The Daily Zeitgeist - Weekly Zeitgeist 196 (Best of 10/4/21-10/8/21)

Episode Date: October 10, 2021

The weekly round up of the best moments from DZ's Season 205 (10/4/21-10/8/21) 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 iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts 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-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. Santos! Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts.

Do you ever wonder where your favorite foods come from? Like what's the history behind bacon-wrapped hot dogs? Hi, I'm Eva Longoria. Hi, I'm Maite Gomez-Rejon. Our podcast, Hungry for History, is back. And this season, we're taking an even bigger bite out of the most delicious food and its history. Seeing that the most popular cocktail is the margarita,

followed by the mojito from Cuba, and the piñocolada from Puerto Rico. Listen to Hungry for History 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.

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only on Apple Podcasts. Hello, the internet, and welcome to this episode of the weekly Zeitgeist. These are some of our favorite segments from this week, all edited together into one nonstop infotainment laugh stravaganza uh yeah so without further ado here is the weekly zeitgeist he was named 2015's number one comedian yeah on the top 1000 comedians list please welcome the hilarious and talented andrew machan thank you thank you for having me and my song about me is happy for no i don't i did not know it was a musical podcast um so i don't have a song prepared but just know that um if i had one prepared it would

have been awesome it's very clear to everyone listening that you have a song in your heart yeah yes last time you were on you on, you said the same thing. Like, I didn't know it was a song. I would have came with one. Wow. So, it's funny. Let us down the second go around. Wow.

I should have known. You know, well, it's been a normal couple of years. Yeah. What's your problem, man? November 2019. What's going on, dude? Just pick up where you left off. Well, I haven't really

been paying attention um so i don't know everything's been good for me cool cool yeah yeah yeah no it's good to be back thank you for having me i'm gonna i'm gonna come clean here and let you know that i have forgotten that we met forgot that you were on the show and then become a fan of yours through podcasts But Outside since then. Oh, thank you. And without realizing that you had been on this show. That's perfect. Podcast But Outside is very, very funny.

Yeah, before you came on, he's like, you know, Andrew? I'm like, well, yeah. Oh, shit, man. That is very funny. I was like, father, you need your medicine. Oh, boy. Hey, I honestly, actually, that makes your fan of my show, like that makes it more pure.

Yeah, of course. That was just a pure enjoyment outside of the fact that you and I are close friends. Yes, exactly. There it is. Great. What's good with you, man? Other than you're back from Costa Rica. I'm doing well.

Yeah. Costa Rica. Last time you were on. How was that trip, man? It was great. It was really nice. And honestly, looking back, I'm very glad that I did go in November of 2019 because I try to go out of the country once a year and it was a really great trip.

And then if I had known that I wouldn't be able to leave the country for a long time after that, it was perfect timing to be able to go. Great country. Highly recommend it. Easy place to travel and everyone's very nice. Great country. Highly recommend it. Easy place to travel. And everyone's very nice. Very beautiful. Love to see it.

And I'm actually going to leave the country again for the first time since then in November. So no timing there. Where are you going? I'm going to Costa. No, I'm just going. I'm going to. I'm going to Iceland, actually, which I've never been to. Whoa.

Yeah. Oh, what's the weather like at that time of year? Super cold. I think it's kind of cold year round the vibe is apparently it's just always cold but that is definitely when winter is in the swing of it's like in the full swing of winter so there might be a little more snow but i think it's just universally cold and frigid there but it is like you know it'll get dark like at like four or five p.m when we first get there and then by the time we leave it'll get dark at

like three p.m like it really drastically changes over the course of november yeah yeah but there's like boiling hot water just like shooting up out of the earth there all the time yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah man i want to go there so bad i i studied a lot of viking history in college and like iceland's always been like i gotta i need to see it because a lot of the people that like ended up habitating that place were like fleeing the Vikings. They were like, yo, these Norwegians are wilding. Like, let's get over here. Did the Vikings ever go there and like mess them up? Yeah, I'm sure they did.

I mean, as far as I can remember, what was that? 14 years ago. Yeah. I mean, that's like those are the remnants that you hold on you're like i know they were fleeing the other vikings and then they have a great soccer team that overperforms well i'll let you know how it is yeah it seems like a nice easy place to travel and also it's like 96 vaccinated kind of thing and you have to be vaccinated to go in so as far as like feels like a safe first trip after this whole thing sure marcella we do like to ask our guest what is something from your search history i had to

google san francisco fleet week because i didn't know what the fuck that was and um i'm in modesto california right now and we've been having uh these i just been me and my brother have been noticing these little like cute little planes and then like multiple planes at once for just crisscrossing and I was like what the fuck is going on and then my friend who lives in San Francisco was like it's fleet week and I was like what the fuck it's fleet week and then I fucking put the thoughts together

once I hit the Google I didn't read about it because I don't give a shit it just feels like a waste of money oh yeah but yeah I guess that's happening this week and they are practicing in Modesto California so what Oh, yeah. it's it's been a thing for like a minute but i know right and then they'll have air shows and shit it's just kind of like yo we're here we're we're in the city they have potholes all over the city but they're using the money for a fucking fleet week right i associated with like old timey like a bunch of sailors in their in their uh whites just like walking around and yeah exactly causing trouble getting into fights and bars in the Lower East Side or whatever.

Yeah, that happens. And then you get a little Blue Angels, you know, a party going on there too. It's one of those traditions that feels really childish. Yeah. Yeah. I think they need to pick one. Why the planes?

Aren't they supposed to be on the water? What's happening? Because they're launched from the aircraft carrier. I don't know. Yeah. Fuck it. Whatever. I'm no military expert but i i mean that's a good thing right the navy yeah i'm sure i'm gonna i'm gonna get hate mail for mentioning that right somebody be like i served and it's a very important tradition i feel like a lot of the people that served and listened to the show like they come through with and very enlightening opinions on they're like yeah this

is what's fucked up about the military i'm like thank you for that and they're gonna be like it adds millions of dollars to the local economy i feel like that's the what do you like ted cruz ted cruz is a big fan yeah yeah yeah he does like the daily zeitgeist weird uh what is something you think is overrated i'm a really big professional wrestling fan it's something i've been a fan of my entire life pretty much and um there are a series of matches that happened in the 2010s in new japan pro wrestling wrestler named kenny omega versus a wrestler named okada which are considered to be the greatest professional wrestling matches in the history of professional wrestling.

Dave Meltzer is a pro wrestling journalist of note who has a five star scale of how he rates matches in terms of quality. And one of the Okada Omega matches, he rated seven stars, which like broke his scale. It was so good. And I got to say, I just don't see it. I'm a big pro wrestling fan. The matches are like, the problem with them is that they're all like 40 minute long epics. So it's sort of like sitting down to, you know, like a three hour movie or something like that in pro wrestling match terms.

