wow. Barefoot? Wearing the pump?

I went for a pair of Tevas. Oh, okay. I've been doing Tevas. Occasionally, though, I'll just go they're not like walk that far on concrete comfy. Oh, they're not? Okay.

They're walking around a cruise ship comfortable. Yeah, they're not they're not like walk that far on concrete comfy oh they're not okay they're walking around i mean comfortable yeah they're they're they're more like you know a light a light walk in the woods and or i don't know i i just i just don't i just don't care anymore which is because i used to be a person that was so like couldn't handle any discomfort now i'm just i think i you know what and i'm sure i'm not that good but for me i'm right well i'm sure part of that too is like you're now motive your motivations are different whereas before it's like fine if i gotta go out there and be out there yeah comfortably versus like oh okay so you're trying to fucking wear me down fuck you yeah i am i am become death i'm the yeah i'm i am the i am just like i've been ground down to the the little like nub i'm i'm like the the seed in the middle of the plum and you know what the fuck you're gonna do to

me i don't care there you go that's why i take an ice bath every morning you know yeah that's right that's right i do feel like i i need something like i need to do something uncomfortable early in my day or else not not a nice bath but like or else i will just like retreat into like i don't know because i'm a very like interior person and so like i need to like get out of my body and wait wait go on this now this kind of resonates with me what do you mean like because i feel the same way so you you try and push yourself to do something like what do you mean like is that when you just like like exercise or something like that yeah i do exercise on a fucking bed of needles i'll jump in the pool when it's cold enough like just get going do something that's uncomfortable and like that is movement

because otherwise i just yeah like otherwise i just will be comfortable inside my body in a way that then, I don't know, it fucks me up. It just leaves me in a little cocoon. I've actually been trying to focus on just being more comfortable with discomfort as a general rule. Yeah. I mean, look, I know you guys have actual human beings you're responsible for in a more important way but that's a little bit what having a dog like an old dog too it's just like

I gotta get the fuck up cause like she gotta walk and it doesn't matter like however uncomfortable it is cleaning up whatever mess she makes if I don't get her walk in time is much worse this thing's about to go off yeah it just like it creates whatever mess she makes if I don't get her walking time is much worse.

This thing's about to go off. Yeah. It creates this incentive of like, fuck, fuck, fuck. Good. Great. Let's go. Yeah, my baby can't even walk yet. It's like, yeah. I think it's probably easier than having a dog, actually, because you don't have to walk for now.

Yeah, I guess so. For now, in my very narrow perspective. Yeah. It's a lot easier. You easier you guys gonna have real annoying la i guess you were already a real annoying la kid yeah yo oh hell yeah the cool the cool ones come from the valley you know like molly lambert you know what i mean like yeah yeah we have like that cynicism of growing up here that we're not like West side kids who are like on some fucking shit. Like everything's okay. And I have so much money kind of thing. We're like, uh,

yeah, nah, a little bit different. Right. Cause from when you grew up there, it's like, you know, everyone is a clown.

So you're not scared of them, but you're also not like, yeah, you still got that edge to you. And also, yeah, you're not scared of them but you're also not like yeah you still got that edge to you yeah and also yeah you're not impressed by that don't impress me much you know what i mean yeah everybody yes yeah yes thank you saying that all the time i'm gonna don't impress on me much yeah i feel like the when you think about like why there's so much so many canadian comedians early on like one of the best explanations i read was that like they are have a lot of the same shit as our culture they

get like a lot of what the same culture that we view like incoming but they're like at enough of a distance that like they view it through a reflect a refracted lens i feel like you got that with the valley too that's what that's where we get mama lambert and paul thomas anderson that's what we call it we call it the canada of la county that's right and they appreciate it and they love it and i was my fit i wasn't like i feel a connection to the people of new jersey in that yes we're like yeah We're like the people, again, the West Side, Hollywood, LA people thumb their noses at the people from the Valley.

We got our own shit over here. That's why when people are like, yeah, the bridge and tunnel, I'm like, I see you. I see you. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back

and we'll talk about the strike. We'll be right back. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high-control groups and interview dancers, church members, and others whose lives and careers

have been impacted, just like mine. Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new, chilling firsthand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives. Forgive Me For I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring

these types of abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts separated by two months. 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 And we're back. Before we get into this, Drake, real quick, on the subject that we were talking about. Okay, which topic? I just did the Wire podcast with Matt Lieb. Yeah, yeah. It was the episode after Stringer Bell's untimely demise and they go into his apartment and he has samurai swords and cranes on the wall and i was like i definitely at the

time when it came out and then like uh mcnulty like takes adam smith's like you know first book whatever the fuck the like book that it invented modern economics like off his thing and is like who the hell was I chasing and I at the time was like damn Stringer Bell is so tight bro there's like a water feature in his apartment and shit but it made me wonder, did the writers of The Wire, were they like, this is tight. People are going to recognize how tight this dude is. Or were they like, this is kind of funny. He

is basically like a finance bro. Like a hustle culture rising grind. That's right. Yeah. Or that he just knew what he liked. That he was so secure. He's like, yeah, I'm a samurai sword type dude. Yeah. Or that like he just knew what he liked, you know, like that he was so secure. He's like, yeah,

