The Daily Zeitgeist - The Truth About America’s ‘Crime Wave’ Panic 2.16.22

Episode Date: February 16, 2022

In episode 1086, Jack and Miles are joined by civil rights lawyer and social justice advocate Alec Karakatsanis to discuss California Crime Is Out Of Control Narrative Winning, Shoplifting And Train Theft “Crises”: Where Do These Stories Come From?, Focusing On Structural Inequality Is Considered Not Serious, But Banning Rap Music Is Serious?, Trudeau Invoking the “Emergencies Act” To Stop The Convoy Is Politically Loaded and more! California Crime Is Out Of Control Narrative Winning Shoplifting And Train Theft “Crises”: Where Do These Stories Come From? Focusing On Structural Inequality Is Considered Not Serious, But Banning Rap Music Is Serious? Trudeau Invoking the “Emergencies Act” To Stop The Convoy Is Politically Loaded Canada News: Canada Initiates Emergency Act, Expanding Measures to End Protests War Measures Act Follow: @CivRightsCorpsWatch: Muhammad Ali Recites His Poem About the Attica Prison RiotLISTEN: Dance To The Music by Sly & The Family Stone Live Woodstock Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee 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 4 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

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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. 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. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball. And on this new season, we'll cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio apps, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke. Hello, the internet, and welcome to season 224, episode 3 of Dirt Daily's Eye Geist, a production of iHeartRadio. This is a podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness.

It is Wednesday, February 16th, 2022, which of course, Miles, means that it is National Almond Day. Ah, about damn time. Do yourself a favor and don't read how much water it takes to grow them shits, please. I feel like I'm eating... That's the closest I've ever come to eating wood as an almond.

Well, I remember when I caught you eating those little wooden pegs they give you in an Ikea. Okay, not the closest I come. I guess there's also the times when i just eat straight up wood yeah we always like see you see how strong my teeth are and i'm like that's not a way to prove that but okay chew on my man not just the teeth the digestive system also very strong i can i can take down some rock. All right. Well, my name is Jack O'Brien, a.k.a. Cowabunga.

We are brothers. We are living within the sewers. Our visitors all say, ooh, your place of smell just made my nose bleed. Pizza boxes overflowing. We don't mind. We are just turtles living within what is fertile. Even Master Splinter can see. This place is gross and he's a fucking rat.

Hey, that is courtesy of... I like doing the dumbest AKAs. And not dumb like in a bad sense. Dumb in the well done sense. Since when we have our most prestigious guests on. That is courtesy of... Shout out to you. when we have our most prestigious guests on. That is courtesy of at Rumham McDuck. Shout out to you.

And I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray. It's Miles Gray, a.k.a. experimental Blackanese artist, your boy, Kusama, a.k.a. the valley legend, Hideo Noho, her majesty i'd add that new one on there just yes yeah in my in my honeymoon phase my wedding bliss carries on yeah congratulations again thank you i'm gonna keep saying that you look great you look yeah what can i say you know when uh i honestly think it agrees with you i think it's the lack of wedding stress that has contributed to me looking like like I have a glow to me. You know, because I was not handling my wedding stress well at all. People didn't know that on Mike. But Jack, you remember that week before I left, I was like, is it normal to be completely afraid out of your mind that you don't know if you're making a terrible decision or you're so confused about everything yeah the process leading up to the wedding can be very difficult you did

you had a nosebleed for two weeks in a row it was just non-stop it was pretty wild but yeah anyways great to have you my mom says because i pick my nose too much right you do do that constantly get those fingers out of there well Miles, we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by an American civil rights lawyer, social justice advocate, co-founder of Equal Justice Under Law, and founder and executive director of Civil Rights Court. Most importantly, he's a great follow on Twitter. That is the most important thing. Please welcome the brilliant and talented Alec Karakitsanis! Alec!

Hey, y'all, how's it going? Thanks for having me. Good, man. Good. Your appearance has been teased by me talking about your Twitter threads for a couple weeks now. I discovered you during the great train robbery panic of Los Angeles from a couple weeks ago. And man, you're doing great work. You're doing the Lord's work out there. What's good? You were just out in Los Angeles, presumably robbing some trains? I wanted to see the trauma that you all are experiencing from the train robberies firsthand. So I came out there and looked at the devastation. And I have to

say, I've been worried about climate change and the lack of housing and healthcare and rising domestic and global fascism. But I have to say, after my trip to LA, I'm now most concerned about whether the profits of the major train corporations and monopolies are going to take a hit from this train theft. Yeah. I mean, those Amazon boxes just scattered everywhere. What the hay? It's certainly what the Los Angeles media wanted me to be concerned about, that and shoplifting. Absolutely. Yeah. Those are, when I enter a Rite Aid or a CVS these days, I always go, I do the buddy system.

I bring a fellow consumer and we just go in back to back like double dragon with our dukes up, just making sure, you know, our heads are on a swivel. Making sure nobody steals a three pack of Old Spice deodorant. That's right. You know. You got it. That's where the real money is at. Yeah. But, yeah, so we're going to get to know you a little bit better in a moment.

