The Daily Zeitgeist - Truth Ain’t Truth, America Is An Abandoned Amusement Park 8.20.18

Episode Date: August 20, 2018

In episode 215, Jack and Miles are joined by frequent podcast guest and comedian Jamie Loftus (Happy Birthday!) to discuss the top book charts, the box office charts from the weekend, top music charts, the recent google trends, Rudy Giuliani's appearance on Meet The Press, our generations 'quicksand' metaphor, and more! Plus a call with Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch. FOOTNOTES: 1. Fact-checking Fox News analyst’s pro-Trump book ‘The Russia Hoax’2. Box Office: Mark Wahlberg’s ‘Mile 22’ Picks Up $1 Million on Thursday Night3. Nicki Minaj, 6ix9ine, and the Alarming Normalization of Predatory Behavior4. Streisand effect5. WATCH: Rudy Giuliani tells @chucktodd that he doesn’t want President Trump to be caught in a perjury trap by speaking with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. #MTP #IfItsSunday6. White House Counsel, Don McGahn, Has Cooperated Extensively in Mueller Inquiry7. Terra Infirma: The rise and fall of quicksand.8. WATCH: Kali Uches - Coming Home (Interlude) Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? It's right here in black and white and prints. It's bigger than a flag or mascot.

Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What happens when a professional football player's career ends and the applause fades and the screaming fans move on? I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. For some former NFL players, a new faith provides answers. You mix homesteading with guns and church. Voila! You got straightway. They try to save everybody.

with guns in church. Voila! You got straightway. They try to save everybody. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Captain's Log,

Stardate 2024. We're floating somewhere in the cosmos, but we've lost our map. Yeah, because you refused to ask for directions. It's Space Gem. There are no roads. Good point.

So, where are we headed? Into the unknown, of course. Join us on In Our Own World as we uncover hidden truths, navigate the depths of culture, identity, and the human spirit. With a hint of mischief. One episode at a time. Buckle up and listen to In Our Own World on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Trust us, it's out of this world. Hello, the internet, and welcome to Season 45, Episode 1 of It's out of this world. Miles Gray! Is that the grape stuffing? That was my best attempt. It wasn't as good as yours, but... Oh, shit. Well, you're a rich gray and you've gone two miles because I know it don't matter, Zyte Gang. You can't rely on the orange man's money. You can't rely on the orange man's money.

Thank you to Master Yoda or Hoda at Joseph Race for that, you know, Hall & Oates inspired AKA, my favorite band. One of them. I'm still that fast as a grape lady. That AKA was at least partially courtesy of the grape-stopping lady, but also Jamie Loftus, who unintentionally did the grape-stopping lady during vocal warm-up.

Oh, wait, Jamie, are you the guest? And we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by... Oh, yeah. Wait, are you? You are? Oh, oh, oh. By Jamie Loftus. Hi.

Hi. The great... Happy birthday. Thank you. It's her birthday, but she'll always be Lil' Zam to us. Oh, I'm never going to be Ol' Zam. I'll be Ol' Zam someday. Ol' Zam. One day. Yeah. You guys will push me out of the iceberg. We're joined be Lil' Zam to us. I'm never going to be Ol' Zam. I'll be Ol' Zam someday. You guys will push me out of the iceberg.

We're joined by Ol' Zam. That'll be the thing piece that comes out. Is it time to start calling Lil' Zam Ol' Zam? There's no period where I'm just Zam. No. Hell no. Jamie, we're thrilled to have you. Thank you for joining us the night after your birthday.

I came in with my MFB day hangover. I'm here. Yeah, and we're thrilled to have you. Thank you. We're going to get to know you a little bit better. But first, we're going to tell our listeners what they're in store for on this Monday morning edition of the Daily Psych Ice. Good morning. Wake up.

We're going to check in with the charts. Wake up. Wake up. It's the Zeitgeist. See what people are reading, listening to, viewing, Googling, you know, all the things. People still Googling? Yeah, people still Googling. Okay.

People always Googling. Then we're going to check in, see what Rudy had to say yesterday on Meet the Press with Sleepy Eyes, Chuck Todd. He's a master of words. We have to give it to him at this point. He may have outdone himself this week. He also looks like I was saying to Miles this morning, he looks

like the Men in Black villain who is just bugs wearing a skin suit. It looks like his face is rotting off of his skull. So the bug from Men in Black is wearing a Rudy suit. Yes. I mistakenly called him Edgar, and someone on Twitter corrected me.

He's like, it's actually a bug wearing Edgar's skin. Right. Oh, it's like a Frankenstein's monster kind of doll. Exactly. Rudy, your skin is hanging off your bones. I'm optimistic that there's a better face underneath that one, and once this one finally drips off.

Just drips off. He's shedding like a snake. There's a hot face underneath that one and this one finally drips off. Just drips off. He's shedding like a snake. There's a hot man in there. A handsome Rudy Giuliani. Yeah. And we're going to be joined by right wing watchers, Jared Holt. Yeah.

Jared, Jared, Jared. Jared. And we're also gonna try and diagnose our zeitgeist, try and figure out what our quicksand is in the third act. That will make sense at the end. But first, Jamie, we'd like to ask our guest, what is something from your search history that is revealing about who you are? I was on one yesterday. Yesterday was my birthday, and I was just forcing people to do things they didn't want to do all day.

I woke up, I was like, I want to go to Dunkin' Donuts right now. right now and then i went there and then i was like i want to look at snakes at petco and so i looked at snakes at petco because i'm i i feel like a snake owner uh and so i was thinking about me so some search history snake owner bonding how can you how can you tell snake gender? Can you bring, my favorite, can you bring snake out with friends? What's the answer to the last one? The last one is a really sad search because you can. There are no laws in place that say no snakes, but it's like the snake owner Reddit board is very sad where they're like, you can bring your snake out, but there's a big public stigma against snakes in public. They're like, if you have your snake out, no one's going to want to be around you and your snake.

And then one guy was like, I'm moving out of my neighborhood because of the snake stigma. The snake hate is too much? Too much snake hate. Oh, come on. Which is like kind of a him thing, but can you bring snake out with friends? Yes, but at what cost? Yeah, really. But I appreciate what you're doing for the snake-owning population,

because when I picture snake owner, I picture lonely male. I don't picture a young... I want to queer the narrative of snake ownership a little bit, just kind of mix it up. Like that tweet I called out last week of the reductress one, that was just, woman owns snake? Wait, really? No way! I didn't know that! Woman owns snake?

I was really excited. Yesterday I met a very sweet ball python and I think I want to get a snake. Unfortunately, they do live for 30 years. That is an investment. The snake would really be with me for some time. I'm thinking about maybe getting a starter snake. A little three-footer who will live three to five years

and then maybe return to the ball python for the 30th birthday. Maybe that's a gift I'll give to myself. Yo, that's so funny. Now that I think about it, I had a homegirl who bought a little snake, like a little albino. I don't know. It was a tiny little snake. And I don't know what the fuck happened to it.

