The Daily Zeitgeist - Vaccine Rollout Plan, Can Trump Be Safely Ignored? 11.19.20

Episode Date: November 19, 2020

In episode 763, Jack and guest host Jamie Loftus are joined by writer and producer Joelle Monique to discuss the coronavirus vaccine roll out plan, Trump firing anyone who won't go with his voter fraud claims, officials being worried about the Iran/US relations, Ben Shapiro complaining about Harry Styles, ambient television, and more!FOOTNOTES: Coronavirus vaccine roll-out plan hindered by Trump stonewalling Biden transition Pfizer says it will work with four states to refine plans for rolling out its vaccine. How to Stop a Power Grab Trump Fires Election Security Director Who Corrected Voter Fraud Disinformation #MurphyBreakdown YES THEY DID! Orwellian! even in Milwaukee and Dane! How Months of Miscalculation Led the U.S. and Iran to the Brink of War Noted ‘WAP’ Critic Ben Shapiro Is Big Mad Over Harry Styles’ Love Of Women’s Clothes “Emily in Paris” and the Rise of Ambient TV WATCH: The Masked Singer 4 - Gremlin Sings Ben E King's Stand By Me And Then Freaks Out! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's so much beauty in Mexican culture, like mariachis, delicious cuisine, and even Lucha Libre. Join us for the new podcast, 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, emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay.

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

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere starting September 25th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Hello, the internet, and welcome to season 160, episode four of your daily zeitgeist production of iHeartRadio. This is a podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness. It's Thursday, November 19thth 2020 62 days until january 20th my name is jack o'brien aka vaccine vaccine vaccine vaccine dolly parton will save us all

from gov 19 that is courtesy of big wolf hot dangs at Hot Dangs on Twitter. And I'm thrilled to be joined by my special guest, co-host Jamie Lofton! A.K.A. Jamie Flotus? It's an anagram. It works. Yeah. I don't want to, but I have no interest in the position and I think it's weird so yeah Jamie Flotus

someone pointed out to me all the Otis things are so weird the POTUS, FLOTUS SCOTUS yeah grow up you fucking dorks but I mean the Olive Garden we have an olive garden as our

flotus now so that is amazing we have an olive garden as our flotus there was like this huge that was that huge celebration when jill biden was like they're like wow it's our first italian flotus and everyone's like wow like the olive Olive Garden Lafayette finally got what they fucking wanted. You're happy now when you're here. You're family with the president. I don't know. All right. And we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by the brilliant,

the talented Joelle Smith. Hey, y'all. What's up? Hi. What's up? Oh, man. I'm awake. I'm at my computer.

The gears are still turning up here in my brain. So I'm going to count it as a win. My therapist told me that I have to count all of my little wins. And I was like, it's really hard. Nothing feels like victory. And she was like, it's really hard. Nothing feels like victory. And she was like, there are victories in there. So I'm trying. I'm trying to take Dr. Sylvia's advice and find the little victories.

So we're here making it work. Is anybody else super tired lately? Past couple weeks? I've been tired from just quarantine and being ambient depression. tired from just quarantine and being ambient depression but like i feel like the past couple weeks have been super duper i've been like exhausted and having a hard time getting getting the old wheels turning uh yeah i feel like my brain starts later and stops earlier it's like by i mean i've seen a lot of tweets to this effect, and it's kind of comforting,

but just around 6 o'clock every day, everyone's like, wow, times just are winding down, and then they realize it's 6 o'clock. I was definitely in bed by 8 last night, and I was like, well, I'm a grandma now. That's it, and I'm fine with this transition. It's almost like a throwback to early quarantine it feels like where it's like you're either in bed by eight or you're up until four right right

we are gonna get to know you a little bit better in a moment joelle first we're gonna tell our listeners just a couple of the things we're talking about we're starting to get some views into what the vaccine rollout plan is going to look like. So we'll talk about that. We'll talk about where we're at with the Trump administration, the Trump enablers still claiming fraud and what happened in Michigan a couple of days ago. We'll talk about Trump terminating yet another major member of his cabinet. He likes calling it terminating. We will talk Ben Shapiro.

We will talk the rise of ambient TV. All of that, plenty more. I have to say, I was dreading as I was scrolling through the doc, I'm like, please say that Ben Shapiro's name is not going to crop up on the doc. It's weird because we held off on it for a long time it's no longer topical but i do feel like we really missed out on an opportunity to

yeah i mean it has to be done it's you know we all had to take that l and let that name escape our lips every so often but my god the man the man expert the man who we go to to hear about what it is to be a man um joelle what is something from your search history uh that's revealing about who you are this is so embarrassing i was talking to your lovely Daniel before we got on. I have been researching a lot of Pokemon. You know, your combinations. How do they work? This is my stress reliever now.

I got a Nintendo for myself. My brother bought Pokemon. And immediately I was like, oh, this is what I'm going to do for my stress relief. There's no geopolitical analytics in here. I don't have to worry about race relations in this app uh no one's making podcasts in here it's just you just catch a pokemon and you fight another pokemon and then you buy a cool outfit and it's like the best fake retail therapy because i can't afford to do actual retail therapy anymore uh you know pokemon that's what's happening oh my god that's incredible we're

surviving yay so wait what are some what are some particularly what are what are the top pokemon i'm like let's power right you asked the first follow-up question because I was going to equally be like, so, I mean. Tell us about these Pokemon. Tell us more. Listen, for the children out there, slash older adults who never got out of their child favorites, I'm really boosting up my Machamp. He's a fighter.

He's got big boxing gloves. He's ready to go. A Slurpuff, which looks like whipped cream. I like it because depending on what kind of fruit you give it, it turns into different Pokemon. So you get a variety of the same thing. And then I can't remember the name of my elephant, but I got it and it's cool and I love it.

Nice. And this is on Switch? Yes. Which again is just, it's amazing stress relief. It's really great when it's late and you're falling asleep. You just, you pop it in and you get to bike all over little countrysides that look like London. It's wonderful.

That's heaven. I read recently about, there was like a big, and by big I'm like YouTubers I watched discussed it at length. But there was like a big Pokemon scandal where, bear with me, I guess Logan Paul. Performance enhancing drugs. Oh boy, oh boy. Logan Paul, he's not the villain of the story, shockingly.

Logan Paul has a Pokemon pokemon dealer which is a job you can have and this pokemon dealer dealt like arranged this big pokemon deal and then these guys paid two hundred thousand dollars for a set of pokemon cards and then it turned out the pokemon cards were fake and now there's all this it was a pokemon fraud scandal and i really loved watching it unfold because it was a bunch of doofuses with too much money being like well the cards about to get here and they were like live streaming it they're like the most expensive pokemon deal ever and they open the cards and they're like well these are clearly fraudulent they're like made of just like regular paper stock

that you would get in Staples. Yeah, it was just a pile of printer paper. I just like to say that the game is $30 right now. It's on sale. You don't have to pay $200,000 for anything. There are no in-app purchases, to the best of my knowledge. Just go ahead and save your money. You know, invest that in something worthwhile.

Give it to a child in need. Please don't spend that kind of money on paper it doesn't make sense it simply doesn't don't do anything that logan paul has already done that i thought that's been a rule of thumb for years generally good idea a perfect guideline i do wonder like for sports cards and pokemon cards and like physical things like that i do feel like we're reaching a point where i mean we can make any video see like make people seem like they're saying things that they haven't said like right perfect precision and like i you know sneakers like that one of the ways that people are getting, quote, counterfeit sneakers is like the people who make those in other countries are just like here. I'm going to make a couple more and they won't go through Nike, but you will get the exact same thing.