And I don't know. I just kind of want to watch people do flips and kick each other in the face. I'm not sure if I want 20 minutes of like slow mat wrestling action to get to the cool stuff you know that's funny there is a bias like in certain you know fan bases where i i feel like the longer the movie for a while was it was considered like well that's a that's a classy

movie even though i think a lot of times like you should at least have a couple 90 minute movies on your like top five list. It shouldn't just all be like three hour long epics. Yeah. Like sometimes you're in the mood for like a four hour long, you know, like sometimes you're in the mood for Citizen Kane or whatever. Or sometimes you're in the mood for like, yeah, like a 90 minute like die hard or something like that we're just like someone getting hit by a train yeah totally totally totally and it's i think it's you know like both of those wrestlers are so good and like i'm a fan of okada and omega separately it's just like this thing that the fandom has called the best series of matches of all time

and i'm like yeah it's i don't know it's like sometimes you want you know a seven minute long like rush song or something like that or sometimes you want like a minute 30 punk song and like yeah i feel like i'm more on the minute 30 punk song side of things yeah one of my like my mom's really good close friends is uh used to be married to that wrestler masa saito who's mr saito oh yeah wf like back in the day and i remember around the time i was so into wrestling that i went when we were in japan she's like oh come out we're having like the i forget whatever like all those tournaments like the g1 climax oh hell yeah the g1 fucking rules yeah so i went to one

of those and i was like i was like i'm ready because i had already been to a couple you know wwf house shows and a wrestlemania and i was like okay this is it and the culture around the shows were so different i was like having this like sort of bit of wrestling culture clash happening right uh but it's true like it is it offers like a completely different version whereas to me a 14 year old who's just been mainlining Dwayne The Rock Johnson like clips. I was a little bit like, OK, yeah, that was cool. That was there was some cool stuff in there. Yeah. Technical stuff in there.

Yeah. And like NJPW, it's it's really it's like I would say that if WWE is like the action movie form of wrestling where it's just like, yeah, the undertaker shooting out fireballs, like Cain's long lost brother, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like NJPW is like,

Oh, this is like the sport version of this. Right. Like, you know, there's not as, there's not like magic stuff. Nobody is like secretly a demon or whatever.

Right. It's very much just like, Oh, these are two like top of their form athletes who like understand the sport of professional wrestling to a t and like are so good at like the performative aspects of it so it's like it's a little bit more real in how they perform their moves like uh they hit like there's this thing called strong style where wrestlers will hit each other for real as hard as humanly possible but in safe spaces so it's like a forearm as hard as you can to like the shoulder where it

might hurt, but it's not going to like knock you out like that. It's like punching on the shoulder, like sort of when you're a kid, like a thing that I feel like. Oh, like getting someone to death. Yeah.

Okay. You get one, you get one, get one. I'll take it. I can take it right there go yeah when the wrestlers are really good at like uh there's a star named kota bushi who's like one of the best wrestlers in the world who famously does a lot of like just insane drops on his neck

like he gets pile driven straight on his neck all the time and it like looks insane and the way that he can do that is he just does a lot of neck exercises so it's sort of that thing of like oh they like do the moves for real to each other but they are trained in such a way that they're like not going to get injured doing it whereas wwe is more the showmanship side of it of like it's like wwe is a little bit you know faker for lack of a better term in that like things are a little bit more slight of handed away as to how things are done whereas njpw it's just like oh dudes are just dropping each other on their necks for real right right right and then people like in like a backyard match in like tampa are like did you see that clip yeah we should try that on a regular folding table and then be surprised when someone has a tbi

oh yeah for sure yeah yeah of all the places to, you know, do the do the sleight of hand that convinces people to do really dangerous things. I feel like America, not the best choice for that. Right, right, right. What what's something you think is underrated? Underrated is buying a used car or, you know, a SEP or a Simple or a bunch of retirement accounts that aren't super sexy. I love the people who did the marketing for a 401k. 401k is like the darling, but I think that's overrated. There are a ton of other retirement accounts that I think are underrated. And the more the merrier when it comes to retirement accounts. I think a lot of folks think the 401k is like the only girl at the dance. She's not. There are others. And does your company need to like participate in the other

like retirement accounts or you can just kind of pick and choose if you have a 401k? Well, so you can have a 401k and an IRA. I know you guys are stoked. An IRA. Roth IRA, huh? and an IRA. I know you guys are stoked. An IRA. Love that Roth IRA life. You just go to the bank and you can open up an IRA, a traditional or a Roth. And the only difference is taxes. With a Roth, you pay taxes now. With a traditional, you pay taxes when you take it out. And so that's like a whole other category of retirement accounts than the 401k. So you can have a 401k and you can have a Roth IRA and a traditional if you want. And then SEBs and SIMPLs are like other variations of IRAs in that family if you own your own business.

Wow. How did you become so financially literate? Because I grew up in the most pretty financially illiterate home or like one where a lot of those things were not communicated to me so it was a lot of trial and error once I got out of college so I would always meet people with their financial shit together I'm like how did you get there oh I lied you know I lied true story I grew up in an immigrant family. So I'm first generation American, super broken home. My father died of an overdose when I was young. My mother sort of

peaced out and I just needed to work. So I needed to get a job. We talked about this before we went on the air. We're all in LA. I went to an arts high school. I wanted to be a dancer. And then I went to college to be a poetry major. So like I'm the least likely person to be a finance expert or whatever. I never thought I'd even be in business or talking about business. But then I started in journalism and I auditioned for this small station group in Chicago. I went to Northwestern and I wanted to get like a local news job. And they said, well, you don't get this job, but do you know anything about business? And I was 18 at the time.

And I just said, yes. I just lied. I was like, I so fucking literally love business all day, every day. Did you not read my resume? Come on. Right? Twice on Sunday. Like I had a boyfriend in high school who said he wanted to be a hedge fund manager.

And I thought the dude wanted to be in gardening. Yeah. So if I could do this, anyone could do this. Sure, sure, sure. For real. Yeah. And I mean, I've I've I've gathered that over the years and people like, try this, read up about that. I'm like, oh, right.

OK. I think it's just at a certain point there was was just, I think my priorities are just completely off. So it took moments like that to realize like, yeah, that's right. We live in a very complex financial system here as well, especially as it relates to taxes and things like that. So at a certain point, I think I just became very apathetic because it just felt like, well, this is... I get it.

I would have been apathetic if I didn't need it to pay the bills. I wouldn't have done it otherwise, for sure. And what I realized is that money is a language like anything else. We just didn't have a Rosetta Stone for this language, no matter what high school you went to or growing up, no matter what kind of household you grew up in. We don't learn this stuff in school. We learn a bunch of BS, like how to dissect a frog or the Pythagorean theorem. Yeah, that BS. Why?

Why do we need to, like, if we want to know when, right? Like when a train gets to a station. Fucking isosceles right triangle. But you know what the Pythagorean theorem is, don't you? Yeah. What is it? I'm sure A squared plus B squared equals C squared. That's right.

But then you start asking me about retirement i'm like uh shit right if i were in charge of the world we would learn about seps and simples instead of isosceles triangles but i'm not yet and you know i think that for me out of necessity i just went to the school of hard knocks and right you know if you go to china or you don knocks. And, you know, if you go to China or you don't speak Chinese, you'd be confused. If you go to Wall Street, you don't speak the language of money, you'd be confused. But then, hello, Captain Obvious, once you speak it, you understand it. But first you have to just learn this silly little language. But it's like not complicated.