But first, we'll tell our listeners a couple of things we're talking about. Mainly that. Mainly that stuff. I wanted to have you on to kind of dig into some of the details. We have a new story coming out of California that crime is out of control, according to polling. According to people. According to people. So I think that whole media strategy from the police has taken a toll. So I want to just dig into that, dig into the shoplifting and train theft crises. And also, you know, Eric Adams's drill rap ban that he's proposing. You had a back and forth with somebody who's on board with that. And I just, I thought it was an, it was instructive in terms of like how this conversation is had, how these arguments are had in modern America. And then if we get to it, I also want to talk about the convoy, the latest in the convoy story. Trudeau has invoked the Emergencies Act to stop the convoy. But before we get to all that, Alec, we do like to ask our guest, what is something from your search history? This is kind of embarrassing, but I was looking at the last thing just now that I searched and it

was best glue for wine corks. I've been collecting thousands of wine corks from friends and family for years and I'm trying to make a big mosaic out of them. I like to do a lot of big paintings. Doing art is one of the ways I cope with the really painful and difficult work that we do around the country with people who are confined

in jail cells all over the country. The work can be really difficult and stressful and one of the ways I just personally cope is to making art and i now have been asking everyone i know to collect wine corks for me and i have thousands and thousands of them but i have no idea how to actually make them into anything so i was trying to figure out how to actually glue them together what do you think what i mean what are we talking here like you'd paint each one and sort of mosaic it out or you're trying to use the natural graphics on the cork to inform how you get your image or what you know walk walk me through this process i've been

i paint each one and make them into sort of a colorful mosaic usually depicting like some poem that i like or some aspect of the work that that we do so yeah it's maybe not the best use of my time, but I think the consensus seems to be glue gun. Okay. Oh, okay. All right. There we go. Glue gun, when in doubt, it does feel like the glue gun is always a good option.

Like, is there anything that a glue gun does not glue, like does not work on, is my question. I mean, something that you need to guarantee like structural integrity of, you know, like crafting, I'm sure it's fine. But do you, you know, do you repair a baby's high chair, you know, with a glue gun?

I don't know about that one. I do, but I mean, that's just me just because I'm wild with a glue gun. Do you remember when you're old enough to use a glue gun? That felt like a, like the first like driver's license you get as a child

where it's like, man, you can't fuck with this glue gun because that metal tip a like the first like driver's license you get as a child where it's like man you can't fuck with this glue gun because that metal tip will burn the shit out of you and then at a certain point it's like you are acknowledged as a child who is responsible enough to use a glue gun and i felt that was a i don't know a big point turning point for me i keep that thing on me man the the glue gun got it holstered, ready to go at all times. You never know when you might need to make a cool little doll out of corn husks or something. Yeah, exactly. So can you speak a little bit about the work that you do? Like what you were actually out in L.A. doing? Yeah, we are civil rights lawyers and advocates and storytellers and experts about the criminal

punishment system in this country. And the bulk of our work over the last few years has been suing cities and counties and states and judges and prosecutors, sheriffs, police, over sort of the rampant unconstitutional conduct that they engage in every single day all over the country. So for example, as you and I are talking right now, there are 400 to 500,000 people, depending on how you count, in cages in this country solely because they can't afford to pay a cash payment to get out. These are people who are presumptively innocent. They're awaiting trial. They're supposed to be presumed innocent. And because their families don't have enough cash to keep them with their

kids and their schools and their homes and their families and their jobs and their churches and their community, they're stuck in a cage. And so we have filed lawsuits all over the country. Last year, I argued a case that we brought in California that struck down the money bail system in California, as we know it, on behalf of our client, Kenneth Humphrey. And so we've been doing a lot of work with people who've been directly harmed by the prison and jail system in California, advocates, public defenders, organizers, crime survivors, and others to try to figure out how to reshape the pretrial system in California. to the extraordinary and senseless violence that the criminal punishment bureaucracy just inflicts on people with absolutely no evidence that it does any good or makes anyone any safer. having a reckoning with, especially in California, is the idea of like, I just feel like maybe we just need to be cruel to people. So I read less stories about shoplifting or that, you know,

there's no acknowledgement, you know, of like the work that it takes to try and go up against something like the prison industrial complex and, you know, what that entails. Well, a really basic thing that a lot of people just don't seem to understand is that if police and prisons and prosecutors made people safer, then the U.S. would have the safest society in the history of the world. I mean, we cage people at rates that are five to 10 times every other comparable country. We cage black people at a rate six times that of South Africa at the height of apartheid. So if human caging and punishment and police and surveillance and batons and tasers and guns, if all that stuff made people safer, we would have an extraordinarily safe society. And yet we spend by far the most money on armed government bureaucrats of any

country in the world. And those armed government bureaucrats specifically target very poor people in communities all over this country. And they have a terrible track record of improving public safety. And so I think it's a really important thing to keep pointing out to people that essentially every other society in the world has figured out ways of having lower levels of violence

with lower expenditures on things like handcuffs, cages and prosecutors and cops. Right. Yeah. Because I think in our way of thinking, it's like, well, what's the problem? All right. Spend money on it rather than taking a little bit of a wider view. I'm like, well, what's driving crime?

Because that's the one thing I always see absent with a lot of reporting around things like crime rates going up. It's like, crime's up, man. It's out of control. And we got to get rid of these DAs. And it's never, I've yet to read like a, or hear a real sincere analysis of what crime even is in this country. And I think that's a huge blind spot. I think a lot of people have as well in the discourse. And I think that's a huge blind spot. I think a lot of people have as well in the discourse. There's a lot of powerful people who also are making a lot of money who want you asking questions like, well, shouldn't we just be having, shouldn't we just be spending more

money on more technology for cops and more stuff for prosecutors and more prison beds? And, you know, that'll help the union, the correction officers union, right? What they don't want you asking are things like, should we pay attention to the research that shows that having a stable place to live and having healthcare, mental health treatment, having good schools, having less inequality, having less starvation and poverty, those are actually the things that are correlated with violence and harm.

But they don't want you asking those questions because that solution to so-called violent crime would actually require deep investments in changing the levels of inequality in our society. That's not something that most of the powerful politicians who control these narratives are actually interested in doing. Right. What's something you think is overrated, Alex? I think the police are very overrated. You know, they have all this propaganda. I think maybe that the police and the New York Times are probably the two most overrated institutions in our society.