And those are like counterfeit. But it's like what? I don't know. thing and those are like counterfeit but it's like what i i don't know i feel like the philosophical question of like what counterfeit is is going to arise uh more and more yeah especially with regard to pokemon cards that seems like a pretty easy one to to knock off but maybe maybe i'm missing something i understand the collectible you're definitely not missing anything the collectible aspect of it is what's keeping people going and like it's only it's the belief that's like keeping people connected right like no mine is real like so it depends on how you value you know i guess

the subject of the thing because like with with baseball cards was like oh that was like a moment in history like they printed it while this guy was in run you know and now that's right he retired so there are no new base so if you really like that player then you have to have that card that i i totally i somewhat understand that i don't quite understand like to your point like especially the use of a pokemon card is like in a game so as long as you have the correct information in front of you you can play the game. So it's bizarre. But you know, I also know people spend like a ton of money on like rare Monopoly sets. And I don't know, I think when you have too much money, you're just looking for something to brag about. And you're like, I bought this like incredible rare thing. And now you have to value me and my collection as well. It's a weird cyclical thing like we were talking before we started

recording about the donkey's market the dunkin donuts shop that they just opened that has oh yeah uh tandem bicycles it has a dunkin donuts bathrobe like i mean that's a practical person immediately sold out like everybody just bought all of the dunkin' Donuts bathrobes. But that's where I mean, I couldn't not to jump to their defense. Yeah. As I always will for Dunkin' Donuts. I feel like their marketing, it's going to sound like I'm being paid to say this. I'm not.

I think their marketing has gotten so weird and savvy recently where they're like okay we're an old ass like donut brand that is mostly known for like really mean moms going to their like that is their consumer base but then they're just kind of like they're they're definitely trying to hit the teen market because they gave charlie d'amelio her own duncan beverage and as a regular duncan customer i'm a very mean mom uh but like there's now teenagers at duncan donuts all the time it's like you can tell charlie d'amelio brought her fucking tiktok base to duncan donuts and now they're releasing merch like it's sneaker drops like it's just they're trying I they're they're trying some stuff out it seems to be working also the the Charlie D'Amelio drink has so much dairy in it that I like was shitting for days just for young

people it's for the youngs it's for teenagers only yeah it's not for adults that's so interesting that dunkin donut it seems almost random that dunkin donuts is the brand that like got this culture like mcdonald's tried really hard with their like travis scott meal and yeah uh jay did that work i don't know it definitely did they sold out in a couple of hours. The children loved it. And I live across the street from a McDonald's. There was a line around the block for probably a solid week to get into McDonald's to get the stupid meal, which is already on the menu. Yes!

I'm so confused. Wait, that worked? Is it for the box? It did. It definitely worked. How would you sell out of the meal because is there is there a meal like is there a box that comes with it okay so the travis thing came in two parts right so first there was online merch right so they had like the jackets and stuff so all of

that stuff sold out but then mcdonald's we had a shortage of like the burger i think it was some of the condiments that go on his specific burger. They were like running out. They couldn't keep it in stock because so many people had come through to purchase this burger. I didn't get the meal, but I do think it came in its own like Cactus Jack style box. But don't keep that. It had food in it. Gross. Right. Like you think your house is just going to smell like a cheeseburger for the rest of your life.

This is mint. Mint conditioned Travis Scott meal, guys. Untouched by human hands. And it smells like shit. My favorite product. cheeseburger for the rest of your life yeah this is mint mint conditioned travis scott meal guys you're like uh untouched by human hands my favorite product they had was a cactus jack mcdonald's lunch tray so you know the brown trays that you get at mcdonald's yeah it's not this cactus jack you can buy for like 15 bucks and i was like this is tempting but no right also steal it for no bucks because those things are the easiest things to steal these kinds of griffs are not going to work forever but they're definitely working right now you have nothing to look forward to i think honestly that was like half

of the sell was like something new yeah i mean i have to have it it's just new yeah yeah it's just interesting that we are it's almost like we're going in two opposite or seemingly contradictory directions whereas one like consumerism or like materialism is breaking down like you can replicate anything easily and then on the other hand we're like going super hard on like okay there are only five mcdonald McDonald's bathrobes that we all need to get because it has the special tag in it. And it's, uh,

it's almost like we're having a end of materialism, like panic moment where we have to like really dig in our heels and be like, this matters. Somebody who just bought two suits from Beyonce. Yeah. I was like, listen,

I, where will I wear these suits? I'm not going anywhere. Literally anywhere. Not to dinner, not to a movie, but I have these suits. Yeah. I mean, I'll come clean. I bought the Duncan duvet.

Awesome. It'll be on my bed come Christmas. Cozy. Very cool. What is something you think is overrated, Joelle? Overrated. It's hard to say what is overrated right now because everything that I, like, if I do go outside, I'm like, my God, the sky is blue today. Like, I think, I want to say the news, but that's really vital.

And I don't want to be the kind of person that shits on journalists. You know what? I got it. The PlayStation 5 is overrated. Here vital, and I don't want to be the kind of person that shits on journalists. You know what? I got it. The PlayStation 5 is overrated. Here's why. I can't get my hands on one. And so I choose to believe it's underrated so that I don't have FOMO. Right.

Hell yeah. Here's my review. Looks too big. Why is it so big? It's definitely too large to fit on anybody's normal shelf. But it also is 4K, it's it's gonna have cyberpunk 77 on it which is a game i've been looking forward to since 2018 and we were supposed to have in april and then again in august i think and then they had a november launch date but they pushed

it back again to december i the way i covet this machine it's embarrassing um so yeah overrated i don't need it yeah yeah fuck it definitely every time i see a new gaming console i i don't know i'm not a gamer but i so i just flash forward to like thinking five to seven years in the future when it's just going to be on all of my friends mantles like how howling at the way that PS4s are right now where you walk into your house and you're like, oh, do you have a PS4? Because something's burning and I can't hear anything. Oh, shit.

How are people dealing with the height? Are people just treating it like a piece of furniture that you just have on the floor next to your TV? I've seen images of people just shoving it on the shelf, which is funny. So now their shelf is sort of like tilted and lopsided and it's half hanging off. Some people have, you know, industrious people who don't let the pandemic get them down have built personalized shelves that like sit next to their floating TV. So it looks nice or whatever. I'll probably just put it on the floor.

It's right there. It's fine. It kind of looks like an air purifier. Yeah, it does. Like a nice air purifier. Yeah. Yeah. Or like the biggest Wi-Fi extender in the history or Wi-Fi router of all time.

It's sleek. Joelle. Yeah. So sleek for an obelisk. What is something you think is underrated, Joelle? Oh my God, getting gifts and wrapping gifts and thinking about gifts and choosing the right wrapping paper.

