The Daily Zeitgeist - Trump’s Weird Musk Interview, Streaming Wars Over? 08.14.24

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

In episode 1725, Jack and guest co-host Pallavi Gunalan are joined by co-host of This Day In Esoteric Political History and producer of What Now? with Trevor Noah, Jody Avirgan, to discuss… Trump Musk Interview,  Apple TV+ Tries To Stop Blowing Money and more! Trump Musk Interview Elon Musk's unanswered energy plea to Trump Trump Definitely Not Slurring Apple TV+ Tries To Stop Blowing Money Apple TV+ spending billions on content not many are watching LISTEN: The Traitor by Menahan Street BandSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Did you fly across the country with that arm? I did. Wow. I need the arm. Did you check it or did you take it and carry on? Checked it and wrapped it in a bunch of clothing. He removed his kid's car seat and checked that. The kids are just riding loose in the backseat.

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now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, everybody. It's Katie Couric. Have you heard about my newsletter called Body and Soul? It has everything you need to know about health and wellness, from skincare and serums to meditation and brain health. We've got you covered. And most importantly, it's information you can trust. Everything is vetted by experts at the top of their field.

Just sign up at katiecouric.com slash body and soul. That's K-A-T-I-E-C-O-U-R-I-C dot com slash body and soul. I promise you'll be happier and healthier if you do. Hello, the internet, and welcome to season 351, episode 3 of Dirt Daily's iGhost, a production of iHeartRadio. This is a podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness, and it is Wednesday, August 14th, 2024. Almost halfway through August. We're getting there. We're making our way. Although I think we all just want to pump the brakes let's let's uh

you know let this time pass slowly enjoy august i don't really need november to come at all to be honest i'd be good with no halloween for maybe just like no november november yeah no november november let's get it started my My name is Jack O'Brien, a.k.a. Well, I fuck couch. Yeah, I'll fuck a loveseat. Get that ottoman over here. I'll fuck an armchair. That one, courtesy of First Blood 522, in honor of the great J.D. Vance. The lore is building. It's not just couches. It's all furniture now.

When someone submits one of those, are they submitting, are they like doing a voice note? Or are they just saying, to the tune of To the tune of Creep. And then you have to go remind yourself of the Wow. What commitment. He and get i am i am lazy enough that i will rarely go and re-listen to the song to remind myself so i just pick the ones that

i can immediately i'm like oh yeah i know creep that one's easy it's been in every movie preview since since it came out I'm thrilled to be joined By a very special guest co-host With the guest mo-host A hilarious and brilliant stand-up comedian Writer, actor, improviser It's Pallavi Gunali Hey

I'm back bitches They didn't kill me And they tried They tried Reagan tried. Reagan is, the beef has started in Reagan. It has started. Well, Pallavi, thank you so much for joining, filling in for Miles once again.

We are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by a podcaster extraordinaire, you know, from this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia. He's also hosted 30 for 30 for ESPN, the 538 Politics Podcast. He's the lead producer on The Puzzler. It's Jody Abergain! Oh, that was a nice little... Yeah, yeah. I appreciated that, Dan. Thanks for having me. This is great. And probably nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. I have an AKA for you if you want.

Oh, you want to do it? Go ahead. Let's hear it. Hey, Joe D'Avergan, where you going with that podcast? Mic in your hand. Oh, man. That one was not suggested by a brilliant listener. That one just came from the top.

That one just came. But I think, you know, it's not all about the syllables actually fitting. Sometimes it's all. It's about the delivery. About just like what pops into my head in a given moment. It's about the heart and believing in it. And that's exactly what Ray Gunn told herself. Yeah, it's how badly do you want it, kind of.

It's not about the craft. It's just about the passion. It's just about believing in yourself, having that attitude where you're kind of it's just about the passion it's just about believing in yourself having that attitude where you're kind of like looking back at the judges just you know can you top this thing them do you know what she reminded me of she reminded me of like a missy elliott video reject you know what i mean oh yeah that's the vibes i got oh my god early rounds of american idol type energy yeah yeah one of our greats to ever cross the i don't know but to ever flesh the wrong way that's right all right jody we're gonna get to know you a little bit better in a moment

first we're gonna tell the listeners a couple of things we're talking about today we are of course talking about the big trump musk interview which i don't know i could have i feel like i could have predicted most of the things that were going to happen in that interview uh the talking points the technical problems the technical problems, the technical problems, both in terms of Twitter being able to stay up and also his teeth being able to stay in his mouth. We might get to Ray Gunn. We might get to the decline of Hollywood. We'll get to Ray Gunn. All right. We'll get to Ray Gunn. All of that. Plenty more. But first, Jody, we do like to ask our guest, what is something from your search history that's revealing about who you are? Well, I just this morning, actually, it's going to come out in a week or two, recorded an episode of my political history podcast where we looked at the history of like weird convention moments because the convention is coming up and we have a fun episode to look at some streets.

So my search history is full of like videos of um like clinty's were talking to that empty chair in 2012 you remember that that was oh that was a moment that was iconic moment iconic i gotta tell you though the one that has lingered with me the most and we go back way back in time into like there's some amazing stories from conventions in like the 20s and 30s but um when Al Gore kissed Tipper Gore for like an uncomfortably long amount of time in 2000, do you remember that? It had kind of fallen away from my memory.