And so. And I think that's probably intentional, too, because I think most people, if you're not making globs of money, you don't learn a lot of the other tricks of the trade or like wealth accumulation tactics that people have. And it seems like, yeah, you're just like, well, then that's for someone else. But then you realize, no, it's just we can educate ourselves and maybe give ourselves a different outcome. Yeah. And then a lot of women in particular, you know, I wrote rich bitch and either thought it was going to fail or crush it. There was no gray area. People were going to have feelings about the book, but because I think women in particular don't get their financial lives together because they think a guy's going to take care of it. And listening to you guys, case in point,

guys don't know more. Nobody knows anything. Shit out of a of it. Guys don't know more. Nobody knows anything. I will kill the shit out of a spider, though. Thank you. Or I will escort it outside because I like spiders. But I'm there. But yeah, you start talking about college funds and stuff like that. My partner and I were like, should we be in a college fund?

Man, I'm going to sell an NFT. And then we're good. It's like, that's not a strategy. I'm like, you're right. Do you have a like a crash course that you recommend for people just to like, kind of like, what did you read to first sort of learn the language? I was just on the floor of the Chicago Merc, which is like Wolf of Wall Street style. And so I learned it there. And I realized like when I heard people say short, I thought it was the opposite at all. But it's not. It's just the opposite of long in the Wall Street world. And it's not complicated. It's like it just means

something's going in the pooper. It's going to fail. And that's all. But nobody says it like that. They say, you know, most folks who explain it don't even understand what the heck they're saying. And so I thought that there was an opportunity to be like, hello, everybody is just like smoking something here. Can somebody just explain this? Like say it plain how it is. And so that's what I tried to do. And so folks wanted that. Yeah. So rich bitch would be the crash course that people need to understand. Rich Bitch would be a good place to start. Boss Bitch would be another good place to start. Miss Independent is the book I have coming out in January. And not to sort of like sell my own books, but I came up with The Money School because I kept saying the same type of spiel, like,

why isn't there a class? And so I kept saying it so much. I was like, I might as well do one because it doesn't include the Pythagorean theorem. Yeah, you're really hard on the Pythagorean theorem, by the way. I do have to stand up for the Pythagorean theorem. It's never steered me wrong,

as far as I know, in the zero times that I've had to use it in my everyday life. You're right. You're right. It's always there for me. Let's be fair, be fair, Miles. We've been really hard on her. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right 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 Jay. 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 podcast 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. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago, when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president.

One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current. Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 iheart radio and realm

listen to dream sequence on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and we're back and christy gnome is defending herself from nepotism accusations by just like admitting she did nepotism kind of like yeah okay maybe i did that shit but not the way you think so yeah you know she's been in the news for last week that story came out the rumor that she was sleeping with cory lewandowski from trump world like they were having an affair and, she's been in the news for last week. That story came out, the rumor that she was sleeping with Corey Lewandowski from Trump World. Like they were having an affair. And then she's like, I love my husband, whatever. She's like, we raised God fearing children together. I'm off this. Like, this is a bad rumor.

And people were like, wow. OK, that by addressing it, it seems a little bit more guilty. But hey, do you, Christy? You got to do you. by addressing it, it seems a little bit more guilty, but hey, do you, Christy, you got to do you. And now she's like over the last, you know, two weeks or so, this nepotism thing has been getting louder and louder and louder. And because here's the deal, you know, her daughter, just like about two years ago, she wanted to be a real estate appraiser, but you know, like the tests and certifications were just like so unfair that the board denied her application and certification.

And the state says that they will like in order to have your certification denied, it's denied when, quote, an applicant's work samples don't meet minimum compliance with national standards. I mean, try to imagine how bad her application must have been for her to not get the approval in the first place when her mom is, you know. First of all, the application was in crayon. I don't know if you guys know. It must have been. It must have literally been in crayon. She's like, you traced someone else's application on top of this with crayon. It's not even your name, miss.

Oh, okay. So all these biases and things I got to overcome now. And I mean, look, no shade to real estate applications. It seems fairly straightforward to get licensed. I know an appraiser, like this specific certification might be a little more specific. I'm sure. However, it just seems like anything. I'm sure it's hard for a lot of people but not the not her you wouldn't

like this because the the moment that they denied this the meeting that you're about to describe was like set in motion and they had to have known that like there was no only one option so the uh certification denied governor mommy coming coming through and demanded a fucking Soprano-style sit-down with Sherry Bren, who is the manager of the appraiser certification program, her direct supervisor, and the state secretary of labor. And her daughter. And her daughter. Wow, her daughter was there. I do like that she did a, let me talk to your manager.

And your manager as with the and your direct supervisor. I need to speak to everyone's manager. So who's your manager? Okay, their manager as well. And who's yours? Them too. I just love that she did all that when she could have just hired somebody to fill out the application. You know what I mean? There's so many

ways you could have really played the system if you wanted to. My daughter was trying to do it the right way, Marcel. Failing spectacularly and then having her mother abuse the office, the power of her office to get this done. So oddly enough, a couple months after that meeting, boom, she's certified. Baby's certified and is ready to start appraising, uh, appraise the Lord, but it is not nepotism. And Kristi Noem did a vertical video apology. So, you know, she's fucking serious about this. So this is governor Noem's self-taped. It wasn't nepotism, but very listen very closely to how

she just even lets this unfold. And I wanted to take a second to set the record straight. even lets this unfold. And I wanted to take a second to set the record straight. I never once asked for special treatment for Cassidy. She is my daughter and I'm proud of her. I raised her to accomplish things on her own, just like my parents raised me. Other appraisers went through the exact same process that Cassidy did. Right here. And I'll be honest, my administration started fixing that process and it was way too difficult appraisers weren't getting certified and south dakota having to wait much longer to buy a home than in other states okay that's it i don't even care about the rest of it she stayed up goes yo i didn't do nothing however we have the process was in the problem yeah which it was way too hard way too difficult

i'm sorry did you is that a direct quote from your daughter mom it's way too hard. Way too difficult. I'm sorry. Is that a direct quote from your daughter? Mm-hmm. Mom, it's way too difficult. I don't fucking... It's too difficult. I had to cut this application process, and I had to fill it out all by myself, and there was nothing on Google. Okay, okay, honey. I'll figure it out.

Sherry, I need to see you tomorrow, and bring your manager and her manager too this is the governor bye thank you mommy thank you yeah no i got it baby i know honey it's so i can't believe they made you read i wonder i wonder if they don't know the difference between nepotism and incest that's why she's like it's not nepotism it's like It's like, lady, do you even know what nepotism is? Because it sounds like she doesn't know what nepotism is. No. It's really what it sounds like. I mean, especially when you then go on to say, however, we did have to fix some problems over in that place that made my daughter upset.

Okay. She's like, y'all, nepotism is disgusting. And that's why, obviously, I support abortions in the case of rape and nepotism. Right. I also love that you can see the ring light in her eyes in that video. That's my favorite when you're just like. And the glasses. Did you keep her apology glasses?

