The Daily Zeitgeist - The Greatest Drug Dealer In American History, Stranger Things Is Based On A Real Conspiracy Theory 10.30.17

Episode Date: October 30, 2017

In episode 16, Jack & Miles are joined by comedian Billy Wayne Davis to discuss Trump drug abuse speech, the Sackler Family & Oxycontin, Stranger Things & the Montauk conspiracy, tabloids, George H.W. Bush & the Harvey effect, & more. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

Do you ever wonder where your favorite foods come from? Like what's the history behind bacon-wrapped hot dogs? Hi, I'm Eva Longoria. Hi, I'm Maite Gomez-Rejon. Our podcast, Hungry for History, is back. And this season, we're taking an even bigger bite out of the most delicious food and its history. Seeing that the most popular cocktail is the margarita,

followed by the mojito from Cuba, and the piña colada from Puerto Rico. Listen to Hungry for History on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves.

The biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? It's right here in black and white in print. It's bigger than a flag or mascot. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Miles Gray. Hey, when you see me at Wingstop, know that I'm ordering only all flats. That's it. That's all you have to know about me.

And we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by one of the funniest stand-up comedians working. Just one of my favorite guests from my tenure at the Cracked Podcast, Mr. Billy Wayne Davis. Hey, so we can talk about your past. Yeah. I didn't know if we could yeah yeah mention his dark dark past it's halloween tomorrow right yeah it is halloween tomorrow you guys what are you what are you going as anna super producer anna hosniak came to work today in a brown velvet shirt a brown cowboy hat like carmen san diego hat and announced as she walked in the room, I'm Blade Runner, you guys.

Yup. And after a while, revealed she's never seen Blade Runner. But, yeah. Which is important. Yeah. It's a good bit, though. I like it. I'm fond of it.

But then she went around to the other offices in the building that have candy outside their doors and just, like like took handfuls of it because she is quote in a costume uh and and is a lot of fun uh we'll have what are you going as for halloween jack i nothing just gonna be a dad yeah just are you taking your son oh yeah yeah i was i was actually thinking about that's all right my kid that's not true son of a bitch that kid fuck uh yeah i think i'm going to be Luigi. He's dressing up as Mario. So I'm going to be Luigi.

He's setting up a power dynamic, too, isn't he? Yeah, exactly. He knows. Just tell me who's boss. Billy, what's something that you've searched online on your phone in the last couple days that is revealing about who you are as a human being? Oh, I know what i looked up i looked up uh this uh white supremacist reviewed uh performance of mine and sturgill simpsons in spokane washington and i looked that up because it's i'm like very proud of it how was he fond of your work oh no he he was not. It was my favorite sentence was a barrage of anti whiteness and blasphemy.

And I was like, well, you got what I was doing. A barrage. I didn't come for this. Yeah. Well, it made him reevaluate his love of Sturgill Simpson. So he realized he was wrong because he was because Sturgill was associated with me. So do you think he went there thinking like, I'm around my people? Oh, hell yeah.

And then he just had one of those awakenings. He's like, oh, yeah, my girlfriend describes it. Great. She's a little Jewish girl. She was like, can you imagine, though, like as a white supremacist, you walk out with blonde hair and blue eyed. And then your voice accent and your name. And like he even says in the article, he's like, he's like his accent.

Everything's like this guy. Yeah. Yeah. and then you start saying the things you say i was like yeah it's like neil brennan's head exploding in the chapelle show right um do you get that a lot do people just assume you're racist because yeah yeah there's a comic in chattanooga has a great joke he's like he's like they just people just tell you those jokes the racist jokes yeah yeah they assume you're down oh all over the country like uber drivers or stuff like they hear your accent you won't hear a joke yeah i do jesus christ what do you wait what do you start like if you don't mind revealing what's what do you think is like one of the jokes that you come out with that immediately signals to the white supremacists, like, I thought Billy Wayne was, I got the wrong idea about that. I got the wrong Billy Wayne.

I think just how openly okay with homosexuals I am bothers them. And then I called out in the Northwest, it's still pretty segregated. That's what I noticed when I moved up there. Like, how, like, I have a whole bit on my first album about how they brag about the Northwest. Like, it's a utopia of progressive liberality. And then you get up there and you're like, yo, where's the black people at? Oh, they live on the west side of town. And then they're like, oh, yeah, that's Tacoma.

We put them all in Tacoma. And I was like, what? You guys can't do that anymore. Right, that's Tacoma. We put them all in Tacoma. Right. And I was like, what? You guys can't do that anymore. Right, that's not okay. So, like, yeah, and so I did that joke, and I think that opened his eyes. And then I just really dive into how silly a lot of religion is. Right, right, right. And that guy was like, hmm.

Religion besides the one true religion, right? Christianity? Yeah, no, yeah. He didn't have a problem. White, blonde hair, blue eyed Jesus? Me making fun of most religions, but one specifically. What's one thing you believe to be overrated? And yeah, let's start with overrated.