I'm a samurai sword type dude. Yeah. Yeah. I just wish there was a scene with him. It just, it sucks as a reveal though. Right. Because I would have loved to see a stringer bell maneuvering some fucking

katana or some shit, seeing what the fuck you could do. Just like a dark room, like in a, in a robe, just like doing some shit like by himself but he's like not that good at it yeah

he's got blade on the big screen and he's like just doing it along to the movie his wall has like cuts in it and shit so many times it's just all copies of Ghost Dog on your DVD yeah it's just all copies of ghost dog on your uh dvd

thank you yeah that's the only movie that matters yeah oh you big jim jarmusch fan who who all right let's get into the strike all right you had a recent tweet about how this like the thing that's different this time like like the studios, their whole stance is. Yes. Very predictable. Just, oh, they're going to be assholes in this very predictable way. Yeah. That there seems like there's like the thing that's been surprising is the level of solidarity.

Yeah. On the strike side. Like, what have you seen there? Like, what would. So. Yeah. Yeah. on the strike side? Like, what, what have you seen there? Like what, what would, what, what? So yeah. Yeah.

I, I was not in the union in 2008, but I actually was weirdly, that was when some of my friends had started getting their first TV jobs. And, um, I was actually working at comedy central. So I was like occasionally having to cross a picket line in New York,

which was like fucking horrible but so from what i remember of those days slash just like what people have been saying oh i guess like to back up to like like my the reason i tweeted that was basically the amptp who are the motion picture television producers the studios not really the actual actual producers are not happy that producers in that title right actual producer are closer to the concerns of the workers but this was off of them uh at literally like a hundred days and change asking seriously to come back to the negotiating table which is is exactly what happened. Essentially, like, last strike went just over 100 days. The reason that sort of, like, the conventional wisdom is because that's when they can start

canceling some overall deals. I mean, they have canceled some or paused some, but basically, the conventional wisdom goes that's when they can get stuff off their books like deals they want to get out of and appears that they have basically that's and the reason that's conventional wisdom is because that's the first time the studios like get something out of going uh forcing us to go on strike they get to recoup a little bit of money and and thus after this it's all sort of diminishing returns for them there's no reason unless they want to just pack it up on the entertainment industry there's no reason for them to keep the strike going any longer so that was like utterly predictable the other thing that was utterly predictable was that dga would take a you know i know there are directors who are happy with

the deal they got but i think most people understand that they got a not that great deal and they did it in a way to lessen solidarity from the other guilds. You know, by agreeing to a thing that one, I feel like I'm just talking, so, you know, jump in, whatever. But, like, they took a deal where they didn't get streaming residuals, I believe, which has been one of our main points. Essentially, we knew they would stab everyone else in the back, and they did. The other thing they could have done, which is what our leadership

appears to be asking for, is the right for us to stand in solidarity with SAG, the actors, even after our contract is ratified. So that basically is what the Teamsters have. And I believe IATSE have some version of this too. IATSE are the crew people on the...

There are many things, but as far as Hollywood goes, they're the crew people. So, yeah. So, you know, I guess what I'm saying is, at every stage, if it could have gone one way or the other, it has been more in the case of on the side of solidarity. We, the writers, have been more in solidarity with each other, save for a few, like, high-profile, mostly white guys talking about how they don't give a shit about the union showrunner types.

they don't give a shit about the union showrunner types but you know compared to last time when apparently there were just like deep divisions evident immediately um and this is also like sort of i don't know if it was it was certainly pre-wide adoption of twitter i'm not going to look up when twitter started it was 2007 2008 so there was some kind of it really hit the scene 2009 i feel like is when effectively like when we being like, hey, that's how you can follow food trucks. Yeah, exactly. It was when Michael Jackson passed away. Yeah, June 2009. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. So a culture where we can all communicate better. unexpected at least to me a rank and file member of the guild the teamsters announced they would stand in solidarity with us which allowed us to shut down productions much earlier because you know teamsters uh have negotiated into their contract a right not to cross a picket line which is a legal right that has to be fought for so yeah they they would. I mean, I remember in the first and second week of the strike, I was out at fucking 4am at Paramount. And it was kind of like this magical thing where it's like, two people can constitute a picket line. And so it's just two people at each gate.

And trucks were turning around, they were not making their deliveries. And Teamsters were very like, you know, I was gonna to say kindly, but it's not really kindness, but they were, you know, losing work to stand in solidarity with us. Right. And that was, you know, amazing. And then individual IOTC members had a little more latitude. And of course, you know, you don't begrudge anyone their need to make their day's money but there were iotsy members who also didn't cross the line and that's how we got production shut down as far as i understand much earlier than last strike right because people were more on our

side than we thought and then when sag came up for their contract negotiation. You know, conventional wisdom was sort of just like, they're probably going to take a not great deal after DGA. It did even seem like that's how things were going. I speak with no insider information, but just like from the outside of SAG. You know, it seemed like they were making all the moves to just settle for whatever. And they, you know, they were given a,

they released their deal points the same way the WJ board did. And it was preposterous. It was disgusting. They were, there were things like the studios were proposing scanning background actors and simply owning their likeness forever in a digital form.