You've got police who claim that they're all about violent crime. They are incredibly bad at actually solving or preventing violent crime. And in fact, they only spend 4% of all their time on what they call violent crime. I mean, 96% of the rest of their time is just spent on things like marijuana, driving on suspended license for people that have unpaid

debt, right? There's 11 million people with driver's licenses suspended just because they owe debts. That's the number one arrest in most of the places that I've seen across the country, many of the places I've seen across the country, combined with disorderly conduct and trespassing by homeless people. This is what police actually are doing, right? And so to the extent you think they have any connection with public safety, they're incredibly overrated. And then you've got sort of their PR mouthpieces and sort of elite media who, you know, when I was growing up,

I always looked at the New York Times as sort of like an institution that, you know, had a lot of respect, you know, and it even had a slogan, like all the news that's fit to print. It gives you the sense that it had a lot of respect, you know, and it even had a slogan, like all the news that's fit to print, it gives you the sense that it's some kind of objective, like really public service that is telling us exactly what we need to know, and only the things that we need to know. And then when you actually look at their articles, you look at how biased and, and how evidence free and how sort of it's almost like on at least on the areas that we're talking about of, it's almost like on, at least on the areas that we're talking about now, it's almost like they're just routinely publishing climate science denial. I mean,

the extent to which the New York Times is repeatedly just publishing lies and misleading information by police and prosecutors and private corporations that benefit from the prison system, it's almost as if, you know, they're playing a PR function for a lot of the most powerful and wealthy interests in our society. The police have massive, like many multimillion dollar like PR wings that are, you know, in out there constantly putting pressure on the media. Right. Like that's kind of how that was something that in in your kind of writing on this was first revealed to me was just like how much goes into like that, not only just 4% on violent crime and then everything else on like low level crime. They also have like massive propaganda wings, right? And like that are constantly pushing. I didn't fully appreciate this myself until I started digging into it over the last 18 months to two years. I think that one thing most people don't appreciate, because the police do a very good job of hiding this in their

budgets, but there was just, you know, taking Los Angeles where you all are, the LA Times did an investigation after the George Floyd protests that found that the sheriff's department alone in LA County had 42 employees working on public information, PR stuff. And the head of their strategic communications division was making $200,000 a year. And the LAPD, which is another large police force, and by the way, Los Angeles County has many municipal police forces. Los Angeles Police Department is just the biggest one. They had an additional 25 employees working on PR. So if you just count the two largest police departments in Los Angeles County, the sheriffs and the LAPD,

they have 67 people spending millions and millions of dollars a year just on manipulating the information that is told to the public about what they do. And that's astonishing. And then that doesn't even count the external consultants that are paid after any bad instance of a police shooting or a beating or any kind of like crisis management. You know, a lot of these departments across California and the country are hiring specialized PR firms.

in many of the places around the country that the initial narrative given to the media is so wildly different from what later emerges if we're lucky enough to have body camera footage of a particular incident or other officers giving inconsistent reports. We often later learn that the initial version of the police is completely off and in fact was a deliberate lie.

And these PR companies that police pay a lot of money to are actually helping with that construction of that lie. What is PR companies that police pay a lot of money to are actually helping with that construction of that lie. What is something you think is underrated? I think that, like, I would say cats. You know, I think there's a lot of people that don't appreciate how majestic cats are.

Hell yeah. That is a daily zeitgeist-esque pivot right there. That's a pivot, yeah. That's what we do constantly, pivot between silly songs about how much the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles house would smell like shit into really salient points about social justice.

But Percy, I just wanted to applaud that really quickly. No, I mean, I think there's a very real argument to be made that cats appreciate the sort of violence and senselessness of the policing bureaucracy. And that's one of, I think, the best things about them. And are you basing that on Andrew Lloyd Webber's work or just cats' personal experience with cats? It's mostly personal experience. It's almost entirely anecdotal, but every cat I've ever met has hated the police. And I don't think that's fair incidents that definitely not also very few feline units and yeah in police forces so the feeling is mutual apparently right yeah they

don't fuck with 12 ask any cat ask any ask any cat you say, you fuck with 12. Pause the podcast and go ask any cat. Right now. Right now, they do not fuck with 12. All right, 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 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. 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. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Sanner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies.

Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it, like you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to 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. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports where we live at the intersection of sports and culture up first I explore the making of a rivalry Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese I know I'll go down in history people are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game every great player needs a foil I ain't really near them boys I just come here

to play basketball every single day and that's what I focus on. From college to the pros, Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Angel Reese is a joy to watch. She is unapologetically black. I love her. What exactly ignited this fire? Why has it been so good for the game? And can the fanfare surrounding these two supernovas be sustained? This game is only going to get better because the talent is getting better. This new season will cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke.

Sponsored by Diet Coke. 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. podcasts. And we're back. And so there's apparently some polling that says Californians across the political spectrum are concerned about rising crime. We covered a couple weeks back this LA Magazine article. Alec, I don't know if you had a chance to read this work of brilliant journalism, but basically, like, talking about the hysteria, describing crimes in great detail. Then they will add, like, a paragraph with some statistical sanity about, like, how this is not some sort of unprecedented crime wave. And then the writer will use the phrase, but still,

and then go into how people, but still, it feels like the Joker just rode into town, is an almost direct quote from the article. And it does seem like the, you know, in local politics, you have a more progressive district attorney that won office in 2020 who is now like being recalled basically on the on the regular. And the recall campaign is being funded by like Hollywood bigwigs, like the sort of people who usually donate to big D democratic causes like George Clooney's producing partner. And it seems like people are buying this narrative that you've done a really good job sort of deconstructing and kind of at least anybody who reads your explanation around these stories, I feel like I don't know how they're coming down on the side of, you know, let's give the police a