I think I blocked that out. Yeah. Why did they do that? It had left my brain too. And now it's come back and I'm like, why? Why would you put that in our brains again? And weirdly, like,

it's the one that has just continued to rattle around in my brain. So why did they do that? It's such a visceral. Yeah, I know. So Al Gore had this reputation as being stiff. And so I think he wanted to come out and show I got a little. Al Gore, fucks.

Al Gore, fucks. Look, we do a real Zapruder breakdown of it on our show. But it looks like they hadn't decided they were going to do this. Like, Tipper looks caught off guard and does that little uncomfortable leaning back thing, and he keeps going in. It's like a solid three seconds. Anyway, it's for whatever reason the one weird political moment that has— He had to lean away from his wife. Yeah.

Yeah. And they separated in 2010. 2010. But, yeah, I don't think you can draw a straight line from 2000. Might not be a straight line, but two days in a row we're talking Gore. Really? Yeah. We had Rhiannon Hamam on yesterday from the 5-4 podcast.

Oh, yeah. And we were talking about Bush v. Gore in the context of the upcoming election because the supreme court is poised they kind of were ready to get involved in the last one they were doing all sorts of fuck shit like in the lead up to the last one but they didn't have like amy coney barrett was like only half through the process or like was just freshly on so she was like i'm not gonna weigh in but they were like throwing out mail-in ballots and doing all sorts of wild shit like along yeah ideological lines i i just read a biography of like the first i guess 40 years of jfk's life and he fucks

that guy fucks like too much it's a problem but it made me realize that we've been robbed of like an entertaining thing it's probably not the best in terms of political order and like how things work but like the conventions like they used to determine who was going to be vice president like he was i mean it was like yeah we'd go in and it'd just be a sort of open question in many cases and then they would like fight for it we almost we almost got that this year and i think we're getting i mean i'll be curious to see if we've gotten enough of a taste this year of what it's like when you this isn't a year and a half long process where it's like there's all this energy at the end you know i'd be curious if the parties come out of this and be like you

know what maybe we should just kind of like lay low and then like the summer before the election just go for it almost every other country in the in the world does that would be amazing if they actually learned from this process that would be beautiful i thought i had like after the 2020 election and seeing like and it was really like you know after 2016 with like obama's popularity was like kind of low and then you had it's just any sitting president becomes unpopular in the modern world and so it made me wonder, like, will it become a thing? It's going to be a struggle between the incumbent who has a lot of power because they're the president. And I think like more and more party officials are going to be like, it does not make

sense for you to be our candidate again. Everybody fucking hates you. Like they just don't like, like no matter what you do, if you have four years as president in our current media environment, people are going to hate you. And then, yeah, if Harris and Walls are able to, like, just sprint through the finish line, I think you're right. Like, that will be even more reason for people to kind of change the way they approach this and just be like, yeah, what if we switch things up all the time? What if, you know, throw a whammy in there. Throw a reverse uno. They just keep making the candidates get younger and younger until they're babies.

Baby president. But you only get to run for one term. So it's age two to six. So they're like, the baby is 30 or the president is 36 months old. Yeah. Now a lot of youthful energy. That's right. What, Jody, is something you think is underrated?

I don't know if this is underrated. This might be more what I've been listening to lately. But I've been personally riding the rated and overrated and underrated roller coaster with Charles Mingus lately. And that's because, in part because of the Kamala stuff and all those pictures of her holding up all those records. And one of them was a Mingus record. And do you know what I'm talking about? Those memes of her. So there was this video of Kamala Harris, like, from a couple years ago.

And it started flying around when she was when she captured the nomination. And it was like her coming out of a record store. And she had like some, you know, a lot of great albums. And one of them was a Mingus album. And then someone made a little thing where you could like insert, have her have like Photoshop, automatically Photoshop her holding up any album you wanted. It was very clever. have like a Photoshop, automatically Photoshop her holding up any album you wanted.

And it was very clever. But anyway, so it just Mingus has been one of my favorite artists for a long time and, and seems weirdly criminally underrated. And it was nice to see Kamala buying a Mingus album. And it's put me back on a very big Mingus kick over the last couple of weeks. Mingus is a jazz musician. Oh yes.

Sorry. Jazz musician who also trained his cats how to use the toilet, but that's another story. Really? That's why I'm a fan of him. I actually wasn't aware of his jazz work. You're a fan of the Charles Mingus

catalog for toilet training your cats. You used to be able to write Charles Mingus a letter to a P.O. Box in downtown Manhattan and then close $2 and then he would mail you back a photocopy method pamphlet with his method.

It's incredible. Wow. And do we have access to that method? Yeah, we do. I did a whole radio piece for it one time and then tried to train a kitten using the Mingus method and it didn't work that well. But yeah, it's very intuitive. I talked to a vet

and like sort of cat psychologist who validated that Mingus really had sort of tapped into something about cat psychology in terms of the method he was using to coax cats into using the toilet. Was one of the steps like play just the smoothest jazz for them, like so that they get super relaxed. Yeah, exactly. Be an amazing jazz musician. There's some joke about scatting in here. There's scatting. Oh, yeah, there is. There is.