And so for that reason, coupled with, I believe, like, you know, there was that, there was like an open letter signed by a bunch of a-listers to sag leadership that was like do not take a fucking bad deal and it did appear to work because the tenor of the conversation from sag communication changed drastically after that you know it was there's a lot of rumors about what they were really trying to do but the fucking week after fucking fran drescher is out there being like you know fuck you right yeah after kicking it with kim kardashian right yeah it's it's one of those things where you're like you know there it's sort of unclear how they arrived at that position but they're indisputably there they're

they're you know doing some things that i i personally maybe quibble with strategically but the fact is there are fucking you know 160 some thousand actors like out there they're on the picket line there have been a little bit of growing pains with just like swelling the strike by 11 times but you know just basic logistics but it is like it's bad it literally is some like real cavalry shit like yeah the actors are here and you know that's all actors you know i imagine want they're the heroes so good for them they look great no but good lord but i mean yeah so you're not surprised by anything you're seeing from them i don't think anyone who's been paying attention to corporations yes and these corporations in particular are surprised they definitely seem surprised by yeah like the front that they're getting like the united front the like lack of

public support seems to really have them being like why does everybody think i'm the bad guy like zaz love and eiger seem to be having a i bet they're on the phone every night just talking to each other what is happening they genuinely thought i think because it worked well in 2008 they they genuinely thought they could like bully bluster and like so discord among the union members i think again social media has been a big help in like eliminating some of that but also here's my pet theory which is like they uh you kind of forget the peer group these fuckers run in but you cut you have to kind of remember that to them ted sarandos is like their cool hacker nephew so like ted sarandos i'm sure in those early netflix yeah yeah sorry head of netflix

yeah you know and a tech guy i'm sure he's telling you know but it's still like a dozen decrepit mostly white men like right like billionaires like completely out of touch so to them like ted sarandos is the equivalent of your like zoomer showing you no this is better than tiktok right like yeah yeah yeah this is how you watch that pay-per-view fight on twitter grandpa yeah so he's like so so he's like they're you know and fucking reed hastings or whatever all the netflix tech guys i'm sure i look to these old old old media billionaires are like they said they these guys you know if there's one thing these guys know, it's digital. They know

the internet and they say we're going to win. They say the people are going to be on our side and I think they just believe them. I just don't think they have anyone in their circle who's like, no, you guys are villainous clowns. Like, maybe there's like a communications

like officer, you know're if you're the they haven't they haven't arrived at the are we the baddies moment yet yeah yeah i think they're on their way on they do have that one billionaire who owns the uh jewelry company who oh cartier is cartier the cartier billionaire owner who's losing sleep and they're like what the fuck's going on with him like he needs to dial in what a loser what's crazy is they actually need a cousin greg like they just need someone to be like hey i don't think this is working people are not on our side uh but i think it's also important right and especially talking about the solidarity right because the last time there was a dual strike was in 1960 and this is the last time the wj and the writers went on strike

and it's it's really instructive to like really to learn about just what the the history of labor negotiations in Hollywood have been like, because it's been a fucking exploitative cash grab from the beginning. And in 1960, many people you hear a lot like, actually, Ronald Reagan was played a huge part because he was SAG president. He actually had two stints as SAG president, one in the late 40s and early fifties. And then again, he came back for this strike in 1960. And a lot of articles have like heavily sanitized his actions as like SAG president saying that like he had the overwhelming of SAG members when he agreed to this new deal and without, and which is true because we want to get back to work. But the other thing was, and that like without him, there wouldn't be a pension fund for actors. So we want to get back to work but the other thing was and that like without him there wouldn't be a pension fund for actors so we have to thank him for that but if you look closely you see a story of a fucking guy that was just self-dealing and could give a fuck less about

his fellow workers so after world war ii right people just stopped going to the movies like they used to and the decline was noticeable so the studios decided to go in big on this new technology called broadcast television and decided that was because tv became a thing they're like what the fuck the heck okay fine well what are we going to do to make money well they decided to license their films for broadcast and sell them to all these tv stations and that how they're that's how they're making money. But this move brought, you know, seminal films into American homes and people were engaging with motion pictures again. But what about that money?

A lot of people are like, hold on, man, I'm in this movie. Where the fuck is my check? Ah, well, you see, all of these films were only making money for the studios and none a single cent was going to the people that wrote or starred in them at all it was only benefiting the studios so they wanted to strike get their money that was owed to them and reagan returned as sag president for this and he sorted out a deal in five weeks really easy really easy here's another thing we don't realize is the writers they actually started they were on strike before the actors and they were on strike for 21 weeks in 1960 because they were unwilling to take

these like bullshit deals that were they're like no we want a percentage we need you to articulate five percent like we there's there's like real math involved with what the writers were fighting for so they got you know we we come back reagan's like yeah well i've got this deal if you want to check it out and basically the actors would receive residuals only for films beginning production after that basically starting from 1960 onward when they started striking like all right y'all get residuals for the shit y'all make now and everyone's like well what about the other shit what about from 1960 to shit at least 1948 well basically since they weren't paying residuals on that they said okay we'll cut y'all a check for 2.65 million dollars for a

pension fund yeah and people were like oh great but if again if you look at the time everyone is saying they wanted at least four million dollars for this fund that's what they're like all right if you want to do that like you need to meet us at this four million mark they got away with that shit too so essentially no money right now except in the form of a pension fund is what the the actors got then all because of ronald reagan and you're probably thinking about the other part is what about movies before 1948 like shit shit like Gone with the Wind, Wizard of Oz, Citizen Kane. What about those deals? Well, here's where Reagan comes back into the story.