I have submitted to the Christmas season. I've never, this is the first year in my entire adult life when I'm like, I can actually get gifts for people I love. Like real, not cheap. You know, we're not talking Starbucks gift cards for the homies, like real stuff I put thought into. But then also my,

my pod of people that I've been hanging out with during this time have decided to go like full Christmas. So we're doing like a seven course meal from the French laundry. Yeah. We're going to like, we're going gonna cook it ourselves how dare you how dare you no we uh you know they just really like to cook they were the people that were doing bread at the top they um yeah the things they've done during quarantine or they

got like the wine thing it's like i don't know what you call it but it's like so you don't have to open your bottle of wine it's got a long needle that goes into the cork so that you don't ever have to like airify it like it never reaches air so you can like pour a glass and then you put it back in your fridge but the wine stays corked it's still fresh there's a really thin long needle that goes inside yeah it's amazing we got i thought you were describing a corkscrew yeah yeah no i know all about those joelle yeah uh what you're describing joelle is a corkscrew uh it's a long narrow screwy thing that uh is used to open bottles of wine uh i'm an idiot sorry so like typically for christmas we do like you know a giant roast and blah and they're usually

big like large events like 20 plus people uh but this year we're sticking to the seven we've been hanging out we like know each other um and uh yeah so that we're gonna do all the all the different versions from the french laundry and big christmas tree real christmas tree we're gonna cut down a tree and so i got really pretty wrapping paper and i'm gonna take photos it's gifts i have to focus on the positive and so this is what i'm doing it's just like that's a really good gift for my loves yeah how are you cutting down where are you going to cut down the tree? Yeah. Oh, they're doing that.

I'm not going outside to touch things or anything like that. It's gross. When they bring it in and clean it up, then I will help make it pretty and decorate it. Right, right. Somewhere. I'll let you know because it does seem like a fun activity if you're an outdoorsy woods person or have children and you're like here's an experience you won't forget i'm trying to this is my first christmas in like uh living with

someone and so we're like we need to like get decorations and stuff and i'm really i'm trying to figure out a way to set like safely really like make it christmas in our apartment it's exciting i don't know where how to do it though because i'm afraid of costco oh my gosh okay no don't i again like i i'm horrified of covid like very very scared because i already had like breathing issues and all kinds of stuff so i'm like no so i went to paper source paper source oh has hella wrapping paper like really cute like little thingies for your packet like i got little wreaths that are just little bells and wreaths and you just stick them on the package and it's cute but also they have like these little um like string lights with

little glass bottles with like little santa's or little lighthouses and there's snow and scenery they have all these all tiny cute light up things and they're bright and they're fun my favorite they had a botox ornament that's just a botox needle uh it's kitschy and fun i think paper source is going to be a good place um the hallmark store you can order online hallmark if you if you want the um granny slash mom vibe feel to come in that should be your store sure i always need a touch of that yeah you you want to feel like your grandma could stop by and say hey but also please don't come over to my house granny i have bongs everywhere you're not gonna approve you guys have a christmas playlist that you like start putting into rotation yeah around the

holiday i live with my brothers and they do not like christmas they're very much grinches about that you start putting into rotation around the holiday. I live with my brothers, and they do not like Christmas. They're very much Grinches about it. They don't want to eat it. You've got to make those hearts grow two sizes. Listen, I try to put on Christmas TV shows, like the Christmas-themed episodes, and they were like, we don't want it.

Christmas music has to go off immediately. So stuff in my headphones. Dollyon's christmas album is pretty great obviously mariah carey is the standard uh any african choir is gonna blow the house down i have many like african choirs worth of old school gospel music that's pretty great um and i think doesn't ariana have a ariana has a good one yeah yeah a whole album or a good song or whole album i think wow i think so hold on let me look this up i grew up i did do a christmas i grew up listening to this cd that my dad had is like a punk christmas album called the edge of christmas uh and it's really hard to find out but it was it's really good and it has like uh pat benatar kate bush uh i've got it up here uh the ramones the waitresses

like it's just i don't know it's like dad uh dad punk christmas album and that always makes me feel at home and then my mom was like, Kenny G. Like, welcome to Christmas. It's Kenny G. That is absolutely my experience too. Full Kenny G. Christmas sounds like a soprano sax. I don't make the rules.

Yeah. And like Michael Bolton Christmas songs that are like other people's Christmas songs or whatever, but just in Michael Bolton's voice I want new Christmas music in my rotation this year though because especially because I'm starting to celebrate uh right now it's like I need to find insert new stuff into the rotation Dolly Parton's Holly Jolly Christmas uh it's really coming in for me because I like to pretend she's saying have a Holly Dolly Christmas. I just imagine I'm at Dollyland just really getting it in.

We're singing songs. I just love Dolly Parton, guys. The glamour. Watch 9 to 5. It's the perfect movie. Make you feel empowered and capable. Alright, guys. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk the dreaded news.

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. 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 as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you stream podcasts. Hello, everyone. I am Lacey Lamar. And I'm Amber Ruffin, a better Lacey Lamar. Boo. Okay, everybody, we have exciting news to share. We're back with Season 2 of the Amber and Lacey Lacey and Amber Show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network.

You thought you had fun last season. Well, you were right. And you should tune in today for new fun segments like Sister Court and listening to Lacey's steamy DMs. We've got new and exciting guests like Michael Beach. That's my husband. Daphne Spring. Daniel Thrasher. Peppermint.

Morgan J. And more. You got to watch us. No, you mean you have to listen to us. I mean, you can still watch us, but you got to listen. Like, if you're watching us, you have to tell us. Like, if you're out the window, you have to say, hey, I'm watching you outside of the window. Just, just, you know what? Listen to the Amber and Lacey, Lacey and Amber show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network 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? 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 print. 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'd just take all the other stuff out of it. On the 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. It's 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. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast.

As the U.S. elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever. But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows. That we're surprisingly more united than most people think. We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics, and that we need to do better and that we can do better. With the help of Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki. It's really tragic. If cynicism were a pill, it'd be a poison. We'll see that our fellow humans, even those we disagree with, are more generous than we assume. My assumption, my feeling, my hunch,

is that a lot of us are actually looking for a way to disagree and still be in a relationship with each other. All that on the Happiness Lab. Listen on the iHeartRadio iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts and we're back and uh i was going to talk about like vaccine rollout plans but should we just like review more Dunkin Donuts shop merch

it's all sold out it's all sold out the hoodies looked incredible but I snoozed and I lost they do look pretty cool subtle very subtle yeah what I love about the Dunkin merch is that it's subtle nobody knows Yeah, they do look pretty cool. Subtle, very subtle.

Yeah, what I love about the Duncan merch is that it's subtle. It's subtle, nobody knows. It's like, just set up a recurring donation instead. So the vaccine rollout plans are starting to be revealed. Apparently phase one could start as early as november 30th phase two likely to be january or february phase three could be april and this is how they've broken out the phases so phase 1a high risk health care workers and first responders phase 1b high risk or uh comorbid conditions, older adults in congregate crowded residences. I think that means people in old folks' homes.

Yeah. I thought I was in business there for a second because I'm old and my house is crowded with a bunch of kid shit. So those are the people who are going to get it this year and soon. So that's exciting. I'm pumped for them. Phase two, teachers, critical risk workers,

like in essential industries, moderate risk, comorbid conditions, homeless shelters, group homes, jails, prisons, other older adults. And as I was reading this, I was also made aware of an article in the Daily Beast that was about a bunch of... There was a conspiracy spreading around a community in Utah because they noticed that this hospital

that was supposedly full of COVID patients, the parking lot was empty. And they were like, aha, we know there's nobody in there. What? Yeah, that was all the evidence they needed. And they kept trying to break into this ICU to prove that it wasn't full of COVID patients because the parking lots are empty.