It's in there. I saw Kamala won some Italian pasta making contest. Like all of these things from when she was like from 2012 or something. All of these random facts are coming out about her. It's just very surprising like what's what's being unearthed that's cool what is something you think is overrated jody okay here's what i've been thinking about a lot and i don't know if i think it's overrated underrated but i've been sort of working through it but i i have maybe reached a saturation point on talking about vibes and like

it's a phrase that I use a lot. I find it very useful. I will very likely utter it at some point in our upcoming conversation. But I have been catching myself lately and been like, maybe this term has run its course. And maybe- It's aura now.

Did you know that? Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, but aura is a little- It's the same thing. Yes, in theory it is, right? But doesn't aura feel like it's being used more to talk about an individual's presence in a room

and vibes is more... Yeah, vibes is more flexible. It can't be a person or it can be like the general feeling in the room. Right. Aura is definitely an individual. Or in the country or whatever. Yeah.

But, you know, I've been hearing it. I mean, you know, it has clearly reached a saturation point and maybe a played out point is the sort of what I'm identifying. But, you know, I'm hearing it like on fucking like Meet the Press. They're like, yeah, come with the vibes around. I'm like, okay, that's probably a big flashing sign. No, it's definitely like old head news now or old head terminology.

But I'm like, yeah, I'm definitely in the like embracing the hello fellow kids moment where I'm just like, I'm still going to use it. It's still, I don't care if it dates me. And it is very useful for when you kind of like, I mean, I think like intuition, sort of that ineffable thing about like excitement and emotion and feeling. Like sometimes it's a little hard to put language that in vibes is very useful in that case but i also sometimes feel like people are just falling back on it way too much i think it can also be like discriminatory not because i i do think that back like 10 whatever years ago in silicon valley they would always call it like we don't know how your fit will be at this company. And that was always like coded racist terms or something. And so it can be used in that way too.

So it's definitely fun that it's intangible, but it can also be used weaponized in a way that's not good. Right. You just say the vibes are off and you don't have to really go beyond that. Yeah, exactly. Not quite sure. It's just the vibes. Something about the vibes. off and you don't have to really go beyond that. Yeah, exactly. I'm not quite sure. It's just the vibes. Something about the vibes. Toxic vibes. The vibes seemed ethnic. He's being called the vibes candidate. I feel like that was every news lead on Tim Walls.

For sure. Yeah. Yeah. lead on Tim Walls. For sure. Yeah. Any way that you can, once it becomes adopted by establishment

powers, then it becomes a tool for, yeah, like you said, on all the tangibles, they're great. But the vibes category, they scored a.5 out of 10. And we're not sure why. But, you know, like it just gives you a new language for doing whatever the fuck you want, essentially.

They always said that a joke was dead when it hit late night, when like a late night host would start using it like an Internet joke. And then you're like, all right, that's done. We're done with that. Oh, and you know, Jimmy Fallon's been talking about vibes for a year and a half. For ages, yeah. Oh my God. It's dead. But I like zeitgeist.

I mean, there's a word that I find myself using a lot. And what's your tagline in the intro? The shared consciousness. That's a nice little, I mean, I like that. Shared consciousness. Thank you. But that's what it's kind of getting at. And I think it is useful to talk about that kind of stuff, you know.

And this is good because we're canceling our planned rebrand to be the American Vibescast. That was our new title. Vibescast USA. That's right. You're going to be hosted by Casey Kasem. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk some news. We'll be right back.

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And we're back. And the vibes of this show may never recover from the Al Gore, Tipper Gore kiss that has entered my mind. And I don't know, like, I wonder, are we doing a disservice to our younger listeners? Because I do feel like it had been somewhat purged from the shared consciousness. Like, I feel like it was where we were like, we're actually doing a solid for ourselves for our mental well-being. And we're going to pretend that never happened because he didn't win. So, like, you don't have to, like, we're actually doing a solid for ourselves for our mental well-being. And we're going to pretend that never happened. Because he didn't win. So you don't have to remember it.

But yeah, that sucked. I'm happy to just walk over and plant that little seed in people's brains. God forbid. I really hope I never get to a point in my life where someone sees me kiss somebody else and is like, that sucks. Oh, gosh. me kiss somebody else and is like that sucks oh god yeah yeah i guess watching watching people kiss is never great like even movie kisses i'm always like is that really i don't know like that it never feels great but that that one is way way off way off base you're way off base Way off base. You're way off base, Al Gore. All right. Donald Trump, Elon Musk, the big interview. Speaking of bad vibes. And by the way, we are completely just

leaning in on vibes. And I apologize, Jody. That's fine. We will not be using it to fire anyone during this episode it was this like to announce that donald trump was back on twitter i couldn't i couldn't tell like it seemed like that was part of what people were saying like was it just he's back because he's doing the interview i don't know i i feel like he came back and they interviewed i i don't know if it was in conjunction with that i think it was definitely for elon musk just to kind of be on his dick you know what i mean i think it was definitely for elon musk just to kind of be on his dick you know what i mean i think it was just for elon musk to tell the world why association yeah why he's voting for him and doesn't care about the comments he made about electric vehicles

right right so i'm not sure but it definitely is a move of desperation for him to come back to Twitter because the stuff he was posting on Truth Social was insane. And so now he's like, let me bring that back to Twitter because Twitter is an assess pool. But has he started posting, posting again? His account got reinstated, right, by Musk. That was one of his first moves after he took over. And then, yeah, I think this is clearly, he's trying to do this and try and get him. It's funny how