couple more, a couple more bill. They need some more helicopters. But yeah, I don't know. Like, does this story worry you guys? Like, I think we've learned to take some polling with a grain of salt over the past five, six, eight years. But like, I do feel like there is, we are seeing this narrative sort of win out. There's a reason that police departments spend so much money on this stuff. There's a reason that propaganda has been so vitally important for powerful political interests across the world, especially over the last hundred years. But even before that, I posted a tweet the other day about a very similar

propaganda effort in Victorian England to foment fear around rising thefts. And it works, right? And so that's why these people are doing it. So yes, I am very worried. I'm very scared because the extraordinary extent to which the media is creating a sense of urgency around so-called rising crime is very troubling because a lot of people will be hurt. And let me explain what I mean. So what the media chooses to cover every single day, breathlessly with all these stories you're talking about, with stories you sing every day, affects what all of us think are the urgent threats to our health, safety, and well-being. So for example, if every single morning the media was doing breathless stories about the

number of illegal evictions or the air pollution deaths, right? So 10 million people die every year because of air pollution. It dwarfs by orders of magnitude all reported homicides, right? I mean, it's not even in the same league. Much of the air and water pollution is actually caused by criminal activity by large corporations. So if the media every single morning reported the very documented and very regular pollution violations in water and air in LA County alone, people might have a different sense of urgency about what the real threats to their health and safety are. The same is true of wage theft, right?

Wage theft is about a $50 billion a year problem, but it's mostly large corporations and wealthy people stealing from poorer people and working class people. And as a result, even though wage theft dwarfs by a factor of about five all other reported property crime, you never see daily news stories about wage theft. So imagine if the local media in LA had daily beats where they talked about wage theft and pollution and evictions and illegal foreclosures and the things that are actually affecting the health, safety and well-being and actually killing people at far higher rates, we have a different public understanding of the sense of urgency around these problems.

That's what worries me because as a result of this sort of media focus, we are not dealing with the central problems of our day. And the world is careening toward ecological devastation. Our political systems in shambles. We're still two years into a pandemic, not offering basic health care for many people in this country, basic housing, right? So these are the things that should be urgent problems. And because of this nonsense, like the LA Magazine article you're talking about, we've got a lot of well-meaning people who are urgently afraid of a problem that is just minuscule compared to all the other problems that I just mentioned and more problems. Right. And the like irony of not actually talking

about those pressing issues as a as a sort of contributing factor to even the things they want to see about crime or property crime and completely just being like, you know, there's just some bad people out there. And that's how it begins. And that's how it ends without, you know, like you said, if we have a consistent sort of cadence of proper reporting, people would start to connect the dots to say, oh, you know what, people are desperate. And there's a desperation that drives people to do things that are outside of what we define as, you know, legal activity. And yeah, it's, it's, you know, I think we see this all the time. But that's why the media and you know, the established powers are just so hand in hand, because to begin reporting like that, like you're saying, beat will begin to create a level of urgency in people that are more inclined

to say, what about like inequality? Like, isn't that a thing? But it easy to say oh my gosh did you see how many 40 inch tvs that one guy had in his arms right huh yeah and there are a handful of very real very horrible crimes that have just been that we talk a lot on this show about sampling error and the fact that the media overcovers like over samples a handful of very like horrifying crimes and just gets them out there and makes it seem like it's a danger to to everyone like those are what all they want to talk about and they store the stories that they are completely ignoring that you talk about so much, Alec, are contributing factors. So it's not just look here, not there. It's like, look, if you looked at this, those other stories would be fewer and further between.

But yeah, I don't know but it's interesting to look at this thing right where like the polling where they say 65 percent of californians that say that crime has risen over the last year and that's in and rather than like saying here are the statistics about crime rates this is merely saying hey man 65 percent of people are pretty fucked up off of all this you know sensationalized reporting right and have completely fallen into this column of yeah man crime's out of control and we got to do something about it apparently we need to throw the brakes on any kind of progress that addresses a completely imbalanced like judicial legal system yeah i think it's it's a product of the media's propaganda spree on this and and you know i think it's really more copaganda it's a product of the media's propaganda spree on this.

And I think it's really more copaganda. It's really an attempt by a very coordinated and very successful attempt by police unions, police departments, and in many local jurisdictions, like L.A. in particular, by very, very powerful real estate development interests that have a very particular interest in police controlling unhoused populations and low-income populations and play an outsized role in the deployment of police resources. And there's a really great, amazing report about Los Angeles in particular called Automated Banishment by the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, which is a group of amazing directly impacted people in Skid Row in Los Angeles who've done this incredible analysis of the connection between real estate developers

and sort of big technology companies and police departments. And so you have to understand, they're not just doing this because it's fun for them. They're not just doing this because they want to have fun manipulating people. They're doing it because there are very real interests that benefit from the way that our policing system looks. So, for example, there were people who benefited from the war on drugs. The war on drugs was not some very neutral, objective attempt to reduce drug usage. If you look at the last 40 years,

and we've spent trillions of dollars in the war on drugs, we've caged tens of millions of people, we've separated tens of millions of children from their parents, we've surveilled global populations, we've essentially destroyed much of the pristine wilderness

and farmland and jungle throughout South America through various pesticides. We've had people who have been spending hundreds of millions of years in prison at this point, if you sort of add it all up. We've got horrific costs associated with this, right? And for what benefit? Drugs are easier to get now. They're more potent, way more overdose deaths, more young people using drugs. So it's not that the people that created

and have profited from are still pushing the war on drugs. It's not that they're stupid. They're not blind to this evidence. They know that overdose deaths are worse. They know that drug usage is even worse now than it was 40 years ago. It's just that they're not pursuing the goals that they told us they were pursuing.