He was SAG president between 1947 and 1952, and he forfeited royalties on films made before 1948 in exchange for the promise of talking about negotiating over royalties for films made after 1951 yeah i was like all right fuck that we don't need to see anything before 1948 well this affects me too but like his movies that he's like that are affected by it are like sleepover parties with orangutans and shit yeah bedtime for for bonzo i think you're talking about yeah exactly so he basically left all that money on the table and we're just saying all right well let's negotiate for stuff from 51 onward that and and it was because of that move that precipitated the fucking dual strike in 1960 because ronald reagan again was like hey whatever y'all want okay whatever is fine yeah apart from like a few exceptions, right?

So again, a lot of many of these actors felt so betrayed by Ronald Reagan. We're like, we created the industry for these people to be in and you've left us fucking out to dry. And so again, the only thing that a lot of these people got after 1960 was a pension fund. And this is where you kind of, you get to see the Reagan-ness of it all. Like, you're like, why would Ronald Reagan do this? It's like, well, he knew he wasn't going to make money off royalties. He was looking at bigger shit. So an interesting dimension is his agent was a man named Lou Wasserman,

who was the president of MCA, which is like a multi, they do music, film, television, whatever at the time. After the strike, when Reagan got them to agree to that shitty deal he left his positions at sag and got took a lucrative production deal with mca like two months after like if if we had twitter people been like oh that's what the fuck is going on it's crazy it's like when the plot twist in episode nine of star wars is like the bad guys emperor palpatine again it's like oh it's always the

same motherfucker that's all you guys got wait him killed unions at the beginning of the 80s he killed he's like fucking everybody over like yeah 50s and 60s like yeah hey maybe reagan just was that awful dude the whole time it's so weird how like that yeah that he needs to be lionized from time to time like even by people who really should fucking know better like yeah 100 like tear down every single myth about ronald reagan i think there's a book called tear down this myth was it tear off my balls? Tear off my balls. So anyway, the other things that are wild, too, because this guy was so power hungry, he was doing he was willing to do anything. Right.

Including being a fucking informant to the FBI. Yeah. And he gave testimony in 1947 when he was first like entering the SAG leadership about striking Hollywood workers being the byproduct of subversive elements, AKA communists. And he regularly fed the FBI information on people. He even personally just suspected of being a communist with very little evidence, if anything, that so much of the 20th century, just the bad guys won. Yeah, exactly. And so if you think about it, it's like this was all it can all boil back to like these very early conversations where the norm was always going to be. Yeah, take this like shit deal with the vague promises of something better down the road. And we'll just kick the can down the road because at the end of the day, we want to Hoover up as much of this money as possible.

And just one last thing about it, which is wild is if you think about like all of this stuff pre 1948 and shit like that. So like people like, you know, Ted Turner bought the film libraries of like RKO, which is like pre like old school Warner brothers and MGM and Turner classic movies was basically a free money printing

machine because he's like oh this is all IP that you don't have to pay it's free yeah it's all fucking free and so we so a lot of the things that I think consumers were like oh wow that's on TV a lot people are getting money from that it's further from the case and like I don't know Andrew like how would you how would you describe to somebody because I've heard from people who like talk about the strike who are like a film adjacent people who like maybe do a lot of catering for

stuff or like you know work in other departments there's like well the writers like they're just they get everything they want these people are all rich and I and I want to really reiterate that this is a job where people are barely they can't even put their kids through school you know when they're trying to so how would you how would you describe what the lifestyle is of of someone who is trying to

just be a writer in the industry and if yeah is it just all champagne parties all day and you have no bills to pay exactly it's i mean look and this is also a today of it like i i think at the there there was a time when at least the when when network and cable was like equitable it was like you worked a job and you had about a middle class existence was just about where i i would be or maybe even a little nicer depending on how well your show did aka how well you did your job so yeah just i just since i'm here it was one of those things where i'll just do the long version of this which is like at the beginning of the strike i was like you know i'm i'm like doing okay you know, I'm like doing okay. You know, I work. And in the last like, you know, 100 days, 104 days, like I've really been seeing like, oh shit, I specifically was like screwed for doing kind of the same work.

And so the example that is like very stark is the last show I worked on was That 90s Show, which is on Netflix. It's a, one of those like multicam streaming reboots. No promo, no promo though. No promo.

Yeah, exactly. No, fuck that. Like any promo, just any promo. No, I'm like,

truly going to tell you why. And the prior to that, I worked on a show called mixed dish, which was a spinoff of blackish, which was on ABC. So just like the kind of like hard facts example, I mean, mixed dish was never like a huge hit.

We got like a second season, but you know, it wasn't killing it ratings wise. I'm very, you know, I'm very, uh, honored to have worked on the show and it's,

uh, I thought we did a great job and I met so many amazing people. However, you know, it wasn't like, um, you know, overwhelmingly crushing it. Whereas 90s Show, apparently, because one of the other things the MPTP refused to do is divulge their streaming numbers.