That's what I call them. You know, it's an apology when someone who's not normally wearing glasses puts the glasses on or around their head. I think it evokes that old thing like Batman when the Joker's like, you wouldn't punch a guy with glasses. Oh my God, that's so funny. Oh, what a mess. Let me just take a break from all this work I'm doing with my glasses to put them up on the top of my head and apologize. You guys are a distraction from the real she definitely took more time on hair and makeup than she did on the apology yeah oh 100 because

then the content isn't there but the next two minutes it's just this is why it's so bad you won't believe how long it takes to buy somebody to buy a house in in south dakota because there's no appraisers i I mean, really, what I'm trying to do is he goes on and be like, I need to get more young people involved in this to give them opportunities because there shouldn't be so many obstacles to opportunity. Please don't look at my policies on education funding or things as it relates to reservations. But anyway, that's what I believe. It's like the classic white feminism story, right? Like they fucking want to adjust it for them. And they think that that's what i believe that's like the classic white feminism story right like they fucking want to adjust it for them and they think that that's helping everybody well yeah or use that very

narrow like lens to say like the version of what is being experienced now is actually an oppressive force that we're trying to counteract versus yeah my daughter is ill-prepared i probably raised her as such where whenever she had a problem mom would solve it without her having to learn a lesson which has created runaway momentum for this baby adult who i've raised now who now screams when they don't get their appraisers oh my god i just thought of i've had my mom help me on one thing once when i was in high school i think we had to we had to carve out the fucking what is that shit the sphinx oh like one of those styrofoam and shit no from soap and i yeah so i was trying to do it right and i was like mom can you help me and she was like yeah and then she started doing it and i was like okay let me and she was like no

let me and she finished it i didn't want her to she just was like you know what you're gonna mess this up and i worked really hard on the back so now i'm just gonna do the whole face yeah and i was like and then she's the hard part yeah and then we saved it and to this day when i look at it i'm just like i will never ask that woman for help again she just fucking snatched it out of my hands i mean it's so weird when your parents are less like let me do this thing for you and you're like but this has to do with my school and like if i fail like the opportunity yeah let me fail on my own no because i gotta show you mom still got it with an exacto knife in a bar of dial here we go so funny but i we still have it sometimes i'll see it and i'm just like this doesn't even mind but she's like oh yeah remember that when you made that and i was like i didn't make that you made that like stop telling the lie mom yeah that's

funny it's funny the same the one it's so funny you say that the one time my mom ever helped me with a school project was with a like an ancient egypt diorama i had to build wow and i was trying to make my own pyramids out of paper and my dumb ass just didn't know how to fuck with geometry properly to get it and my mom watched me struggle like for hours good and then until she was just like yo like you can't embarrass me like this we bring this shit in here like here like just cut this paper like this and then just fold it and then it'll be it'll look like a little pyramid and i'm like fuck and i remember like being so self-conscious when i

brought it like i was like the teacher's gonna know my mom did this my mom did the fucking paper pyramid and no it wasn't like that but i'll never shake that feeling either yeah it's so funny right when I brought it, I was like, the teacher's going to know my mom did this. She's going to know that my mom did the fucking paper pyramid. And no, it wasn't like that. But I'll never shake that feeling either. Yeah, it's so funny, right? Because I got an A on it and I was like so upset that I got an A on it. Because I was like, that's not my A. For me too, like with, you know, Asian household, it's very much like sink or swim, motherfucker.

And if you fail, I hope you're ready for the shame train because it's about to make a stop at this house and you better hop on uh but like at the same time also became very much like able to rely on myself because i was like you know what because i feel like every kid like when book report time would come around there was always that one kid you know like your mom fucking made that shit i've seen you you can't even color in the fucking lines that's funny and now you did a whole ass diorama out of a moving box that's like to scale no no my dad uh helped me with math homework in sixth grade once and i still remember it because it ultimately ended with him being like your teacher's wrong about this oh that. That classic move. This doesn't make sense to me.

And my poor teacher, who was like such a hard ass, she didn't give a fuck. But she was just like, uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. Great. Yeah. And you're a basketball coach, right?

That's true. Okay. Yeah. So why don't you just add up the score? Because you can only count to five, right? And do it in ones, twos, and threes? Okay. But see, isn't that funny that we all have a story and then we all are like we very vividly remember it and how it made us feel how we still feel about it and like chrissy gnome's daughter is probably like well this is how it is sometimes for some people yeah well that's like because you

know i grew up around a lot of kids who were the children of celebrities and they all have that similar thing which is money has solved all of their problems since they can remember. And I mean, there are some kids who, you know, were raised to be a little more self-reliant, but many are like to the point where it's like you move in, you're like, yo, can you set up the Wi-Fi or something? Like they don't even know how to set up a Wi-Fi account, like to even like, you know, you call the phone company and they're like, huh? And I'm like, fuck, bro, did your mom always do this like they'll be like yeah my mom got it covered we're still on the parent plan come on now yeah it's wild yeah don't be bullied into not drunk driving okay don't be

bullied don't let the thought bullies uh you know do your own research right yeah on facebook which speaking of uh francis haugen which is how german people say hulk hogan last name um has yeah i don't know man i don't know you know what keep it keep it i don't know man come on now franc Francis Haugen has now testified in front of Congress in like words that it seems like they might be able to understand based on their response. Yeah. I mean, because I think this one for a lot of people, it feels like this could be a slightly different moment as it relates to Facebook and talking Facebook on Capitol Hill. Because typically when the Senate hauls Facebook up to the Hill for some just good old splaining, it's usually some very slick representative or a lawyer or like an alien form of Mark Zuckerberg, like doing the talking and people that are like, these are all people that are like well-versed in obscuring like the sins of facebook like through their like rhetorical mastery and just being like well you know i think i'd have to get back to you but actually the way this product

is you know it's all this just it's it's just a lot of sidestepping when hard questions are being asked well yeah i mean and they're also explaining like they're also doing this like sick explanation that's like explanation to like octogenarians who don't know what computers are so like that's part of it too you know yeah oh a huge part so they're it's just very easy for them to go by because they'll be like what's finsta and they're like that's not us sir you're confused old man here's your applesauce and i think uh your tapioca is getting warm. It's like, oh, thank you. And they've just completely sidestepped the question.

Well, Haugen has come out here and just letting these dinosaurs know very straightforward and very plain words from the beginning. So this is Haugen just coming to the senators, being very direct, straightforward and letting them know, hey, you know, there's actual, let me just say this in normal sentences, what is happening at Facebook. During my time at Facebook, I came to realize a devastating truth. Almost no one outside of Facebook knows what happens inside of Facebook. The company intentionally hides vital information from the public, from the U.S. government, and from governments around the world. The documents I have provided to Congress prove that Facebook has repeatedly misled the public about what its own research reveals about the safety of children, the efficacy of its artificial intelligence systems, and its role in spreading divisive and extreme messages.