trump posting on twitter like everyone thinks that's good right i mean democrats like yeah go for it we you know i mean we would love for this guy to be yeah it's like you back on twitter you being crazy 15 times a day right into people's feeds and then republicans are obviously like yeah you know we don't want he has been posting insane shit on twitter like recently starting august well it was starting yesterday actually there you go he's back so yeah his first tweet back was like a like a two minute video of him speaking to crowds and stuff and then the next one was are you better off now than when you then you were when i was president our economy is shattered our border has been erased for a nation in decline make the american dream affordable again make america safe again america make america great again and then just a lot of like now wait a second i want to see

where he's going with this that sounds pretty good campaign talking points it doesn't yeah campaign talking points a lot of really weird graphics of him and i mean life was great four years ago i mean it's a little right it's a little hazy but i feel like summer 2020 it kind of was because he did get covid and that was fucking awesome yeah that may have been twitter's greatest night ever. That was a wonderful moment for Twitter. So just big, big picture impressions. There seems to be a lot of talk about, the word I'm seeing is slurring. That Donald Trump was slurring.

Lisping. Yeah, it felt more like he was speaking without his teeth in, or his dentures were sliding out, or like becoming unstuck it sounded like he had an old prospector mouth going on you know he was not beating the old man allegations yeah the scourge of old prospector mouth that you you have to uh cordon off and quarantine your old prospectors if you notice it in your old prospecting community

but yeah i mean i don't know it does feel like part of the energy but that has been released from the switch to kamala harris is all the stuff that was bad about biden we can now point out about trump and yeah him slurring and seeming incredibly old is is one of those things so i think that's they still haven't gotten the memo though because in that space he was still attacking biden like he still didn't want to let go of his talking points about biden and then he kind of slip Kamala's name in there. And it was like, you sound insane right now because you sound old and you're still attacking someone who isn't even there. Like he's not convinced he's in the current race as it is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he desperately wants to keep running against Biden. And I think it's like that campaign was like, and it's sort of incredible

that they didn't, it seems to have really not occurred to them that Biden would really drop out and they were caught flat footed, which is kind of stunning. Cause I think it was pretty obvious for a while. At least it was a big possibility, but the slurring lisping thing. I mean, my first instinct with stuff like that is that I tend to get a little, I tend to be a little dismissive of it and get a little exasperated of it because it feels a little bit of like, you know, orange man,

bad resistance, blue wave Twitter kind of thing to focus on. And it's like, you know, why not just keep focusing on the guy is clearly addled. And the thing that's addled that tells you he's addled is not some like slur that you may hear. It's like the actual words coming out of his,

the fact that he can't put together a sentence. Which are often slurs. Yes, there we go. But then, and then I like also the radio producer in me was like, yeah, microphones are really wonky things. And like sometimes connection, the combination, we've all been on Zoom calls where like you're talking and someone's like, you sound like a robot,

like what's going on? So I'm like, maybe it's that. But then I saw a video from like inside the room that was shot and presumably released on purpose by someone in his camp and he's like kind of lispy and slurry and so now i'm like maybe it's the denture thing i don't know it's and like that's just such an encapsulation of this moment where it's like you want to be the rational one who doesn't go down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. But then it's like, maybe it actually is. And like, you know, it's just very destabilizing. Yeah.

The one thing I would say, the reason that it is important and that it's not just like blue wave Twitter, like it goes outside of that bubble is because how this election has been run has not been on policy. It's been on aesthetics. And so because we are playing the Republicans game, I think even though it's kind of been proven that voters don't really give a shit about hypocrisy, I think if we're going to kind of beat them at their own game then you have to point out these inconsistencies and how he kind of fulfills their version of weak because this whole thing has been i'm strong law and order whatever this man's old he doesn't know what he's doing and then you have like like his whole thing is he came on twitter not to have a contentious interview this

wasn't the black journalist you know caucus this was this was a very easy interview and it still caused people to think he was weak as a presidential candidate so i think that's why it's being emphasized so strongly yeah so in terms of there was also the fact that it took them a good 30 minutes to get things up and running. Not a great look. This is the second time that they've tried to create a big like appointment viewing moment on X post, you know,on musk and just like with the desantis announcing his candidacy glitched out 40 minutes late a lot of like blame going around a lot of denial that it was glitching out a lot of you know blaming saying the democrats were like trying to stop yeah launch a ddos attack which i don't know that was so funny it was so funny did elon musk actually say that or was i think i don't know that was so funny it was so funny did elon musk actually say that or was he

i think i don't know i don't know what that was but i think like if that's the case i like i just think it's so funny because you're saying that you're susceptible to that after being at twitter for so long you're saying that you're not as smart as as the democrats at at reassuring your the people using your platform that you can be secure against those types of attacks. Yeah. I don't know if you specifically blame the Democrats, but you definitely floated the idea that they were under a DDoS attack.

And first off, I mean, the Washington Post, who had a much better article about this than the New York Times, I got to say, but the Washington Post called someone at Twitter and was like were you guys under it and they got and they were like no every other part of twitter was working just fine like you know it's just not you know i think you scratch at that excuse and it falls apart pretty quickly but i do like the the possibility that has put that into the zeitgeist as a possible excuse for when things are going bad i'm going to start trotting out yeah I'm under a DDoS attack anytime something goes wrong for me.