But, you know, it was a huge hit, according to them. It was the number one streaming on Netflix for like several weeks. Yeah, just trust us. So by their metrics, a quote unquote huge hit. And look, I mean, I guess there's a possibility more residuals will come through, but sort of to date, I have made per episode somewhere on the order of 100 times more

per episode of Mixed Dish that I have my name on than my episode of 90s show. 100 times. Yeah, and that is again marginal like a solid show versus a you know by their yeah by their reckoning like i hit a humongous right so so basically that's like what the royalty structure on streaming versus network is it's literal pennies or more than pennies on the dollar. And so residuals is a thing that I think people, you know, feel a certain way about, right? You, most people at their job don't get paid for the thing they make over time. However, so the reason residuals

are, to our minds, a fair thing is these, we only get paid if the studio continues to resell our creative product continues to make money from it right so so the reason for instance like like when when my episode of mixed issue plays overseas or plays on video on demand i get a tiny percentage of that money that they make whereas there's no real equivalent or sorry there's an equivalent but it's much lower on streaming yeah you know again 100th 1 100th about as far as i know like i don't know i guess all the ins and outs but it has been really stark i'm like making no money for this hit and you know you hear many stories people just routinely um yeah cody ziggler who's been on the show before friend of mine, made a three-figure check for his hit episode of She-Hulk, which, again, was one of the highest rated, according to them, highest rated things on Disney+.

So, and the reason you need residuals is because that is sort of because we are not full-time employees. Like, we're not someone who like is hired by a studio or hired by a producer just able to work all the time so the the compromise is sort of like in exchange for when we do stuff that does amazingly well we are compensated and able to like like participate in that that well-performing thing so the other thing that is like a direct way that i was like oh this is a one-to-one and how i've been specifically screwed is i worked on that 90s show which is a reboot of that 70s show if anyone's ever watched both shows they were created you know we have like our showrunner was like a um that 70s show writer the creators and executive

producers were writing and in the room with us like it was exactly it's the same fucking sets like it's the exact same process of making that 90s show right as making that 70s show except for we had approximately half the writers wow which in a show like that, makes it very difficult, because what you're doing is pitching jokes, and at a certain point, it's just a volume thing. There's only so many fresh takes, and there's only so many resources that you can have to make

the exact same product. So, yeah, it was just one of those things where I was like, oh, man, that show was very, very difficult to make, and I think like, oh, man, you know, that show was like, very, very difficult to make. And I think like, unnecessarily so because of because of the the resources that we had writing wise, which is again, a tiny fraction, like, right, single single digit percentages of the budget. And you know, and then also just my development as a writer suffered, like I was often just like, either either in over my head like having to run the joke room for instance which is like usually you know someone more senior than me would be doing that because we would have twice as many people so so working with like half as many people often without enough you know and i don't really mean to say this as like a ding on the actual

people running 90s show but it was just like you know i who the fuck knows but i i guess it's like we were like slightly just like under-resourced the whole time in a way that was like incredibly difficult for doing the exact same job again it was exactly the same work as making 70s show and people who wrote episodes of that 70s show you know conservatively because it was on fox like high mid six figures probably over the lifetime in residuals maybe maybe like it was a ton of money yeah for doing the exact same work so in multiple ways like analogous to old school like tv writers even from like five six years ago i'm like really and i kind of didn't realize how screwed i was until spending a bunch of time on the picket line talking to people and

i was like oh right yeah like i thought i was doing okay and then i was like oh i've really been getting fucked for like apples to apples work like right literally the exact same thing or in my i would argue more difficult right all right actually before uh we keep going on this let's take a quick break and we'll be right back i'm jess casavetto executive producer of the hit netflix documentary series dancing for the devil the 7m tiktok cult and i'm cleo gray former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades.

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

This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground.

Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current. Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. And we're back. It sounds like there's an incentive for not even acknowledging a hit show. And I know that's also always been a traditional thing that people said about the entertainment industry, right? The first Indiana Jones movie is still, according to the studio, that made it not profitable. Sure. It's like creative bookkeeping to keep people from participating.

But it does feel like there is... We don't even know when a show is a hit anymore. And, like, it's just, like, they dumped so much content. So many, like, shows on their streaming networks without, like, even trying to promote when, like, one of them was a hit. It was just all, like, invisible. promote when like one of them was a hit it was just all like invisible and it's like all these things that supposedly millions and millions of people are watching and are entering like should be entering our like cultural like bloodstream and like these are the ideas that are like affecting the zeitgeist and they're just like completely invisible do you do you think that's connected

to the streamers just being so kind of guarded about letting their data yeah well one is they might simply be i'll i'll say you know using creative statistics yeah straight up bullshitting right yeah the performance of things like that's certainly a possibility but the other thing is yeah has been like their model is like so driven by people who apparently don't like or watch TV or understand how culture works at all. Sure. Like down to the binging. Yeah, it's Wall Street and Silicon Valley's influence. Like you can see that happening because it's not like there aren't things that can happen.