So I'm just worried we're got them. Got their asses. Saying people who have to go to work, just bless you because the amount of things you have to deal with are from grocery store workers who have to deal with people literally yelling in their face

without a mask because can you please just help keep our store a safe space as possible to, you know, the guys that were counting the votes who had to deal with actual death threats to this kind of stuff. It's bonkers. I'm just trying to survive a pandemic. I can't even imagine. I can't even imagine having to do all this going above and beyond. Yeah. Yeah. I think we might be just too dumb for this whole thing, maybe.

So speaking of too dumb for this whole thing, the president is still claiming fraud on Twitter, that he won Michigan. I feel like a lot of the mainstream media has chosen to just kind of dismiss and ignore. And yeah, like on the one hand. Yeah.

What were you gonna say? I don't know. Yeah. It's like, I'm kind of of two minds about that. Like, I feel like it's, it is a better use of the media's time to focus on transition team stuff to

be, but I mean, is the media going to be critical enough of a transition team of course they're not going to be that's not their thing but i don't know it's like i i feel like ignoring him is the uh instinctual well finally great that makes sense right uh but then i don't know what the what the whatever potential backlash factor is for having done that. Because in a way that just reinforces Trump's worldview. But I don't I don't care.

I don't know. Yeah. I just feel like there's a lot of counter, you know, educating that needs to be done. to be done like that every time he claims that there's voter fraud like that is doing incalculable damage to like the people who voted for him and their like faith in the country and the institutions and that's not going away and i feel like our answer so far has just been to like kind of throw up our hands and be like yeah i mean i don't know what to i'm like i i don't have an answer to that but it's like i was reading a article about you know people heading into the election who are experts on peaceful uh resistance in like authoritarian coups and they were just like in america like preparing american uh people to resist if the trump administration like tried to

do essentially what it has done and they it's like all the bad things that they were predicting and worried about are happening but we're just kind of like ignoring it and hoping to just sort of power through or like yeah i don't know yeah it's really i don't know it's really hard to know like who to trust and whose word to kind of take on these topics because like i don't know about you guys but i didn't know very much about coups before two months ago i was not an expert in coups and like there it seems like there is still like a fair amount of people who are saying it's a possibility and then others that are saying like it's not gonna happen we need to just like move forward um i don't know there was like a

fair amount of i don't know if y'all talked about it on zeitgeist but there was like a fair amount of controversy with uh like a van jones talk that was published where he was like here's how a coup is gonna happen and people who know more about coups were kind of like no it isn't uh but it ends up i don't know like it but even so it's hard to know whose word to kind of take there because i'm so uh coup illiterate yeah i mean we we have never experienced one as uh like is that like we can most of us can turn to our parents and be like what did you survive or how would we do this or whatever sure um i do feel like the most comforting thing is listening to people who have survived coups right because to me i don't know i i feel

like as a as a normal person i don't have very much control over what will happen i can be enraged i could march i could donate some time somewhere but it feels like a power very much above me and beyond me and so i'm like well how if if the worst were to happen how would i prepare like what's the mindset i need to be in and it seems like most people were like oh yeah your daily life will not change uh you'll be like oh there was like some fighting over there there are some new restrictions on what i can do at work but for the most part you're still just trying to survive hopefully bread doesn't cost like five grand and you just keep it pushing until until change happens inspiring words okay cool cool so you know we were just gonna try and make the best

of it as a citizen look out for my neighbors you know make sure my parents are okay and keep going i yeah trying to worry or or figure out all of that is a lot but i also think to your point jamie like nobody truly knows what's going to happen it seems in the little research I've done that it would not be possible for this guy to do it but that a lot of what he's doing sets up an opportunity for someone smarter and more prepared to do it in the future and that's sort of what it's not the next two months that scare me it's the next like eight years yeah totally yeah just weakening the institutions and like the pillars that our entire democracy rests on are being kind of just weakened to the point of it seems like like the expert on peaceful resistance. There wasn't a lot of research on, you know, doing the numbers of how often peaceful resistance works

when there's like an authoritarian takeover. And they went in and did the numbers and found that it's like two times more effective when the resistors are using peace than if they use violence when they're resisting an authoritarian takeover and erica chenoweth definitely worth paying attention to but it just it does seem like we just don't have the language and the institutions to deal with this like the mainstream media is certainly not equipped to deal with what like i feel like trump's entire you know strategy is built on combating the things the mainstream media does like how they talk about these things and the

mainstream media's response at this point has been to just kind of throw up their hands and be like, well, we're not covering him. We're not talking to him anymore. Which again, like I don't know if that's, that might be the right thing to do. I just, it just feels like then we have this thing metastasizing in the dark that we're not paying attention to.

And that's scary, I think, from a long-term perspective. Well, Joel, speaking to your point i think that yeah like it makes uh it doesn't feel like a present thing for the next two months but i think that yeah like what what a lot of us are gonna have to do like with ourselves and then with our families or whatever our circle is is like you know not to like be like a don't take your foot off the gas like we all know that but stay like actually educate ourselves so that you know this time eight years from now we do understand um what might happen and would understand how to actively resist it if something happened. Because it makes total sense that the majority of the country would have no idea what to do right now. But it's, you know, it's something that we should educate ourselves and definitely

not completely ignore. I feel like that's the other end of the of the mainstream media problem is that you know it's great to not be reporting on trump 24 7 that is like a huge relief but then on on the other end of that i i really don't like the tone of like and now we're back to normal and it's like that is such bullshit it's fucking so frustrating where they're like, the third Obama administration has begun. And you're just like, that's not, no one asked for that. We need to like talk about shit. And yeah. There's definitely a brand of liberal that's just like, oh, thank God.

Everything's good again. Like he's going to come in and saw. And I think it's exacerbated by uh the discovery of potentially two vaccines working at 95 everyone's like great we're gonna shoot people up and we're gonna get back to work and the economy's gonna bounce back and it's like such a sunny disposition ignoring sort of everything that happened over the summer and like this whole like emotional upheaval we had and then and then to also ignore like there were literally people begging us to stop counting votes like that is horrifying that

is the very base of our democracy is like everyone gets a vote and they were like nope stop counting don't like it i think yeah we're definitely going to have to deal with so much more of these deeper issues but it's very american of us to be like well our big problems are solved and we're just gonna have to come to the middle on everything else right which is like proven time and time again in almost every administration in our lifetimes to be an ineffective solution that doesn't help like that helps barely anyone it mostly helps capitalists uh and and in fact harms are most disenfranchised typically i mean it's those it's the same administrations that gave us the three strike rule it's like oh well come to the middle you get three times and then we lock you away for life like what the hell i just i feel i'm horrified that though we're

going to see a lot of those same types of policies coming up again as a way of like we just we just want everyone to be at peace as opposed to let's actually resolve some of these issues. Right. Yeah. I also we didn't talk about this in the vaccine section, but I also kind of I I worry about vaccine rollouts. I know that a lot of people do, but I just worry about, I mean, in the phases being described,

I feel like there are not frontline communities being prioritized. There's not like the phase four all others category kind of baffles me because wouldn't you, I mean,

I think it makes a lot of sense to prioritize frontline communities and communities where COVID is most prevalent and where people are most at risk. I hope that phase four gets a little more fucking specific. And phase three as well, where they're just like, all others. Because I feel like when we say general all others, that means that...