So that seems like an easy follow. Just, yeah, you're blowing the whistle. You're saying everything you thought you knew, you in fact do not know because there is a policy there to keep as many people in the dark as possible. And that was sort of one of our first statements. And people were like, okay, well, what else is going on? What else can you can you tell us is happening? And, you know, I think she said she stresses the same thing about this whole profits over people thing, which we've seen constantly over and over again, which is that when push comes to shove, they will choose whatever they have to do to make money. they will choose whatever they have to do to make money. That's it. That's all that this company is going to do. And again, just so for the elders in the back, in case you were

understanding, let me just say, it's not just algorithms or things like that. These are the choices that are being made at Facebook. During my time at Facebook, first working as the lead product manager for civic misinformation, and later on counter espionage, I saw Facebook repeatedly encounter conflicts between its own profits and our safety. Facebook consistently resolved these conflicts in favor of its own profits. The result has been more division, more harm, more lies, more threats, and more combat. In some cases, this dangerous online talk has led to actual violence that harms and even kills people. Yeah. Surprises?

Well, it's not just, I mean, like in the industry that we work in, like we've experienced Facebook, just, you know, presumably just flat out lying about stuff in a way that like just destroys entire industries like uh like a lot of us worked in work or worked in like kind of the digital comedy space you know writing for you know comedy websites who uh you know when facebook started allowing videos on their platform they like goosed the numbers on all of their videos so all of a sudden you'd see somebody post a video from their kid's birthday party and then it would look like it had like five million views or something like that and then every comedy website was just like oh pivot to video only on facebook and then that turned out to be like just a horrible idea because facebook just you know

kind of tweaked those numbers scroll past it it's a view you're like yeah no it isn't yeah yeah at my time at certain companies the like the the people who are running departments like we love it just just because even if they don't watch it says down there it was viewed three million times and i'm like yeah yeah and that's something that like is it's you know a big reason that like online sketch comedy is just not a thing anymore is like because facebook convinced all these places to pivot to video they hired huge video teams and this caused like too much overhead which caused them to have to like shut down lay off all of their staffs because it turns out that like facebook was goosing those numbers in the

companies were seeing no profit from these huge video teams that they were starting so yeah you know if they'll like do you know if they'll work in such a way that's self-serving for that then yeah for sure i'm sure facebook like you know gooses things in other areas as this whistleblower definitely pointed out you know yeah and i think you know she's calling for i think like most people like transparency, like regulation oversight, because a real popular defense that Facebook, you know, will deploy a lot of times like, you know, we don't really need any like regulation because we're not like like this, not like an infrastructure people are using. Like it's like a platform. We're trying to start our own trying to start a new world. Everybody is cool shit.

You know, it's not infrastructure. start a new world everybody it's cool shit you know it's not infrastructure but you know when all their whole shit went down for five hours on monday that certainly blew that argument up because it became really clear because many people were like suddenly unable to communicate with people over whatsapp internationally like many people do use whatsapp for or even like a lot of people who maybe do they're like run a small business on Instagram, suddenly, like, I'm losing out on my livelihood, because this thing went down, I don't know what's going on. I think a lot of people begin to like, that is providing a lot of robust infrastructure for people to communicate or create a livelihood. So what, it's still just

this casual thing. My version of that, which I would say is equal in levels of stress and importance is I have a pro wrestling group chat on Facebook and Facebook shut down. I had to be like, OK, what's everybody's phone numbers? Let's put everybody on a cell phone. So we had to like migrate the pro wrestling group chat to text message for five hours just so we could like talk about the sweet wrestling news and rumors uh without like losing that infrastructure so like but that is a real thing that is like just facebook messenger instagram messenger and all that are like ways that businesses communicate at this point and like yeah or just using shops through instagram like if you're just being like hey here's my bespoke whatever where's i'm you know creating that facebook's a great place for people or instagram and facebook has a great place for people or Instagram

and Facebook has been a place where people have been able, like I I'm actually making my living using this stuff. When I was working in the online comedy space, like there, there was a slow, but steady kind of change from things. You would get a lot of traffic from Facebook and then like they would start like kind of squeezing it down and squeezing it down and then like i went to a symposium like put on by facebook you had to just like focus on facebook because that's where so much of the traffic was coming from and like the people were like yeah industry-wide uh page placement is really the only thing that's working.

And it was just like a given all of a sudden that you just had to pay to distribute your content on Facebook. So that's another way that they just took out any small content creator. Yeah, it's like if you have a Facebook page with a million followers and you post a video to it, usually like pre this, it would show up in the news feeds of all million of your followers. Then Facebook started doing kind of like this thing where, oh, it would only go to like 10% of your followers. And then based on like how it does in analytics, then they would slowly parse it out to like the other million.

Or you could give Facebook $100 and they would immediately put it out to all million other million or you could give facebook a hundred dollars and they would immediately put it out to all million people yeah yeah and a bunch of people you don't even know yeah how about that and give me a hundred bucks but that's you know you are either paying them a shitload of money or you know doing like a fucking rain dance like to hope that the facebook gods smile on you that day and like tweak the algorithm in a way that makes it a little bit fairer to the little guy. But all of that to say that all publishers are still presumably, like non-podcast publishers, I guess, are still presumably very focused on what Facebook's preferences are. And I feel like that has to influence like what we see like the the this story miles that you put in here like just made me wonder about the finsta thing which

was like in in and of itself like inherently funny but the the fact that that went as viral as it did and was sort of the thing that overshadowed or like that was like the main takeaway from that day of testimony was the senator being like what's a finsta can you not do any more finstas like i i have to feel like that people saw that that was getting a great response on facebook and that facebook kind of encouraged that along because why the fuck wouldn't they sure but i think also i mean if you're looking at very cynically how we would at the on Facebook and that Facebook kind of encouraged that along because why the fuck wouldn't they? Sure. But I think also, I mean, if you're looking at very cynically how we would at the Senate, it's just like even organically, I would look at that and go, this is the fucking problem. For sure. He's supposed to haul these people up here for answers. And he's just getting like he's wasting his breath getting explained like a thing that isn't necessarily as consequential than the

purpose of the hearing yeah but yeah i mean but yes that i think like they say she goes on to say we all live in a world that is being affected by facebook whether you are on there or not there are many people that are so yeah to that point i'm sure there's there's an element to that i just want to say a quick side note on a jack the term rain dance. I was like, it's like I'm a native person and I've heard that phrase a lot. But I was like,

wait, did tribes really do that? Or is that just a thing that people say that tribes did? And I just Googled it. I just want to say shout out to the Zuni tribe of the Southwest. They did rain dances. It's not totally a thing that people just made up that native folks don't actually do. The Zuni tribe does it. So shout out to the zuni tribe of the southwest they uh they did rain dances uh it's not not totally a thing that people just made up that native folks don't actually do the zuni tribe does it so uh

shout out to the zunis yeah there you go a teaching moment yeah yeah that was teaching moment for me too because i was just like wait i've only seen the stereotype of that but is that a real thing you know right right right yeah the the other part of this that was very interesting was suddenly Richard Blumenthal, the famous man behind the Finsta comment, his energy was a lot different, too, which I found to be, again, like things feel a little bit different about this hearing. Because now I think I'm sure Richard Blumenthal has read up now on everything. Facebook looks like he put a little color in his hair. A little bit. It's always been that form of denying I'm aging brown.