Right. because it's not like there aren't things that can happen right even like on the streamers like a squid game or like you know you know just whatever like you know jury duty yeah like things things can break through and make a cultural impact but i i think it is because these people essentially what their business model is and you can tell sorry this is all my own speculation i should say is like you watch them trying to feed this like concept of quote content like you see it in like hbo max like david zaslav just thinks of everything as content like he's like house hunters and game of thrones is equally equally a creative endeavor yeah like like that is like very important to their worldview it's just like minutes to eyeballs and fill in tape essentially so so that i think is also why

like like they they don't like they seem to have an interest in devaluing the business model and i will just throw this out there it it if you look at the way silicon valley has done things to other industries i think uber is a great example or like rideshares in general like they just go in operate at a loss in an attempt to destroy the industry and create some kind of monopoly um which is arguably what netflix is doing and then you know either jacking up the prices or just sort of leaving the industry to like fucking deal with the crater pieces and society yeah right i don't know so so that it just seems like like netflix essentially so the the other upshot of all this is that because streamers play much fewer residuals off of because-we-say-so data, Netflix and Netflix or the streamers having pioneered this practice of mini-rooms, which is, again, what I went through with 90s Show, hiring much fewer people, asking them to do much more work, and doing it for a shorter period of time. more work and doing it for a shorter period of time we like they're essentially just begging to be able to operate at a lower cost which is like hey maybe you just don't get to if you're not

smart enough to make money like from television like america's greatest import or export like the most powerful thing like other countries realize this like fucking china understands that it's important to have like they obviously want to screw their workers too but they at least understand it's important from a fucking even if you're like a complete like you know if you really don't care about this like just from a geopolitical standpoint like great britain gets to continue to be a world power you know decades edging on century like after the their their fucking little empire like crumbles because people because the beatles the beatles is soft power that resonates you know this we still have like my my like dumb family who were literally victimized by the british being like oh sad when queen elizabeth dies like that's power

that's like fucking power and the fact that we appear to be like willing to give that away so what i should say is what i think give that away is if the studios get what they want, that will within, you know, five, 10 something years be the end of like working as a creative in Hollywood, being a middle-class sustainable existence. Like it simply will be not possible. There will not be any staff writers like essentially

that will then become if you are um a low level television writer it's sort of the equivalent of an internship like essentially like only rich kids will be able to do it right and like that it just is basically then becoming a a writer in hollywood is what i know most about is a lottery ticket you know some of you will be able to make it on merit but also luck some of you will be able to just outlast because you could run at a deficit for five six seven eight nine years look and it by the way is already like this but it will make it worse. And if the proposal to SAG goes through, that's essentially trying to break the union from a pension perspective. If what they put on the table was there, that would end background acting as a profession. And that would completely decimate—sorry, I should say all this is as I understand it.

Adam Conover probably has the actual notes version of this. But that just fucking ends acting as a job. It ends acting as a job and turns it into a gig. Which is just that's how we start to tell fewer interesting stories, fewer new people will come through,

we'll start to be doing the same thing over and over and over again. And we will start losing to creative people, creative countries. Like, it's just it's very weird. No, it's not. But it is like sort of pathetic how like short term that all these folks thinking is. Yeah. Yeah.

Because, yeah, I mean, like for the longest time, we were always like, how the fuck is Netflix a company? Because I would be be like they're just deficit spending and deficits yeah and deficit spending and i was always asking like other people i knew who were like at the executive of like what is their like i remember 10 or maybe like eight years ago i was like what the fuck is their plan exactly yeah and someone was like they're probably hoping something like an apple or google will just buy them at first yeah kind of like the thought and it won't matter how much they've they've spent or burned up because that would be the end goal but then also once wall street started rewarding that stock to say oh well it's really not about the profits

they're showing it's about look at their their market share that they're devouring and look at the potential it's like it's like tesla where it's like don't look at like the facts and figures of the business because it's dog shit think of like what this it's like don't look at like the facts and figures of the business because it's dog shit think of like what this can do for the future that's what you're buying into and then once netflix was like oh we just had a subscriber loss wall street basically said fuck all you guys for not being profitable and then the reaction from the studios all right well now we got to cut shit now we got to do people got to do less we've got to do more with less which is a theme that many people across the country are familiar with no matter what industry you're in

it's like hey do more for less and we find ourselves in this position now where we're completely like like in a way inadvertently or very advertently you're starting to see all of like the the gains that were made in like equitable representation from like the kinds of creators that were getting shows and the kinds of people we saw being the faces on the screen. We're just going to we're just regressing right back to the fucking status quo where it's like, I don't know. We don't have time to tell black stories or trans stories. We don't have time. Like, what's the new fucking IP? We can just dust off and do another.