I'm picturing a blimp. They're just dropping the vaccines yeah i'm like are we just like i don't know sending those creepy postmates robots to people's doors like what the vaccine yeah um yeah i just i don't i don't trust any american administration to do this well in a way that prioritizes communities most affected by COVID. One of the big stories that happened, just to talk about specifics really quickly and just where we're at with the final days of the Trump administration. Michigan's date to certify their vote came up yesterday or two days ago and they had two republican like official canvassers who were refusing to certify what was clearly an okay vote because they were being

racist it was an area of detroit that had largely voted for biden and they were using these like things about matching signatures to just raise questions and then people were rightly like this is racist you're being racist you're going to go down in history as like having just basically disenfranchised a entire community of people for your own purposes. And they were like, ah, yeah, good point. And reversed course. And then Trump was like, they've been abused in two. Yeah, yeah. Trump and the Trump administration are acting like that was violence,

just pointing out that their grandchildren will know how racist they are um as opposed to just telling them the truth about the consequences of their action um yeah i love the idea that calling something racist is is violent is the problem and not the actual racist act and the idea that like oh we didn't know we didn't know it would be racist to suppress a vote what and also i could not hold out this long like i i don't want to give you know trump the impression that anything he does is impressive but it's wild to me that you lost this bad and are still like no several more lawsuits i think i follow a lawyer in michigan i think there were like one in 25 like there's one court case was like yes and 25 losses for trend it's just i

i don't have the stamina the energy especially when we know for a fact that they have no money left it's a little it's a little impressive to just be like i will drag this whole society down with me hell hath no fury like me angry it's impressive it's fucking unreal i mean yeah and the way that the way that he's talking about michigan too it's like you it's just so i we've been saying this for years but like it's just so fucking flagrant like he couldn't be more clear that he's like i am trying to suppress black votes. That's what I'm trying to do. And I'm doing it in all caps. It's just,

and then I, I self harmed this morning and went through some replies in under one of the, the Michigan tweets. And like, it's just, it's just like Twitter shell, like eggs doing bad math and they're they're like there was this whole thread i followed that was like uh well more people because he was saying

more people voted in detroit than live in detroit which is a single google away from knowing that's not true right and then when people replied with that's not true here is like the first thing that comes up when you search how many registered voters versus how many voted they're like well the rest of those people are children and so it was like i don't know it was these weird twitter eggs suggesting that the population of detroit is like 65 children it was just really bizarre i don't like it's just there's no logic to it it makes my head hurt and it's just cruel and awful and i'm tired i mean so the the good news is that there is you know we are coming up on the time when uh these votes are basically due to be certified.

And at that point, like Michigan was 1123. So they're doing it a little bit early. Pennsylvania is 1123. Wisconsin is the 1st of December. So like after these dates, that's like when it's due. Georgia is the 20th. So that's in two days. Arizona is the 20th so that's in two days arizona is the 30th um once those have been certified they

really don't have like i think a lot of people think it's purely theoretical at this point the idea that these are going to be reversed but as we saw with those canvassers like it's not purely theoretical so you know these are all looming deadlines that once we get past those if we get past those the country will i guess be in better shape but again it just it won't change the fact that they are doing the the absolute most to exhaust us to just tear down the fabric of the good parts of the country. It really is. I'm finding it more and more exhausting dealing with the whole they accuse us of doing the thing that they're doing.

cues us of doing the thing that they're doing. Like the Kaylee McEnany saying that telling people to wear masks around Thanksgiving holiday is Orwellian. And then them saying that it's like violent and racist to call someone racist for being racist. It's so frustrating and exhausting. Maybe that's why I'm tired. How do you have these, like, I,

there are, to the very best of my knowledge, no Trump supporters in my family, so I haven't had to have, like, any of these challenging conversations of like, what are you doing? But I don't even know how, like, I used to be, like, back in Prop 8 world, I was like, yo, make sure conversations of like what are you doing and look at what you're but i don't even know how like i used to be like back in prop eight world i was like yo make sure you talk to your family members

about this like if you're queer you know you could explain it just talk to them about why these but now i'm like i don't even want to throw somebody in that fire because having seen some of these people try to like debate online with their neighbors or family or whatever like i don't know how to have that conversation if you're absolutely disinterested in listening to anything factual, like a cloth over your face is not like Orwellian. What? It's. Yeah.

It's like the, why are you hitting yourself defense? But they're not even like using our hand to hit ourselves. They're just hitting us and then saying, stop hitting me.'s it's a real mind fuck it sounds exhausting like we're taught like it sounds exhausting to have to rewire your brain in that way yeah uh yeah it's i don't i i i don't know i a thought, but it's gone now. I actually felt envy for the people in the book 1984 because I was like, wait, so Orwellian.

Let me just look at what she could possibly mean. But they have cool outfits in that book. I never read it. But it's much easier to combat in that book because they aren't doing the thing. I've never read it. But it's much easier to combat in that book because they aren't doing the thing. Like, Big Brother is not being like, you're Big Brother-ing me.

It's just easier to deal with. Stop being a big camera at me. Yeah, all you have to do is just be like, no, look, this is the thing they're doing. That's the saddest description of our current timeline that I've heard. I'm just like, God, what if we were Orwellian? I thought this would be a lot easier to deal with.

It would be. At least it's a little more straightforward. Yeah, it's just more straightforward. I mean, it does. It's such a daunting task that requires a level of empathy that I personally would not really demand of anybody. But the like de-radicalizing someone's mind after living in that mindset and just like doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on just like complete bullshit for this.

I really hope that there is like some sort of of deradicalization movement that takes off. That it's like, well, leave me out of it. You can go over. But I'm curious. It's like, what is the long game? Once Trump is out of office, what is the long game for what happens when no one is stoking that every single day and validating it? And where does it go?

I don't think it's when Trump is out of office. I think it's when Trump is no longer on the planet, to be honest. I just think that he is going to be a powerful, basically anti-universe president like president universe anti like bizarro world uh president where he's like still universe that's that's a really dystopian phrase like an anti-matter version of the president where like everything the president does, he will have a take that is the opposite of that and undermining it in some way. Like, I think he is going to continue to be a problem for anybody in this country for as long as he still has a public platform.

In terms of things he's doing in his official capacity, he just terminated the head of Terminated. He no longer is firing people, he's terminating them because he's strong and powerful. The head of cybersecurity for not going along with his coup and for saying that the election actually happened the way it actually did. And people are worried for Iran.

And, you know, we mentioned yesterday that people are worried Trump was going to attack Iran and was firing people and promoting people based on, like, just how loyal to him they were. people based on like just how uh loyal to him they were uh but then the sort of people were saying oh no the military leaders in america aren't going to let him do that but now people are pointing out that saudi arabia and israel's leaders are like just as likely to attack and then draw America into that conflict because they see this as their last best opportunity to start a conflict with Iran while Trump is still capable of marshalling his very anti-Iran.

Right. Do we know what the likelihood of that moving forward is uh there's indicators that like they are preparing for uh like i think israeli forces attacked iranian forces in syria but it's yeah we just don't we don't really know but it's definitely something that uh uh international security experts are watching and concerned about um so that's awful completely fucked yes yeah yeah does dungan donuts have like slippers no i wish they did. They don't. They should have had slippers, right?

