The Daily Zeitgeist - Trump’s “Funny” Indian Voice, Has WW3 Already Started? 8.14.18

Episode Date: August 14, 2018

In episode 211, Jack and Miles are joined by writer and Behind The Bastard's host Robert Evans to discuss the Paul Manafort trial, a recap of this past weekend's DefCon, Trump's lack of knowledge when it comes to time zones and how countries are pronounced, Bob Goodlatte's son calling him out, some stories Robert's been following including the state of the Kurds in Northern Iraq, how 'The Meg' has been a huge box office success, some drink related stories, and more! FOOTNOTES:1. Behind The Bastards: No Matter How Much You Hate Paul Manafort, You Should Hate Him More (And Here’s Why) Part 12. Behind The Bastards: No Matter How Much You Hate Paul Manafort, You Should Hate Him More (And Here’s Why) Part 23. Manafort Lawyers Rest Without Calling Witnesses in Fraud Trial4. The Most Terrifying Device Hacks From This Year’s Def Con5. Trump’s diplomatic learning curve: Time zones, ‘Nambia’ and ‘Nipple’6. In Politics, No One Can Call You Out Like Your Family7. Up to 1,000 more U.S. troops could be headed to Afghanistan this spring8. With ISIL gone, Iraqi Kurds still battle a weak economy9. 6 Insanely Post-Apocalyptic Realities of the Ukraine Revolt10. ‘The Meg’ Is a Surprise Box-Office Monster11. Man fills water cup with soda and things go unnecessarily haywire from there12. Why You Should Think Twice Before Ordering Coffee or Tea on a Plane (Video)13. A Brief History of Vice: How Bad Behavior Built Civilization by Robert Evans14. WATCH: Ravyn Lenae – Sleep Talking (Official Music Video) Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 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. Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the podcast from Hello Sunshine that's guaranteed to light up your day. Check out our recent episode with Grammy award-winning rapper Eve on motherhood

and the music industry. No, it's a great, amazing, beautiful thing. There's moms in all industries, very high stress industries that have kids all across this world. Why can't it be music as well? Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister, or is history repeating itself?

There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Gray got me open like fallopian tubes, a.k.a. he's hung your head when you least expect. Jack O'Brien on the mic, boy, protect your neck. Uh, that was good board. A Wu-Tang, a.k.a.,

and I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray! Alright, Jack, I hope you're ready, because if you're coming with that Wu-Tang, get ready for Let Miles Love Open the Door. Let Miles Love Open the Door. Let Miles Love Open the door to your heart. Pete Townsend.

All right. Thank you, Matt Schlessel, at Mr. Schlessel on Twitter for that AKA. We don't plan it, but it's just like in the firmament that if one of us does like a cool song, the other one is going to do like something kind of. Just some of the softest balance. Yes. We're like a purple mattress. We're both soft and firm

at the same time whoa wow and if their ad buy expires if you're leasing this in the future we'll scrub this

right cause I'm about to counter you with ghost bed oh really who the fuck is that wait first of all

who is that who in here who there they are fine mattresses who there we are thrilled to be joined

by one of the great gonzo journalists and funniest smartest dudes I know, Mr. Robert Evans. I don't have a rap. I'm sorry. AKA Matt. Yep. Oh, yeah. AKA Matt, which is a hard ass AKA.

Yeah. What's up, man? Not much. I was at a Unite the Right 2.0. I know. A good day and a half ago. Right. And on the side of the white supremacist? Yes. I've been a white supremacist. He's taking

it down from the inside. Right. White Klansman is going to be the name. That he's in. Not quite as good a title. Unimpressive? Unimpressed with their turnout? Yeah. It's more that I was happy and gratified to see how many people came out to march against

them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. I think the importance of getting 5,000 or however many thousand people to show up to protest Nazis when they march is important for the same reason why you should do pull ups in the morning. Like you're not going to need to lift yourself up every day. But every now and then you'll run into a situation where it's useful to have that kind of strength.

And it's protestsed the same thing. It's like it's building a muscle. That's like a Chinese proverb or something. Yeah, that was pretty good, man. You don't have to do a pull-up every day, but you might have to pull up with that energy. Well, we're going to hear more wise Chinese proverbs from the mouth of Robert Evans. But first, we are going to tell our listeners what they're in store for. We're going to talk about the Manafort trial, where the defense just rested without calling witness.

We call that a mic drop. We're going to check out some of the highlights from DEFCON, the hacker convention. What were they able to hack? Basically, a lot of terrifying shit. Anything with internet. Yeah. Like, basically a lot of terrifying shit. Anything with internet.

Yeah. We're going to check in with a Politico story about how Trump doesn't understand things like countries and time zones. Just a lot of fun details that aren't really surprising, but just about as hilarious and embarrassing as you would expect from this White House. We are going to introduce you to Bob Goodlatte's son, Bobby. Bobby. And I was pronouncing it as Bob Goodlatte, but that's not right, is it? Yeah, it's Goodlatte.

He looks like it. Probably does not like when it is pronounced like that. That's probably our way to troll him then. Yeah. We're going to ask Robert what global conflicts he's keeping an eye on, because he has always been on top of those since I've known him. We're going to check back in with Omarosa. We are going to look at the weekend box office wherein the Meg dominated. We are going to have some beverage news, two beverage

stories at the end of the episode. But first, Robert, we like to ask our guests, what is something from your search history that is revealing about who you are? I mean, I've been looking a lot at ties between Patriot Prayer, the group that was protesting in Portland two weeks ago. They're not a white nationalist group. They don't consider themselves a fascist group, but they have a lot of ties to people who are at Unite the Right. Their leader, Joey Gibson, has a lot of ties to people who were at the first Unite the Right rally.

And I'm essentially trying to build a case that a lot of these organizations that claim to be counter to Antifa or counter to communism have their basis in fascist groups and are in fact largely peopled by outright fascists. So that's what I'm searching around these days. You find anything interesting? Oh, yeah. There's a lot of ties between them, and a lot of the strategies that these groups are using sort of began last year with a group called Anticom that was heavily tied with the, they were at Unite the Right, they were a big

part of the first Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Their Discord server was taken down in September, and their Twitter hasn't been very active since, but they pioneered a lot of the strategies that you've seen the Proud Boys using and Patriot Prayer using to success in Berkeley. Yeah, it sounds like they both anti-com, you said? Yeah, anti-com was the name of the first group. But they were the first. I thought you were talking about Proud Boys not jerking off.

Sorry. Well, no, that's a great joke, Jack. I just didn't catch it at first. Anti-com would be a cool shirt, actually. It looks like a logo for a group. It is better than NoFap, which is what they call it. Patriot Prayer is a group that if you were paying attention to the right-wing media in the past couple months, you would see headlines about how different people were protesting a religious group.

And it's very shady. They have some connections to, like, their agenda doesn't totally make sense. And it seems like they have a lot of connections to some of the shadier far-right groups. Starting almost, you know, seven or eight months before the first Unite the Right rally, the guys in the anti-com chat room, who were also members of groups like the Traditional Workers Party, there's a lot of bleed in between these groups. There's a lot of interchange between them. Traditional workers? I mean, I can't argue with that. That sounds good. That doesn't sound like a Nazi group. Almost like National Socialists. Just like Patriot. I like Patriot. I like prayer. Yeah, those are both good things.

Yeah, they're basically born out of the realization that defining yourself as white nationalist or as fascist is counterproductive and cannot they tried right after 2016 to make that push that into the mainstream and that failed but they think they can and seem to be able to be successful if they position themselves as anti-communist right and try to declare antifa a communist group so we're not but even then like yeah someone has to be so sort of like guess, have a fucked up understanding of what communism is and other things to be like, yeah, uh-huh. OK, I like this group. It works. I mean, you look at the you saw in Portland last week that that protester was shot in the back of the head by a tear gas canister. Right. Because you have part of their strategy.

Wait, but who shot that? Was that the police? Yeah, the police shot a guy in the back of the head. And that was a counter protest, right? Yeah, that was a counter protester., right? Yeah. That was a counter-protester. And this is their strategy. Because you can read, Unicorn Riot has leaked thousands of chat logs between a lot of these people. It is their explicit strategy to be polite and nice to the police because, in part, they depend on the police because there's not that many of them. Right.

And to try to get the police to fight Antifa. And that appears to be a successful strategy. to fight Antifa. And that appears to be a successful strategy. And some of this is on the anti-fascist groups because you will see a lot of fuck the police attitudes, a lot of rage at the police among these groups of counter-protesters, which I understand to an extent,

but also is counterproductive on a tactical level. Because it brings the police in on the sides of these, the fascists. It's not, the wave of people who are at Unite the Right 2.0 are the fascists who have lost because they went full Hitler too fast wave of people who are at Unite the Right 2.0 are the fascists who have lost because they went full Hitler too fast. The people who are dangerous now are the ones who are a little bit better at being cagey about it. We always say here at the Daily Zeitgeist, don't go full Hitler too fast. Ease up on that Hitler throttle.

You were saying that one of the counter protesters jumped up when the Nazis were walking in with a flag and said and called them wankers. He was a British guy. Right. An older British gentleman. And grabbed their flag and then got stomped out by Nazis and the police? Yeah, he leapt over a line of police to grab this guy's flag and then hit the ground and then was kicked repeatedly by both the Nazi he'd grabbed a flag from and by the police

around him, or at least a couple of the officers around him. Yeah. And that's, I mean, there have been all sorts of studies that indicate that there are a lot of white supremacists or, you know, ideals like that in America's police force. So it's not totally shocking. And yeah, increasingly becoming a bigger problem in the military. Yeah. About a quarter of active duty U.S. soldiers say they have met someone who has openly identified

as a white nationalist while on duty. Cool. Well, what's something that's overrated, Robert? Oh, geez. I mean margarine. Okay. Yes. Thank God. It's time to stop big margarine. Holy shit.

Now, shout out to my sponsors, Country Croc. I do not believe this. But you go on. Say your piece. Well, I'm just going to say, if you just get some butter and you pour some honey in that butter and get a spoon, that's delicious. You make some honey butter. But if you stir honey into margarine and try to eat it with a spoon, you're going to be vomiting all over the place.

You're just eating vegetable oil. Is that true? Vegetable oil. Also, is that true? You just eat honey and butter with a spoon? Well, you stir it together. But honey butter? That was the question.

I mean, usually I'll dip bread in it, but yeah, it's delicious. I mean, look, let me tell you something. I love butter. I remember as a kid, my parents had to regulate my pad usage, like a pad of butter at the restaurant, because I would take one pad and just put that on one bite of bread, and they're like, hold on, you look

crazy. You're making us look bad as parents. But now in my adulthood, I'm just eating that mag. It's better sauce. It just makes it better. Make it better with butter. Salted butter or unsalted butter? Different situations for both. We were going to cover that, the great chef's

debate about salted or unsalted butter. And it really is contextual. Unsalted is good as an ingredient. As an ingredient, yes. But I personally prefer salted for everyday use. Yeah, I'll go on a nice run and just eat a stick of butter while I'm jogging. Right. You put it in like a power gel packet.

Can't do that with margarine. Like other than not being able to stir honey into it, are there like bad things about margarine? Is it worse for you or just equally bad for you? I don't read about what's good for me. He's more upset about the honey aspect. Right. Yeah.

What is something you think is underrated? Besides honey butter. Besides honey butter. I think the danger of fascist activists is underrated because I think people look at the tiny numbers and people look at the fact that most Americans don't identify with them outright. And they don't look at the fact that like Laura Ingraham was on Fox News recently saying that immigration is changing the nature of America and we didn't vote for that shit. Like the ideas that these people who are outright fascists have injected into the conversation has pulled everybody further to the right. And I think the threat of that is generally underrated at this moment.

Yeah. Yeah. We're going to talk a little bit later about how there are all these, you know, Omarosa has a recording of Trump and says there are recordings of him using the N-word. And, you know, there are people who have worked at the White House who say that if you heard how Trump talked behind closed doors about black people and women, people would want to burn the White House to the ground. But there are people saying, basically espousing the same ideology, just not saying the bad words on Fox News every fucking night. Tucker Carlson is openly a white supremacist now. Oh, yeah.

And the Laura Ingraham thing, people do not accidentally make the hell Hitler gesture on a national magazine. It's a hard one to accidentally make. Yeah. She went full hell Hitler. She locked her arm. Locked her arm. Like it wasn't a wave.

Yeah. She's like, no, that was my tennis elbow. Yeah. Yeah. That is full on Nazi. All right. That's why, you know, I don't know when we can get enough of a boycott against their advertisers to fully form to actually put some kind of pressure.

Because we talked about it last week. That Laura Ingraham thing was wacky. They turned up white supremacy to 11 on that episode. And then the next day, that half-assed defense was just even worse. I don't like these shook Nazis who are like, yeah, I'm going to say this shit, but then when I get called, I'm like, I don't know. Well, right. Because they're harder to defeat. Yeah.

Because they just bend with you, you know? All right, then. What do we do? I'm not buying Volvos anymore. Right. Does Volvo still? No, I don't think. I know they used to, but.

I'm curious to know who's even advertising. Right. Loringandpets.com. Sleeping Giants was interviewed on one of the Cricket Media podcasts and they were saying that they've only had like three advertisers who have just come back to them and been like no, we're still going to advertise. We're good.

So it's just like people who they haven't gotten to yet apparently. I'm going to watch closely because I just feel like Fox really does have to take some responsibility. They need to be broken. They need to be broken. Yeah. They need to be broken financially. Yeah.

And I think that when you talk about sleeping giants, that's some of the most effective activism anyone in the country is doing right now. Yeah. I'm a big supporter of what they were doing. And just for the listeners, they are doing what? They are essentially when people do stuff like what Laura Ingraham was doing, when they're outright racist or white supremacist or whatnot, Do stuff like what Laura Ingraham was doing when they're outright racist or white supremacist or whatnot. They are contacting these people's advertisers and trying to get other people to contact the advertisers who advertise on these platforms and get them to pull their money because that's how you hurt these people. Yeah.

It really hurt Breitbart over the past year and a half. That's the funny thing about capitalism is it's so easy to kneecap something because, you know, money is the fucking answer to everything in this fucking thing. So it's like, oh, yeah, this you just get rid of the advertising right uh and finally robert what is a myth what's something people think is true that you know to be false i think the idea that if a tape were to leak tomorrow where donald trump says the n-word i think it's a myth that it would hurt him in any way shape or form i don't think he loses a percentage point of his popularity from that. I think about 39-40% of the country is fine with using that word. They would not say they're fine with using that word as a description

for all black people, but they'd probably bring you some variation of that old Chris Rock bit. There's a difference. I think about 40% of America honestly feels that way. It would definitely depend on the context. If it was like Papa John's style. Right.

If it was Papa John's style, I'm sure he wouldn't lose too many points. But if it was, you know, like some of the things that have been reported that he has said in the past from people who heard it with their own ears, it's really dark. Like he's a huge like dark racist like not the type of racist that you know a soft racist is going to agree with he's like a full-blown uh hardcore racist there's that guy who tweeted and whose tweet gets back into virality every now and then who was like leading some sort of team onto a yacht that trump owned and trump told him not to send one of his like mechanics or something. It was a black guy.

And Trump said he didn't want him on the boat. And they sued Trump over that and won. And that's a thing that happened. Donald Trump didn't want a black man on his yacht because he's racist. Or rent apartments to them. Right. Yep. So that's the other thing, too, is I think the pressure has to be even harder on the

Republicans and even fucking Democrats, man. You need to also be just as vocal about this dude's bullshit. And I don't care if it hurts you because you're in a swing district. I mean, at some point, the game of becoming reelected and staying in office is keeping us from having real unambiguous discussions about his behavior. Because if you're a vulnerable person up for reelection and you're a Democrat, you're not really going to go out there with your chest out about how the bullshit that the president is doing, because you got to worry about staying in office. And at some point, I think we need to demand that our leaders have a little bit more of a backbone. Yeah, on it on all sides. I mean, there's still just there's only a few Democrats who are consistently always coming out with,

you know, the kind of commentary that's necessary. Yeah. But I mean, politicians with no backbone learn their lesson from the Access Hollywood tape when, I mean, it was like full on. He's like, yeah, I'm a rapist. So that's what I'm about. And yeah. And this is not a locker room. Yeah. And people were still on board after that.

And in fact, there was focus groups like Women for Trump launched the day after. Yeah. Politicians Without Backbones is a bit of a, it's a little redundant. Yeah. I don't know. We'll see. All right, guys, let's get into the stories of the day. The Manafort defense has rested.

They have dropped the mic. They were like, done and done. I think we've made our point. I think it goes like this. The prosecution rests. Then the judge is like, like okay now what will the defense be presenting a case we're good yeah so there are weeks of prosecution calling witnesses who testified that Manafort did like all the money crimes basically and did them like flamboyantly like he thought people couldn't

see him like he was invisible and there were a couple weird like courtroom shenanigans uh that we don't totally understand just yet like there was a recess that was like a full day recess that nobody really knows why it happened a lot of yeah behind closed doors meetings with the judge and defense and prosecution and then the defense requested that the case be dismissed. And the judge was like, no. But like there's a reason the defense thought that they could get away with that. And then apparently that was their whole idea because then they were like, okay, now present your first witness. And they were like, oh, we rest.

Nah, we're good. Yeah. You'd present your first witness. I don't, oh, we rest. Nah, we're good. Yeah, you'd present your first witness, judge. I don't know what's going to happen if that means, like, you know, a lot of the speculation has been some kind of issue with the jury, whether it was a juror overhearing something or speaking to someone or if there is a, you know, a huge Donald Trump supporter who's just willing to stay locked in their position and have a hung jury. Yeah.

I don't know. Like if it's a juror who overheard any of the news for the past two years, maybe he's anti-manifort. I don't know. It seems crazy that we have to have a trial where people would be completely impartial. But because of, you know, this touches literally every aspect of our country. Robert, you just did a Manafort episode of your podcast, Behind the Bastards. You did two Manafort episodes. So first of all, explain to our listeners what Behind the Bastards is for people who don't listen. I mean, our tagline is, we tell you everything you don't know about the

very worst people in all of history. And Paul Manafort is definitely one of those. What I say in the podcast and what I truly believe is that his work for Donald Trump is probably the least objectionable thing he's ever done. That's crazy. His whole career was built on – he's the guy who helped invent the modern concept of lobbying. Yeah, right. I think a couple of hundred lobbyists in the entire United States when Paul Manafort started his firm. I think a couple of hundred lobbyists in the entire United States when Paul Manafort started his firm. And he is like, you know, in the late 90s, you started getting jokes on like the Simpsons about how, you know, all politicians are the same, Democrat and Republican, they're the same person,

they support the same ideologies. A lot of that is due to the fact that the lobbying firm that Manafort started with Roger Stone and a guy whose last name was Black, would regularly represent both sides of elections, because elections because a big part of their goal was they would help. They were the first company to put lobbying and campaign advice and whatnot, campaign management under the same roof. So they would help both sides of an election in a contested district. And then no matter who won, they could then lobby to that person with whatever corporations were backing them. Right.

So they're at least partially responsible for everything bad that people hate about politics right now. Yeah. Within a decade of the establishment of Paul Manafort's firm, they went from a situation where there were maybe a couple of hundred lobbyists in the entire country to a situation where there were more than 10,000 lobbyists. Yeah. They have a lot to do with that. Cool.

And Paul Manafort quickly stopped working in the U.S. as much and started working for a variety of dictators and terrorists all over the world. And that's who he spent most of his career representing. The name of the lobby that he invented was called the Torturer's Lobby. He's that kind of guy.

He's like, oh yeah, you did human rights violations? Well, we're going to rehab your image. You're going to put a suit on, and we'll present you to people in D.C., and they'll think you're a legit person. Yeah. Now, your show's also great for giving us weird personal details, like that Hitler was a fanboy of Westerns, and that totally informed his military decisions, and that Saddam was a romance novelist. Is there a surprising personal detail about Manafort that you particularly liked? Yeah. When he started working with Ukraine's wannabe dictator, Viktor Yanukovych, Yanukovych had just lost an election for president. It was Manafort who helped him get elected a few years later. And his advice to Yanukovych was to basically dress and act

exactly like Paul Manafort. They got identical suits tailored together. He made Yanukovych was to basically dress and act exactly like Paul Manafort. They got identical suits tailored together. He made Yanukovych start doing his hair the same way Manafort did. That was how he helped this guy into power. It was like, be like me. Dress exactly like me. You know what your problem is, Victor? You don't have my swag. Yeah, right.

That's what'll put you in it. Apparently worked. Yeah. Right. For a while. It's like twins. Yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

MTV's official challenge podcast is back for another season. That's right. The challenge is about to embark on its monumental 40th season, y'all. And we are coming along for the ride. Woohoo. That would be me, Devin Simone. And then there's me, Davon Rogers. And we're here to take you behind the scenes of... Drumroll, please. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

The Challenge 40 Battle of the Eras. Yes. Each week, cast members will be joining us to spill all of the tea on the relentless challenges, heartbreaking eliminations, and, of course, all the juicy drama. And let's not forget about the hookups. Anyway, regardless of what era you're rooting for at home, everyone is welcome here

on MTV's official challenge podcast. So join us every week as we break down episodes of the Challenge 40 Battle of the Eras. Listen to MTV's official challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Carrie 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.

Kaitlyn 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. Hey, I'm Bruce Bozzi. On my podcast, Table for Two, we have unforgettable lunch after unforgettable lunch with the best guest you could possibly ask for. People like Matt Bomer. Thank you for that introduction. I'm going to slip you a couple of 20s under the table for that. Emma Roberts. When it came into my email inbox, I was like, okay, I know I'm going to slip you a couple of 20s under the table for that. Emma Roberts. When it came into my email inbox, I was like, okay, I know I'm going to love this so much that I don't even want to read it.

Because if I can't be in it, I'm going to be bummed. And Colin Jost. You know, your wife was the first guest on Table for Two. It's come full circle. As long as I do better than her, I'm happy. Table for Two is a bit different from other interview shows. We sit down at a great restaurant for a meal, maybe a glass of rosé, and the stories start flowing. Our second season is airing right now, so you can catch up on our conversations that are intimate, surprising, and often hilarious.

Listen to Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged

housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current, available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And so DefCon, the top hacker conference,

took place over the weekend in Vegas. And they demonstrated what they're capable of in terms of hacking. There were a few highlights that we'll point out. There was first a group that hacked an Amazon Echo, and they were basically, they strung together like multiple bugs and like a second gen Echo that could basically allow a hacker to stream audio from a microphone remotely.

So just kind of listening on you. But a lot of the, you know, this can, the DEF CON too is also meant for hackers to point out these vulnerabilities and then help these companies be like, hey, you need to sort this out. So the group who had found this vulnerability, they've already told Amazon about it. So you don't have to full on worry about this and start putting your Echo inside of like a soundproof box or anything like that. It also requires pretty sophisticated access to like your Wi-Fi network. So I think you'll be all right.

But it was just interesting enough to know, yeah, the thing that you thought can happen can happen without them addressing that. And then last year, the DEF CON conference got a huge press buzz because they did a lot of work with voting machines. And they showed how you could just hop in that thing and just mess with the vote tallies or whatever. And this year. Well, thank God they must have fixed that. Yes, they did. They did.

They totally worked that out. Except this year, they just upped the ante. And again, it was no different. They took a lot of the machines that a lot of states use when they're using electronic voting. They were able to upload their own malicious software they could change vote tallies and one of them even just pulled like the hot fire what's the that one gif with the dude just going with his hands on his cheeks like this he had that gif just playing on the screen because you can do anything right but the real fun part about this one is they also had 40 children between the ages of 6 and 17 attempt to infiltrate replicas of these election board websites for several swing states. And so what they did was just built out like the exact architecture of these websites and just said, have at it, kids.

If, you know, like young aspiring hackers, do your worst. And let's just say the kids are all right at hacking because we are fucked they were able to some of these kids were able to exploit vulnerabilities with that they were able to tamper with vote tabulations change the names of candidates uh and one 11 year old reportedly hacked into a mock-up of the florida secretary of state's website and changed the voting results within 10 minutes. But election officials were like, hey, hey, I'm not really impressed by that. I mean, yeah, most elections are done in, what, four or five minutes?

Yeah, exactly. And they're like, you know, the environment's completely different. Yeah, because a noisy conference hall is much different than the empty gymnasiums being overseen by octogenarians asking you, when, where do you live? Yeah. So, you know, again, if the kids are, if it's that easy for, you know, younger people with just sort of the basic skills to do it, I think maybe we should be looking into this a little bit more rather than, you know, passing the blame and being like, oh, well, this,

this, you know, I'm not, I, well, we're not really impressed by this. It's scary because the details of this, in some of the hacks, they change the candidates' names. And the things they change it to are Bob DaBuilder and Richard Nixon's head. So it's like a mixture of juvenile sensibilities, but they're so easily able to just fucking destroy this thing. I follow a lot of these people on Twitter, a lot of folks who are at DEF CON, a lot of hackers, because I don't understand that at all. So I just try to listen to what the people who do say. And there was a big thread of people who do security for these things and who actually have been part of coding voting machines like Diebold and stuff saying, this is the only field of coders you will find this for. None of us think electronic voting is a good idea.

None of the people responsible for securing electronic voting machines think that it's a good idea to vote electronically because they're just not secure yeah and you can't really point to hard evidence like a paper receipt or something or like you know how we have in california like the ink the inked up uh voting card we get so yeah they also hacked police body cameras yeah voicemail the internet of things is horrifically insecure the body camera was wild because they're you know people hackers were able to remotely download the footage edit it and then re-upload it and they weren't like it was untraceable like you wouldn't have known that someone had just switched out a video file in there jesus so that's cool uh hey that's cool. Hey, that's pretty cool.

Hey, man, that's cool. Hey, so what else they do? Oh, they're able to live stream footage. So they're saying, you know, criminals could just basically tap into a feed and be like, oh, okay, that's where you are? Okay, that's pretty cool. It's one of those things.

It's weird because like in the 90s, it's sort of similar to what happened with gaming in the 90s where there were all these pundits like screaming about how dangerous video games were and it was bullshit. And so now when people try to point to like, no, there's actually some things

we need to be concerned about psychologically of what violent video games do to people, that doesn't get any traction because we were so used to like- It being bullshit. It being bullshit. It's the same thing with hackers. We're so used to movies in 1998

where people were hacking cars and stuff. And it was like, that's not possible. But now it is. Now we have autonomous cars. They can be hacked. Remotely started, remotely stopped. Whatever you need. And so our reflex to reject that as a possibility is out of sync with the reality of the situation.

Yeah, 100%. The voicemail one was really interesting, though, because I never thought of how that works. So what they were saying is a lot of our mobile carriers, they were just terrible at securing voicemail because we're still using four-digit pins. Most people don't even know what their pin is because you can just dial it straight from your phone now. And it's usually just the last four. It'll default to being the last four digits of your phone number. Oh, cool.

Yeah. four it'll default to being the last four digits of your phone number uh so yeah so then basically what hackers can do they can just brute force access your shit because there's also no limit of the number of like incorrect passwords you enter where it just locks it down so you can just have at it uh and then once they do that they can get into your voicemail system they can request like a like whatsapp send like you know the target's code via a phone call and if they don't pick it up and goes to voicemail then they can access the voicemail get the code and then put your shit like you know log into your paypal ebay other shit just by using this like voicemail hack so that's another cool pretty cool thing that's going on well fortunately we have our top minds

at the top of the government just sort of locking everything down. But didn't they actually just pull a bunch of funding from that? Yes. Yeah, they did. Oh, come on, Robert. So Politico has a new article out that reveals that the president, you know, from past people who have left the White House and are not coming with the same energy as Omarosa. So they're just like dropping these anonymous hints or anonymous quotes to journalists.

But the anonymous quotes are pretty scary. They say that the president doesn't seem to grasp the concept of time zones. Like when because he always wants to call Abe, Japan's prime minister, in the middle of the night. He's like, yeah, let's give him a call at 3 in the afternoon. They're like, oh, but it's in the middle of the night where he is. But he keeps bringing that up. Like he can't – it doesn't register to him. And again, that's a part where I'm almost like, okay, he could just be impulsive and he just wants what he wants.

Not that he has trouble understanding time zones. And he just wants what he wants and not that he has trouble understanding time zones. But he could also – it also shows there could be something wrong with his ability to retain information where someone is saying, no, we can't call him because 11 at night there. Right. Uh-huh. Then five minutes later, you say the same shit. And it's another example of like a thing. If he was just a guy, it wouldn't be – because there's a lot of people who don't really have a strong understanding of time zones there's a lot of people

who can't pronounce Bhutan or Nepal like there's a lot of people he called them nipple and button yeah like legit this is not a joke this is in the fucking article

where he's he was I think it was because he was prepping for a meeting with India and he's like what's this other shit here and they're like

I wasn't prepping for it it was during the meeting with India oh and he's like what's this other shit he's like the countries of Bhutan and Nepal and he's like, what's this other shit? He's like, the countries of Bhutan and Nepal. He's like, nipple, button. What the fuck is that?

Nipple, button. But he didn't know it was a joke. That'd be hard to button. Yeah. I'm sorry, go on. No, I was just saying, if he was a normal dude, this wouldn't be a problem. It'd be totally understandable. Because there's a lot of shit to keep track of in the world for all of us.

And you pick your battles. But he's the president. The president should know these things. Yeah. The stakes are much higher when you're the president for shit like reading even. One of my favorite details from the article is that so during a meeting with Abe at Mar-a-Lago in April, he repeatedly praised Xi Jinping, according to this former NSC official, and everyone was cringing because Japan and China are rivals. But presumably Trump was like, oh, another Asian guy. Yeah, I like the other one that I just met.

Hey, your cousin's pretty chill. Right. And people are like, yo, you're not supposed to talk about how much you love China to Japan. That's not a good look. Why was that? It's called diplomacy, asshole. The Washington Post reported that he sometimes puts on an Indian accent and imitates the way their leader speaks. Well, real quick. So like I said, on the GIST Slate's Daily Podcast, Well, real quick. So like I said, on the phone. He just calls leaders of foreign countries. He loves calling Macron from France and just chatting. And Macron has to be like, hey, what are we talking about?

Because he's very busy. I've got a country too, right? You don't just call to check in with someone and be like, hey, so what's up? And they try and get him to focus on like deliverables and like you know because he's the president and the other leaders have you know things to do so there needs to be some transaction but he doesn't get that and he just like hangs out like a you know 80s teenager he probably caused like hey i heard you you guys won the world cup who do you guys won the World Cup. Who do you guys think in a football game,

the Eagles or the French national team? Come on down to the gridiron. Let's see what's up. He's like, I'm sorry, what is this call about? Right. I don't know. I'm lonely. There's a joke with Japanese diplomats

that Abe has had one meeting with Trump seven times because he has to go back over the same issues every time he talks to him. Oh, man. Yeah. And then I like how it goes on. Abe and his aides have avoided telling Trump that he contacts them too often for fear of harming their friendly relationship. Oh, Japan.

They're just not that into youald well yeah it's so japanese too or even like you're doing high stakes governmental business and it was just more like i get you know i get it for diplomacy too but i i can also see how just being japanese too it's like let's let's not call out his shit to his face too because it's yeah i mean despite how he acts, he's still the most powerful person on the planet. So, yeah. This thing calls seven times. Yeah. It's just probably about, hey, how's your cousin doing?

You think he'll knock the tariffs off? Right, right. Did you talk to him? Are you guys, are you having dinner or something soon? What's she up to? Bob Goodlot. Let's talk about this dude. Oh, Bob Goodlot.

I mean, look, he's, it's just a quick story because he is, you know, he's talk about this, dude. This is just his vibe is just he's just one of those repulsive Freedom Caucus Republicans who is all about protecting the president and disregarding fact or honesty or having things like pride or shame, things like that. But his son is out here on Twitter just getting just I don't know, just getting messy. You know, his son, Bobby good lot uh he he tweeted he just quote tweeted quote i just gave the maximum allowed donation to jennifer lewis a democrat running for my father's congressional seat i've also gotten five other folks to commit to donate the max 2018 is a year to flip districts let's do this so he's basically saying i'm giving money to somebody to get my dad the fuck out of Congress. And that tweet went boo-koo because, yeah. I mean, Bob Goodlot is just one of the most unsavory characters in the house.

And I do love this new trend because it happened with Stephen Miller, too. Yeah, his uncle. People's relatives throwing them under the bus for being monsters. I think it's probably good because in the future, you'll be like, wait, you're Bobby Goodlot? You're like, but the tweet, though. You saw the tweet? Oh, yeah.

All right. All right, gang, gang. I did my part. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, I'm axed out. Yeah. I'm axed out to Jennifer Lewis's campaign. You think, yeah, I may be his son.

I may be Bobby Goodlot Jr., but I'm axed out to his yet thing. I'm doing my best. Yeah, I think it must be tough, though, when you have these familial relationships to these people who are so, like, you have the same name or whatever. I'm related to Rick Santorum. No. Yeah. You are?

It's a distant family relation. Wow. And he's a real piece of shit. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, come on. I mean, we can't say that. He's a real piece of Santorum.

Yeah. There we go. Which is the foam that is created. Yeah, there you go. There we go. Which is the foam that is created with lube. Yeah, when you're having anal sex. Right, when you're having anal sex. And the poop and the cum all get sort of, that's Santorum, as I understand it. Foam up. That is a term.

Wow. Welcome to our new show. No, that's what a Santorum, they made that because he was such an asshole to the- They made, who made that? The gay community. The, they made that because he was such an asshole to the- They made? Who made that? The gay community. The gay community made that. Oh, it was like an activist thing. They made that their term for that foam.

Wow. Yeah. Just to make sure he is not forgotten. He lives in infamy. Yeah. He will be remembered. He will be. But I mean, to Bobby Goodlatte's credit, Donald Trump Jr. supposedly hated his dad his whole life

and was kind of abused by him. It was just like, this guy's the fucking worst. But when it became politically and socially a good thing for him to say that he fucked with his dad, he did that because he's an opportunist. When you say fucked with him, he bangs with him. Yeah, yeah. He's cool with his dad now. I mean, oddly enough, he could be opportunist. When you say fucked with, he bangs with it. Yeah, yeah. Like, he's cool with his dad now. I mean, oddly enough, he could be the one who brings it all fucking down,

because he's the one who, from what we see, seems like to have had the most direct contact with Russia repeatedly, which would be a fitting end. All right, Robert, I wanted to check in with you on just what's going on internationally. You're someone who has been on top of shit that like we're talking about it today in the news but you were on top of it years ago when it was first like popping off like the crimea revolution uh is a big issue in u.s russia relations today and

uh you wrote an article about that like as it was happening when we worked together back at Cracked, you were on top of it and interacting with the rebels when that was first popping off. Yeah. And that was my first, I would consider my first real piece of journalism was interviewing a bunch of protesters at the Maidan. general, what I'll say is if things go badly in the next couple of years, like really, really badly, like global conflict, you know, expanding to a size we haven't seen in decades badly, I think historians in the future might trace back the starting of whatever hostilities erupt as far back as 2007. Like when we're looking at like now, like we look at World War II and you're like, when does it start? And a lot of people say 1938 as opposed to 1939 or 40. I think they might trace this global conflict that I do believe we are in a global conflict right now.

And I think the warfighting domain that it has mainly occurred in is the internet. But it has physical battlefields in Ukraine, in Syria, in Iraq, in other countries around the world. in Syria, in Iraq, in other countries around the world. And I think we may trace the beginning of that conflict back to 2007, when Russia launched an unprecedented cyber attack against Estonia, which was at that point, and I think it's still at this point, the most wired nation on the planet. All of their banking, their voting, all of their government work was essentially carried out online. So it was a devastating attack that was launched on them. Their system is actually really cool. Like when you read about how Estonia is set up, like it's all this really intuitive stuff that it's like, oh yeah, that is how the internet should have simplified our life. But because we are sort of this corporatocracy,

all the different ways that corporatocracies are inefficient have made it so that we're not able to take advantage of that. But read up on Estonia. They really do a cool thing. And they are – the whole country right now is ready and is in a semi-permanent state of being ready for a mass national war with Russia. And then, of course, in 2008, we had a war between Russia and Georgia. And some people will say – it only lasted like five days. And some people will say, and in fact, the UN has said that the actual fighting started when Georgian troops started firing on separatist troops that then brought the Russians in. But leading up to it, there was an internet blitz.

There was a propaganda blitz. There was a, you know, arming of these sort of breakaway groups by the Russians. So it's very complicated. But you can almost look at what happened in Georgia and what happened in Estonia as a lead up to what happened in Ukraine. Because in 2014, basically, a bunch of protesters rose up against the government of Viktor Yanukovych, who was the president of Ukraine and had brutally suppressed with extreme violence protests in the center of the city that led to a larger protest movement geared at unseating him. And he was pro-Russian? He was very pro-Russian. He wanted to pull the

country out of a deal that it had made that would bring it closer to the EU in favor of going closer to Russia, which most Ukrainians supported getting closer to the EU, except for in the East. And when I went over, I've spent a lot of time in Eastern Ukraine talking to people who supported the separatists at first and talking to people who lived in those areas when, because a civil war started after that. Like after these protesters in Western Ukraine unseated the president, the civil war began in Eastern Ukraine. And that civil war was largely, there were some local rebels who started fighting, but a lot of the first wave and a lot of the current fighters, there are Russian soldiers who just pulled off their uniform patches and crossed the border

their artillery is russian their tanks are russian um so the guys that you were kind of interacting with the men and women i guess uh were the reason that we started writing about it at cracked is like it was just this incredible scene of like they built a snow fort yeah an ice fortress yeah this is the my don protest yeah in the middle of the in the middle of the city and you know we're fighting their government with catapults and like burning tires out of an ice fortress yeah uh it was just this crazy story um and paul manafort was behind a lot of that and was apparently according to paul manafort's daughters he was the one who urged the Ukrainian government to crack down violently on the protesters. He has so much blood on his hands.

And if you talk to Ukrainians about what they saw as the lead up to that, starting a year or two before hostility started, there was a propaganda blitz in Russian media aimed at creating a divide between Western and Eastern Ukraine, aimed at creating a divide between Western and Eastern Ukraine, much as there was a propaganda blitz in the United States aimed at creating a divide between the left and the right. Or not creating, but further widening. Because there was a divide between East and Western Ukraine. Well, their first attempt was Texas and California secession.

And they were like, wait, this isn't catching on like other places. The right and the left certainly hate each other. I think my point is that you, number one, and this is something the Defense Department came out last year in a report and said that the United States has fallen behind in the internet as a warfighting domain. And it is a very important warfighting domain. And if you look at it that way, this conflict has been going on for a decade now. And you have to connect. You have to connect. So number one, a lot of the fighters who provided manpower for the civil war in Ukraine were essentially propagandized on the internet. There's a video called I, Russian Occupier that was viewed millions of times. And I've talked to at least I've noticed a number of right-wing and fascist activists in the United States point to as like a video that radicalized them. They use the same – they're set up almost as movie trailers and they use a lot of like

video game style imagery and it's – I get to this point where I'm like, okay, am I just – because I spend so much time thinking on this, am I like – have I gone crazy? Like am I building this up to be more than it is? But I do think there's a global conflict in people. Social media has a death count, a substantial death count, because there were, you know, thousands of soldiers in Ukraine who were reached out to and radicalized through the internet and wound up fighting there because they were convinced to leave their homes and go fight there because of stuff they saw on the internet. And the same thing is true in Syria and Iraq, 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers who were radicalized online through Twitter, through Facebook, through YouTube.

It's like in the past, in traditional warfare, you would go invade and then try to win hearts and minds. And now you start out with the hearts and minds and try and win people over to your cause and then radicalize them, I guess. Yeah. And so that's – I would say in terms of where I'm looking at right now, I think there's a possibility that we're going to see more violent conflict between the Syrian government now that the civil war is winding down and the Turkish government. And I don't know where the U.S US is going to fall on that or where Russia

is going to fall on that, because both the US and Russia have, you know, the US has supported the Kurds in Syria, who are now allied pretty closely and increasingly closely with the Syrian government. The Russians have supported the Syrian government, but the US and Russia have both also supported and sold arms to the Turkish government. Right. So it's really hard to see what's going to happen there. But just generally, I mean, we've talked on this show, Super Producer Nick Stumpf was talking about how, you know, there's this idea that we're no longer in a place where we can understand conflicts regionally. And it's more, you know, because the internet has just kind of

broken down those barriers. It's just ideological conflicts that spread that aren't based on where you live, but they're just, you know, being fought across the world on the internet. And the actual military power of a state, at least at this point, in whatever conflict is going on, matters a lot less than their ability to project power through the internet, because the Russian military on paper is very weak. They are not on paper a threat to the United States or to NATO. They've got this tank called the Armada that was... There are a bunch of viral stories four or five years back about it, about how much deadlier it is than all of NATO's tanks. And the undercovered postscript of that is that Russia's

ordered less than 100 of them and has cut back on their orders substantially. And it's cost them something like a trillion dollars. It's their equivalent of the F-35. It's a big boondoggle that's expensive and not effective. The Russian military is not effective, would not be an effective warfighting force in the conventional sense. But it's been very effective in Syria. It's been very effective in Ukraine because they have married the use of fairly small surgical amounts of force to the use of very successful propaganda and media campaigns. Right. A couple that were like some insurgency movement and you're like, boom.

Yeah. And the U.S. is bad at that. Yeah. Yeah. Because it used to be like, you know, like rain down pamphlets of propaganda by air back in the old days. That was the best we had. That was Twitter back then. Right.

And now it's just straight up, no, you got it on your phone. All right. Well, that was very interesting. Thank you for that. We're going to take another quick break and we'll be right back. We're going to take another quick the scenes of, drumroll please. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The Challenge 40, Battle of the Eras. Yes.

Each week, cast members will be joining us to spill all of the tea on the relentless challenges, heartbreaking eliminations, and of course, all the juicy drama. And let's not forget about the hookups. Anyway, regardless of what era you're rooting for at home, everyone is welcome here on MTV's official Challenge podcast. So join us every week as we break down episodes of the Challenge 40 Battle of the Eras. Listen to MTV's official Challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. of one single game. Every great player needs a foil. I ain't really near them. Why is that? 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.

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Listen to Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today.

And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore.

The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current. Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And I was almost surprised that we're back in that delivery of that. Yeah.

So speaking of surprises, guys, The Meg. What is The Meg exactly? I mean, I know it's a movie. What is it about? It's about a- Big ass shark? An extinct species of shark that was basically a giant great white, except more deadly and more angry and better at killing. It's called the Megalodon is the full name for it. is the full name for it.

And if you were obsessed with sharks like I was when I was a kid, it's like, you know, just this mythical creature that's like so cool. In terms of scale, it's like to a great white shark what a great white shark is to a salmon. Yes.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, that's tight. Wait, this already happened. There was like Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus. There's been a lot of movies mega shark versus crocosaurus i'm i'm trying to like puzzle through this because so i i pay attention to the box office they're usually like on friday they will put out their box office

prediction like these box office analysts and they'll usually be between like five and ten percent like sometimes they're just like right on point being able to predict exactly what something's gonna make the Meg came out this weekend it doubled what box office mojo was predicting holy shit it pulled in a hundred and fifty a hundred and forty six point nine million dollars globally nobody really that solo got oh yeah oh yeah it destroyed solo it's uh it might be more than solos made uh fucking disney yeah but so i'm trying to figure out like what about this connected so much with people i'm thinking there's something about so there's been shark movies since jaws there's deep blue sea uh there are shittier shark movies like Sharknado and stuff like that.

But I wonder if there's something to it being a singular, like there's been sharks movies like where there are multiple sharks, but not a like singular shark movie. And I think there's like something about one giant man-eating shark that makes I don't know that appeals to us a little bit more I also know I mean Jack you and I have been making content for people on the internet for a very long time and we've noticed that it's definitely cyclical what people are interested in yeah when we were both at

Cracked in the early years of Cracked some of our most successful articles were lists of weird prehistoric animals and monsters and insects that were scary and then for years you couldn't get people to read that stuff. And maybe it's just that that shit swung back around and people are interested again. Yeah. I mean, I, yeah, I think that's definitely true.

I think people have always been interested in big prehistoric creatures. I think what happened at Cracked was that we created a type of article that we were the only ones doing it. And then BuzzFeed and a bunch of other websites basically saw that those articles were popular. Listicle. Yeah, the listicle. Listicle. And they flooded the internet with articles that were indistinguishable from ours.

They weren't quite as good as ours, but they were easy to confuse with it. And when you're on the internet, you can't tell the difference. So I can blame you all for these, these 15 teen celebs have taken a turn for the worse. No, it's still Buzzfeed's fault. Number six will make you die. Shout out a terrible version. But I, but to your point about like the cyclical nature of things,

one thing we did notice in their early days, and I think up until the end at Cracked was that robots were no longer scary to people. Yeah, right. In the 80s, they were a thing that the whole world was terrified of, and there were all these movie franchises. Shout out to Batteries Not Included. Yeah. And then starting in about 2008, 2009, we just couldn't get people to read about robots

in any way unless it was like, this robot's fucking cool and does a thing that's going to solve a problem that you have. We had at least exactly one article about drones that got decent traffic, and then no one wanted to read about drone war anymore. Right. Yeah, that's right. I wonder if some of it might also be, though, like right now you've got a bunch of very, it's a very political time in the country, and you've got a lot of very political movies,

Black K.K. Klansman, or however we're supposed to pronounce it. Just Klansman. Sorry to bother you. A lot of political stuff has dropped recently and maybe people were like, oh, it's just a movie about a big ass shark. That seems like it'll be a palate cleanser. I don't want to think about the fucking state of the world.

I think that is what it is. It's so broad. Yeah. Completely apolitical. It's basically shark, it distills shark weeks, the energy of Shark Week, and puts it into a movie that they also engineered to be accessible to China and America. Yeah, it put up $46 million in America. It put up $50 million in China.

Right. That rarely happens. That's really interesting. Because when you get that on-screen duo of Jason Statham and Li Bingbing, I mean, you know that's his money in the register, bling bling. But with these two, I think it's just because it's so, it's just easy to understand. Big ass shark.

Motherfuckers are scared. 100% of humans can understand the appeal of that. It's not like Star Wars where there's a lot of cultural things as to whether or not you find that story interesting. Oh yeah, a big shark attacking people. I'm scared of sharks. I've swam. Right. And I think, yeah, because like the shallows are 47 meters down.

Those are a little more nuanced for shark films. And there are multiple sharks. I'm telling you, that has something to do with it. Well, no, the shallows was just one, right? Oh, was it? Yeah, it was that lady who goes out swimming and gets the shit bitten out of her. And that was a pretty fun. I enjoyed that.

They're intense. But yeah, I think with this one, you can just look at a shot where one shark is the size of 900 people. And you're like, oh intense. But yeah, I think with this one, you can just look at a shot where like one shark is the size of like 900 people and you're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that shot in the trailer of like there's a bunch of people swimming and you see the shark's mouth

in the water and it's as big as all. And you're like, oh, okay, I want to see a shark eat a bunch of people. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a Roland Emmerich movie,

but with a shark. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, maybe we were just, or maybe I was overthinking it, and it's just like, yeah, it's a Roland Emmerich movie with a giant shark. Yeah, well, I guess that's how much

we're dumbing things down, where we're like, surely people's tastes have to be a little more refined than such an aggressively beef movie or whatever, but at the end of the day, you just want to see some motherfuckers get eaten by sharks. Super producer Ana Hosnia is writing a question to me.

Team Field Trip? Which, yes. I think that's a good idea. Bring a Sprig soda. To go hunt down the megalodon that lives in the Marianas Trench, right? Yeah. We hijack James Cameron's submarine

and write it down there with a bunch of shotguns and take out that damn fish. Hell yeah. Or why don't we just get Meg tattoos? Or that. Either or. I thought that's what she meant by Team Field Trip. Go get Meg tattoos why don't we just get Meg tattoos? Or that. Either or. I thought that's what she meant by team field.

Go get Meg tattoos. Yeah, we'll get Meg tattoos. I'm just going to get a big shark on my throat. But I mean, the first Jaws is a B movie executed by like a Hitchcockian great director. And the first Jurassic Park, I'd say the same thing. And even though the first Jurassic Park has the raptors it still has this like the T-Rex is like the singular

monster that's like lurking out there that you're constantly aware of. It's not just like a bunch of different animals. Have you seen what the projections are for this weekend? They think it's gonna double. They think the Meg is going to double? I can see that because it's a surprise.

Internationally, yeah. If something is a surprise, people start piling on to it. Another thing in one of these articles in the media that an analyst did point out was it comes at the right time where all the traditional tentpole movies in the summer have already happened. People are right about

to go to school. You get your last hurrah in, and it's like nothing too weird. You don't really have to wrap your head around it. So they kind of found a good lull. I think Crazy Rich Asians is going to do well this weekend too. Let's hope so. Yeah, I think so.

I hope that next year is 50% movies about sharks and 50% movies with Ken Jeong as a major character. And it could be that sharks just kind of are a great metaphor for the time we live in now where we're innocent people and there are just a few disgusting sharks out there wanting to do the most. Right. Yeah. I mean,

the shark clearly represents Donald Trump. I didn't want to say it. Oh, no. I meant Spectrum Cable. Oh. Okay. Because they do not. I meant spectrum cable. Oh, okay. Because they do not. I got words for them. All right. It's time for beverage update.

Two beverage-related stories for some reason. They just happened to come across the transom at the same time. Miles, let's talk about the old can I get a cup for water scam. Okay. I don't know about y'all, but when you're in high school, this is standard operating procedure when you have no money, but you want a little bit of a soda at a fast food restaurant. You go up there. A little taste of something sweet.

And you say, can I get a cup for water, please? And they give you the plastic see-through cup because they want to make sure. So this is a tale about a man who took this a little too far. So this 48-year-old man, Daniel Stein, in Montana, he pulled the same trick out of Arby's. An employee saw that he just went for the sweet, sweet soda, confronted him, he ran out, and then as he kept confronting him,

the man who is the perpetrator started attacking him, tried to kick at him. So the employee was just like, all right, fuck this, called the cops. World's most dedicated Arby's employee, by the way. Like, come on, Liam Neeson,. Called the cops. World's most dedicated Arby's employee, by the way. Like, come on, Liam Neeson, settle the fuck down. That's just a goddamn. I'm going to go on a limb and say that was not a person of color who was working at Arby's.

Because you'd be like, yeah, get the fuck out of here. Anyway, excuse me, sir. You have lemonade in there. So the cops show up. This guy, this dude, Daniel Stein, he ran into a Denny's, hid in the bathroom. He wouldn't come out. The officers tried to get him out. They had to physically try and open the door.

He started resisting, started fighting with officers. He had to be tased. And now my man is looking at so many charges. Felony robbery, then four misdemeanors, criminal trespass, disorderly conduct, obstructing a peace officer, and resisting arrest. What is the felony robbery? All because you wanted to save a couple pennies. Wait, the felony robbery is just putting soda inside the water cup? I don't know if that's...

If you... Motherfucker. If you steal anything and then commit a violent crime, it can be bumped up to a felony. Yeah. And assaulting an officer is a very broad term. Oh, yeah. You can just be like, hey, don't touch me. Oh, you... Uh-oh. Uh-oh. An't touch me. Oh, you, oh, oh, oh.

Or an officer, covering protests, I've been shoved by a lot of police officers. And if you shove back, that's assaulting an officer. Your head will be cracked. Yeah. That's what they're looking for. And then in other beverage news. I just like that. This is.

Oh, this news story, yes. This is a bummer. This is more of a hack. And I saw this. You guys see this? This was going around. You guys see this? You hear about this?

This was going around. It's like from an old article, but suddenly like a lot of people started writing it up again. So we find out that there's a thing flight attendants do not do. There's one thing that a lot of flight attendants, they just know better when you're on a flight. You do not do this one thing. They just know better when you're on a flight. You do not do this one thing. And that is to drink straight up coffee or tea on an airplane or drink any of the fucking tap water on a plane because it is disgusting.

Right. So this is any anything that does not come in a bottle, a bottle or a can that is like where you can see that the seal has been broken. Like doctors even say, don't fill up a water bottle for a baby. Like we're not talking about like in the sink in the bathroom. Obviously, you don't use that. But like even the drinking water that the flight attendants carry around. Yeah. So they say, yeah, or if you're immunocompromised, don't.

Right. Because there was a study. This was like 14 years ago. But still, I think it still holds true. I think they refer to some other more relevant stuff too, but they said in a sample of 158 planes, 13% contained coliform. Two of the airplanes are found to have dangerous E. coli in the water. And then another thing they say,

the EPA study found that one in every eight planes fails the agency's standards for water safety. Now, keep in mind the EPA is the government body that they look over and they make sure the standards for plain water is in their purview. So considering where the EPA is right now, I don't think, I would probably worry even more whatever the fuck is in there because I don't think anybody's going to be checking now. I say roll the dice. Don't be a wuss.

Roll the dice. Drink the water. Drink the coffee. Drink as much as they will give you and you will be stronger. It's the same reason I suggest licking the floor of bathrooms when you're at the bar. It just makes you stronger. That's what my mom used to do when I was a kid. I cannot recommend Robert's advice on this.

Robert also likes to make drugs that haven't been taken by humans in 100 years. He has a whole book about that. I'm just saying when society collapses, those of us who have been drinking the filthy airplane coffee will be the ones who rebuild the world. I mean anybody who I think was a dirty little kid and got just shit all over you, like dirt and you're just eating garbage or whatever like I used to, you got that good diversity hopefully in your immune system. Yeah, that's strong constitution. It's like Danny DeVito. That's why he's unkillable. I assume that he is the same as he is in Always Sunny.

He's like, my secret. Plugging up wounds with trash. Second Danny DeVito ref in the same show. Damn. One of the better myths that I've had busted for me is, for some reason, I always assumed planes were, and we've talked about this before, but in case you didn't hear that episode,

I always assumed that it was the air being spit back at us through the air filters in planes, that the air was full of germs. And it's just that every surface in an airplane, they don't get cleaned, ever. Have you seen how quickly they clean a plane? Yeah, they go in for five minutes. They just pull shit out of the pockets. Yeah. So it's like sitting in a you know public restroom literally like you're sitting in a bar restroom and you're putting your face down on it

and you're you know it's really bad for you so like the first if you want to avoid germs if you just wear a biohazard suit right but no just like wipe down your seat wipe down everything around you that's uh that one of the best things you can do. Or I do. I buy a plane outfit, which is a really cheap T-shirt and pants from a thrift store. And I throw it away, pond landing at my destination. Do you really? Don't want to wear it.

No, of course not. Publicly, as I walk off the plane. I'm wearing an oversized Tweety Bird shirt and weird sweatpants. I'm like, what the fuck is this? That would explain a lot about how people dress on planes. I'm sure there are people who are that concerned about their germs, who have throwaway clothes. Yeah. Robert, it's been a lot of fun having you, man.

Thank you. Where can people find you, follow you online? Well, they can find my podcast, Behind the Bastards. We just had another episode drop on Tuesday, and we'll have another one coming out on Thursday. It's a two-part series on Charles Koch, the Luke Skywalker of rich people. So I recommend checking that out.

The Luke Skywalker of rich people. Yeah, that's how he views himself. And his dad was a Nazi. Yeah, well, his dad built a critical piece of infrastructure for the Nazis and also said that the Nazis were the people who had the best culture in the world in 1938. Right. Yeah. And he was raised by a Nazi nanny. Yes, who measured his poop every morning.

Right. Yep. And literal Nazi. Went and was like, hey, I've loved being your nanny, but this Nazi thing's popping off over during World War II. I'm going to go back to Germany. She left in 1940 to celebrate the victory over France with Hitler. Right. That's tight.

And, you know, just like Luke Skywalker, I also heard his Uncle Ben and Aunt Beru were tragically killed. Yes, yes, yes. He was on his way. And that, I'm not going to make fun of him for that. That's horrible. And, you know, I think Charles Koch's dream was just to go to Tosche Station for some power converters. Yeah, that's what all of us want. Yeah.

Yeah. You can also find me on Twitter at IWriteOK, and you can find my book that Jack mentioned on Amazon, A Brief History of Ice. So that's where you can find me. Yep. And also, do you have a tweet you've been enjoying? Yes, yes. It's the guy who did the tweet about a genie, and he asked the genie to,

the genie said he had two wishes, and his first wish was to replace every G with a P, and his second wish was to replace an E at the end of every word with an S, and so the genie's name was Penis by the end of the joke. It was a great Twitter gag. That is awesome. Miles, where can people find you? You can find me on Twitter and Instagram at milesofgray.

And, you know, shout out to Christy Yamaguchi Mame, who through some Reddit sleuthing, I figured out that there is a Daily Zeitgeist subreddit that they be running. So shout out to the Daily Zeitgeist subreddit where you guys talk about the show. I see you out there. I'm stalking you on Twitter. And in terms of a tweet that I'm feeling, it comes from Lexi Alexander,

which who, she wrote a tweet that said, shout out to white male critics who have trouble connecting to crazy rich Asians and black Klansmen. Does it not speak to your experience?

What's that like? I'm so lucky to have all these movies featuring multicultural feminists or Arabs in creative industries like myself. I can't imagine. All right.

And a tweet I was enjoying from Omar Najam. It starts out, teacher sees student sharing a note. Teacher, why don't you read that out loud? Student reading note. Dear teacher, this is an intervention. Your methods of discipline via public humiliation are uninspired carbon copies of Hollywood tropes. We wrote this letter as a class. And you can follow me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien.

You can follow 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. You can find footnotes for this episode in the description of the episode, as well as on our website. Footnotes are where we link off to the information that we talked about, source that shit. And we also link off to the song that we ride out on, Miles.

What's that going to be? What is that going to be? I think I want to play a Raven Linnaeus song. Now, I know during 420 week, I've played a track from her that was called Sticky that was produced by Stephen Lacey that has like a very sort of new R&B vibe to it. This is a track called Sleep Talking. The production is much more, you know, beady. I got that little bit of sort of fly low extra percussion in the background. But this is Sleep Talking by Raven Linnaeus.

All right. We're going to ride out on that. We will be back tomorrow because it is a daily podcast. Talk to you guys then. Bye. Bye. It's a little light. It's a little light. I'm going to go to the beach. Good night. Children, dancing in the crowd. Fallen to the ground.

Do not make a sound. Can we, can we, can we be like children Dancing in the crowd Sleeping side by side, our fingers intertwined We never seem to find the right things to say When we are awake, I can't close your eyes TV up so high as if we're trying to hide The things we'll never find out

Wish you would say That we'll be okay Our stomach's not in us no more Maybe I'm not everything you got no more I still listen to your heart speed while you're dreaming softly i wish you would have told me that you do not know me i wish you would have Before our fingers broke 10.30pm your dreaming begins With no worries and stories of life way back when When your sister would kiss you and tell you she missed you

I'm sorry, I'm sorry that that had to end 11.30, speaking slowly, you say you're lonely You say you wish that you could hold me If I would not pretend that I needed him 4.10, if we would not pretend that we could be friends 1.11, if you would not extend your beautiful hand to touch me 130, you're so, so lucky that I do not trust me You only speak with your hands

So tell me, how do I understand? How do I understand? But can, can, can, can Can we, can we, can, can, can. Can we, can we, can we be like children? Speaking right to me, you 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.

Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the podcast from Hello Sunshine that's guaranteed to light up your day. Check out our recent episode with Grammy Award-winning rapper Eve on motherhood and the music industry. No, it's a great, amazing, beautiful thing. There's moms in all industries, very high stress industries that have kids all across this world. Why can't it be music as well? Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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, Caitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister? Or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams.

Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.