They're going to do a spinoff of Nurse Jackie. Yeah. Like, what the fuck are we doing worse than the status quo because it's the status quo but also they don't pay people living wages right like yeah is is the actual plan yeah they like wiley coyote themselves off a financial cliff but the problem is they can bring all of us with them right and they're trying to do that yeah that that is it appears to be the plan and like you know i mean it's just like this thing where i was like again watching watching how much like the same work is not being rewarded or being devalued oh sorry that was the other thing with the with the deficit spending thing is like they also didn't really do a good job with the money they spent no like it's like because they just think again minutes of tape is the only metric that matters and

it's so bizarre how it like any fool could have told you that's not how culture works except for these bozos like yeah they misunderstand how culture works it's also this thing that so the other um sticking point in this strike has been ai and like you know the fact that like i understand ai can do you know we'll start to very quickly approach the old thing you know perfect replicas of whatever the fuck existed in the past right but like i i think like these people like seem to misunderstand that culture is novel right like right they they just do not get that like there is a need for something new. Right. And their little plagiarism machine, it maybe can, through a dint of random remixing,

essentially, come up with something that does appeal to a novel center of the culture's brains. But that's also because some creative person picked that instance out of this pile of fucking 10,000 or 10 million. It's still required a... Every time anyone posts

AI art, it's like, oh, it's over for creatives. It's like... It sucks. Far be it for me to defend the creativity of these AI fucking evangelists. But their misunderstanding that they picked the instance that was like pleasing to some center of their brain and shared with everyone right that that the ai doesn't know that this one's better than the other fucking

nine million versions it made right it still requires like a human sense of novelty and joy and wonder and experience to like have this mean something i don't know maybe i'm fucking i'm sure there's some like ai person that disagrees with me on this but the second that it puts out the the most an actual flawless seinfeld episode i then i think that we're still okay you know but yeah yeah the other thing even that would be an old show like there are plenty of ratings right write a flawless Seinfeld episode right now like that's yeah the thing that it misses is and I I agree that like it feels like they're already shading in this direction when you look at what

they did with that spending with all the money they spent where it was like a lesser diminished like amount of production resources per show and then you like look at all these streaming shows that are like they have these crazy high numbers like that this one article will link off to on the footnotes talks about the show the night agent being this huge like netflix show and they're talking to the showrunner who's like yeah but i'm like not not being compensated like it's a hit netflix show or a hit any show and but like that that show like doesn't really exist as far as like p like i i just it came and went and like i wasn't aware i had it confused with the bodyguard i think and the guy who plays it is like looks similar to the bodyguard and

but it like i watched you watched 15 minutes of it, and it feels like it could have been generated by an AI that had ingested every procedural for the past 30 years. It feels like, yes, AI is actually in line with what they think they're trying to do. It's just what they think they're trying to do. It's just what they think they're trying to do. Is going to not make anything good. Like good enough to actually like propel the entertainment.

And like the art. Yeah. That like drives culture forward into the future. And they're just killing something that is innately human. About like wanting to create and to be creative like yeah because the way these studios and executives look at the nature of creativity is like it's the same way a senator would look at what they're going to read if they're trying to filibuster it's like yeah man just say shit just say words that's all you gotta do doesn't

matter just read from the phone book and that And that's enough to tick the box. It's just as good. Right. And think of how uninteresting what happens when you shift gears to, well, just read from the phone book. The most entertaining thing might be when they don't know how to pronounce a certain name. And that's like the height of like fucking entertainment or whatever. Because more and more, it's just looked at. Well, we just need to hear words and visuals be put out there for people to stare out creativity and like a non issue. And I think that's

really a violent part like about it is that we're taking that sort of ability for a human being to pursue something like that, to have an imagination and to be able to sustain their life with it. Just because it's not even, it's not even possible but like like even in your example right like like stumbling over a word is something only a fucking human could do right like like also it's it's like this like like they're they're the myths that got built around like like netflix the myths that they're built on is like we had an algorithm that told us that people like kevin spacey and political drama and therefore we greenlit house of cards and look like the computer did that no human could do that which like ignores their like

the things that don't work the it ignores the things that haven't worked that have been algorithm driven and also it's like this such a funny thing it's like you know what put amazon streaming on the map fucking transparent which by the way right not one computer at any point ever was like do you know what we need now right like you know this this story transparent so like like they're working from just like this law of tiny numbers. I mean, that was my other experience. Wow, this is maybe talking out of school, but I think this is a common enough experience, which is like, we had a moment in 90s show

where they were insistent. Okay, I guess I just won't say exactly what the thing they were insisting on, but they had a note for our um opening credit sequence that was basically like the algorithm says you have to do this or else no one will watch it and i when i tell you it was an utterly utterly utterly inconsequential note from a creative perspective it was just like technically going to be very difficult to do and they're like our data shows that this has to be this way and like having worked in on the network side of entertainment before

and worked with executives and watched our research department routinely lie to them, essentially, or obfuscate with statistics, and having taken a little bit of statistics in my life, I'm like, you don't have enough data to know. You simply,

this niggling tiny thing that doesn't really make any difference like you're insistent on it because your date you're like legitimately statistically insignificant data tells you one thing but it doesn't the reality is it doesn't matter and the fact that you are killing multiple executives and a high-priced showrunners day arguing about this is like flushing money down the toilet because you worship an algorithm but you also don't have the statistics knowledge to like actually say this is inconsequential they had an inconsequential fight all because i'm like you haven't produced that many show opens before so you don't know you just don't have a data set that tells you like whether this creative choice or this creative choice makes the most difference in this and again cannot stress enough it did not make a difference right

like yeah i i bet that executive was like see those hits see those numbers that's yeah it's because of the intro yeah yeah well Andrew such a pleasure having you to come on and tell us what it's actually like working thank you for letting me talk so long no this was great we're like we want to I mean every time I see you post from the picket lines or like whatever you're observing your tweets I'm like we gotta have Andrew to talk about this also like and also like again i think there's just such a misconception of what it means to work as a creative person in the industry because most people just think they're just thinking of the exceptions and yes rather than that there is such an occupation where you just are trying to match like hone your craft of writing and it could render you an income that you could live off of and yeah and that's it it's

not it's not yacht money it can be yacht money oh you know yeah god willing but for the most part it's it's like anything else it's by the same thing we have people who want to think they got to take side gigs now it's like but I thought you were writing on this show. Well, no, now I'm doing Uber. Now I'm doing this because it's actually not that kind of money. I think if it helps, just from the actors, right?