The tandem bicycle is the most baffling and cursed item. I've never seen a tandem bicycle that looked like that. I was shocked at the price, but then I asked you both. It seems kind of like a normal price for a tandem bicycle. Although once I said that phrase out loud, I'm like, why would i know what that number is right i have no idea yeah i also don't think i trust anyone enough to mount a bicycle like that i would just get pregnant on the bicycle that's what i would get get it for you asked us because joelle and i used to before in pre-covid times used to ride around on that tandem bike. Isn't that how you met? Yeah. Yeah. Our tandem bike team. Yeah, yeah. Posted to a Facebook group, looking for a tandem bike partner.

That's really sad. Nothing weird. Message me. All right. Let's take a quick break. We'll be back. Hello, everyone. I am Lacey Lamar. And I'm Amber Ruffin, a better Lacey Lamar. Boo. Okay, everybody, we have exciting news to share. We're back with season two of the Amber and Lacey, Lacey and Amber show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network. You thought you had fun

last season? Well, you were right. And you should tune in today for new fun segments like Sister Court and listening to Lacey's steamy DMs. We've got new and exciting guests like Michael Beach. That's my husband. Daphne Spring,

Daniel Thrasher, Peppermint, Morgan J, and more. You gotta watch us. No, you mean you have to listen to us. I mean, you can still watch us, but you gotta listen. Like, if you're watching us, you have to tell

us. Like, if you're out the window, you have to say, hey, I'm watching you outside of the window. Just, you know what? Listen to the Amber and Lacey Lacey and Amber show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network 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 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 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 print. 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. 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. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast. As the U.S. elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever. But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows,

that we're surprisingly more united than most people think. We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics, and that we need to do better and that we can do better. With the help of Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki. It's really tragic. If cynicism were a pill, it'd be a poison. We'll see that our fellow humans, even those we disagree with, are more generous than we assume. My assumption, my feeling, my hunch is that a lot of us are actually looking for a way to disagree and still be in relationships with each other. All that on the Happiness Lab. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And we're back. Should we talk about Ben Shapiro?

I guess we should mention the Ben Shapiro controversy in quotes. Oh, wow. I'm just, I like that he's being like launched out of a can and out of glendale that's a very like uh or i don't know that what's happening he had a he had like a uh an office i don't know if it was the office but an office for whatever his dweeby little fuck company is uh in atwater village uh near where we all live and uh he he kind of it sounds like he uh didn't feel welcomed and he's like joe rogan uh moving to texas probably to avoid paying more taxes but it also sounded like he really couldn't walk down the streets near his office without getting fucking roasted at every turn.

Shout out to Atwater Village for launching Ben Shapiro out of a cannon and sorry to Texas because I think that you're getting, you're being burdened with Ben Shapiro. But I'm pretty sure that there is like kind of a move for like devious capitalists like uh like ben shapiro and to an extent people always fucking drag me every time i say this joe rogan who who moved to who moved to texas because the um i think it's either income or property taxes that are significantly less. There's no income tax. So that's why Joe Rogan went there, even though he's like, no, you guys,

I just really love it here. I love it here. All right, sir. I'm reading. I keep referring to this book. I'm reading about the Bush family, but like Texas, straight up, Texas is a bad place uh what one of the little details that i just learned is that the guy who owned the texas book depository uh that oswald shot kennedy from uh actually had the window from that he shot him from removed and moved to his home as like a thing to celebrate. What? Yeah. Oh my God.

Yeah. Holy shit. That is horrific. Even if he were a Kennedy supporter, like it's what, I was talking to my brother, it's one of the most awful like things to view on tape. Like just the chaos and the horribleness of the act.

And then I, what? That is really disturbing. Fucked. That's like, holy shit. Yeah. Yay.

And all of these people are in some way tied back to George Bush, George H.W. Bush. Lacey Mosley, the only good person to ever come out of Texas. Sound off in the comments. Anyways, Ben Shapiro got mad that Harry Styles was wearing a dress on the cover of Vogue

and claimed that masculinity was under attack. Do you think Ben Shapiro knows how boring he is? Is he aware that... It's either he's not aware at all or he's so aware and he can't stop thinking about it it is a piece of clothing and if your masculinity is threatened by a dress it is truly fragile like the idea that seeing another dude in a quote-unquote female garment is now all men can't be what does that even mean like it is

you could have a whole array of genders and just pick and be really comfortable in your own subset and let everyone else just live their lives ben shapiro and yet here you are i've said it at eight fashion cover which i don't even know if harry styles likes wearing dresses or if his pr person was like listen people, people are going to love this. And he was like, cool, whatever. It's hardly a statement at all from Harry. And so for you to get riled up over it, you just look damn foolish there.

Prince did it in the 80s. Rock bands were doing it in the 70s. This is old. I'm pretty sure Harry Styles has a history of dressing kind of, what am I trying to say? Androgynously. Yeah, he has done this for a while. And I'm like, first of all, why are we still, like, I feel like he's been doing this for years. Leave him alone.

And on top, I mean, it's just like Ben Shapiro is just so fucking pathetic where he's like just coming off like, you know, just coming off complaining about the wetness of various pussies for like three consecutive months. The medical condition of. That is still maybe of the few. I would call the cops if it was wet. I would call the cops. I mean, that's dangerous. That clip is iconic in all the wrong ways. I would call the cops if it was wet. I would call the cops. I mean, that's dangerous. That clip is iconic in all the wrong ways.

But the fact that he went to the mat on the wetness of pussies and demonstrating that he has no idea how they work in the process, just chef's kiss, really incredible stuff. I honestly couldn't even bring myself to watch whatever the fuck he said about Harry Styles. The good news is that Harry Styles for sure doesn't give a shit He got money in the bank Yeah, all of Harry Styles' fans

he has a very young fan base and they don't give a shit what Ben Shapiro says so it's like, what are you even you're just saying things I kind of wish they did I kind of wish they did. I kind of wish they like did to Ben Shapiro, what like K-pop fans have been doing to like right-wing and authoritarian

like trolls. But I, yeah, I think they just like, don't give enough of a shit, which is with well within their right to not give enough of a shit but like yeah i don't know he has a podcast it's just like it's so harry styles is dressing ambiguously men have been doing this for centuries it's so like the even the kind of masculinity that ben shapiro is referencing is like historically pretty new and like just so rigid and fucking boring and shut up i don't know it's from 80s movies but he also doesn't like fall into that category of masculinity like if we're going to look at the falsified like pumped up

version of masculinity i don't see ben shapiro anywhere in the category. He's not in the circle. You're not there, buddy. Yeah, fuck Ben Shapiro. I don't know. I hate him. Let's talk about ambient TV. Yes! There's a piece that I really enjoyed in The New Yorker. They've written you up before, Jamie.