And we need to understand that the people that are controlling this criminal punishment bureaucracy are not doing it because it is the best way to create healthier, safer communities. They're doing it for other reasons, and they don't tell us those reasons overtly. Right. Yeah. The role of real estate, by the way, is interesting on the on the automated banishment front. And just when you look into the background of the person, like I just couldn't believe what I was reading when I read that L.A. Mag article. And so I just dug into the author's background and their background is reporting on real estate for The Hollywood Reporter. So that then builds up sources that then you know help them portray a world view it's like yeah i party with rick caruso every weekend you know what i mean yeah but now i'm

right about crime you got me this sick gig at la magazine to just you know sound the alarm on these property crimes yeah and the um shoplifting the train theft like that, that is something that they were really pushing in December, the shoplifting and the run up to they love to get a consumer based panic going in the lead up to the holidays. We've talked before about how they they're every year you can kind of guarantee there's going to be a Christmas tree shortage story or a candy cane shortage story. We talked about that in early December. And sure enough, it hit. It hit big.

That gamble hit big because they were both all over Fox News and, you know, the Drudge Report and shit. But they're still bringing that shit. You were pointing out an Axios article from, like, a couple days ago that is kind of portrayed as this, like, digest of the entire problem. And now they've added this new element where it's like the, you know, people are doing this because it's so easy to sell stuff online now right but but yeah like the the article for on axios from a couple days ago shoplifting has gotten so bad nationally the chains like rite aid are closing hard-hit stores sending terrified

employees home in ubers and locking up aisles of seemingly mundane items like deodorant and toothpaste. That's from a couple of days ago. And it's been repeatedly pointed out, not just by you, but like many like New York Magazine and other places. By the way, the source they link off to for the idea that Rite Aid is closing is the New York Post. And it is sourced to a Rite Aid employee or I forget, like an employee with knowledge of the situation, something like very vague. But you and many others have pointed out that there's just like no, who I don't think is known for being a copaganda outlet necessarily, is just out here still rocking with that story.

Well, not only that, not only is there no evidence, it's affirmatively false. So the reporting has established that Rite Aid, Walgreens, CVS, they've been telling investors for a long time that they're planning on closing these stores to keep profit margins. And because of the loss of business to online. So one of the things you have to understand is more and more people are buying their prescriptions online. And so a lot of these drugstores are becoming less profitable because they have high margin products that people, the way they make their business, much of their business is people come in for prescriptions, then buy other stuff that's really high margin on their way to the register or, you know, on the same trip. Because a lot more people are getting prescriptions online,

there's just like less foot traffic. These businesses are becoming less profitable. So they're making very strategic business decisions that have zero to do with shoplifting. Right. And they're very clear about that in their investor briefings, investor calls. And so this is just a totally false narrative. But what is going on is a bunch of retail industry people are pushing a bill in Congress to crack down on electronic marketplaces. And so all of this PR push is actually timed to coincide with the federal lobbying to try to get sort of it's an anti kind of Amazon marketplace set of regulations they want, because they are worried that the small businesses that are able to now sell much more efficiently online are actually going to cut into the major big box retailer profit margins. going on here. And then, of course, you've got local cops and prosecutors who will take any kind of excuse to try to pad their own budgets and to try to fearmonger because a climate of fear around

so-called crime actually helps everything that they want to do. And so you've got this alliance between big retailers and so-called law enforcement interests. I use the term law enforcement always with air quotes because they want you to think that they're just like out there enforcing the laws, but they only enforce some laws against some people some of the time. You're not out there enforcing tax evasion laws, right? They're not out there enforcing wage theft laws.

They're enforcing like theft laws against the poorest people in our society. That's what they do, right? Right. So anyway, I think there's a much more to the story and it's unfortunate to see, you know, newspaper and online reporters sort of just parroting this this highly self-serving and false set of claims by the industry. you know reddit or other places and i'll see stories like this posted and people you can tell in the comments are completely disconnected from what's actually happening like man it's it must be so out of control in california like yeah man i guess they need more cops and things like that

with again not understanding like you're saying like what i remember the walgreens story a few weeks or maybe that was back in december when they're like they're gonna have to shut stores down and people like did you read their actual business reporting? They talk about how their real estate plans, they completely fucked up and were over leveraged in markets where the rental costs were just too high and it's unsustainable. It's not because people were stealing Enfamil or something from their stores. It's because of these other business decisions. And then to the other point of these vested interests of law enforcement or prosecutors, you look at the cities that have more progressive DAs and those aren't the people who are going to go lockstep

with the retail trade groups to be like, yeah, yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you. Yeah. Let's, let's, let's figure out a way to make this work for you. And when they're not like that, you begin to see these like recall campaigns sprout up, too. And it's very, very convenient to begin to say, look at all this rampant theft, all this shoplifting, the train crimes, and then look at this progressive DA. I mean, it's just all right there, folks, we need more law and order. And it's a very, very convenient catch all for many, many different aims when most like to your point at the end of the day, it's just to, to enrich the same sort of group of people. They're just finding really clever ways to dress up the problem in spookier ways for, you know, the everyday consumer. Yeah. All right. Let's take a quick break. And then I want to talk about this thing that I, I see a lot where people treat anyone who wants to talk about the real underlying issues as like childish or like not serious or like too idealistic. So we'll be right back. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series,