The criticism of like, look at these millionaires asking for more money. And it's like, it's actually the millionaires foregoing money to help everyone else like far be it for me to like you know kiss these rich people's asses but in this instance the rock right they are no but truly it's like yeah he they are like giving they're they're leaving money on the table to help other people like from the sag thing think I read, the minimum per year

you have to make in SAG to qualify for health insurance is somewhere like $25,000, $30,000, something like that. And around 85% of their union do not make that from acting work. So, this is not like rich people. This is people, like,

trying to do a thing that they love that makes money hollywood is immensely profitable so like the things that we do generate money and we would just be able to like to be able to like live off of yeah and i would like to like that's the fucking thing it's like i don't know like going back to work is going to be hard but like we love tv and movies and whatever media is you know part part of this you know high high budget youtube shows whatever i fucking love this shit these people that we're negotiating against by their actions do not even seem to like or understand any of this stuff right yeah and it is like they think that our love for this is their leverage to exploit us

and on some level it is and will be but like you know we're at the ledge and like there's a certain point this strike is like necessary because it's like there's no version where if we accept the deal they put on the table there would even be an industry so like they forced us to be you know in survival mode so that's it like good fucking luck and here we are surviving yeah yeah amazing yeah when zaslav was like i think a love of work will bring the strike to an end he was like telling on himself that he's just yeah these people seem to like have this weird thing It's like nerds want their game back. Yeah. It's so pathetic.

Where can people find you and follow you and all that good stuff? Oh, you got to hit me up on Threads. Next.com! Andrew T. everywhere. Yeah, if you can, we're still doing the Yo! Is This Racist podcast. We actually started on the premium

show doing my co-host Tawny Newsome and I. If you're a fan of Star Trek, she just had a pretty amazing episode where she did a live action crossover on Stranger Worlds. She's not promoting it. I'm not. I'm just saying I really liked it. But

we have been doing picket line diaries, essentially. Most of them start with me going, fuck, fuck, fuck, I'm running late. But yeah, just literally what the vibe is on the ground at every... We're going to try to hit all the picket lines by the time this is over. But we started that way late, but it's been actually fun. Yeah, so yeah, just Yoast is racist. If you could, if you find any of this remotely interesting, that would be cool. Is there a work of media that you've been enjoying yes besides all the movies i talked about let's see the tweet

i was looking for that i couldn't find um so i'll just have to attribute this to apocryphal and i don't remember paraphrasing but it's basically somewhere on Strike News, basically some version of, hey, CBS, Sheldon ain't getting no younger. It's crazy that CBS and the old network, not like old network, but legacy TV is like, why are you fucking tanking your fall season just to support Netflix? That's a different issue. But let's see, Brian Jordan Alvarez,

but Brian Jordan Alvarez on Brian Jor Alvarez on Twitter wrote listen we cannot kill this fucking pig there's a spider nearby who keeps writing things in her web and they seem to be friends which made me laugh this morning so that'll be my media there you go Miles where can people find you is there a work of media

you've been enjoying oh find me on wherever you got them at symbols at miles of gray also you know you want to hear nba talk check out jack and i'm miles and jack i'm at boosties uh check out my new true crime joint the good thief we talk about the greek robin hood uh and also 420 day fiance uh some media i'm liking i thought i saw something over the weekend that I was fucking with. Nah. Forgot about it already.

Don't worry about it. Yeah. Just learn yourself. Learn yourself, folks. There you go. You can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien and on threads at Jack underscore O underscore Brian. I've checked it in the past week. I swear to God.

Work media has been enjoying it. At Internet Hippo tweeted, every children, every American child has a Boston accent until they're about six years old. Science cannot explain this. You can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist we're at the daily zeitgeist on instagram we have a facebook fan page and our website dailyzeitgeist.com where we post our episodes and our footnotes we link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode as well

as a song that we think you might enjoy miles what song do we think people might enjoy oh i think you're gonna enjoy this track uh this from surprise chef uh gone out on the track from surprise chef before uh but this is another track called spiky boy s-p-i-k-y-b-o-i and it's just like good instrumental you know just relaxing get your week started light head nod i will turn up the volume a little bit towards the end of the week and we'll probably go out on some wild ass drum and bass or some shit like that. But to start spiky boy by surprise chef. All right. Well,

you can find that in the footnotes. The daily is like guys, the production of I heart radio for more podcasts from my heart radio. This is the I heart radio app, Apple podcast, 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. Bye. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories

behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese.

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

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

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