I think the reason for his fire is that he has a Facebook page and Facebook shut down and he was just like, no, my Heathcliff memes. He's like, they love ape. He was just like, no. There was five hours where he couldn't read a love ape. He was just like, no, there was five hours

where he couldn't read a garbage ape and he was panicking. His staffers were having to make ones on paper. What about this one, Senator? Oh no, this has a logical punchline. That's not what garbage ape would have. Heathcliff's tooth is on the other side,

you ignoramus. Heathcliff is wearing a helmet that has a word on it that you can track the logic of. Get out of here. Right. So this is him saying, he's coming with some way different energy rather than, what's Finsta? He's like, Mark, get over here. Mark Zuckerberg ought to be looking at himself in the mirror today. And yet, rather than taking responsibility and showing leadership,

Mr. Zuckerberg is going sailing. His new modus operandi, no apologies, no admission, no action, nothing to see here. Mark Zuckerberg, you need to come before this committee. You need to explain to Francis Haugen to us to the world

and to the parents of America what you were doing and why you did it so this is only about 7 years too late but that's cool but to that point I'm not going to give Blumenthal i'm not going to just start standing up applauding him because there's they they're they're able to do things up there and amy klobuchar she's also like let me also let me also come in with a take onto

why there's been this glacial pace in terms of us being able to regulate or have oversight over things like facebook we have done nothing when it comes to making the algorithms more transparent, allowing for the university research that you referred to. Why? Because Facebook and the other tech companies are throwing a bunch of money around this town and people are listening to them. We have done nothing significantly past, although we are on a bipartisan basis, working in the antitrust subcommittee to get something done on consolidation, which you understand allows the dominant platforms to control all this, like the bullies in the neighborhood, buy out the companies that maybe

could have competed with them and added the bells and whistles. So, yeah, it's there's so many elements to this. you got the lobbying parts of this where they're like they've bought people's votes so that's an element of it and we're trying to do something but i i don't know that this this i feel like at this point her words francis haugen's words are just so direct and just powerful like to these people that maybe this, this will inspire something different. There's also like these tech companies are getting so big. This is a story from 2018, but like Facebook and Amazon are building their own towns for their employees

to live in. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, yeah. So it's like, there is just this weird level of like,

yeah, we need to have some level of oversight on facebook instagram twitter all the hits friendster get the get the person who runs friendster in here and let's yell at him there are a lot of memes about like the other platforms they kind of be like well just fade into the back like i don't know like yeah facebook huh they get it together over there right because you know they're able to like get rid of things like like obscene, like child pornography.

They're very quickly able to like, you know, get things like that off of the Internet. And then I think that's why a lot of people are then like, but for whatever. But white supremacy is just too lucrative. So that's why you want to just turn the other way, because Haugen also said too

that prior to the election they like ramped up a lot of the controls to help curb a lot of misinformation and just any just chaos around the election because they didn't want a replay of 2016 or maybe they did but just to a lesser extent but they said once the election happened they fucking they took all those controls off which really helped all the big lie misinformation really get a ton of interaction on Facebook because Facebook was trying to recoup the money they lost from doing the slightly responsible thing before the election. like facebook profit are things called like it's engagement likes comments shares whatever so like if you get into a facebook argument with like somebody you went to high school with who like doesn't think that vaccines are real or whatever like that's like facebook wants that and like there's also things that they can do with the algorithm to steer you in that direction of like seeing things that they know that you'll disagree with and comment on.

So you'll start those Facebook arguments, which will increase the engagement on the piece or whatever. And like, it is just this power that these companies have over like, you know, like how we communicate as people. And yeah, it sure would be cool if somebody who didn't have profit in mind was like quit it

right yeah exactly and you'd hope that like they would have people like haugen help congress understand what they can do and what they could do rather than like richard blumenthal asking his like granddaughter right like yeah i mean what should happen that's why it's important that people like aoc and congress who are like in their 30s you know people who like have instagram accounts and understand what this stuff is you know yeah rather than someone who's like i don't know my staffer said i need one of these things i guess so i have that and I have a tick tock, but I don't know what it is. Yeah, I have them like they have an email that their staffers check for them, you know. Right. They. Yeah, that's a really good point about the like they put input these benevolent seeming values into the or not even benevolent, but just harmless seeming values like engagement into the

algorithm and then that ends up leading to these outcomes that they can claim are unintentional they're they're not putting like angry up the facebook community into the algorithm but it's just engagement but that the outcome of that, which may be unintended, but they're not doing anything to fix it, like is that they just can't be trusted to ever do anything to fix it on their own. Well, yeah, the only way it can be done is regulation. Right. And society is just all saying, like, well, make as much money as you can, however you can make people be damned. You can, however you can make people be damned. I got to say, one of my favorite Facebook interactions to watch was a guy I went to high school with. This was probably, I want to say, two years ago, challenged another guy to a fistfight over Facebook. And like they were on the Facebook wall post, which I forget what it was about.

It was probably just like the burners are bad or whatever you know jay buehner was a hack yeah yeah something like that but it was like watching them try to plan having a fist fight with each other on a facebook wall was delight because it was just like like what time do you get off work i gotta work at 6 p.m let's meet in this park no i actually i'm busy tonight let's do it y'all you're trying to duck this fight, bro. No, I told you. I have my daughters on Fridays and Saturdays. And I was watching two grown men in their 30s trying to plan a fist fight publicly over Facebook.

Ruled. How are Thursdays for you, bitch? Yeah, it was like a lot of that. It was like the minutia of like, I can't do it during my lunch break. I mean, sales, if I come back all scraped up, I might lose my job. I'm not going to risk that, you idiot. So actually, on second thought, now that I'm thinking about that, let's leave Facebook unregulated.

Yeah, one quick aside on the company towns thing, Joey, that you just mentioned. So last week we talked about Amazon doing these company towns for sort of the laborers that make their business model possible. But I think you were referring to these Facebook and Google company towns that are more for like the executive class that they're building that are going to be these you know elysium style like really beautiful you know the way the google campus was held up as like the best place to work because you had all these fucking chefs and amenity ball pits and slides like they are building these company towns that are like the next step in luxury and like you know communal living but really they're just going to be these hives of like groupthink where which is really dangerous because these companies are you know controlling

our country from the top down like in really profound ways and so like you know the more you just get the like-minded people at the top who have all the power just in their own, like, like literally literal bubble, I feel like the worst it's going to get. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about Starbucks cups. 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.

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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, 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 app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks.

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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?