Pop music in general is overrated. Pop? Mm-hmm. Like, who are we talking? Who do you have in your crosshairs right now? I mean... All of it? Yeah it yeah like most popular music is not good it's all the same song yeah and we're having a we're having kind of a a moment

where pop music is like embraced by everyone i i guess it's been like a while that like call me maybe was universally acclaimed as sort of a a great song by even hipsters and wait really yeah call me maybe that song from i did i always thought that was a piece of shit yeah no people you mean or you think people liked it just because it was so on the nose they're like oh so ironically they were like it was a perfect pop confection oh god damn it yeah i just thought it was torture me yeah no that's what that's what it is right it's familiar and if you're mindless it's perfect right exactly what's something that's underrated i still think that the movie fargo is underrated fargogo's so fucking good. I love that answer. That movie's still underrated.

And I know it's acclaimed, but that's the point I'm making. It's not discussed enough when they bring up some of the... The great films. Yeah. Do you watch the show? I haven't. I've watched a couple episodes of the first season. It's like one of those things where it was like, immediately it was like, I don't have

the time to give this show the the one the time it deserves yes right that being said it reminds me of another thing i think is underrated in the same vein is extract which is mike judge's last movie i haven't seen oh is that the one with jason bateman yes yeah yeah yeah i haven't seen it but i it always pops up at like in any kind of algorithms like you should watch this movie and it that one's nailed you because i'm writing it down on my hand and even to this underrated theme david kechner's in it who i think is grossly underrated as an actor amazing he's so funny um he plays a character in the in extract that is just it's that testament to somebody that's so good at acting that you're mad at him for a while whereas like i don't like that guy at all because he's so good yeah and then

you sit and think about it for an hour after the movie right now that was he's a goddamn genius all right so let's get into uh the stories that we're keeping an eye on uh real quick the daily zeitgeist we're trying to take a sample of the ideas that are out there in the firmament changing the world, whether we're looking or not. We talk about politics, the president, news, but we also talk about movies and supermarket tabloids, which today is supermarket tabloid day. So we will get to some of those because, yeah, people, millions and millions of people pass those every day. And, you know, those headlines creep into their mind whether they want them to or not. But first up, we want to talk about drugs, specifically the legal heroin that has been going around in the past couple decades. So Trump finally declared a health emergency.

Kind of. Sort of. Not the real one that would actually get funding. Yeah, not a national emergency. Yeah. His press conference was pretty infuriating. He claims at one point he was like, you know, I have friends who can't stop drinking. And I'm like, well, I don't understand it. And then immediately after that goes into, by the way, killer Trump oppression, immediately after that goes into that, the solution is just to tell them as kids not to drink and not to do drugs.

That'll do it. Yeah. That'll erase any trauma that you have that sometimes motivates people. So basically, he and I. Oh, just not do it. Right. OK. Don't do it.

Just don't. That's it. Yeah. He and I think at one point he was like, I came up with this brilliant idea. So he like reinvented D.A.R.E., which is a program for our younger listeners. D.A.R.E. is something that we were subjected to in the 80s and 90s where a police officer would come into school and tell you about drugs and why you shouldn't do them. And studies have since discovered that it actually made kids more likely to use drugs than not. For sure that happened to me. Just like kids who went to D.A.R.E. used drugs more than kids who didn't go to D.A.R.E.

It educated them about drugs. Yeah, exactly. And drug culture. It was the first place I ever smelled weed. He was like, smell that. That's going to be the worst smell you've ever smelled. And I smelled a pipe. I was like, well, that That's going to be the worst smell you've ever smelled. And I smelled a pipe. I was like, well, that actually smells pretty good.

I was like, can I buy that off you? Yeah. Why do I feel so relaxed? It's also kind of the first time I was like, yo, these cops are fucking whack. Like, the DARE officer that we had, he was not a cool-looking cop. He looked like just a dude who had, like, fucked up. And they're like, all right, Chuck, you're on DARE duty. Right. And just a dude who had like fucked up and they're like, all right,

Chuck, you're on dare duty. Right. And just phone it in, in this classroom. And he was like, yeah, this is mushroom. I don't know.

And just like, was not fun. And we were just like, okay, the cops are fucking whack too. If you eat these, you'll rethink why you're a cop. Yeah.

Don't eat them. Had the one story about how PCP, like he saw a guy like throw a dumpster at a cop car. I heard that too. I think, I guess that's maybe in the handbook. Yeah, exactly.

It's not even true. But then I was like, yo, PCP sounds fucking dope. Yeah. PCP. They told us all that PCP turns you into like a fucking super hero. Yeah.