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and we're back and actually alec the thing that made me think about this is you had pointed out that erica adams is trying to get drill rap videos banned from social media after some rappers were killed in new york recently and like it's a it's become a high profile news story. And you, I think, had a tweet to the effect of, you know, Adams is also planning on banning the opera because, you know, people who engage in wage theft and tax evasion like tend to go there. And so this guy, DG is serious on Twitter, lest you doubt his journalistic bona fides, came at you and was like, like, you can't be serious. You think like we're going to be able to solve those problems, like the things that, you know, we've been talking about on this podcast, like wage theft, caging humans, lack of funding for schools and programs that

invest in the humanity of underserved communities. He dismissed it as like, you know, unrealistic or childish and then and just like clout chasing, I guess. And I actually a couple of weeks ago, we had somebody on the show and we were like they made some point to the effect of like that the system is is fucked up and you know that kind of aligned with what we've been talking about and then like stopped and was like i know it sounds childish and i i think that's something that like i also internalized at a certain point is like just like pointing out these very basic problems is like idealistic and childish and like not some like the the realistic people are out here pointing out individual like acts of violence like when you go to the guy who you are arguing with on twitter's thread he like has these posts

of like a murt like a video of a murder happening and it's the Bronx is out of control. And like, so he's the serious one while arguing for the banning of rap music on social media. Like, do you run up against that a lot? Like just sort of the you're being unrealistic or childish? All the time. I mean, I think he's maybe a bad example because he's not really a serious person because, you know, like he really showed who he was, not just with all the insults he was hurling at me as I was trying to just like have a reasonable like debate. But like he then said that Eric Adams is also trying to address all these root causes. And then he cited to Adams's crime plan, which is literally the exact opposite. Like, you know, Adams is trying to beef up,

you know, roll back bail reform and beef up cops and all this stuff and not addressing things like healthcare and housing and inequality. And so, you know, this guy's not a serious person, but I think what was really revealing about the exchange in which I do see a lot is politicians and sort of very comfortable people are constantly trying to

distract us from having the real conversation about structural inequalities in our society, about divestment from safe places to live and systems of care. And what they want us to do is focus on like bad individual bad apples or, well, this week the problem is music. So like we don't have to confront poverty and inequality and deprivation and loneliness and, and toxic masculinity and all these other things that are sort of big social

structural problems. All we have to do is ban this type of rap music. And tomorrow it's going to be, all we have to do is get rid of bail reform. And the next day it's going to be, all we have to do is get rid of bail reform. And the next day it's going to be, all we have to do is get rid of this district attorney in Los Angeles because everything was so much better the last 30 years before we had this district attorney.

Right? And every single day they point to some other little thing that is not fixing the deeper structural problems in our society. And to me, that kind of argument is just such a joke. It's hard to even engage with someone seriously about it. But there are a lot of well-meaning people that get trapped up in this. And so I think it's important sometimes to treat this as a serious argument and to point out sort of why it's so flawed. Yeah, it's, it's, again, it's so much easier to

just say, to, to ignore, like all of the root causes like you're talking about and just turn it into this thing of like this like very understandable evil that exists somewhere and it's this this drill rap i mean the disses are too violent and that's what's causing all of this chaos but again people like the example people always fail to like really think about too is like well then how come you know what what about why is there not a drill scene in beverly hills you know why is there not a drill scene in these more affluent areas and what what would happen then with that would those people suddenly be overtaken by the demonic drill music and then begin killing each other or is it about the the outcomes that people are offered based on their, their place in this sort of,

in like in this sort of caste system that we have in the, in the country. And rather than saying like, you know, when people are deprived and desperate, we, we begin to do things that have to ensure our survival and to distill it to, well,

these lyrics are too hot. Again, everything is just sort of about avoiding the real solution to something, which is we need to address rampant inequality. We need to address this stuff. The greed of the wealthy has only exacerbated these things. But again, I think that's much easier for people who probably feel that their livelihood or something is at risk with some kind of increased equality in society. I think those kinds of explanations help those people wrap their minds around it because it's like, well, certainly it's not this other thing that I've been completely turning a blind eye to my whole life.

It's drill music. And if you think about it, yeah, I believe drill music was around even in the 60s. You know what I mean? Like what? Why is it always this like changing this evolving sort of like fake target that, you know, allows people just to avoid again, like always avoiding the part of the conversation, which is, yeah, we have really know what that means, but it sounds impressive. And like he has a picture like his Twitter header is like a picture of him like doing war reporting and like being on the ground and like being there for violence happening in other countries. And then he has this post of like a video of somebody being murdered and the degree to which like it's ingrained in our like values and the values that i like grew up with where like the you know action movies are about the police and like doing like real serious things and like serious people taking care of serious problems and

like that that sort of idea that you're serious because you were kind of focusing on the like very short term like cause and effect of like violent conflict. Like that that is the serious thing to do. And then actually talking about structural issues is like the the not serious thing like that i don't know it's just especially now with social media which i feel 90 years old every time i complain about social media but like it is so like every aspect of this value system of like you you know, being able to over index whatever problem you want to exaggerate is like so deeply ingrained in like how, how we communicate and get information that I'm, I don't know, like I, is there anything that makes you feel hopeful, Alec, like about the struggle that you're kind of engaged in? I think it's easy to feel hopeless because the problems in front of us seem so daunting.

And you've got very powerful interests who not only are controlling how all of this money is being spent, all these policies, but they're also, you know, ones who own the media system in which these discussions are being had. But at the same time, there's a whole new generation of people that are seeing through this stuff, that are having conversations that we just weren't having 10 years ago. And we know when I was a younger lawyer, just starting out in this space, there was really no one talking about the need to shrink the size of the criminal punishment bureaucracy, to take money away from police departments, to invest in communities of care. No one in sort of these elite spaces, that is.