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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. And we're back. And so BuzzFeed released a declassified scientific review of the attacks that have been described as Havana syndrome, that the attacks should be in quotes because they found what we had suspected, what a lot of people have talked about, that the noises that they were associating with the attacks that first happened in Havana were crickets. And it was a declassified state department study. So this isn't like an outside researcher. This is what they have learned themselves. Now, around this time, the Biden administration had started referring to Havana syndrome as unexplained health incidents, which kind of suggested they were backing issued a new report that seemed to back in like jump back into the this is an attack camp because the people who you know are suffering

the symptoms believe that they were attacked and that they're very sensitive understandably about because we're in their country attacking them right exactly so you very much would be on the fuck oh okay i'm just i'm just a nurse that's all i am not a cia op but yeah the this miami herald piece about like the new this new direction quotes a and the this is a trend senior administration official, but no name, we need to believe our personnel who are coming forward. People are facing real symptoms. We are very conscious that people are experiencing something very real and it's having a real negative effect on their health. And we're seeing better health outcomes the sooner we can respond

to that. So it's like they're trying to treat it as though it's a real thing because it is, as we've talked about functional disorders, like they're the real thing that these people are experiencing real symptoms. They're not just making them up, but that it is probably a neurological and, you know, a stress-based thing that, and that is the thing, that explanation is very offensive to anybody who is suffering from this and so there's this new article from jacobin that just kind of puts this

in the context of a bunch of different stories over the course of like the last 25 years that have been kind of adopted and just repeated by the mainstream media because they are, you know, they go in the direction of like helping America maintain an aggressive foreign policy. So they start with the Havana syndrome reporting and just like all the different headlines that flatly state that Cuba attacked U.S. diplomats, which, you know, are generally CIA agents. And, you know, pointing out that any time somebody is quoted, it's always they're always quoted on background or they're quoted as like a unidentified administration official. And they point out like this is this happened immediately after Trump indicated that they were going his administration was going to go like hard in the opposite direction of the Obama administration and start being like really hostile towards Cuba. And then this event happened and they seized on it and started ramping up their negative foreign policy. But they kind of put it in the context of,

you know, the New York Times, all these mainstream media outlets trusting military officials on things like Russiagate, which, in addition to being hostile towards Trump, was also allowed the military to make Russia seem more dangerous. And, you know, with a lot of the Iran reporting towards the end of the Trump administration, because they were trying to justify a case for war. When they're holding up shards of things, they're like, this says Iran on it. I don't know what you want to do with that. Maybe do a war.'t i don't know i can i can cook up some other evidence yeah there's no there's we don't have a pattern of doing that at all in this country yeah but it just reminds me of like the you know we talk about the news relying on police sources and especially like for the local

news and like you know the guys with guns are the sources that they need to satisfy like audience bloodlust and like their willingness to chase that bloodlust makes it so that we live in a world that we think is more dangerous and keeps people tuning in and it also just creates this sort of feedback loop where you know the version of like the world that exists in the minds of the military and the police gets like filtered back to us over and over again and it's just you know what why is that like after the most catastrophic like mistake in the you know recent history of america going to war in iraq was like turned out to be based on a complete lie you'd think that the mainstream media would have like altered their approach

a little bit and been a little bit more willing to pump the brakes on shit like this but it just seems like that is as currently constituted like unless something kind of dramatically changes the mainstream media will let the military feed them, you know, bullshit. Right. I think that the tolerance for bullshit stories from the Pentagon is higher because they're all they all have a relationship with each other. You know, it's like you have a homie who may bend the truth from time to time. You're like, OK, all right. That wasn't the best thing, but we're still good. We're not because I know you. And it's the you have a homie who may bend the truth from time to time. You're like, okay, all right. That wasn't the best thing,

but we're still good. We're stuck. Cause I know you. And it's the same thing. Like you'll get burned by just straight up misinformation from the Pentagon. And still it's like, nah,

it's all good. Like, don't worry about it. Like we got to keep this thing going, you know, general electric and the Pentagon do some good business together. And we're also NBC. So,

you know, we'll let's, let's, you know, we're not going to make it too hot for anybody. Yeah. Can I be honest about this before we move on? Just real quick. I think this Havana

syndrome is Jamaican me crazy. Are you got to go Havana tough time out? I'm having a tough time with this Havana syndrome. I swear to God. Oh, I'm being serious i know it's i know that's the problem that's the problem oh man yeah i mean so many reporters like get into the game because they would like want to be war

correspondents like they have that like kind of you know they grew up on the idea of like going to vietnam and being a reporter on that or you know and it just you know as blake i think you were suggesting is making them crazy it is and that's exactly not even suggesting just what i was pointedly saying i think there's no room for interpretation there yeah in college i had a i took a class called war reporting and my professor was a former like embedded journalist and he would never he would always just show us movies and we would never like it's like why like you have the most interesting story in the world why wouldn't you just teach us and then one day there was this girl in class like

who just maybe like laid in a little too hard being like all you do is show us movies like why don't you actually instruct us and tell us what it was like being there and he went a 45 minute story of one of the most emotionally traumatizing things i've ever heard in my entire life the one time he ever told a story about his time in war about how his guide was like murdered right in front of him and then the whole class was like completely silent and he goes yeah all right i think we're done for the day and then he and we're like never asked him to talk about it again we just watch movies for the rest of the semester because it was that it's like yeah that's why he doesn't talk about it you know what i mean

anyway just random side note but seriously that that made me sane the he doesn't talk about it. You know what I mean? Anyway, just a random side note. But seriously, that jamaed me sane. The joke doesn't work when you change it. That jamaed me sane. You can workshop that one. Yeah. We'll work on it and come back, report back to Zyka about what we came up with. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. No, that's fine. I think it'll stand. Just give it a few years. Yeah, yeah. We'll come back. Pitchfork will do a... They'll rescore that joke. They'll rescore that joke. Yeah. All, yeah. We'll just... We'll come back. Pitchfork will do a... They'll re-score that joke.

They'll re-score that joke. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about the war on Christmas. Finally. God. That was the war that he was embedded in, by the way. I forgot to tell you.

He was embedded in the war on Christmas. The war on Christmas. It's begun. And then Fauci said in an interview that it's just too soon to tell whether holiday gatherings will need to be restricted due to the pandemic for a second year in a row, which is a... There he goes. Sound the alarms because he said that. It doesn't really say anything. It's like a non-answer that doesn't really offer any specifics for what kind of restrictions they might put in place but right-wing media you know i i guess the fact that he was willing to answer

a question like enraged right-wing media the national review wrote an article calling him a grinch and you know the fox and friends labeled fauci a grinch because that was too good not to repurpose. It's fucking October. It's October. They're talking Grinch and claimed that he was about to cancel Christmas based on his statement

that it's too soon to tell. It seems fully fabricated. So there are actually this year like legitimate threats to the christmas traditions that they seem to hold so dear such as you know supply chain problems that are going to make it so that it's harder to order presents for people or due to climate change, there are fewer Christmas trees available. And there's a shortage of truck drivers because as their wages have declined over the years, there's just been a problem with finding enough people to do that job. As the New York Times pointed out, it takes a peculiar form of

logic to cut pay steadily and then be shocked that fewer people want to do the job. But that's what happened in the truck driving industry. And also because of slowdowns in manufacturing, there has been a slowdown in the production of fake Christmasmas trees so these are all things that rent shit the real spirit of christmas yeah and they don't they don't they're not interested in talking about that shit though i mean i i think for their sake like the fox news set you probably don't want to have all of your un like most of your unvaccinated base take airplanes to congregate because the you know they're already like getting freaked out by the demographics of how like the pandemic is affecting things so what there's gonna be like nah man get together folks don't worry about any kind of spiking cases just do your thing y'all

i it's i don't know this is just it's it's fun watching them get so outraged and i mean so were there things in place that like actually stopped people from congregating or was it just like advice last year. It's like guidance, right? Yeah, it's just guidance. Don't do that. I'm so confused. At the height of the pandemic, they just offered guidance. They're like, okay, big

brother, nice try, asshole. Oh, you said it's inadvisable to gather with elderly family when there aren't vaccines. OK. Yeah. OK. Yeah. I don't know. It's yeah. They were just merely guidelines. But I think most people, because they were able to look around in their communities or just the news and be like, OK, so this is real. And there's the potential for untold harm for people that I will I will heed these guidelines.