You could like, he was like, I've seen somebody on PCP who was like shot eight times and kept coming. Right. Like, just like brushed it off. I was like, wow,

I don't give that to soldiers. Right. Meanwhile, the Nazis tried that. Yeah. I go on YouTube live leak all the time. I'm trying to find that PCP video that actually shows someone, you know,

that's dusted on PCP throwing a dumpster. You'll never find it. Well, or I've heard of this. The dude rips his own arms off. I've heard that one a bunch. We're like that for a while. I was like, that's what pcp

does you can rip your own arm off which actually sounds kind of awesome yeah you see a one-armed guy like oh shit did i rip it off again and also just in terms of dare's not gone dare dare i was coming out of the whole foods in silver lake the other day and there are two people doing that thing where they sit outside the supermarket but it was dare people really of the Whole Foods in Silver Lake the other day, and there are two people doing that thing where they sit outside a supermarket, but it was dare people. Really? And the lady's like, are you familiar with dare? I was like, yeah, and I just can't walk. Wow.

They're back. They're back, baby. A like lending one's celebrity clout to a cause like Trump being like, you know, we just need to tell him drugs aren't cool is like, OK, you are going to kill the next generation. Everyone is going to die of drug overdoses if you like just go out and lend your celebrity to the anti drug cause. But, you know, I think people are aware that drugs have become a problem. But, you know, now opioids have killed more people than Vietnam, which was not a great war. It didn't go well. And now opioids have killed more people than that. And Americans are now like for the first time in hundreds of years, Americans life expectancy went down. They're saying it's like this Nobel Prize winner,

Angus Deaton, thinks that it's because of an epidemic of suicide, alcohol abuse and drug overdoses, specifically among middle-aged white people. And so the New York Times podcast, The Daily, actually did an episode on the opioid crisis last week, and they focused specifically on this one town in Kentucky that I used to live right next to. For some reason, the three towns that I've heard called out as like, among the worst places for opioid abuse are all places I lived growing up. It's like Wheeling, West Virginia, Miami Valley, in like Southern Ohio, like around the Dayton area, and now outside of Lexington, Kentucky. But so they interview this kid who just tells the story of when, you know, he's growing up, he his town is like a normal town, you know, and then the opioids hit his town. And by the end of it, like every one of his friends, parents were dealing opioids. And like he was dealing opioids, his mom was dealing opioids, he was making $1,500 a day. But then he was also using opioids. His mom was dealing opioids. He was making fifteen hundred dollars a day.

But then he was also using opioids. So, you know, that that wasn't working. So you go through that money pretty quick. Yeah. That's not a good it's not a good system. A lot of overhead. Right. But yeah, we actually have, I think, a quote or I think we have a section of that episode that we're going to play for you real quick.

Everybody, either A, were doing and selling OxyContin on themselves, or B, they knew someone who did. This is parents of my friends, if not their brothers, their older brothers, their sisters. Yeah, everyone did this. Even people who didn't do drugs eventually did this because it was so profitable. Aaron, how do you make sense of people's parents doing this? Did you grow up in a community with a lot of friends whose parents needed money? Yes. Yeah.

I mean, this is like, this is the recession. This is 2008, 2009, 10, 11. And what about your parents? My mother eventually jumped on that train, but my father has never touched drugs in his entire life. And which train did your mom jump on? The distribution of narcotics. She had a lot of things to pay for. My grandmother was in poor health and there was a lot of, you know, financial strife there so uh she did what she thought was a rational idea yeah so that's crazy like his grandmother being in poor health meaning like medical costs being so high right that's even

feeding the need for someone so like there's such a snake eating its own tail in so many ways with this shit. It's insane. It's terrifying. Well, and then, like, I think that's important what he said, too, is, like, she thought she made a rational decision. And looking at it, like, I mean, from a financial, you just look around and you're just like, well, this seems to be literally the only way to make any money here.

Right. This is the only way to make any money. Yeah Right. This is the only way to make any money. Yeah. I mean, when you think about like these are all rational human beings making decisions, it's not because they don't know the dangers of drug use. They know the dangers of drug use. They're weighing that risk into their decision making process and still coming out the other end thinking that, yeah, using drugs or dealing

drugs is the better way to go because I don't want my mother to die or, you know, I have to feed my kids. So I don't think a commercial telling that person, hey, don't use is bad. Don't do that. Right. Come on. They're going to be like, oh, oh, okay. It was like in college, I played baseball for a couple years, and steroids, I realized

like steroids weren't cheating then. It was the way. Right. But I, like, had a, I mean, a lot of people on our team were on them. On steroids? Yeah. And I couldn't compete with that. And I remember I called my dad, who's a high school football coach, and I yo what the fuck what is this and uh he was like don't do it it's not

he just knew enough about the side effects he's like it's not gonna be worth it right right right and he was right like i'm so glad i didn't do that i mean granted i drank a ton in my 20s which is like arguably just the same but it was was like, it's not the same. Like my body's still fine. And like your head didn't grow like nine hat sizes, all that shit. Yeah. And then most of them didn't make it that far.

Right. Exactly. Even in my high school, I'm like football players were fucking around with, you know, steroids and shit like that. And I don't know a single one of them that that's playing in the league now either. And it's just crazy because that it's it's sort of normalized like you're saying it's

the way it's like well this is kind of what people are doing to compete when they're done using steroids and their head shrinks back down to normal size like do they have just like a like thing of skin that they like tie on the back of their head like a plug or something that's not their head okay that's not steroids. That's something called human growth hormone, which is a second puberty. That's what Barry Bonds did. That's why, if you look at him when he came into the league and when he left, he was like,

he's a different human being. That's what human growth hormones... That's what Sly Stallone does. That's why he's like 70-something and looks like he's 52. That's a second puberty. That's something he's like 70-something and looks like he's 52. Right. Yeah. That's a second period. That's something they found in your body that it produces.

It's very dangerous. But steroids, what happened? I knew a guy who had titties. Oh, really? Not like man boobs. Like, he didn't take estrogen blockers with the type of steroids he was taking. So he developed... Straight up breasts.

Tits. I mean, and we were ruthless about it. blockers with the type of steroids he was taking so he developed straight up breasts tits like i mean and we were ruthless about it i mean he got what he deserved really right yeah gynochymastia is not fun for anyone damn the fact that you know that word yo man because i because sometimes you know you start getting your 30s look at your own body and i'm like damn am i getting titties and then you look up on the internet you're're like, that's what it's called. So there's also been a couple. We're going to touch on this real quick. We could probably do a whole episode on this family, the Sackler family, who is the family that has owned Purdue Pharma, who are the makers of OxyContin for the past, I don't know, however many number

of decades. They so Arthur Sackler is sort of a great name. Three Arthur Sackler. So the this dude, Arthur Sackler, there are all three of these brothers are doctors. Arthur Sackler was like on the side because doctors didn't make that much money back in the early 20th century, went and started doing ad copywriting seems like he's like sort of the genius of the family. And he basically invented modern pharmaceutical advertising and marketing in the sense that he started making ads that are directed at doctors who would then prescribe the drugs. And that was sort of his contribution to medicine, which a lot of people now look back on and are like, that was a Pandora's box. That's really bad.

I have a question. Yeah. I'm sorry I raised my hand. No, you're good. What made him realize, oh, I should advertise to the doctors? Like, was there something where it was like, he realized, like, oh, if we keep telling him about this one drug, there had to have been a eureka moment. Well, because he was a doctor. They're the gatekeeper to the prescription.

He's a doctor and an advertiser. And so by bringing those two industries into one mind, he was able to just be like, oh, well, this is easy. You just like, I know how to trick these people. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm sure other times you used to be like, ask your doctor about this. And I'm sure other times you should be like, ask your doctor about this. And now you can eliminate that and just be like, tell your patients about this drug. Right, exactly. So the first time that he was able to use this strategy was with Valium.

And Valium basically had the same effect as another anti-anxietal that was on the market but his idea was to pretend like valium could be used for any sort of uh i think he called it mental tension so he was like one of his ads was a girl like with a backpack and it was like going away to college for the first time like that has some anxiety use valium like or prescribed value yeah so like he was just like, yeah, spread it out. Say it's for anything. Everything, right. Get sleepy, cocaine. Right, exactly.

Mad that you lost that game of Madden? Right. Pop a Valium. Yeah. So he had a huge success with that. And his family eventually would do the exact same thing with OxyContin, which I guess content is for continuation or continual. Because it's supposed to be like time released. Yeah. And the Oxy is basically the same.

It's like the active ingredient in Percocet and one of the other painkillers. But those ones are like mixed with things that tamp them down. And Oxy is just like the pure uncut form of that. And they were just like, all right, we're going to create a thing that can last for 12 hours. That is this like thing that is stronger than morphine. is this like thing that is stronger than morphine. People, for whatever reason, they were confusing it with another ingredient and thought it was actually weaker than morphine. And he knew that or they knew that.

And so they focused on that and were like, this is actually less addictive than morphine. It's like a less addictive alternative. They like focused on people's misconceptions to like help blow up oxycontin and oxycontin was the strongest drug that has ever been on the market or like will ever be on the market and uh people were getting addicted yeah i know i'm underestimating them You're motivating the next great pharmaceutical. Right. So anyways, this this family has sort of stayed off the radar for the most part because Purdue Pharma is a private company. Forbes actually just found out about them and was like, oh, you're one of the richest families in America. Hi. Like, welcome to the Forbes richest families list.

And they were like, shit. Yeah, exactly. They do a bunch of philanthropy and, you know, donate to like their entire wings of museums that are named after them. But they do not do any philanthropy in the area of drug abuse rehabilitation. Of course not. Why not? I don't know, man. They just they like to feed

those. They feel like they're doing enough work feeding them with the patient population where we've created an industry. Right. Exactly. So, yeah, that's what we'll dig into the Sacklers a little bit more. We it's also interesting to think about the double standard between how opioid how the opioid crisis is being treated and how the crack epidemic was treated in the 80s, because opioids are primarily a white disease and crack was primarily seen as like a black and urban disease. And like you heard in, uh, Michael Barbaro's question, uh,

that he was like, how could parents be dealing this? And it's just like, they're drug dealers, man. Like you surviving. Right. It's just a,

I think his confusion stemmed from the fact that he couldn't picture white parents like dealing drugs, but, uh, we will dig into that. He didn't go to high school in the South. All right. We'll dig into that in a future episode, but we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about the conspiracy theory that Stranger

Things is based on. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions. Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes.

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thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption

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Come up here and document my project all you need to do is record everything like you always do one session 24 hours bpm 110 120 she's terrified should we wake her up absolutely not what was that you didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this?

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Taking better care of yourself is just a click away. My buddy used to have this joke where he was like, he talked about going to the dentist and they gave him, he's like, God damn it. Now I got to go to prescription. You know, fill up prescription. I'm on my way home. I look, it's like, don't use with alcohol. And he's like, son of a bitch. Now I have to go get beer.

Well done. That is a great joke. Son of a bitch. And we're back. So stranger things debuted at the end of last week. I have yet to see it. Me either. I got to open up my whole schedule if I'm going to do that.

I know. It's a lot. It's like me and Fargo. The first season was one of those that took over my life. I just was on a business trip and watched the first episode. And then like that whole trip, I was just like binging, staying up at night,

like watching it. So, uh, yeah, I need to clear my schedule, uh, and stop hosting this podcast before I watched the second season. Um,

but so apparently, uh, our writer, JM McNabb, uh, told us a story about where Stranger Things came from. So apparently the original title for Stranger Things was Montauk. And it's because it is based on I think I assumed it was based on just the collected works of everyone who had a beard in the 80s and was named Stephen. But apparently it's

also based on a real conspiracy theory uh here we go but it's not one of my conspiracy theories so you don't you don't need to play the drop the undermining music they play that anytime i mention one of my conspiracy theories to to undermine me billy it's it's not fair well um but so you power structure you were aware of the of this uh of the conspiracy theory yeah yeah that's where the philadelphia experiment and all that they're trying to do interdimensional travel okay i don't know any of this shit my favorite one is the one you have the the last one you have reference is a hairy monster physically birthed from someone's consciousness yeah that's come on so that's what i want what is going what is this montage what was going on so the theory is that

and a lot of this comes from recovered uh memories from somebody who claims that these experiments were done on him but allegedly i think it was in 1983, a lot of Nazi scientists and the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project were like basically doing experiments on children in this in Montauk is the name of the town, I guess. like some of the theories are, uh, that there was this thing called the Montauk chair that used electromagnets to amplify psychic powers. Um, so they were like identifying kids with, and according to this conspiracy theory,

they found like gifted children or whatever. They're trying to give them gifts. Right. Oh, right, right. Gotcha. Oh,

so they were almost experiencing like, can you, can you upgrade somebody's brain? Right. Start doing some psychic shit. Okay. Right. Oh, right, right. Gotcha. Oh, so they were almost experiencing, like, can you upgrade somebody's brain to start doing some psychic shit? Yeah, they were experimenting on abducted children, according to the theory. Those are the best. They were opening wormholes to other times. And, yeah, like Billy Wayne said, a hairy monster that was physically birthed from someone's consciousness. physically birthed from someone's consciousness um another another aspect of this conspiracy theory is that uh one person claimed they were involved in time travel experiments at mount at

montauk that successfully altered the outcome of the civil war so this person is claiming that he made sure the union won yeah and we can thank him for time traveling? Otherwise, we were... We lived in an existence that will be dramatized in an upcoming HBO series called... They're still going to do that, huh? They are, yeah. I believe so. I like stubborn. Just sticking with it. No, we're going to do it.

Trust us. It's a good idea. It's going to be good. I don't know. All the black people say it's not. No, but we got insecure. So they'll be on board. It's a make good.

Yeah, so who knows? We may get a season where the kids from Stranger Things are like bayoneting Confederate troops while riding their bikes around. But this conspiracy theory is based off of the scattered memories of a few people that claim they were at that date. No, one dude. Oh, so one guy who says like, who says he was like the original 11? I think there are a couple sources now. Yeah, that's what I'm because the Philadelphia experiment

has, that's, there's papers about that and like government papers where they were trying to make a ship disappear. Okay. And then there's like a, there's weird people that come back and have said hey i was i was in that and i came back and i like half of me was in a wall or something like that i mean the philadelphia if you've never read about the philadelphia experiment it's fascinating

it is like really next level shit like there's some stuff at uh area 51 is that where it is? Oh, yeah. 54. Studio 54. Studio 54. At Area 51, they were doing a lot of cocaine and... Yeah, with aliens. No,

where they think that Nazi scientists might have been responsible for UFOs, might have, like, figured out how to do, like, non-jet-propelled

flight. And also, they think that some of the sightings of, of like little gray men might have been the result of Nazi experiments on humans. And that this is all part of this book called Area 51 by a L.A. Times journalist who I think since this book came out has been like everyone's like, oh, you're not a journalist anymore. Oh, right. Because you wrote about this weird.

But it's there. There's some really crazy theories in there. But, yeah, this this apparently belongs to that whole there's a shred of truth to it. And then a bunch of stuff that seems like it's probably been elaborated by imaginative people. Here's my thing about Area 51 is I do think there's some weird shit going on out there. My theory is we found some alien shit. That's why we have the stealth bomber and shit like that, and other countries don't. Because if you look at any other technology besides that, all the countries, they end up stealing it or figuring or reverse engineering it. Right.

And with the stealth stuff, they can't figure, the other countries can't figure that shit out. Oh, really? No, they don't have those. I just thought that's because America is the fucking best. Yeah. But now you're saying it's because we fuck with alien technology. Well, we are the best because we happen to, like, hey, they crashed in our country. Thank God.

Right. But it's kind of stuff that's my working theory about where that kind of stuff because there's certain technology just question wise where you're like where in the fuck did that come from human wise right earth wise there's just such a leap and then there's no then they can't explain it and when and when you look like oh like with jet engines and stuff like that, you just find one, you reverse engineer it, figure it out. Stealth technology, they haven't done that. Exclusive shit to the U.S.

Exclusive. But they think the greys are in Ohio. That's where they keep the bodies. Oh, really? In the Air Force Base in Ohio. I like saying stuff like that very matter of fact. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's in Ohio.

Right state Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio? Yes. That would make sense. Then maybe that's why they all need to use so many drugs, because just get rid of that reality that they're having to repress. Okay, here we go. Got some next level shit going on. All right. Let's move on to Bloidwatch.

So the theory behind Bloidwatch is these are headlines that are hitting more people's eyeballs than maybe any headlines in media. And the National Enquirer, the Globe, the National Examiner are all published by the same guy a guy named uh no joke david pecker and uh you gotta own it he also he also has uh us weekly um basically all the tabloids really yeah one dude and he is uh donald trump's like boy they're like homies just and what a shithead fraternity right exactly oh yeah well it's crazy i mean too because they're they're like stories uh the new yorker did a piece talking about sort of peckers um it's funny to say uh his company and just how even when they would do like initially pitch meetings around trump how he would like gloss over um any any kind of story that would paint trump trump negatively so like

one day when that video came out of trump or melania batting donald's hand away a lot of the people were like hey should we talk about this and he's like he just said i haven't i haven't seen this i don't know what you're talking about and sort of did that twice and basically you know he's he's it's clear that if you look at any headlines they're definitely all pro trump like in the build- up to the election. There were things like, you know, how Donald is going to win the debate or then the other ones are like crazy. Hillary's about to die. You know, so it's very clear how they're, you know, their relationship.

They are. They're very good friends. Right. And you can see it in the headlines just this week. You can see it in the headlines just this week. So Cher, one of the most outspoken Donald Trump critics on Twitter, is, according to the National Examiner, they have the cover with the headline, Cher 71, colon, let me die. And then the caption, sick, loveless, frail, and flat broke. Loveless. Yeah. That one's tough.

That one's the meanest. That's cutting. That's mean. And most of the stuff is based on nothing. It's actually amazing because they always have these quotes from anonymous inside sources, but they always speak in the exact same voice as the rest of the article. Like they like have this like catty bitchy, like yeah. Puns and stuff. It's like Cher can't believe that, you know, like how far she's fallen.

It's just basically it's like they just put quotes around parts of the article and just make that a quote. Right. Make that a quote from inside sources. I trust them. What else are what else areicans across the country learning right now kathy lee uh the real kathy lee has been exposed uh she is mean according to very mean that feels right though that one feels like yeah that one checks out and um the clintons covered up

weinstein's sex scandal, according to The Globe. But then you go to the actual article and it's just all speculation. It's everything that we already know that, you know, he contributed to some of their campaigns. And then so they have a quote from an insider. This is a good example of one of their insiders who speaks exactly like them. Quote, Weinstein's disgusting sexual antics were an open secret in Hollywood. And who knows? Obama and Hillary may have heard the rumors, but ignored them to keep the money river flowing.

If Obama did hear the talk, then shame, shame on him for letting his daughter work for the slime ball. That's supposedly a quote from an inside source. I want to hear that tape or whatever when they recorded that conversation. Right. But yeah, so all they have is a quote inside source saying that they may have heard rumors. So that's all that they got. But according to the headlines that half of America is going to see, they have way more than that.

They also hate Megyn Kelly. On the Inquirer's front page, they have, mean girl, Megyn's sister, tells all, racist, bully, phony. This one says, new humiliation for Megyn. Yep. Yeah, they come at her from all angles. Why are they coming for Megan Kelly like that? Well, she jumped ship.

She jumped ship and she's critical of Bill O'Reilly. Oh, so you're saying this is O'Reilly payback on her. Well, and also she was critical of Trump, right? I think she was just – Well, yeah, I mean she had her spat with Trump. Didn't get on board the way they wanted her to with Trump, though. I think she was still like, I know which side I'm on, but could we at least be like, could we up here? Like, we're a little bit.

Right, right, right. And then they were just like, do your job. And she's like, all right. Well, what's funny, too, is they use the piece John Oliver did in that article to be like, look at all this crazy shit she said. So it's like you're even using like what to them is like liberal media punditry to like then paint your picture to smear Megyn Kelly. Well, it's like Trump's thing. Someone said that was like, it's fake news if it's negative and it's it's real if it's positive. Right.

If it benefits the agenda and it doesn't matter where it's coming from. Right. And he's very blatant with that. That's I have to believe that people are people know that like people recognize that at this point. Right. That when he says fake news, it just means it's news. That is. What do you mean?

People just even even his. No, no, no no no you don't you think they literally believe that every one of the things that the new york times writes about him is i mean there are people stabbing their parents because they think they're quote leftists oh yeah that's true people are operating in this quasi reality i mean did you hear about that guy's dad, though? I mean, he was he was kind of a cuck. A total cuck, yeah. I mean, Jesus. Alright, we're going to go to a quick break, and when we come back

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Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When you think of Mexican culture, you think of avocado, mariachi, delicious cuisine, and of course, lucha libre. It doesn't get more Mexican than this. Lucha libre is known globally because it is much more than just a sport and much more than just entertainment. Lucha libre is a type of storytelling. It's a dance. It's tradition. It's culture. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, the emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Santos!

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So we're going to spike one of our stories we had. We wanted to talk about this huge news story that is outraging, like literally everyone, including the New York, like Maggie Haberman came out and was like, could not believe that the Clinton campaign helped pay for the dossier. The PP dossier. I don't understand that. That seems like faux outrage to me. Right. Because if you're a political journalist, a career political journalist, you understand what they do in those campaigns. You know what oppo is, what opposition research is.

It's called oppo research. And also the dossier began with a Republican doing oppo research on Trump. Before he got the nomination. But we're not, we're, like, the story is just going to, the story is just going to keep going, because it seems like every time the probe, the Mueller probe kind of starts heating up, we get this more distraction machine.

This seems like a very ripe one for them to be like, oh, Mueller's focusing on that. Why aren't they focusing on this? The uranium deal. If it keeps going, we're going to get to see the aliens. Yeah, right. The JFK paper's coming out. Aliens.

I mean, yeah, maybe we will find out the origins of stealth technology. Yeah. Yep. Dayton. Soon enough. See if they can figure out the opioid addiction problem. Nah. Ask the alien.

Right. That's what they'll say. It's from aliens. We gave heroin to you guys. That was strictly for musicians. Okay? And you guys keep using it. That's only for very talented musicians.

You give them heroin. So we're going to move on to the Harvey effect, which George H.W. Bush is the last victim. I think we should call him a victim. No, the last perpetrator who women now feel empowered enough to be like, oh, yeah, this guy sexually assaults people. I guess George H.W. is now wheelchair-bound and suffering from dementia. So it's unclear. It's not a clear-cut thing.

But I do just – supposedly the way he was doing this was he would get in a photo with attractive women and before the person took the picture ask uh do you want to know who my favorite magician is and they would say what what the fuck are you talking about are you fucking talking to me old decrepit monkey talks and then he would say david coppa feel and grab their ass uh and or pat sometimes you would pat him. Or pat their rear is how he thought of it. Can you warn me when the offensive part's coming? And then they apparently, so the woman who actually finally came out and was like,

yo, this dude just did this to me and it's not okay. She said that Barbara Bush in the moment was there. So H.W.'s wife was there and she was like rolling her eyes like, oh shit, this shit again. And then his secret service was like, well, you shouldn't have gone near him if you didn't want to get your ass petted. Wow. He's like a tiger.

He's a tiger. And then two other actresses came out and were like, he did the same thing to me with the same joke, which it is a good joke. I mean, you got to use it. You got to work it out. You got to use that. You write some shit like that, you got to use it. Yeah.

I have a theory that, like, famous people live in a time capsule of whatever the year that they were at their peak of famousness was because that's when they inherit all their yes men. And so that's all the assumptions like they stop existing in reality at that point in time. And that's real. He left. That's real. He left the office in 92, which was probably right around David Copperfield's peak, right? Like maybe a few years after? I mean, yeah.

In 92, the most famous magician would have been David Copperfield. It had to have been. Or he was probably contending with Siegfried and Roy or some shit. But yeah, David Copperfield was, I think, one of the really first big sort of famous magicians. That's a nice clarification. I like that a lot. You've got to get Siegfried in there. You've got to shout out the gods. You've got to shout out the gods. first big sort of uh that's a nice clarification i like that like you know i gotta you gotta get sigfried in there like hey i'm you gotta shut out the gods like people at home are like what about

um but the harvey effect does seem to be uh coming for these perverts uh leon we silt here uh who as you can tell I was very familiar with prior to the story. No, he was apparently an editor and essayist at the New Republic and apparently like a known pervert for many years. Mark Halperin, who's just the sort of human being. He's like a famous political journalist who is the sort of human being you would never associate with sex ever. Like he's just like this, like dry sort of straightforward dude who like seems like he was born to, you know, go to his daughter's soccer game while he was at ABC News. And one of the heads of political coverage at ABC News had a habit of pressing his boner against female underlings without their consent.

So, and I mean. Well, when you ask them, they don't let you. Right, exactly. That's the problem. So what's he supposed to do? Right. I mean, yeah, he looks like a business hotel turned into a human. That's how it sort of regularly looks.

Yeah, he's a Hampton Inn of a human that's how that sort of regularly yeah he's he's a hampton inn right a human being um which will press its boner against you yeah and i mean the that video of the young woman walking through new york where she's being harassed like and i've talked to friends of mine who are like yeah it can be that bad like uh i was talking to somebody who said that she keeps her windows rolled up because when she has her windows rolled down dudes just drop like pull up next to her and like start you know saying offensive shit to her about like how they want to have sex with her um okay here's my theory behind this i've known dudes that do that right my theory like anybody that has a weird that hit on women or do that in a weird way where you're just like

why you do it like that right um why it's worked once right and then and it based off that experiment yes that means it could probably happen again yes where it's like yeah you ask 100 women that way 99 of them are going to be like i'm going to report you to the police it's just like a weird you know because all humans are fucked up so everyone's approach is different right but i also wonder how much of it is the power of like that that's that's definitely what i noticed with the weinstein thing is like he oh without a doubt yeah it was like his ability to like dominate them and like make them you know even considerate or like i guess watch him masturbate was like part of like what got him going so like i mean the fact that a dude can just pull up next to a woman and like get a charge like sexually from, you know, making her uncomfortable.

You know, that that doesn't cost him anything. It just I never thought of that part of that fucking suck. Making them uncomfortable makes them that turns them on. That's so unfortunate. I'm sure, too, if your interactions with women aren't good or you're unable to cultivate an actual relationship with a woman, I guess the next best thing is just that's your way of trolling. Because you're like, well, I'm not capable of conducting myself in a way that I'm attractive to a rational human woman. Then the next thing is like, what's up, girl? Yeah, okay. rational human woman then the next thing is like what's up girl yeah okay or it's just repressed so so much that it comes out in a weird way like as i think that's not talked about enough like people are taught your sexual feelings are bad right and then you keep having them they're

going to come out in this weird deviant way uh the i think the midwest is full of very weird sexual people um because of that and you look at fucking japan and germany same thing the porn is fucking insane but i'm not i do think there is something to the power thing i don't understand because i i blessed enough to had a good childhood and i'm very turned on by normal things right um but like the the thing that made me was obvious was the bill o'reilly thing where it's cost him so much fucking money over the years that it's like oh that's not about sex that's pure power right that's all power with him just millions and millions of of dollars. He's hemorrhaging money. He's like, I can keep saying this shit to you.

What the fuck are you going to do? Here's some money. Here's me saying it again. And he goes to the New York Times and is like, think of my kids. It's like, dude, you think of your kids. This keeps happening to you. This keeps happening. Every time you do it, you have to pay millions of dollars, and it goes in the paper.

Like, maybe you should think about your kids. Yeah. have to pay millions of dollars and it goes in the paper like maybe you should think about your kids um yeah and the internet uh seems like the internet invented trolling but i mean guys who don't get laid have been doing this for for many many years yeah well and also i mean the internet culture is vastly real dominated it's just like yeah uh all right that going to do it for this season premiere. Billy, thank you so much for joining us. Where can people follow you and what should they look for from you? I have a record out in Third Man Records. I'm working on new stuff, but that's what's out right now. It's a vinyl record.

You can buy it digitally on iTunes. It's Billy Wayne Davis live at third man records. If you Google my name, all that social shit comes up. I have Twitter. I think I have a Facebook and Instagram. So you said got goggle. What was Google?

It's a search engine. Okay. All right. So you heard it here first folks. Google put Billy Wayne Davis all all spelled normally, into... Oh, am I not supposed to say Google? No, he... I was just being an asshole.

That'd be a weird person to piss off. Like, you pissed off Google? We're sponsored by Bing, so... Miles, where can people follow you? Follow me on Twitter and Instagram at milesofgray. Is that kind of like an emo thing, like miles of gray? In my mind, it was like a night thing. Night thing.

Like miles of gray. Oh, got it, got it. Dope. You can follow me at jack underscore O-B-R-I-E-N, and you can follow us, the Daily Zeitgeist, at Daily Zeitgeist on Twitter, at The Daily Zeitgeist on the gram. And we have a Facebook page. Search The Daily Zeitgeist on Facebook. And go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe and leave us a review, guys.

We're reading them every morning before we record and taking your opinion into account. So that's not true. But we do really appreciate the positive reviews. So please keep them coming and tell a friend about the Daily Zeitgeist. Trying to get that word out. And we will be back tomorrow because it is a daily podcast. Talk to you then. Thank you. Returning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti.

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