You might have heard of them, The New Yorker. They were writing about Emily in Paris and kind of how their description of Emily in Paris was very dystopian. But they overall were saying that it reminds them of like the rise of ambient music, like the Brian Eno thing where he made music that he considered as ignorable as it

is interesting um and like that these tv shows are basically designed to be background music like nothing the plot is incredibly thin on purpose like so that you can miss half of it and still just kind of have a sense of what's going on. I've always used sports this way, like as a thing that you can just have on in the background and not really pay any attention to. Um, and evidence of that is like, I can have sports on and my kids don't give a shit about it because it won't suck them into a TV coma like literally everything else is because it's bad television. But they're making the point that this whole movement,

like they were talking about other Netflix reality shows like the Taco Chronicles Dream Home Makeover they really go in on. I haven't seen that, but it's apparently very bland i yeah i don't joelle did you watch any of emily in paris i got i binge watched emily in paris let me talk about it okay i love uh and we call ambient television my crew calls it depression tv which is like i can't afford to get emotionally invested in anything right now like the world is already too much right but i need something on the tv because then otherwise i'm just alone with my thoughts and

i don't want that either that's not a good recipe for me to get through this evening so emily in paris no definitely not a great show i don't know what's happening with any of the fashion in there it's a hot mess i don't care 2006 you're like where what year is this who did this and why i don't know i don't care about any of the characters i was surprised anyone could like develop a heated emotional reaction to it there was a lot of discourse and they're like emily's so rude for going to paris and shoving her american ways in their face i'm like that's literally the plot of the show you don't like that you should have tuned out after episode three but it was perfect for me because i was just like okay it's just there and i can be on my phone scrolling twitter which is what i really want to be doing anyway but it's not silent and it's great i really feel like we perfected this tv in the 90s

friends peak friends is peak depression tv it's great. I really feel like we perfected this TV in the 90s. Friends, peak. Friends is peak depression TV. It's peak ambient television. Nobody changes. Nobody grows. Nothing changes about the status of anyone's relationship, whether they're together or not. It doesn't matter. It's just a bland, blank slate.

And I think that there's really, truly value in this kind of television. What bothers me is when we try to either escalate it or de-escalate it. When we try to escalate it into something more than it is, which is really what I think what happened with Emily in Paris. I think we were bored and we're like, I can rag on this show. Wonderful. But it's a vital aspect to my life. I really enjoy, I think, Great British Bake Off.

Maybe has a little more emotional stakes in it for some people, but mostly it's just nice people baking. Awesome. They're really sorry when they have to let someone go. Excellent. Anything that's not going to bring me up too high or down too low, that's exactly nice people baking. Awesome. They're really sorry when they have to let someone go. Excellent. Anything that's not going to bring me up too high or down too low, that's exactly what we're looking for. It's literally, yeah.

I feel like depression TV, it was nice of them to call it ambient TV. Truly. But it is like, it feels like, I mean, even like great depression media where you're like, this is about nothing. Big rock candy mountain. It's pleasant you don't feel like you're gonna turn around and something horrible is gonna be happening like if you were watching for example the news like it's just it's just my i really

hope that i had like a very abrupt fantasy when i saw this piece about ambient TV and it's that the creator of Emily in Paris releases a like scathing response being like how dare you say Emily in Paris was about nothing in many ways it was about everything and like

they just had no idea it was a really bad TV show this is how they found out that it was only number two because everyone was so sad yeah oh my god this is how i feel about like netflix has really perfected the algorithm right of making a show that you don't necessarily have to be invested in but it's like i love the way they've like john like their new show jingle jangle it's like, I love the way they've like, John, like their new show, Jingle Jangle. It's like if you were sort of into high school musical, but you want some black representation in your Christmas shows and, you know, you like a little bit of comedy, but you're not going to laugh too hard because that's not what we're doing here.

It's perfect. It's so straight down the middle. You can watch it with your conservative family and no one's going to fight. Listen, it's genius. It's necessary. And then, you know, every once in a while you get a queen's gambit and you're like cool great something i can actually sink my teeth into when i'm in the mood for it but i yeah we need like 700 hours of ambient television to get through whatever the next like eight months is going to be before we can re-emerge into society i enjoyed yeah julian the phantoms was fun that was like i feel like a cute

underrated show that was like very high school musical e but up like it's it's just cute cute shit i like cute shit that isn't gonna remind me of my mortality exactly yeah that's what's on the menu yeah the point that they like their description of ambient tv is kind of that it it basically crowds out the noise in your mind and just like makes everything feel like like go down smooth basically it like smooths out like where whereas when we first had like streaming tv and you could like choose a show to watch and it would be a show that was engrossing and that was what we valued. Now, it's more just like, here is a time portal to an hour from now in the future. You just put on your, open up Netflix and put this show on and you'll be in

the future, which is kind of a dark way to think about human existence. I also have found comfort in like the, all these, I feel like I talk about them all the time now, but like these YouTube channels that are like by funny people who are based, they're talking about nothing. They're talking about like Pokemon card scandals for 45 minutes. And you're just like,

Oh, this is just engrossing enough. I don't really need to listen. But like, good for them for caring. Like, I don't know. It's just, it's nice. It feels not horrible. That's what I mean when I say nice.

Yeah, they highlight TikTok as the ultimate in ambient TV because it just is a stream of kind of passive, you know, unremarkable videos that just go down easy. It absolutely depends on what videos you're enjoying on TikTok. I was like, that could go a lot of ways. If your stream is just those like five dance move dance things, then sure. Sure. Ambient and endless. But there, some people are being creative and some people are being very weird and some

people are being, you know, weirdly political. Yeah. I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say go to TikTok looking for your ambient television fix. But I do think that it's not a streaming issue either. I wouldn't blame this on like oh this is what streaming has come down to now i think it's absolutely just a sign of the times and the fact that people cannot engage like i started watching halt and catch fire which is stunning it's such good television i got through season one and then i'm like oh man

they're really dealing with some real life issues here i'm about to put this on the back burner and turn around to it later like they're like oh financial crisis coming up i was like no no back out of it um so yeah i i think if we were watching on network and to be fair let's look at what networks are coming out with right now in the middle of the pandemic we've got two versions of the mass singer one that's just lip syncers where they're trying to see if you're the actual person singing or not like this is the content we need to get through. And I really think TV is doing a good job for us, even if it's not intellectually stimulating. There's too much to do.

We don't need to be any further intellectually stimulated at this point. Did we talk about, did we ever talk about Mickey Rourke on The Masked Singer? We have a big Masked Singer blind spot on this show. I am here to say I'm behind on Masked Singer. I'm not going to say I stopped watching this season. But I had to stop watching after I

got to the Mickey Rourke episode because it was so good that I'm like, nothing is going to top this for me for months. So what happened was this. It's still so funny. Okay. So it's like the first round of Masked Singer, which takes like four weeks. But they bring out a celebrity who's dressed like a big purple gremlin.

And he sings. Oh, what did he sing? Whatever he sang, he didn't really know the words uh and it wasn't good and the whole panel couldn't guess who it was uh nick cannon gets up on stage to have people guess and then whoever's inside the gremlin is like no more no more i'm like he quits the masked singer after his first performance he knows he's gonna lose he rips off the gremlin's head it seems like it wasn't i mean it might have been pre-planned but nick can't if so best acting performance of nick cannon's life because he was

like wait you can't you can't take you can't quit he unmasked himself it was mickey rourke everyone lost their shit and he was like yeah they asked me to be on and i watched two or three episodes and i said why not but this costume is really heavy and i want to go home and he just left all of us yes i did not know how it went down i just saw the reveal on twitter the same night right so i just yes mickey rourke's tiny head his head's not really tiny but in a giant suit it looks small and he's covered in like purple fuzz and he's like a little sweaty and i'm like how did they get mickey rourke to come on this show and that to me was the funny part but knowing that he was just like oh no i have to bow out today it's so much sweeter it's it's everything i think

everybody wishes they could do just like you know what no i'm taking this human costume off i have to go home now i had no idea it was his first performance that's so amazing it was his first performance and he unmasked himself it was i'm i i mean there was a lot of shit going on it was his first performance and he unmasked himself it was i'm i mean there was a lot of shit going on it was peak election stuff going on so i feel like it really slipped under the radar but it there's clips of it online it was like truly the best television i've seen in a really long time listen at the iheart studio we have Snooki's text or infamous text from the season on the wall on a giant flag. And now I really feel like we need to have Mickey Rourke with his head off, you know, just hang up right there. It's iconic level television.

That is amazing. He is that great of television. Because when you just hear the voice escape, like right before he rips the gremlin head off he goes no more no more I'm here to sign make you work as all of us it's so good it's the greatest clip you'll you'll ever watch it's like

pure serotonin apparently Netflix is trying is going to try to be like a network they're going to do like a streaming like a network. They're going to do like a streaming, like a linear version of Netflix. So that's interesting to me. Wait, like...

Like you just turn on Netflix and there's something on that everybody is watching. So this is something I've somewhat been asking for and I think it absolutely feeds into the ambient depression TV conversation of like, I don't want to have to make a choice. I came here to put something on the TV and walk away. And if you're like me, there's you have like five shows in rotation that you're like, like, it's like King of the Hill. Like, I guess I could watch more of that anytime. I will absolutely do some more Bob's Burgers.

Girlfriends is on somewhere. The game. Crazy drama. Like, I will absolutely do some more Bob's Burgers. Girlfriends is on somewhere. The game. Crazy drama. So I feel like, but I still think, I don't understand why no streaming service is listening to the internet because the internet has been begging for playlist style streams forever. I just don't want to make a decision. What if I just put all five of my shows in there and you just shook it up and were like, here's episode five from season six.

And I just watched that. Like, that is honestly the dream. I don't trust Netflix. Netflix is going to do what any smart business person would do, which is like, here's our new show. We hope you get hooked to it. I don't want to watch your new show.

I don't watch something I watched 8,000 times. So I don't have the anxiety of having to figure out what's going to happen next. I just want to know. Yeah. They will totally fuck it up though. They will. Like,

you're just like, I did not want to watch the holiday and you know that you knew that and now i'm 45 minutes into it because i couldn't find the remote and i'm hooked god damn it just a psa to everyone you don't need to watch the holiday i took that out for us all it's not worth it. I'm thinking about watching Jingle Jangle and just doing a live tweet of it because the fact that it's named, it's not named after the drug that's on the Archie

series Riverdale on the CW, but it does share the same name. Really? Yeah, in Riverdale, Jingle Jangle is like their hard drug. It's like the heroine of Riverdale. That's the worst name for a hard drug. It's terrible, but it's funny. Listen, they box a bear in prison, Jack.

Someone brought a bear into a prison, put it in a boxing ring, and then had one of the stars fight it. Like the show is unhinged, but in the best possible way. I just, I'm curious, like if there is any correlation between the drug Jingle Jangle on Riverdale

and Jingle Jangle, the comedic hip-hop musical christmas special on netflix i feel like there's got to be some good meaty discourse in there somewhere i was in on jingle jangle the second i learned forrest whitaker's character was named geronicus jangle i was like okay i'm gonna watch Holy shit. The trailer alone is enough. The trailer is like, I have to. Keegan-Michael Key plays the villain. And like, in what world?

That sounds incredible. Is it a series or a single? It's a movie. It's a movie. OK, I'm in. I'm already watching it right now. Joelle, it's been a pleasure, as always, having you on the Daily

Zeitgeist. Where can people find you and follow you? Yeah, you can find me all over the internet at Joelle Monique. It's J-O-E-L-L-E-M-O-N-I-Q-U-E. All right. And is there a tweet or some other work of social media you've been enjoying? Oh, yeah. Okay, so Baymon, which is B-E-y-m-a-n it's

either two i's or two exclamation points who knows listen she tweeted four photos of megan the stallion from when she was in college megan dressed every day like she was a lawyer full suit set of nails gold watch hair together she's in college i was like if megan the stallion isn't the absolute inspiration for just get your stuff together in the hard times woman lost her mother and her grandmother in the same year that she goes double platinum i am obsessed with her and her career and her moves and the way that she just constantly surprises everybody and seeing her in her early forms seeing how together it was i was like this, this is where we need to be. Oh yeah.

I just pulled up the pics. I'm like, yeah, she, holy shit. That was, that was just her going to class. I was in sweats.

She was together. She's the best. Fuck. Uh, Jamie, where can people find you? What's the tweet you've been enjoying? Uh,

you can find me on Twitter at, uh, Jamie Loftus help instagram jamie christ superstar i have a new podcast coming out starting on monday called lolita podcast yes it sounds it's depressing it's about uh the kind of like the the journey of all the adaptations of lolita that have been done over the years. So you can subscribe to that. And today, or tonight, when this is airing, if you're interested in learning more about homelessness during the pandemic, I'm going to be hosting, along with the SELA Neighborhood Homeless Coalition, there's going to be a webinar tonight where I'm going to be talking with Theo Henderson, who is an unhoused advocate, as well as Genevieve Lang and Matt Tinoco. And even if you don't live in LA, it's an awesome panel and group of people,

and you can learn more about exactly how poorly the unhoused have been treated throughout this uh pandemic and what you can do to um take action to first uh help in a direct action way and also the most effective ways to um bully your representatives into actually fucking doing something about it so that's also i'll keep posting that to twitter awesome tweet i like is from my friend George Severus at George Severus. I wonder if this will make sense when I read it out loud. Okay. Pfizer.

It's just me against the music. Moderna. And me. Does that make sense? If you love Britney, it does. And I do, so thank you.'s niche it's good a tweet i've been enjoying srikar tweeted my calculator app just released a new feature and it's like a circle of his avatar at the top of like the calculator on the calculator app on his phone, like the Twitter, I don't know. But speaking of things that don't work as a description,

but basically that all apps are doing the stories thing. And Mike Leffingwell tweeted, whoa, this whole season of The Crown is just Queen Elizabeth II being pissed about her portrayal in Naked Gun. My second The the Crown-related tweet that I've called to people's attention, and I don't watch that show.

I was going to say, Jack, are you watching season four? I'm not, but I like the idea of that, and then somebody asked, who plays Jeffrey Epstein in The Crown? Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. And then somebody asked who plays Jeffrey Epstein in The Crown. You can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien. 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 the song we ride out on today we are going to ride out on uh jamie's recommendation which is mickey rourke's performance on the masked singer um it slaps it's it's really good and we And we will listen to 15 seconds of that as we ride out. The Daily Zeitgeist,

the production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That's going to do it for this morning. We'll be back this afternoon to tell you what's trending.

And we'll talk to you all then. Bye. Bye. If the sky we look upon Turbulent falls And the mountains crumble In the sea I won't cry, I won't cry There's so much beauty in Mexican culture,

like mariachis, delicious cuisine, and even lucha libre. Join us for the new podcast, 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, emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. Hey, fam, I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the podcast from Hello Sunshine that's guaranteed to light up your day. Check out our recent episode with Grammy Award winning rapper Eve on motherhood and the music industry. No, it's a great, amazing,

beautiful thing. There's moms in all industries, very high stress industries that have kids all across this world. Why can't it be music as well? Listen to the bright side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unnerves the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country

into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere starting September 25th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. dreams.