untold harm for people that i will i will heed these guidelines yeah i mean jm our writer uh jm mcnabb was pointing out that like this actually kind of obscures how you know focusing on the idea that he merely mentioned that he might at one point consider giving some travel advisories around christmas like so that caused him to backtrack and he was fauci was like no you misinterpreted me uh i'll be spending christmas with my family which is like fucking right again way too soon to tell whether that's a good idea or not the cdc uploaded their 2021 holiday guidance to their website, which was picked up by multiple news outlets. But then they deleted it because they had actually put up last year's holiday

guidance instead of this year's. And they haven't figured out what their guidance is going to be in 2021. It's just a position for them to be in where they're like, Oh fuck. Don't say it. Don't give them real advice or else they're gonna accuse us of stuff so let's water it the fuck down yeah because the situation is just so genuine my uncle's a big fox news person and uh i gave him i put like he's a bad guy so i put

coal in his stocking and then he pulled it out and he's like this is such a great gift this is my favorite uh fuel source so don't give fox News people coal in their stockings because they'll they'll completely misinterpret it as a gift. Did he take a bite out of it, too? He's like, oh, you don't think I will? You don't think I will? Watch this, Blake. He ate it like a jawbreaker. Yeah.

Over the course of the next three days. Joke on you, asshole. Yeah. Oh, my ulcer. Oh oh god yeah yeah they have cold folks but i mean the big news story of the day is really uh of yesterday i guess that that the zodiac killer has finally been identified according to tmz and you know all the other main news sources Fox News so a group of researchers ID'd

someone named Gary Francis Post who died in 2018 as the Zodiac Killer the degree to which this got picked up would have suggested it was like a law enforcement agency that had like done some sort of DNA linkage but they so they're made this group

is made up of former investigators and journalists so essentially volunteers acting in no official capacity they called the case breakers right they're called the case breakers and they what one of their like key theories is that post also killed Sherry Jo Bates in 1966, whose death was followed by a Zodiac-like letter. And this is strange because the police were sent a Zodiac-like letter. So it's not like nobody entertained this idea that that was from the the zodiac killer and her murder was part of the zodiac killings but they looked into it and the letter was revealed to be a hoax and an actual cold case units have already like investigated that that case and concluded that the murder is not connected to the zodiac case so they're just like putting out a theory that most people believe to have been widely disproven

and saying, well, here's your evidence. And then there's also like the evidence that they're pointing to are photos from Post's dark room actually match scars on the police sketch of the Zodiac killer, which it's just creases. It's just lines on the forehead. Yeah, it's just creases in a forehead. Oh, no.

Oh, no. Come on, case breakers. Yeah. Come with some. Come on. Come with some heavier than this. They also claim that they deciphered new code in the Zodiac letters that could only be cracked if you knew if you know Gary's full name. But they're they're not revealing

that just yet. They want to they're being proprietary about their solution what are they the fucking cyber ninjas my pillow voting audit like what the fuck is it oh we go we got it can't show you we just can't show nobody right now it's too explosive tom colbert who is one of the main case breakers his former job was working for a hard copy so i mean he knows how to do a good tease hell yeah people you know but uh he was also a story broker which is somebody who like buys up compelling stories and like sells them to people to make movies he sold the story rights for Fly Away Home and The Vow. So, you know, like real hardcore grizzled crime-solving shit.

Yeah. Gumshoe shit. Yeah. And, yeah, it just feels weird that this is one that any news outlet, even if it's just TDZ, has seized on and been solved. The reason I just started wheezing and laughing is I'm following along in your document that you guys use. Oh, sorry to show a behind-the-scenes look at the show. This is all coming from the top of my head, Blake.

You're right. It's all loose scraps I keep by my desk. Then this is the document that I, the 126-page document that I made for the show. And the casebreaker team had, which I can't believe I just said without laughing my way through it. But at casebreaker team, I'm like, oh, it says eight following two followers on Twitter. You have a screen grab of it. Like, oh, this is probably taken from a few weeks. And now they have 14 followers.

So, yeah, we're in we're in the same place. Yeah, it's trending same place yeah it's trending it's right yeah it's trending so so basically they're saying that the the case breakers the the evidence that they're working with has been debunked so they're like this is already built on like a false premise because you're already using debunked like you're trying to connect dots that really aren't there yeah i mean unless you like look at look at the those forehead wrinkles man i'm just saying like those are pretty well they better come with that info that they say they they're ready to decipher all the letters because we have to

know his full name and only we do i mean okay i How many people did the Zodiac Killer kill, exactly? That's information that they have, too. Proprietary as well. So you'd have to ask them. Yeah, they're holding back on... They say, you'll never believe what we found out about how many people the Zodiac Killer killed. Five. Wait, claimed to have killed 37. confirmed dead but possibly 20 to 28 okay

interesting just another example of their work on a famous story where people are you know very horny to identify a historical figure is colbert got interested in the db cooper case and that's the bank robber right yeah so the db cooper was a bank robber who hijacked a plane and then jumped out of said plane after like you know making everybody turn around i guess uh or go go into the cockpit anyways it's it's a people think that he probably didn't survive jumping out of the plane but you know it's very mysterious they never found the body and he thought he had figured out that it was this guy robert rackstraw and so colbert or colbert approached rackstraw offered him twenty thousand dollars to participate and when he refused colbert threatened to have him hounded forever and then

he started catfishing rack straw who then in turn reverse catfished colbert and yeah it just seems like real real top level you know mature mature and you know top level investigative shit going on right someone who's clearly not just trying to get the thing over the line by any means necessary Mature and, you know, top level investigative shit going on. Right. Someone who's clearly not just trying to get the thing over the line by any means necessary. True dedication to the truth. Unflinching, you know, rather than like, oh, fuck your life up if you don't admit you're D.B. Cooper so I can sell the rights to this. Yeah. So that's that's the story of how the Zodiac Killer was identified.

Well, I'm glad to know that all the people who are talking about it, now I can finally, actually, every fucking tweet I see now. Yeah. And, you know, JM, who is clearly into the story of the Zodiac Killer, is saying they could be right about who it is, but publishing articles definitively claiming the Zodiac case has come to an end based on these people's work it seems a little premature like i've read the story the headlines then like i i've looked at the article and they were talking about these case breakers like they were a known quantity that like i should be familiar with and the fact that they have 14 followers 15

now that I'm following them is wild they do have their own logo which is not nothing right yeah you know kind of huge yeah it looks like Charles Barkley's like signature shoe logo right all right that's gonna do it for this week's weekly zeitgeist please signature shoe logo. Right. All right.

That's going to do it for this week's weekly zeitgeist. Please like, and review the show. If you like the show, uh, means the world to miles. He, he needs your validation folks.

Uh, I hope you're having a great weekend and I will talk to you Monday. Bye. Thank you. 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.

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