Obviously, the people in these communities that are directly targeted have been talking about this, you know, from the very beginning. But there's a, I think one of the reasons we've seen this incredible pushback from the police and from these media interests is precisely because they were threatened by a lot of the growing social movement to change the way our society thinks about its investment priorities. And so I think that is a positive. We are definitely seeing a movement of people led by the people that are most targeted by these systems of human caging and surveillance and brutality and violence.

And that's encouraging. And we're in a reactionary backlash right now. But the thing that it's reacting to is a very encouraging set of developments. And I think it's very, very important that anyone interested in this comes together with other people who are interested in it and starts getting involved in their own community,

whether it's in mutual aid, whether it's in bail funds, whether it's in organizing around environmental issues, health issues, housing issues, criminal punishment system issues, mutual aid efforts, immigration issues. There's so many ways to plug in around something that you're personally really passionate about that all are sort of factoring into us building the systems of care that we need that are going to replace this horrific system of violence. And I think that's all positive. Yeah, it's I mean, yeah, like to your point, it's clear that the that like a moment of clarity for people over in the summer of 2020, where many people are just like, hold on,

yeah, is this the right thing? Is this the way we get out of this? That scared the shit out of law enforcement, clearly, because we've seen them pour every single thing they can into countering the sort of clarity that some that many people are beginning to arrive to, which is sort of like, yeah, I'm not sure that this carceral system is the way that we solve things. It sounds like we need to actually help people rather than solving the failures of our capitalist society

by just investing more in punishing the poor. I think people are beginning to be like, that doesn't quite connect. And yeah, when you see this all-in thing of like, man, the shoplifting, this, that, that, that's the drill music. It does. You can tell that they're in a much different posture than before when I think people were just much more willing to accept whatever the local system, it's hard to I don't know how you counter that. Aside from just going further into your bad habits of stoking more fear without really being able to present the people with actual wins that law enforcement has been behind. You know, like they're not out here being like, hey, you know what? has been behind. They're not out here being like, hey, you know what? We revamped. We turned half of our force into first responders for people who are in need of a mental health intervention and

things like that. And look at the crime. It's gone down, baby. You could leave a bike out and nobody's going to steal it because they're just unable to do that because the way the system works for them is, no, we just have to keep brutalizing poor people. That's the only thing this thing is set up to do. So we're just going to turn up the heat on that. And I think it has this effect of on one side, a lot of people really, I see it all the time. People I used to go to high school with on Instagram who are like looking at taking a picture of a dumpster that has graffiti on it. And you can tell how like cop brained they are because they're like, oh, my gosh, do I need to get a gun now? Yeah, there's graffiti on this dumpster behind my office building.

And I see this is what's happening right now because people are running just out here doing whatever they want because there's no law enforcement. While many others are just sort of like, no, no, all I see actually is a lot of pain and suffering that has gone unaddressed. actually is a lot of pain and suffering that has gone unaddressed. And that to me is a more pressing concern than, oh, do we have to lock up, you know, the Mach three razors at the fucking pharmacy? And so, yeah, like I that yes, with all the with all the momentum, clearly that, you know, this narrative that's been introduced by, you know, the powers that be in law enforcement, et cetera, there is like there is just that little bit of clarity that you're beginning to see a lot of like people sort of step into as it relates than like sort of an underlying white supremacy that everybody seems to be on board with. for a number of days. And they definitely have the built-in advantage of the police also being on board with the fact that they're waving Nazi flags. I feel like if you replace those flags with Black Lives Matter flags, we're dealing with a whole different situation.

But so, I mean, the latest in this story is that Trudeau is invoking the Emergencies Act, is that Trudeau is invoking the Emergencies Act, which is the Canadian act that was used to suppress people's rights during World War I, World War II, internment camps. And then in 1988, they reshaped the War Act to give it a little bit more congressional oversight. But it's a pretty problematic and scary use of force that the government is kind of coming in and using or invoking, I guess. And I'm just wondering, I don't know, is there any part, like the movement for progress and social justice like should we be looking at like these sorts of actions that actually like fucking disrupt an entire city like this is not a well-thought-out plan but it's just something that's happening in the news and i'm just like

wondering without them having any coherent argument or complaint, they are succeeding. Like if what if a you know, the movement to end wage theft like did something like this, a thing that actually affects more truckers than the 6 percent of anti-vaxxer truckers in Canada. Like, why don't we see more things like that? Should we see more things like that, where it's like very disruptive, you know, behavior like this? Absolutely. I mean, this is why you've seen states, particularly conservative states across the country,

criminalized to an extraordinary degree these kinds of direct actions. So now if you did this in a number of states in the U.S., you could be hit with huge felony charges, go to prison for life, you'd be called a terrorist. The federal government can prosecute you. They just prosecuted two women in Iowa for, you know, disrupting climate infrastructure, and they prosecuted them as terrorists. And this is, when it's being done on the left-wing side, all of the incredible bureaucratic apparatus of state violence is arrayed against you and you're called a terrorist. Whether it's people who are trying to disrupt animal agriculture or toxic fossil fuel infrastructure.

And there's a really interesting and thought-provoking new book called How to Blow Up a Pipeline by a Swedish climate activist and philosopher, which essentially makes the case that you just made, Jack, but makes it really beautifully. It's a really fun and short read. Even more beautifully than I just made it? I thought I really nailed that. Well, obviously not as beautiful as you. With all my stuttering and pauses,

I thought I really nailed it. Yeah, sorry. Sorry to interrupt. No, no, it's a... I think you should send him some notes and maybe the next version of this book can be a little bit more eloquent. But How to Build a Pipeline is a really inspiring read about the need for direct action on the level that actually confronts the enormity of the ecological disaster and collapse that we're about to confront as a sort of a global world. And, you know, the more that starts to happen, the more repression we're going to see, the more things like what Trudeau just did are going to be arrayed against anyone remotely pushing environmental or social justice.