I'm trying to look through Elon Musk's replies to see where he talked about the Democrats. This man, I'm scrolling, and it's just a few hours back from now. This man is constantly on Twitter. Yes. Like, he's not, like, I understand using, but doesn't he have a lot

of work to do. This is insane. Right. He just bought it to be Twitter Twitter guy number one. I mean just he literally bought the company

because he just wanted to be able to tweet all day and call it Twitter. That's so wild. In terms of the content of what they were talking about it

felt like a couple billionaires gassing each other up, saying things that you would say if you didn't realize you were being recorded. Musk's attempts to intimidate workers in a way that got them both sued the next morning. Like the UAW on Tuesday filed federal labor charges alleging that Trump and Elon Musk attempted to intimidate and threaten workers during their Monday evening interview on X. And, you know, from a political standpoint, it gave the UAW an opportunity to reiterate why they think Trump is really bad and why they do not endorse him. It was, yeah, just again, you keep seeing these calls from within the Trump campaign and within Republican circles to like rein it in and like stay on message. And it's just like, that is definitely not who you signed up with, you know, like that is not. Yeah. And this is the message. There's no message to stay on. I mean, people haven't realized that by now. I mean, like I thought this after the NABJ thing, where honestly my first thought when trump gave that interview to the national association of black journalism you know questioned whether kamala

was actually black and i had the same thought after this i literally was like that probably went about as well as it could have like what else should we have expected like this is this is it for him like this is what we have this isn't an aberration or a failure. It is just who the person is. And Americans don't like that person. And I think the more that person is in front of them, the more they remember that they don't like that person. And so, you know, we'll see. He said, I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in.

You say, you want to quit? They go on strike. I won't mention the name of the company, but they go on strike. And you say, that's OK. You're all gone. I'm sure mention the name of the company, but they go on strike. And you say, that's okay. You're all gone. I'm sure Elon Musk was like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Like, as he's saying that, like, he's like, no, no, no, that would be illegal. That is that thing you just said I do is not legal. jokingly, but in a way that while discounting global

warming and climate change, you know, said that like at most it's an eighth of an inch every 300 years of sea level rise, which is like one one thousandth of what middle of the road estimates are. And then he also said that it was going to create more beachfront property like fucking Lexx luther which is just like it's a thing that a rich guy would say to another rich guy in confidence you know and be like yeah you know like fun joke but just such a fucking wild

thing to say that's also not the only time they joked about people dying and not giving a shit in this entire thing right like like we'll talk about it but later on they talked about hiroshima and stuff in the same flippant way like they did not care that people would die they literally just look at it as property i mean so much of the gop power base seems to be around this what you know, what you described rightly, Jack, like just two rich guys chatting with each other and like, you know, the whole world of like these VC red pill podcasts that seem to have like a lot of juice inside the Trump world right now.

And then this was effectively that, right? So I guess I'm curious what the two of you think about whether this then has an impact. I mean, are regular voters listening to this, one, or has Twitter just become a place where rich red-pilled people go to talk to each other and gas each other up? And two, if they are listening to this, what are they actually making of it? I'm kind of actually bummed because I don't think many regular voters are on Twitter and are definitely not active enough to understand how to use spaces, let alone stay in it for 40 minutes or figure out the technical difficulties. So I actually think that this isn't going to get

as much play or breadth of reception as I kind of hoped for, you know, people to hear him sound aesthetically like displeasing to what you would think his constituents would people to hear him sound aesthetically, like, displeasing to what his, what you would think his constituents would want to hear. But I really, I think this is just, all of his interviews are just going to be like this. Like, people are just gonna be like, I hate it. I love it. Whatever, you know, I feel like unless something happens, like, I think with when he got COVID, that really, like, struck a chord at his messaging. And that showed him in a light where he where he was vulnerable and, and, and incompetent in a way that like, I think did affect, like how voters felt about him. Because it never is like, I don't think people I don't think the American people, like, I think they're more swayed by things like that, then like you know, specifics of policy because of how contradictory the legislative system is. So I think basically I'm saying I don't think it got to a broad enough audience for it to make a difference.

Yeah, I don't think people were listening along and then like going to CNN and like looking at the 20 fact checks that they ruled were false claims in that conversation. I think some of the wilder shit that he said might make it out to people. I, I didn't, I haven't seen much like come out of this interview that was like playing to his strengths. Like the drudge report,

I always check that website to see like how they're covering something because they are like probably the most powerful online kind of right wing media source. And like their headlines are Trump slurs through interview, increasingly bizarre claims, Musk mega mania. So, I mean, in the sense that I do think, Einstein for anything smart sounding that they like heard someone say and they'd be like actually Einstein says the definition of stupidity is doing anything like I've now heard people do that with Elon Musk where they do you really think that's still the

case I mean I feel like three years ago people were like yeah he's tony stark in real life or whatever but now he's like howard hughes late late howard hughes i mean like i don't know if that's broken through yet definitely for people who pay a lot of attention right i guess i'm talking about like whoever could still be these mythical undecided voters you know right who were yeah i just i i don't know i also think like unfortunately next to trump elon sounds smarter even though he buys into the same effective policies or you know things that could harm the american people like they when they were talking about nuclear power and it was very confusing about because trump initially was talking about nuclear power and then he talked about army tanks and so it was unclear if he understood that nuclear power is different than

like nuclear weapons and then elon was talking about his ability to like eat food around like yeah and i was it was just it was just confusing to trump in a very obvious way that made Elon sound smarter. But then Elon was still like, yeah, I'm going to vote for you. I'm going to vote for this man who doesn't understand simple things that he should for having nuclear codes. Yeah. It seemed like they had nuclear power as one of the things to discuss. And Trump took it to be like the danger of nuclear powers. And so he was like, but to me, the big problem is the nuclear power. The power of nuclear is so great. When I talk

about I'll prevent World War III, I will. But the truth is that you have to, because this is no longer army tanks going back and forth and shooting at each other. Bing, bing. This is a level of destruction and power that nobody's ever seen before. And then Elon Musk- This was in response to a conversation about a nuclear power plant? He just launched into it. And then Elon Musk has to come in and be, because I think they were talking about energy. And then Elon Musk had to come in and be like, okay, so there's a bad side of nuclear, which is a nuclear war, very bad side. But there's also, I think, nuclear electricity, absolutely underrated. And it's actually, you know, people have this fear of nuclear electricity generation, but it's actually one of the

safest forms of electricity generation. And then Trump was still like like he finally like allowed himself to be talked down but was still like i don't know fukushima is really bad and you know three mile island like i i feel like he's not going to be somebody that you could actually bring over to the side of nuclear electricity well he also people are starting to suspect that he thinks like asylum seekers are like people from an insane asylum yeah and also that people who are looking for visas are looking for credit cards because of like the contextual clues of like what he has been saying how he talks about it yeah the second one that visa they could not be i mean even trump i don't know like i don't know. Like, I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. But it's just, it doesn't seem, I mean, he's not smart.

He doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. So it's just really funny that we have given him such a benefit of the doubt that now we have to be like, wait a minute, this whole time, were you actually dumber than what we thought? This whole time? I think the asylum seekers thing,

and I haven't heard the visa thing but i i suspect like so much of what he's doing is free association i mean he has like a recurring riff about fucking sharks because he's scared of sharks kill it in an improv warm-up like the it would be he would be zip zap zop in yeah so well i suspect he's like also on speed. And so his brain is just like pinging between ideas. Well, that's another one of the theories, right? That he popped something right before because it was running late and he needed to pick me up with the energy. God, I can't believe I'm this far down this conspiracy rabbit hole. This is not how my brain normally operates, but I'm telling you.

Oh, I don't feel like it's a conspiracy theory that he is on. Like I speak. I'm talking about the specific slurring. The source of the slurring last night. Potentially. Got it. Got it. Got it.

He had to pop extra pills because it was delayed by 45 minutes. Okay. What am I doing with my life that I know? You're on our show. Yeah. American Vibecast. And we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back after this. It was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin,

former Packers star Kabir Bajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation. KGB explaining what he believes led to the arrest of his friends at a children's Christmas play. A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian, now cut off from his family and connected to a strange arrest. I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. I got swept up in Kabir's journey, but this was only the beginning. In a story about faith and football, the search for meaning away from the gridiron and the consequences for everyone involved. You mix homesteading with guns and church

and a little bit of the spice of conspiracy theories that we liked. Voila! You got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone

in the South loves, the Biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? I mean, the Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels with the image of the Biscuits. It's right here in black and white

in the prints. They lion. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch is a leader. You choose hills that you want to die on. Why would we want to be the losing team? I just take all the other stuff out of it.

Segregation academies. When civil rights said that we need to integrate public schools, these charter schools were exempt from that. Bigger than a flag or mascot. You have to be ready for serious backlash. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When you think of Mexican culture,

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

Santos! Santos! Join me as we learn more about the history behind this spectacular sport, from its inception in the United States to how it became a global symbol of Mexican culture. We'll learn more about some of the most iconic heroes in the ring. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask as part of my Cultura Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. And we're back. And it was recently reported that Apple is working on reining in some of their streaming spending,

which I feel like makes sense considering that they've spent $30 billion on original content, but get fewer views in one month than Netflix gets in a day. And that's, I didn't just say that as like, like that, that's a quote from, say it again, fewer, fewer views in one month than Netflix gets in a day. That is insane. They have so many good shows and they just refuse to tell us about it.

They really do. They just don't promote their shows. Stumble on them, even though we, so those of us who have subscriptions, we also forget that they exist and there's like good shows on there there's a show called hello tomorrow exclamation point starring billy crudup as a salesman who lives on the moon and it's like gotten solid reviews

and like i had to google it just to make sure it wasn't a dream that I had. I've never heard of this before, ever. It feels like they had the idea of investing content and create a massive, broad, powerful media company, but didn't think of any of the steps after that. Even Shrinking was like known to people, the TV show, and like people enjoyed it. And I found out that season two is out

because my friend is in it. And that's how I found out. I had no idea. I'm like, didn't you have a billboard up at some point? What's going on, Apple TV? Are you inventing technology in the background and

distract it is this like a front what's happening yeah i mean you know there's some good stuff on there like i really like that show in the midst of chaos you know that one with a never heard of it no i made that one up that was a good one that's the first thing um but no it is true like people will be like my favorite show is this is like. Never. Don't talk to me about shows that are on Apple, Amazon Prime. Even though I have Amazon Prime, those shows go on there

and just don't exist, as far as I can tell. So the theory of the case I've always heard with Apple is they're spending a ton of money and they're going to get all this great content on there. And then everyone says, they're not marketing it. They great content on there. And then, and everyone says, they're not marketing it. They're not marketing it.

They're not marketing it. And there's an expectation or a sort of implication that at any moment they could just like snap their fingers, flip a switch and market it. And all of a sudden they would just dominate. And that second step, it feels like those, what's that meme of like step one, step two, profit. Step three, profit. Yeah.

And it's like, why has there been this long running assumption that Apple can just like, decide to have hits and turn a profit and have this be successful? And I feel like in the last six months, a year, it's been people have been calling BS a little bit on that idea that we've all had that, oh, it's Apple. They could just, when they want to, they could just turn them into hits if they wanted to. They just don't want to. It's like, why would you not want? Yeah, it turns out, I guess the marketing part is hard. I guess so.

It feels like Beyonce dropping an album, except they're not the Beyonce of television yet. They have good content, but they don't have that reputation. So they assume that people will just word of mouth or figure it out and will be like their marketers, but that's not how it's going to work. Has anyone ever bought an iPhone because of an Apple TV production? Like that's the thing that I don't understand. Like, was that the theory of the case when they first decided to get into it that there would be like this free platform that you could watch on apple products and oh i don't know if they're pushing to have it be watched they're not yeah i think they're trying to just be streaming it's just their own

separate streaming thing that they then have just totally neglected to but i also think like and i've and i worked in a very small weird corner of the disney corporation so saw a little bit of this play out when i was at 30 for 30 at espn but it's like there are some parts of these massive companies where it's like you're here to just like burnish our reputation and like if we win a couple academy awards off of this and we win some awards and we get to say we worked with Billy Crudup and Jennifer Aniston and whatever, that has its own value to companies like this. It's just like we get these famous people to come to our events and we get to say we're doing this. So it's like, you can't just look at it as the money they're spending and the audience they're getting, but $30 billion for fewer viewers in a month than

Netflix gets in a day. I mean, it does feel like there's some hard questions getting asked about what exactly they're up to here. And I mean, to me, I'm curious what the two of you think about like, why, what does it take to get a platform? Like, is Apple TV like in your rotation?

Like you sit down, you don't really know what you want. You have a sort of half-formed thought in the back of your head. Is it on on that list the places that you open and search for and why is it not and how does something work its way into that routine i don't know my login is so annoying when i log into apple t it's not as smooth as netflix or hulu for some reason i don't know why but it's like it's more annoying to log into. That's one thing that it's a multi step thing. And then the other thing is, it didn't start as quickly as Netflix and

Hulu did. So those tend to be the two main ones that I open, because those are top of mind streaming. When I think Apple, I think products before I think streaming. When I think Amazon, I think products before I think streaming. And so I think until they're willing to come to the forefront and market themselves, maybe, I don't know if it's like a change of name or something else, but unless they're willing to kind of redefine what they're known for, they're not going to be the top of mind streamers. They're like create a separate brand or something. But yeah, I mean, it's not.

Apple Max. Yeah. And thank you. Now we get to my pitch. Yeah. Everything. Sharks. Yeah.

They're just so far from that. And when you look at the streaming, like numbers, which which nobody does, that's always been interesting to me. We used to look at the ratings on TV every out a month later but it's all like the top 10 is all netflix and then there will occasionally if there is a game of thrones like a new season of game of thrones like one episode will pop into the top 10 and it will like go up to six and then immediately drop out it's's wild how dominant Netflix is. It just feels like they have kind of cornered, like Pallavi was saying, they've sort of cornered that part of people's brains and then everything's gotten more expensive

so people can't really afford six different streaming services. And so it's just a mess for all these other streamers who are trying to break in. Well, Pallavi, I think I buy your argument and I've kind of tended to, it's just something I feel like I've learned and seen. It's just like, companies tend to just do one thing, you know? And like, there's just, I, yeah, I just think that like most places they have a DNA and it's like, this is what we're about and everything else.

You can kind of tell that it's a side hustle or whatever. And I feel like there's something, there's something to that with Apple. Yeah. There's that book, good to great. That's the study of like companies that go from like good to being like generationally, like they just last and do well. And like some of those companies no longer are like doing as well as they were when that book came out. But like the one part book in the series, that's exactly these companies actually suck. But the one thing that they found was that like the companies that had sustained like success had a very specific focus and like definition of their

mission. They called it the hedgehog principle, very business speak, but it was like, you know, a fox is clever and it like knows how to do all these different things. A hedgehog just knows how to like roll up into a ball and survive. And like, it does that better than anyone else. And like that, they were like, if your company can just like figure out the one thing it does better than anyone else and just do that. And yeah, all the entire streaming war seemed to have been, to a large degree, a illustration of that principle, because the companies that have consistently like poured the most money in and gotten the least results are Apple and Amazon. And they're like, yeah, well that's not what you guys do. You're just like trying to,

yeah. It's also what they originally branded themselves as. It was almost like they were too good to do anything else, especially Apple. They were, they prided themselves on their products. So for them to kind of diversify it's just i think harder for the audience to buy it after all the like all

the work that steve jobs put in to be like this is our our main thing is phones our main thing is these computers and then for them to be like we're artists too now we understand culture in that way i think it's harder for for their market to to buy into that yeah rebranding yeah i think that's right so i don't know i feel it feels like netflix is just getting more and more ingrained in its position as though like a year ago there was a lot lot of talk about Netflix being on shakier ground or whatever. Maybe it's like two years ago and then they just kind of snapped. Well, if they're doing so good, let us share passwords again.

Damn it. Part of the reason they're doing good is that that experiment worked. It was like a rousing success in the business media. I'm so fucking mad about how there are commercials in everything now. Like, we

we're just used to commercials in Netflix now. That's insane. You were used to commercials for the entirety of your life until like five years ago. Yeah, and I don't want to go back. Fair enough. Okay? I'm paying for these streaming services. We have the technology. Fuck this. And they get to pretend like

they're innovating by reinventing commercials. It's literally like watching Elon play with Twitter, destroy it, and then bring it back again. Well, as all of us in some part or another owe our careers to advertising-funded

media. So, you know, this part of me that's like, I'll take the commercials. Yeah, yeah. It'd be nice to have some of those back. That's their problem. Oh, okay. Fair enough. I do get mad when I'm trying to watch a video and an ad comes up, like in a way that doesn't make any sense and is completely irrational. Particularly movies. What the fuck?

Particularly movies on Netflix. Right. Because the whole reason that Netflix is such an advantage is that you get to, you know, going to the movie theater is an experience. It's a very communal thing. Netflix is consuming the media uninterrupted and in a more efficient way. And then when you have commercials in the midst of movies, I'm like, this is, I just want to go to the theater now. Again, I don't want to watch this here anymore. It's interrupting the whole thing. You're not going to like my pitch to amc about damn it so this is the most captive audience

bring the lights up and put a couple minerals into the audience geritol a guy just comes out and pitches geritol to you we're just gonna keep going back and back and back until it's like you know this movie brought to you by coughing powder or whatever like cocaine and your soda okay that's right well jody what a pleasure having you as always on the daily zeitgeist uh where can people find you follow you all that good stuff um well you mentioned my political history show and um produced Trevor Noah's podcast, What Now? So people should go listen to that. But the big news is with my political history podcast, we're doing our first ever live show. So for listeners in Boston or anyone who knows someone in Boston on September 13th, we are doing a live show at WBUR has this really cool event space there. So I would love to have people come out to that. It's going to be really fun. And we're going to be talking a little bit about the history of October surprises, kind of last minute things that happen that upend elections.

And so Friday, September 13th, if you're in Boston or know someone in Boston, encourage them to come out. What's the biggest October surprise? Boston encouraged them to come out. What's the biggest October surprise? I mean, the big one that's always trotted out is the hostages and, you know, Reagan arranging for the hostages to not be released until

after the election, you know, and that's a big one. But, you know, there's stuff like, I mean, this is what we'll get into on September 13th, Friday, but, you know, like, does the Access Hollywood tape kind of count you know it's like a last minute thing the sort of upended things that really did have an effect but um some of some of it is like shenanigans you know in terms of like withholding information or revealing information

at the last minute and there's a long history of that and then some of it is just like news that breaks at the last minute and right destizes things. Right, right. Cool. Is there a work of media that you've been enjoying, Jody? Well, we're not going to talk about Raygun. So I'm going to talk about Raygun. I know we missed Raygun. Tell us your thoughts on Raygun. No, no, no.

I just, I feel like I'm playing a how deep does this rabbit hole go role on this show that I normally don't. But I got to say say the ray gun thing keeps keeps giving to me and like at first i was just like yeah you know she had an off day it is what it is and then i'm like now i'm like reading these reddit threads about how she was the one who who and you know what was the head of the organization that picked the thing and her she put her husband in this you know it's like it a, I don't know how deep does the rake on it go?

I don't know. This one goes all the way to the top of Australia's break dancing community. But it is, it is remarkable how there were so many other memes and like characters in the Olympics. And then she just came storming at the last day. Just out of nowhere. And completely took over. It is amazing. It is. Pallavi, where can people find you?

Is there a work of media you've been enjoying? I'm at Pallavi, P-A-L-L-A-V-I-G-U-N-A-L-A-N. I run a show at the Comedy Store, Facial Recognition Comedy. Next one is August 20th. One after that is September 20th in the Belly Room. It's going to be

super fun. I can't find the person who tweeted it. Unfortunately, I think it refreshed and I lost it. But it was it was the quote was when I sing both parts of that Evanescence song and it was J.D. Vance in his regular clothes and then J.D. Vance in drag. and then JD Vance in drag. That's good. I really enjoyed that one. Amazing. You can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien.

A tweet I've been enjoying, Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords tweeted, I've been to Australia. That was their best dancer. Very, very Kiwi coded. That's right. 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 footnotes 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 super producer justin connor is there a song that you think people might enjoy yeah uh this song will put you in the mindset of a spy on the

run in like a 70s pulp noir movie it's a instrumental but it has a whole narrative arc there's tension and suspense and relief all expressed through composition and musical skill. It's a song called The Traitor. And it's performed by this collective of artists who are from groups like the Dap Kings, The Roots, The Black Keys. And they're called the Minahan Street Band. And that song, again, is called The Traitor. And you can find that in the footnotes. Footnotes?

All right. And that's Traitor, T-R-A-I-T-O-R? A-I-T-O-R. Yes, yes yes would be my guess right right trade for us right like liz chain you know the daily zeitgeist is a production of iheart radio for more podcasts from iheart radio visit the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows that is going to do it for us this morning. We are back this afternoon to tell you what is trending. And we'll talk to you all then. Bye. Bye.

Bye. 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?

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