I don't know if she threw it away. Now that I think about it, I'm like, yo, I've seen her in a minute, and that snake, she brought it out. She was like, yo, look at my snake. Don't know where the fucking snake has been. I don't want to get a snake as a bit. I want to give myself the gift

of long-term commitment to a snake. I want to get a snake as a life partner. I hate when people pimp their pets out on Instagram, the app, and just say, look at my cute little pet, and then when you see them together in person, they're like, oh, yeah, that's my snake. Whatever.

It's kind of how I am with my kids. It's just their Instagram props. I mean, they're squeezing the life out of you like a snake would, so yeah. Think about snakes. I also wonder if life expectancy is different. Like, little albino snakes might not last quite as long. Right, but I feel like you would be like,

my snake died. Right, that's true. Rather than like, sort of like a fade away and you're like, oh, we don't talk about what happened. We don't talk about what happened to the snake. Like Lena Dunham rescuing a dog. Yeah, I hope snake abuse isn't rampant. I don't know, I'm interested, I'm excited to,

I think I am going to get a snake. And so, but I can't decide what to name it. So if the Zeitgang has any ideas for good snake names. Prepare your mentions. My mentions are going to be full of snake names. Your phone will melt. Will you feed it live rodents? No, I'll feed it pre-frozen.

That was the one thing where I was like, oh, I couldn't watch the snake hunt. But my favorite part of it, I learned about snakes yesterday is they eat one mouse a week or the ball python starts by eating one mouse a week and then the day it eats it doesn't snakes don't like when you watch them eat which I can relate with that's awesome just shame

yeah so you put the food in there and then you just you're not supposed to look at them or like try to hang out with them for a whole day like they're like the day the snake eats let it be like just otherwise it's just well if you like jostle i guess a python when it's digesting a mouse like the first day because that's all they eat all week right um it can like fuck up their digestive tract so you're just like emotionally they're like don't want me to eat but then they're like let me just i love it too diva for me although a snake for you is very on brand.

A high maintenance snake, come on. That eventually becomes your demise. You're like, I don't know what to do. I can't wait. It becomes like an Ariana Grande sized snake. They get to be like five feet long, which I'm like, I need a smaller snake. I like my snakes compared to Ariana Grandes. How many Ariana Grandes will this snake be?

That snake could eat Ariana Grande. But don't touch it. Lil Zam, what is something that's overrated? Oh, overrated. This is a fun Bechdel cast shout out. My overrated would be watching The Matrix. I've never watched The Matrix and

some listeners went back to our Matrix episode which was like a year and a half ago. And I like casually mentioned on one episode I was like, oh yeah, there's one episode where I never watched the movie anyways. And people went back and listened to how I talked on that episode. And it is psycho.

Really? Yeah, I'm just very quietly piggybacking on everything Caitlin said. That's so true, Caitlin. Yeah, she's like, Trinity is the female lead. I'm like, yes. And someone almost consider her the star, actually, in some respects. Okay.

Right. They're like, Jamie, did you like The Matrix? And I was like, hard to know. Wow. Or just like a bunch of- Were you shaking a magic eight ball under the table? I don't know. And that's like a hacker text.

Yeah. Right. And I have not seen it. And so as a hacker who also codes, it is my greatest shame. But overrated watching it. In a way, it probably would really change the way you look at computers and how people interact. Like, there's just some shit that's like, I need to learn how to fly a helicopter. And it's like, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1.

Yeah, just one little bit of an eye roll and you're like, let's go. You're like, whoa, like that? He's watching. I've never watched the second and third Matrix. Wow. Very okay with that. That's fine, right? I mean, I don't care.

Yeah, I was a, I don't know why. I'm like, wow. I finally watched Hackers in full, the Matthew Lillard text. God, Hackers is great. Matthew Lillard in Hackers specifically, unbelievable. I have a theory that Matthew Lillard's character in Hackers cannot read. There's several scenes where he'll ask someone to read something to him.

And then there's another scene where he's like, so what do you think that book's about? Sounds like you watching The Matrix and talking about The Matrix. about. Sounds like you watching The Matrix and talking about The Matrix and all that. One thing I will say is for Matrix Reloaded has one of the wildest car chase scenes in it. Right. That's worth watching. And they built a fake loop

freeway basically so they could just do this whole stunt and not fuck up a real freeway. It's very in depth. But again that's a movie where you could just watch the YouTube clips and be like okay that's tight. Bye. No interest in-depth. But again, that's a movie where you could just watch the YouTube clips and be like, okay, that's tight. Bye. No interest in watching it.

Enjoyed being subtweeted at all weekend. Yeah. Hey, why watch it when you live it? You know what I'm saying? It's true. I don't want to watch a documentary about my wife. What is something that's underrated? Oh, underrated.

John Patrick Shanley's Twitter account. John Patrick Shanley is a Pulitzer winning playwright of Doubt. My favorite movie. My favorite play. He has a wild, like, it's just like old guy Twitter where he tweets good morning and good night. Every day? Every day. It always attaches like a dusty JPEG of a moon or a sun.

And then sometimes a selfie. Look, good night. Oh, wow. He's smirking. I guess good night. He is also the most appropriately named person ever. When you look at his picture, John Patrick Shanley. If you showed it to me, I would probably somehow be inspired by God. And I would be picture, John Patrick Shanley. Yeah, like if you showed it to me, I would probably somehow be inspired by God.

And I would be like, John Patrick Shanley? I don't know. That's what it feels like to me. Oh, I love it. Yeah, three hours ago, because he lives on the East Coast. He's a New York boy. He's a theater man. Oh, yep.

He dusted off his Pulitzer, found an old ass oil painting of a woman waking up, and then fires off another one. Let me see. Good morning from JPS. I really love my good mornings and my good nights from John Patrick Shanley. Highly recommend a follow. You should get blocked by him. I should start tweeting horrible things at him.

Or just be really into it that he's like, I'm a little bit concerned about your enthusiasm for my Twitter. Sometimes I just tweet at his good morning and good night and say, thank you, John. Love, Doubt. Big fan. Yeah. And what's a myth? Oh, the myth is also snake related, which is I was curious if snakes could have friends

because there's this whole like snakes seem unfriendly. Snakes can have friends. I've done the research. Outside of their own species? Yes. Well, but specifically with- That's what I'm interested in. That's my favorite genre of video.

There's this wild thread on Reddit of people going back and forth on, can snakes feel love or are they just trying to get closer to you because they want to kill you? Or the warmth or whatever. Right. Where it's like, my snake keeps coiling around me because it loves me. It's like, no, it's just getting your scent and it wants to unhinge its jaw and eat your head. And, you know, I see both sides. On both sides.

Yeah, well, because there's that thing with, like, cat shit is, like, supposed to make you love it. Yes. So, like, cats could be really ugly, and we just don't know. Taxoplasmosa gondii. T-gondii. T-gondii. God bless you. It makes rats sexually attracted to the smell of cat urine.

And there's a theory that it makes humans attracted to cats. Yeah, and that could be the basis for crazy cat person syndrome. Right. I think I've talked about this before. There was that whole thing where my cat would have sex with my feet every night. Yeah. Yeah. So is that related or is that every night yeah yeah that's it

that's your cat getting it sent on you what was this were you talking about this on here i talked about this yeah to completion right to completion where i'd be like dad where are my feet wet at night after i must have blocked it out because it's so upsetting to even hear right now. I would have cat cum on my feet every night from ages 8 to 18. Put that on your wiki feed profile. The foot freaks would go wild for that one. Cat behaviorists say that

a lot of their behavior is just them being like, yeah, I own you, okay? Right. And they're almost like disappointed owners of the humans who think that they own them like they rub their scent on them they bring you animals like that they've killed and like line them up on your porch and they're like okay now eat it like it's

almost right right they're initiating you like what let me see if this bitch is like good enough to like actually you know wow fucker i love it you know because my mom's cats flex on her all the time because they bring in all kinds of animals into the house and the meow really and the meow is specifically engineered to sound like a baby crying to like hack into that part of our brain so Cats are hackers! Snakes aren't hackers. Snakes are, but they are friends. But they are friends. I'm out here killing the snake stigma.

Women can snake too. And snake have friend with each other and don't look up snake sex. I wonder because it's just so phallic. That's why it's just like, yeah, it's this big moving dick pet there is there is like look at my throbbing dick pet like and there is a you know my dick's small but look at this gigantic dick i'm walking around when i see a snake i do think who is selling like the

person who owns a snake is probably selling weed to middle schoolers. Or the snake. Or the snake. But there is a drug dealer, a low-key drug dealer vibe to the snakes. But I think we can really turn that around. All right. Yeah. I feel like if you brought a snake out in public, you would be not only one of the first women to do so,

but also one of the first people who was not wearing almost 50% of their clothing leather to do that. So that would be a dope. Also. Seems like a hacker pet. Yeah. Prepare yourself for a lot of people being like, hey, can I take a picture?

Right. Can I take a picture with your snake? Listen. You got to get an ugly snake. Yeah. People don't. I'll get a hideous snake. I'm not even against starting an Instagram for a snake, but it's not, but it's a love

thing. Or like a defanged, no poison rattlesnake. So they're like, oh my God. I want a snake fanny pack and just keep my snake in there. And then they're like, guys, check this shit out. And then it'll be like, the twist is she had a snake. The whole time. The whole time.

All right, guys, let's check in with the charts. What do you say? I would love it. Let's see the chart. What's you say? I would love it. See the chart. What's top in the charts, Casey Kasem? So on the book chart, this is something that we haven't really looked at up to this point. They make chart for book? Yeah, they make chart for book on Amazon.

Wow. And one of the top books right now is The Russia Hoax, The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and frame Donald Trump. By Fox News legal analyst Greg Jarrett. Greg 2Gs, love it. All 2Gs. Gregig. Gregig. Gregignant. Gregignant.

It's getting amazing user reviews. What are their user reviews like? Just in love. Yeah. But they try and do the soft sell. The top user review that is five stars is like, hey, I know you guys might not like Trump, but you should check this book out. Give it a read if you like to read.

It's a really good, easy read. You'll love it. It's just entertaining. And if you want to know the truth, you should read this because you're all sheeple. Whoa, whoa whoa whoa and PolitiFact just debunked like a ton of the crazy

things that the book claims apparently it's wildly out of date already right and when did it come out like a month ago oh yeah especially with the pace of this thing I guess it's true it's like an emerging market for the left and the right, these sort of like opiate books that either help you believe

that the White House is a total fucking dumpster fire, but then added stuff that make you get like, oh, yeah, it's got to end awful for this motherfucker. And then on the other side, it's like the QAnon shit or this stuff. It's like, no, it's all good, guys. It's all going to be fine. Everyone gets a check. The complete ketogenic diet.

So shout out to Ify because he's talked about that before on the podcast. But that's the new diet fad, right, where you just eat. Just put your body in a state of ketosis where your body burns fat. What's ketosis? Yeah, well, it's basically where you go into a state where normally you burn carbohydrates for your energy, but if you don't eat any carbohydrates, your body will then start burning its fat reserves for energy. Okay.

And then you're passively shedding your weight. So you're just not eating carbs. You're not eating carbs, but you're also eating a ton of fat and things like that because that's your new fuel and you're trying to get your body to switch energy sources. Oh, that's great. You just eat KFC skin. My dad did it. KFC skin. My dad did fucking turn into a rail thin dude

and to the point where he was like, I need to stop. I'm too keto. If you want to look like Iggy Pop, this is a good diet. Ooh, the Iggy Pop diet. But there's a lot of, I don't know, people talk bad about it.

I don't know. I don't know where the science community has fully landed, but I think it's, to this point, people like it. Yeah. And it's big out here. You hear it on a regular basis.

People talk about it. I'm keto. I'm keto. 1984 is still in the top 50, which, I mean, that's a long time, because it was written in 1984, right? 1948. 48, 84. Whoa.

Pretty cool. Ever heard of it? Pretty cool. Isn't that based off his travel to somewhere? I think it's his travels in Eastern Bloc. Yeah, or something where he totally blew his mind. He's like, okay, I think I know what I'm going to write about. Yeah, yeah.

And this book that was mentioned on Friday's episode by guest Kirby Howell. Baptiste. Baptiste. The Four Agreements, A Practical Guide to Personal Wisdom. I went on a deep rabbit hole on this because it is the modern, the secret. I've heard it talked about by people who are fans of self-help literature, and it has four basic ideas that you're supposed to agree with, like use your words wisely, and basic stuff,

but make those the focus. Well, make you think. Yeah, make you think. But it's based, the thing that I like about it, that might just be a scam by the author, but it's supposedly based on Toltec wisdom, which is like they're the predecessors of the Aztecs yeah I've seen legends of the hidden temple right I know about Toltec so like legends of the hidden temple

the big head from that's actually all but yeah I mean we have all of these cultures in America that we you know know, basically paved over, but they did have written traditions. They haven't been fully translated yet, but there's a whole entire library of ideas and philosophies and art and knowledge that's out there from part of the world that was completely cut off from a lot of the world that we have studied up to this point. So it seems like, I don't know, it's a promising idea to me. I don't know enough about the book. I love self-help, and I love how it's just like, be nice. The secret, I was very into it.

My mom was deeply into it. She had a major thing with spoiler alert for the secret I was very into, my mom was deeply into it. She had a major thing with spoiler alert for the secret. Like, don't tell anyone what the secret is. Because it was a competitive advantage. I was like, that was the most popular movie in the world. I was like, don't tell anyone. Oprah, shut up. Shut the fuck up, Oprah.

I guess all those help books really just boil down to go easy on yourself. Yeah, a lot of them do. In a way, you sort of arrive at the same place. Like, I need to relax a little bit more. I need to go easier on myself. Things are not as bad as I'm always making them out to be. And things will improve from that. That's a big one from the four agreements.

One of them is that we have these built-in sort of ideas from our parents that are like when you actually examine them, the reasons we get mad at ourselves are really stupid. Really? Yeah. Like my ED. Right. Yeah. It's like I can't control that. Well, the secret I love because it's just like if you want a car every day, say to yourself, I want a car.

And then one day a car shows up, I want a car. And then one day, a car shows up. A self-driving car. A Tesla just pulls itself into your bedroom. Beep, beep, beep. Hi, here for you. I want a car. Siri, I want a car. Give me the car.

Miles, it's not your fault. Box office, guys. Crazy Rich Asians. Yeah. Dominated. I'm so excited to see it. Has anyone seen it yet? Yeah, I saw it.

Did you love it? It's one of the best rom-coms I've ever seen. I love rom-coms. Yay. Like I said on, I think, Friday's show, yeah. The rom part of the rom-com touched me, and the com part was fully delivered on the comedy, the romance.

Yay. Yeah. And this is the first rom-com in three years to actually be a big success. The last movie that topped 20 million was Trainwreck, which that was a long time ago. That movie already does not hold up very well. Right, exactly.

It's wild how it already seems like a movie that came out 10 years ago. Yeah. So what about Mile 22, bro? We gotta talk about Mile 22. Mile 22. It already seems like a movie that came out 10 years ago. Yeah. So. What about Mile 22, bro? We got to talk about. Did it do well? Miles 22.

Miles is 22, bro. You better be careful, bro. You better be careful, bro. At the box office, bro. Don't beat me, bro. It pulled in a disappointing $13.6 million. Sounds like a lot of money. That is a lot of money, bro. You know, $34 million for a crazy rich Asian.

$13 million for. Yeah, but Asians are rich, bro. Mile 22. But the movie. That is a lot of money, bro. You know, $34 million for Crazy Rich Asians. $13 million for- Yeah, but Asians are rich, bro. Mile 22. But the movie cost between $30 and $50 million to produce, and they usually double that in- Don't forget about the marketing. Marketing. So that's $60 to $100 million. And they were counting on this being the first chapter in a series of mile 22,

mile 23, mile 24, mile 25, up to mile 678. And it's not looking good for that. It was basically in line with the weekend opener Alpha, which is just about the first human-dog friendship, I think, based on the preview. What about human-snake friendship? Right. Well, that's the sequel that is now going to come out.

And then in music, I don't know why. Make friendship. Right. Well, that's the sequel that is now going to come out. And then in music, I don't know why. Yeah. Wow. I had trouble getting that one out. Uh-oh. Jack just had a seizure. Please lift both hands above your head, smile, and say a sentence.

We want to make sure you haven't had a stroke. Nicki Minaj's album came out last week it is doing disappointingly yeah well it got beat by Travis Scott's Astroworld which was in it second week

of release and people are talking about how her co-signing Tekashi69 is not good I mean that is an

extremely bad look for somebody that is the worst possible like here's my new album also I love my raping friend. And you're just like, what?

Can you not do that? Yeah. So that's not good, and especially now that she is being implicated in domestic violence rumors with Safari. Right. And then I just want to talk about a trend I'm seeing on Google that makes me want to tell everybody to try harder, where the number one search over the weekend was Nick Jonas, because he had a big party.

He had an engagement party. And that was the thing last week. The big search last week was one of the Jenners for turning 21. So we're now just Googling people whose parties we wish we had gone to or something. I do like that we've reached that part of dystopia of like,

I just want to see pictures of party. I want to go to party. Please show me Google images of party. Well, it just helps you escape whatever your own situation is.

Right. Like, that's why, you know, like pretty soon motherfuckers are just going to be wearing VR headsets

and be like, leave me alone. Right. Right. I don't want to exist out of whatever's actually happening well I genuinely think

that that's why astrology has had such a big resurgence in the past year or so is just like good old fashioned escapism

of like people just need things to feel nice about yeah Nick Jonas had party good for him on the 5th I will meet someone who will change my life

right not unless there are Pisces. Keep them away. Keep them away. They're dundrous. Hey, speaking of someone who's going to change your life, we've got Jared on the blower. We're going to go to a break.

We'll be right back with Jared Holt from Right Wing Watch. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. 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. One session.

24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out?

I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. 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. Señora Sex Ed is not your mommy sex talk. This show is la plática like you've never heard it before we're breaking the stigma and silence around sex and sexuality in latinx communities this podcast is an intergenerational conversation between latinas from gen x to gen z we're covering everything from body image to representation in film and television we even interview iconic latinas like Puerto Rican actress Ana Ortiz.

I felt in control of my own physical body and my own self. I was on birth control. I had sort of had my first sexual experience. If you're in your señora era or know someone who is, then this is the show for you. We're your hosts, Diosa and Mala, and you might recognize us from our flagship podcast, Locatora Radio. We're so excited for you to hear our brand new podcast, Senora Sex Ed. Listen to Senora Sex Ed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. It's me, Katie Couric. If you follow me on social media,

you know I love to cook or at least try, especially alongside some of my favorite chefs and foodies like Benny Blanco, Jake Cohen, Lighty Hoyt, Alison Roman, and of course, Ina Garten and Martha Stewart. So I started a free newsletter called Good Taste that comes out every Thursday, and it's serving up recipes that will make your mouth water. Think a candied bacon Bloody Mary, tacos with cabbage slaw, curry cauliflower with almonds and mint, and cherry slab pie with vanilla ice cream to top it all off. I mean, yum. I'm getting hungry. But if you're not sold yet, we also have kitchen tips like a foolproof way to grill the perfect burger and must-have products like the best cast iron skillet to feel like a chef in your own kitchen. All you need to do is sign up at katiecouric.com slash goodtaste. That's K-A-T-I-E-C-O-U-R-I-C dot com slash goodtaste. I promise your taste buds will be happy you did. 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! Santos Escobar. Join me as we learn more about the history

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. And we're back and we are joined by Jared Holt from Right Wing Watch. What's up, Jared? Hey, thanks for having me back. Oh, anytime. It's our pleasure. It's our privilege to have you on. So you are going to tell us about the Alex Jones saga, your involvement there with what happened with this Alex Jones character.

I think our audience knows who he is, but tell us how you got involved. Yeah, so it's been a pretty rough couple of weeks for Alex Jones and the InfoWars staff. A lot of prominent social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube. It's hard to think of what he is still on. Yeah, I mean, he tried to go on Vimeo, right? And he got booted off Vimeo. Really? Pornhub.

Oh, God. Yeah, I think it was YouPorn or Pornhub or something kicked Alex Jones off because they tried to do what these gun channels did on YouTube where they went over and started uploading to porn websites. Well, there are only so many videos of gaping assholes that people can stand watching. Oh! Swish! That was great, buddy. Yeah, and this kind of got kicked off a little bit by accident by me i was on spotify one day

looking at the podcast section and i happened to cross info wars on spotify and then shortly after alex jones had tweeted out a link to his spotify page and that alerted me to more InfoWars podcasts that were on the platform. And as somebody who has my own podcast, plug real quick, but I know that getting on Spotify can be a little bit tricky if you are a smaller podcast. So I thought it was weird that InfoWars had been able to get on seemingly without a hitch and I tweeted about it. And then that sort of added into, you know, like years long frustrations and work of other progressive groups that have been demanding that social media platforms enforce their terms of service on InfoWars when they seemingly have been reluctant to do so for so long. And that kind of snowballed.

It was amplified by groups like Sleeping Giants. And, you know, here we are today, weeks later. And as somebody who researches this kind of stuff for a living, it's actually had this weird inverse effect where it's become a lot harder for me to find what I need to find just because it's not on anything. Right. Yeah. So what do you see sort of the future of all this stuff going? Because yeah, for people who don't know, I mean, you've been on the show before, but your expertise is in the

area of sort of keeping tabs on what the alt-right and super right-wing groups are up to on the internet and stuff like that. I know that he has the app and stuff like that, and nutraceuticals are like half off. But where do they go from here? for so long that he has, you know, thousands, if not millions of dedicated hardcore listeners that will jump through the hoops to try to find InfoWars broadcast wherever they are online. Right. But what this did was take InfoWars out of the sort of mainstream online, you know, discourse, if you will, and, you know, has sort of mitigated the harm that bad actors like Alex Jones have on the information space. I think, you know,

InfoWars is trying something with Snapchat right now. They have their app, which is popular in the app store at the moment. But I think that, you know, in weeks to come, we'll see that fade as the Streisand effect begins to wean down. Can you explain what the Streisand effect is? Is that just being a really good singer? Yes. Oh, cool. Yeah. It goes back to, I guess there was some thing where like Barbara Streisand didn't want people to know where her house was.

And because it became like a big public ordeal of like, do not look up my house. Everybody went to look up the house. So I think Infowars is having sort of a similar effect where it's like they're putting out these claims like this is the broadcast that nobody wants you to see so there's sort of like a natural gravitation towards it i think with some people but uh you know given what i know about info wars having watched nearly every broadcast uh for the past few years it's hard for me to imagine that like your general joe schmoe who you know gets curious about info wars and starts watching it is going to stay along like stay around very long because a lot of it is just so

outrageous so if you're watching info wars every day how do you self-care do you go on walks or do you what do you do you go to the gym what how do you do some longboarding yeah how do you take care of yourself? Well, I take three capsules of InfoWars Brain Force Plus. Perfect. And that really clears my mind. Is there something that we as people who have not just been streamlining InfoWars

content wouldn't expect about InfoWars that you know based on that horrible thing that you've done for our sake? Something that a lot of people don't know is that Alex Jones actually has like a bootleg radio station or network rather. And he's also syndicated on a lot of talk radio shows. His whole thing is that the ad blocks where he's normally selling his brain pills that help me maintain a good work-life balance. He gives that space to broadcasters.

So essentially he makes it to where if you're a radio station and you pick up the Alex Jones show, you get free content and you get those ad blocks entirely for your own advertisers. Oh, interesting. So he doesn't make money off of that.

It's just him being like, I need more people to believe my bullshit. So I'm going to give it out there for free. Yeah. Because, I mean, the self-professed mission of InfoWars, right, is that there's a war on your mind uh an information war and if you will if you will oh info is short for information okay got it we're breaking all kinds of news on this show right now and then it makes a lot more sense when you think about it now yeah so he like his vendetta is to like get his word out and sort of create this alternate reality that he can then lure people into and then sell the products or get donations.

Right. Or, you know, it used to be like ad revenue, but they're advertising. People dropped them recently. So ultimately, Alex Jones wants to get Infowars into the mainstream. And I think he's willing to take a loss in a lot of ways to do that. What do you think about the whole free speech argument that came up out of this? I know there were some liberals who were like, oh, this is dangerous. This could make him stronger on the right.

It was just like, oh, this is censorship. Nothing he's saying is dangerous. Well, how do you, you know, obviously you, that's a, that's a defense that many people on the extreme far right employ or deploy to defend themselves. What's your, how do you sort of look at that? And what's, what's the talk amongst you guys at Right Wing Watch about all that? I mean, it's not really a free speech issue because Alex Jones is still allowed to talk his say. He just, you know, isn't allowed to publish on these platforms that have established rules for user conduct. And, you know, I don't think that's a free speech issue.

But it is interesting because it sort of raises this bigger discussion, I think, about like how much power is invested in these private companies online and how these social media companies, this is different because it's a very clear violation of the rules they set out and Alex Jones does a lot of harm. The Sandy Hook parents that are suing him now had to move around a lot. His lawyers tried to make their addresses public so that they could be put out to the InfoWars fan base. He's wrecking a lot of harm, and that's not a free speech issue. But it is interesting to think that Facebook, Twitter, Google, whatever, could essentially just lights out somebody's speech based on their bottom line or at the whim of their executives.

So I think that's sort of a different but like bigger, important conversation about how much power we give tech companies and whether or not they should be regulated. And I think that's an important, interesting conversation to have. Um, but I don't think that, you know, this censorship free speech argument necessarily works here. I find a lot of people that make this argument don't bring up what Alex Jones has actually done and said. Yeah. The thing that finally got him banned from Twitter was telling people to get rifles by their beds and get ready to fight like people who,

you know, are anti info war. So like he, they were like, Oh, that's an incitement to actual literal violence. Like that's not really a metaphor at that point. And I mean,

yeah, with the free speech thing, the, these are public companies, right? And so, you know, if they have user terms that are like, you can't say anything bad about Facebook or we'll ban you, and they start banning people because they say something bad about Facebook or one of the political parties or something, then I think they would be rightly attacked in the media and it would be bad for their bottom line uh or at least this is

how the system's supposed to work but like as of right now their terms of service are don't like incite acts of violence on people and don't like try and harm people's lives which is pretty down the middle a lot of this feels like if we like revisit stories like this in a couple of years it just seems like laws that don't exist yet and policies that don't exist where there's all this noise and dis of like policy put into place that can i don't know just like give at least a yardstick of like here's what is acceptable here isn't because it just like doesn't make sense yeah i mean some politicians want them regulated like utilities like their water or electricity or something like that because it's just you know a thing that they think should be taken for granted but it's just a lot of i don't know there's just, you know, a thing that they think should be taken for granted.

It's just a lot of, I don't know, there's just a lot of blind spots. So, Jared, what do you think, you know, a lot of people were like, oh, this is going to make Alex Jones stronger by doing this. Like, it's going to really rile people up. After, like, looking at the last couple weeks and still watching, what's the assessment of the state of the info wars empire um they are freaking out but they want you to know that they're not freaking out right that's i can relate with that it's like people that get online and they're like just so you know i'm not mad and then they write like 10 paragraphs right into something. Let me tell you how not mad I am. Yeah, they're kind of in disarray.

A few of the smaller time hosts have sort of floated this idea that they might not have jobs soon. I think there's maybe a little bit of worry that the Infowars stuff will have to downsize. But, yeah, they're not doing so great i don't and they're

boasting that they have like they're they're boasting that they have like millions of new listeners but i can't find anything that makes me believe that's the case yeah a lot of bluffing to be the opposite yeah ah well i mean you know he is artist, so, you know, maybe he'll pivot on that. He'll have to create a new character, like Sacha Baron Cohen. Exactly, exactly. It's just a performance. Yeah, what is Alex Jones' Bruno? I like to imagine it's like some sort of mix between like Post Malone and Alex Jones.

I'm thinking SoundCloud raps the next thing. Post Jalon, yeah. Post Jalon. Oh Post Jelania. Oh my God. Jared, it's a pleasure having you. Thank you so much for taking the time and yeah, hang in there.

Yeah. Where can people find you and your amazing podcast and all the other work that you do? I'm on Twitter at Jared L Holt. I'm writing articles all the time for rightwingwatch.org. And I have my own podcast called Shitpost, which you can find on iTunes and everywhere else that podcasts are found.

Sweet. I want to tell people about your show. Yeah, it's a weekly digest of just the weird underbelly of internet culture and how that plays out on a larger scale. We have a lot of guests on to talk about sort of tech culture news events. And it sort of comes at it with a, I think of it as like a Tabasco sweet,

like super deluxe flavor, if you will. Oh, okay. Interesting. Muy interesting. We're intrigued. Yeah. All right, man. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. Yeah. Take care. Movie interesting. We're intrigued. Yeah. All right, man. Well, thank you so much for taking the time.

Yeah, take care. All right, we're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. 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.

One session. 24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that?

You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. 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. 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 This is the Lucha iconic heroes in the ring. This is 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. 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? 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 prints. A lion. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch. As 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. On 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. Hi, everyone. It's me, Katie Couric. Have you heard about my newsletter called Body and Soul? It has everything you need to know about your physical

and mental health. Personally, I'm overwhelmed by the wellness industry. I mean, there's so much information out there about lifting weights, pelvic floors, cold plunges, anti-aging. So I launched Body and Soul to share doctor-approved insights about all of that and more. We're tackling everything. Serums to use through menopause, exercises that improve your brain health, and how to naturally lower your blood pressure and cholesterol. Oh, and if you're as sore as I am from pickleball, we'll help you with that too. Most importantly, it's information you can trust. Everything is vetted by experts at the top of their field, and you can write into them directly to have your questions answered.

So sign up for Body and Soul at Katie Couric dot com slash body and soul. Taking better care of yourself is just a click away. And we're back. And sleepy eyes, checked head. Crazy face, Rudy Giuliani. Rudy is just rotting. Yeah. His soul, you know, he's sort of like Kellyanne Conway, too.

You can tell that they, deep down, their soul knows it's wrong. And it's just mutiny. I don't actually know. Maybe Rudy's doesn't. I don't know. Whatever. It's not good to lie. It's not good for your face.

Right. No. I feel like. And there's doesn't. I don't know. Whatever. It's not good to lie. It's not good for your face. There's no better evidence than Rudy truly on his face. I feel like his teeth are going to come out and people are going to be like, oh, that's embarrassing because we all know he probably has dentures and it seems like he's almost losing them all the time. But then the rest of his skull is going to come out

of his mouth and people are going to be like, oh, no. Fan theory, there's a really hot guy underneath there, and once his face drips off, once the flesh starts to fall off, it's like, oh, there's a Beauty and the Beast situation. There's a hot man in there. Right. Anyways, so what happened, Miles?

So, as Jared was saying, at InfoWars, they are freaking out, but don't want you to know they're freaking out. And I would say that the very same thing is actually happening at the White House, because we got news this weekend that White House counsel Don McGahn is actually now a cooperating witness for Robert Mueller. And he has spoken to like around 30 hours or more of basically chit chat with Robert Mueller about what he knows. And they say a lot of this is born out of the fear that Don McGahn feels that Trump was having him cooperate and talk to Mueller. So he could eventually just throw McGahn under the bus and be like, no, it was McGahn the whole time that was doing all this because he's the lawyer. So McGahn's lawyer was like, I think we should go talk to Robert Mueller so I can tell Robert Mueller I had fucking nothing to do with any of this shit.

And so that report came out. 30 hours is so much conversation. That's six weeks of zeitgeist episodes. Thank you. That's good. That's the only way I can think of things. How many zeitgeist episodes? I was just trying to think, like, have we spoken for 30 hours off mic?

You and I? No. I mean, if people saw what happens, we go off mic? You and I? No. Yeah. No. I mean, if people saw what happens, we go to our respective rooms. Yeah. Mine's just the bathroom. Yes. Where I sob and Jack just lifts weight upstairs. Great episode.

It looks like the- And then Jack starts drinking protein shake and yelling. Just the powder. Yeah. Starts doing weird, his own bench press gym, like American Beauty's garage gym. Anyway. It's a lot of time to talk, is what we're saying. Yeah, it's a lot of time.

And, you know, the thing is that he has a lot to say when it comes to the obstruction case. Because if they ever, like, lack really damning piece of evidence, it would probably come from Don McGahn, who was the lawyer advising them. evidence, it would probably come from Don McGahn, who was the lawyer advising them. And he has an understanding of the president's mindset in the days leading to the firing of James Comey, how the White House handled the firing of Michael Flynn, how Trump repeatedly berated Jeff Sessions, tried to assert control over the investigation. There's just a lot of stuff that he knows that if he's talking to Robert Mueller, that's a good... I mean, he's probably being like, oh, this is great.

This is like, was john dean who was nixon's lawyer who kind of did the same thing so yeah john dean and nixon like called him out as a villain and tried to like use him as a fall guy and so mcgann is specifically or the new york times report specifically says that mcgann like didn't want to be another john dean and so that's why he's doing this because he's's worried about Trump flipping on him. I don't know why he would think that, because Trump has shown such loyalty. Yeah, and he's so calm.

As you can tell, the full court press was on on the Sunday shows, and on Sunday, the president was tweeting all kinds of weird shit about he said, oh, Mueller's like fucking, he makes McCarthy look like a puppy or whatever right interesting bro you had the same lawyer as mccarthy right okay first of all right cone was your fucking lawyer and also you're the one out here pulling people's security clearances like that's you're you're actually punishing your political opponents anyway so i think suffice

to say they're freaking out at the white House. So deploy agent Giuliani to the field because he will dead all this shit with his fucking mind game. So this is him on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd. And wow, just try and keep up with this logic storm. Look, I'm not going to be rushed into having him testify so that he gets trapped into perjury. And when you tell me that, you know,

he should testify because he's going to tell the truth and he shouldn't worry, well, that's so silly because it's somebody's version of the truth, not the truth. He didn't have a conversation about... Truth is truth. I don't mean to go like... No, it isn't truth. Truth isn't truth. The president of the United States says,

I didn't... Truth isn't truth. Mr. Mayor, do you realize what... Shut up, sleepy eyes. Wait, so the Klansman is black? The truth isn't truth. And then he goes on to be like, well, the president is going to say, I don't know what happened with the firing of James Comey.

And then James Comey is going to tell Robert Mueller, oh, he did it because of this, this, and this. And Comey's best friends with Robert Mueller. So who do you think he's going to believe? And then Chuck Todd's like, well, maybe, what if he just went off who's been telling the truth more often recently and use that as his basis for determining whose word might carry more weight? And then Giuliani is like, ah, I mean, all the bones in his face came out of his mouth.

Good for Rudy, though. Like he really threw his name up there with the likes of Descartes and Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant, to be like, truth isn't truth. You know, like, what the, what? I'm not hung over anymore. Listen to that. My blood pressure's just through the fucking roof after that. Holy shit.

Where are we? I mean, not to mention that Don McGahn, too, when we go back to the things that he knows and could have done, he was asked by Trump to be like, hey, can you fire Robert Mueller? Can you just do that for me? Because I'm a coward. And he was like, absolutely not. I will resign if you ask me to do something like that. We cannot do anything like that.

That is horribly illegal and no. And that's when they eased up on the Mueller firing talk. But again, truth isn't truth. And that is a great defense. When you're defending yourself and you're throwing everything you got around you that you're running out of things to throw and now

we're trying to redefine truth. I would just appreciate if Rudy Giuliani would credit me when he is quoting my tramp stamp. It looks great. Thank you so much. It's cool because it looks the same way credit me when he is quoting my tramp stamp. My truth chest. It looks great. Thank you so much. I really love it because it's cool because it looks the same way

right side up or upside down. It is. Yeah, it is. It's a fully cursed image. The font is... It's word art. Yeah, it's word art. Thank you. Actually, no, it's truth isn't truth one way and it's upside down. It says, fuck you, it isn't. Which is amazing, Pete, of word art. Thank you so much.

Again, it's just a very... It like it was funny like how the clinton lewinsky thing like came down to then arguing like what is sex depends on what your definition of is is you know what i mean and now with this we're going we've whittled it down we're we're down to the moment we're like well what is truth what is it though Is it what actually happened? I'm so tired. Or is it whose version, whose lie you want to, I don't know. Guys, Rudy, you done done it. And it'll be fun to see everyone clean up the mess from the inevitable internet fallout from that comment. Yeah.

So you guys. Yes. I wanted to talk. Gather round. Gather round, children. I wanted to talk. Gather round, the fire. The fire. Gather round, children.

So I wanted to kind of put this out to you guys and also to our listeners as more of like an ongoing conversation. But we've talked, I think once in the past, about how quicksand was like this constant metaphor in the 60s and early 70s. It was like all over the place in movies. Yeah, I remember that.

The media called vietnam a national quicksand like that was their word for it constantly like now we you hear it referred to as a quagmire usually right uh that just replaced that with quicksand that's what they said at the time martin luther king jr used the metaphor of quicksand in his i have a dream speech a reporter asked one of the astronauts who was about to land on the moon what they would do if the surface of the moon was quicksand. Oh, okay. And just like...

Makes you think. And people are like, yeah, what about that? So it was just this like national obsession, which is weird because quicksand isn't an actual thing that occurs in nature. There are like sinkholes and... I thought quicksand was real. Wait, it isn't?

I thought it is an actual phenomenon, right? No, not really. Wet, granular sand that just is, when there's pressure on it, it just collapses on itself? There is, but you can just step out of it. There's not a thing where the more you struggle, the more you fall down,

the more it sucks you down. Jack, I saw Bear Grylls save himself from a quicksand pit. Also, Bear Grylls is full of shit. How dare you? Stop it. It's my birthday. Don't talk about Bear Grylls. Don't talk about Bear Grylls for me.

But I feel like we've sort of edited it out of our history because it was just, it was kind of a perfect metaphor for the time because we were this unsuspecting, idealistic, protagonist country chugging along and then suddenly felt like ourselves get stuck and started sinking and the more we struggled to free ourselves, the faster we sunk in terms of like Vietnam and hippies

and great leaders who step up and seem to make a difference getting assassinated. It just seemed like after all the idealism and optimism of the 50s, it seemed like it made sense at the time. Oh, it was more like a warning. It's like, I know times are good now, but quicksand could be ahead. We've got to be careful. It was like suddenly the country found itself sinking. They're like, what's happening? We're always right.

We're America. I wonder who is like the first person to popularize using that as a metaphor. They're just like sitting at home like, what if DeSantis was fast? What if DeSantis was faster? But now when we look back on that, because it's not really a thing that's in movies anymore or really a thing that we think about anymore, we've just kind of edited it out. So we know that it's in some movies and TV shows, but none of those are classics. So we just don't think about it that much anymore. Think about what our current moment's quicksand is, what the metaphor is for this moment that when in the future we look back,

we're going to be like, oh, that was fucking stupid. But at the time, it was just so omnipresent that we just kind of took it for granted and it'll probably not make sense in the future. Yeah. You got some pitches for us? I got some pitches. Yeah. You got some pitches for us? I got some pitches. Okay.

So House of Cards is like a good quicksand style metaphor for the country because we had this facade of everything being great and built up and it turns out

it's full of shit. It turns out that Kevin Spacey is a criminal. Exactly. Literally the show House of Cards was a metaphor for itself. But that doesn't totally work because that's been a prevalent metaphor for decades.

Okay, good. That was my note for that pitch. Okay, great. So let's move on to that. Wizards, same deal. It was like people were obsessed with wizards for the past couple decades because of Harry Potter. But I feel like that people have been obsessed with wizards for a long time. And the only thing that was new is that they were young.

There was like a, someone was like, what if the LeBron James of wizards? The wizard small. Yeah, what if the wizard not old? Jake Harrelly, comma, genius. So my two main pitches, but I don't have them fully fleshed out, crime boss or mafia head slash mobster because I think, first of all,

we have sort of elected one to the presidency in Trump. He's the head of a crime family. They're the stars of our prestige TV shows like Breaking Bad and The Sopranos. They're a perfect metaphor for what we're finding out about capitalism, putting on a good face on a day-to-day basis, like acting like they value the same thing as us,

and secretly these capitalist overlords are running a criminal organization that robs and murders people. Yeah, okay. Remember that? Yeah. I think just like, and shout out Lazy, the scammer narrative in general

is very resonant with our times. Right, the grifter. America is snake oil. Yeah. America is snake. Is snake. But don't tread on the snake. Don't tread on it.

Snake culture is under attack. Mobsters have been around for a while, but they also, like when you look at how they behave in reality versus the movie depictions, they're not these smart people with values and they're usually very simple, disloyal narcissists. And so we had to invent all the like great complex, smart, loyal mobsters that we obsess over. But, you know, the only thing is I feel like, I don't think it's going to be like quicksand because I think people will probably still be obsessed with that going forward.

Oh, yeah, there'll always be crime and mobsters. And they've been in movies since the 40s. I think a better, I mean, I don't, I can't really think of like a pop culture thing, but I look at America as being an old abandoned theme park where fun used to be had. And the infrastructure was there at one point, but it's all rotting away

and no one really is that interested anymore. Too many deaths in the wave pool. There's a lot of... No benefits for the workers. They quit on the job. And the theme park has been left to rot and turn into a big spider party. Yeah, or I mean just like post-apocalyptic landscapes, I think, in general.

And, you know, partially amusement parks if you're focusing on the Scooby-Doo universe, but all around just abandoned landscapes. Yeah, I think that could work. Superheroes seems like an obvious one because they will probably look really stupid at some point in the future. But I don't know. What were you going to say, Jamie? I think Zamboni. Zamboni.

Interesting. Go on. I like this. That one was at the tip of my tongue. Come on. Work this one out. Work this one out. I hope I'm not stepping on anyone's toes by saying America Zamboni metaphor.

Okay. So you got the Zamboni, right? American company. That's good. So the ice is getting a little rough. And what is the ice? In this scenario, who is this? Is this us?

The national mood is the ice. We've been out for a whole period, and there were some fights. People skating it up. Scoring, but also some fights. Couple scores, couple of fights. And then it's like the ice is getting rough. We need a break. We need a break.

Vietnam. Break time, need a snack. Everyone gets off the ice. In comes Zamboni. America. A really attractive, cool vehicle. Cold war. It's cold.

Like the mood is cold. Everyone's got pretzels and fries. And Zamboni comes out and just smooths. We're waiting for a Zamboni that's never going to come. Oh, gotcha. The ice is rough and it's just the ice. You don't get a second ice. You know?

I think we solved it. Never mind. I don't want to hear from anybody else. I'm having a panic attack. I'm going to be honest, man. That's a no for me, dog. That's a no for you, dog? Unbelievable. A little pitchy? A little pitchy for you? A little too wordy, man. Just get right to it. Yeah, go for Brett.

Hold on, I gotta take this call. Yeah, I don't know. I just got some crazy fucking pitch about a Zamboni. All right. Well, that was fun. Jamie, it's been a pleasure having you as always. Where can people find you? Go find me at Jamie Loftus Help on Twitter, Jamie Crowe Superstar Instagram.

Listen to Bechtelcast. And I have a new show on Super Deluxe called Robot Take Over. Robot Take Over. If you love hearing her sickly voice. Yeah, the first, I've been getting so much shit about that. Yeah, the first two episodes we filmed when I'm kind of visibly ill and I sound very sick and people were just like, yo, what happened to Lofty?

What happened to her? Did Tabasco Sweet kill her? Like, what happened to her did tabasco sweet kill her like what what happened take her soul is that her real voice is that her real voice or is it wait regular jamie is a character lots of wild theories anyways watch the show please it's on youtube.com and is there a tweet you've been enjoying uh it's hard to say the john patrick shanley goodnight tweet because there is one every night, I would recommend last night's goodnight tweet, where it's a very tired-looking John Patrick Shanley smirking at you, saying,

goodnight, it's an up angle. I think it was a brave of him to post this picture. I like to think he took the picture by mistake, and this is just a picture of how he feels when he does the goodnight tweet. August 17th's goodnight tweet is a go for me. And that was the one that I saw and said no picture has ever been more appropriate

to someone's name than that picture. And also his Twitter is at JohnJPShanley, which is redundant. At JohnJPShanley. John, John, John, John Patrick.P. Shanley, which is redundant. At John J.P. Shanley. John, John, John, John Patrick Shanley. Awesome. Miles.

Hi. Hey, where can people find you? And what's a tweet you've been enjoying? Oh, gosh. Me. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Miles of Gray. And a tweet I was really liking is from Ashley Parker.

It just says, approximately five hours into family vacation and risk of patricide is high. For anyone who's been on family vacation, especially as an adult, you start being like, who the fuck is my family? So yes, shout out to you, Ashley. All right. A tweet I've been enjoying from Jaboukie Young-White is,

Black Klansman spoiler, it is hard to believe that an undercover cop went to a KKK meeting and none of his coworkers were there. Which is very zeitgeisty. Boots Riley just tweeted out a critique of Black Klansman. He is the director of Sorry to Bother You. tweeted out a critique of Black Klansman. He is the director of Sorry to Bother You. And you can follow me

on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien. You can follow us at Daily Zeitgeist on Twitter. 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. You can also find those footnotes in the description

of the episode that you're listening to right now. If you just look at more information. Footnotes are where we link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode. Miles. Yeah. It's also where we link off to the song that we ride out on. Alright, what are we going to be doing?

Today, let's go out on some Cali Uchis. This track is not like, she has an album, Isolation, that's really good. But one of the tracks I'm really liking is like sort of an interlude. It's called Coming Home-Interlude. And you kind of get two songs for one. I really like the second half of the song. The first half is good, too.

But this is just a little Kali Uchis for you to enjoy on this Monday. Yeah, happy Monday, everyone. Yeah, and I hope you like the new morning availability of the show. Also, go to tpublic.com slash the Daily Zeitgeist and buy the merch. Hot new merch. You can also go to tpublic.com slash Bechdelcast, too, and get that Bechdelcast merch. I just got my ethnically ambiguous tank top in the mail yesterday.

You guys, I hate to say this, but three of our shows have the best merch. Yeah, we do. The feminist icon shirt is so dope on Backed Out Cast, and ethnically ambiguous has the fire merch. I got the eyebrows. Logo eyes. Logo eyes.

Logo eyes. And that's me telling the rest of our network to step it the fuck up. No, I'm just joking I like all the punch alright we're gonna ride out we're gonna ride out on the song that Miles described

oh so you don't remember this song wow we'll be back tomorrow with more podcast Jackson started drinking a protein shake bye out Miles podcast. Jackson started drinking a protein shake and flipping us off. Bye. Out. Miles.

I'm looking back now thinking maybe I was wrong. I've been so out of place and it's been for so long. I wrote about it, think I made a billion songs, but nothing would ever heal the wound. No, nothing would ever seal the wound. No, nothing. Now I gotta go. I would never heal the wound, no nothing Would ever seal the wound, no nothing Now I gotta go

I'm coming home Coming home It's been too long It's been long enough Tell them I went home Coming home You got greens and cherry pie Everyone ain't always nice

But that's because they love you right The bitches fuck when they don't mind at all Coming home Cool it, put them right, come on, just take your time Keep on, keep on moving, moving Gotta get it right, I can't pause and rewind Keep on, keep on moving, moving I know Stop holding me back, quit pushing me forward

Keep on moving, moving I move At my own pace, just leave me alone Cause I'm too this and I'm too that I'm too skinny, I'm too fat I'm all good cause where I'm at I keep it moving I'm the sweetest piece to fall But some don't like peaches at all

I'm too short and I'm too tall Keep it moving Cool left foot then right Come on, just take your time Gotta get it right i can't pause and rewind 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. Señora Sex Ed

is not your mommy's sex talk. This show is la plática like you've never heard it before. We're breaking the stigma and silence around sex and sexuality in Latinx communities. not your mommy's sex talk. This show is La Plática like you've never heard it before. We're breaking the stigma and silence around sex and sexuality in Latinx communities. This podcast is an intergenerational conversation between Latinas from Gen X to Gen Z. We're your hosts, Viosa and Mala. You might recognize us from our first show, Locatora Radio. Listen to Señora Sex Ed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What happens when a professional football player's career ends

and the applause fades and the screaming fans move on? I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. For some former NFL players, a new faith provides answers. You mix homesteading with guns and church. Voila! You got straight away. He tried to save everybody. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. In California during the summer of 1975, within the span of 17 days and less than 90 miles, two women did something no other woman had done before, try to assassinate the president of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson. 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nicknamed Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI.

Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer this season on the new podcast Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to iHeart True Crime Plus only on Apple Podcasts.