And it's going to be very, very scary, especially as significant migration of hundreds of millions of people starts to become sort of the monthly norm. Right. Yeah, I guess anything that somebody is learning from this should be taken with a, like, I think it has been allowed to go on this long because it doesn't have any coherent agenda or argument that is like picking up steam with anybody that I can tell other than just white supremacy. Like, so I feel like they're like, yeah, sure. The hangout, you know, take a picture there. Their examples are the Ottawa police were letting the truckers, these convoy protesters take selfies in the back of their squad car.

And then so that they could spread misinformation that they had been arrested to get people outraged. But of course, the police weren't arresting them. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's telling when you're in the back of a squad car with no handcuffs on. When you're looking out the window like, help! No, that's not what what's happening there and you know it's funny too like they talk a lot about you know well they don't want to send in the military or they don't want to really start you know rounding people up like they would at a you know a protest that would have involved disenfranchised people of color first nations people but know, there's been this insistence that they don't want this imagery of people

actually being suppressed and being brutalized by the state. And I, you know, part of me is like, well, that's really just for them, because most people who are protesting, they don't need to be brutalized by the police at a protest to get in touch with their oppression. Most people already are whereas this serves a very much visual narrative to be like you see even because even what we're talking about is total vaporware and bullshit but if they get out here and start arresting us then we can add a little bit more emotional energy to this to help you know kind of build some momentum because at the end of the day, like you're saying, it's not, many people are confused,

you know, especially if you're outside of this anti-vax trucker convoy world, where they're like, what are these fucking people doing? Like, this is nonsense. But, you know, they're very much in pursuit of those visuals to help sort of solidify or validate their sort of victim narrative which is just truly not

there especially not when you're hugging the police when they're supposed to be clearing you out I mean like and I think that's the other part too it's very hard for people who you know have somewhat of a brain to look at that and go that's weird they hug those protesters

but are firing rubber bullets straight into the eyes of the other people and they're not, they weren't holding up global commerce. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Alec, such a pleasure having you. Thanks for hanging with us for an hour.

Where can people kind of find you, follow you, read you, all that good stuff? Yeah, you can follow our organization at Civ Rights Corps on Instagram and Twitter. And the Corps is spelled C-O-R-P-S, like the Peace Corps. And you can follow me on Twitter at Equality Alec. Yeah, yeah. And is there a tweet or some other work of social media that you've been enjoying? I've been watching repeatedly recently the old 50-year-old

recording of Muhammad Ali reading his poem about the Attica prison riot. You can watch on YouTube. It's an amazing poem that Ali made that just describes the violence and brutality of the U.S. prison system.

And it's fascinating to me just how all of these problems are still the same. And because we're continually refusing to actually confront the ways in which state violence is weaponized against the most vulnerable people in our society, it just keeps recurring. We keep having these same conversations about whether it's prison conditions or police brutality or whatever it might be, inequality, poverty, and all of these systems continue to function and to get bigger and to get more, even more monstrous, to kill more and more people. You know, police killed more people in 2021 than they did in 2020 after all of the attention that had been put on police killings after the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and others. And so I've been watching him read this beautiful poem and thinking about the defiance and the brilliance that he exhibited.

And it's very inspiring. So that's something I'd point people to. And the fact that I didn't even know that existed is just such a testament to like how the system is like how against the grain that sort of thing is like that's one of the most iconic greatest like american celebrities america fucking loves a celebrity like talking about one of the defining problems of his time and hours and it's like oh that exists cool right yeah that seems like that should be absolutely iconic i will go check that out people should do the same miles where can people find you follow you twitter instagram at miles of gray also if you like uh you know 90 day fiance check out 420 day fiance with sophia alexander and i that's a podcast and a live stream so check

that out a tweet i like is from at and a fun nah fun tweeted this is your reminder that 10 of bitcoin owners have 99 of the bitcoins they need new crypto buyers to be able to sell their holdings without tanking the market all these crypto ads are them trying to offload their position in the ponzi scheme okay that's interesting thing to consider and along with that uh listener big al at pork hop express we were joking about like you know if the sopranos were around now and they're talking about crypto and shit most of this picture of like christopher wearing like a leather jacket and sunglasses with a cigarette it says it's called a non fuckable token. There were so much money because they're made of computers.

Well, let's see. You can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien tweet. I've been enjoying at Deutermain at 612jack tweeted this guy I'm hunting just ran across the stream to lose his scent we've all been there you can find us on twitter at daily zeitgeist

we're at the daily zeitgeist on instagram we have a facebook fan page and a website dailyzeitgeist.com where we post our episodes and our footnot notes where 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 oh man this is a this is gonna be an iconic performance from sly and the family stone if you've ever seen the woodstock documentary the sly section is one of my favorite parts of that whole documentary because there's a section

where he's doing higher it's like a medley and he just has this whole fucking crowd going up just screaming higher and it's one of my favorite performances but you can also listen to it the woodstock album is out on most places so this is the medley of higher slash music lover from woodstock from slimeime the Family Stone. But I really, I would really suggest you watch the video version because when the fucking song really kicks in and they start getting loose, it's pure joy. Nice.

All right. Well, the Daily Zyka is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. We'll link off to that Sly video, and we will link off to the Muhammad Ali reading of the poem on Attica also in the footnotes. That's going to do it for us this morning. We're back this afternoon to tell you what is trending, and we will talk to you all then.

Bye. Bye. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing Talk to y'all then. Bye. Bye. 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 4 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 Pradenti. 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. 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. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball. And on this new season, we'll cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network,

iHeartRadio apps, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke.