The Daily Zeitgeist - Weekly Zeitgeist 224 (Best of 5/2/22-5/6/22)

Episode Date: May 8, 2022

The weekly round-up of the best moments from DZ's season 235 (5/2/22-5/6/22)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties

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I'm Jess Costavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game.

Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese.

People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball. And on this new season, we'll cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio apps, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke. 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 laughstravaganza.

Yeah. So without further ado, here is the weekly zeitgeist. Well, Miles, we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by a writer, director, comedian, podcaster, father, who's written comedy, horror, comics, and parenting books, and who hosts the podcast, What Are You Watching? with Chris Mancini, which is an appropriate title because he is Chris Mancini! Chris! Hey, great to be here guys thanks for having me thanks i was thinking of that song in a gata devita it was like the first one that everyone got the name wrong right right yeah like i then realized well it doesn't matter nobody cares enough to correct it so that's just what we're gonna call it from now on oh is it because it's in the Garden of Eden? Yes.

Eden, but he was so drunk that it just came out in Enneagada Davida. Yeah. Enneagada Davida. Yeah. That also was another one I also thought was Enneagada Davida for a long time. Yeah. Well, I think if you look at the lyrics, that's how they have it listed. I might be wrong. The one, like, in other news of looking up the lyrics to be like, this must mean something.

And I just had it wrong or, like, jumbled it into something. That part where he's like, saying love, but you won't. It's saying you love, but you don't. You give your love, but you won't. That saying you love but you don't you give your love but you won't that doesn't really make sense either man like if you're gonna put something that's like mumbled over it should have it should repay people when they go try and figure out what the fuck you were saying right sometimes people just go for the rhyme yeah Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And won't and don't. I mean, that's rhyme smithing. Yeah.

Chris, what's good? Where are you coming to us from? I'm coming from Los Angeles. Okay. And I don't know if for some reason I live in a neighborhood that there's always a tree being cut down. So you might hear a little bit of buzz sawing periodically. Yeah. Shout out the arborists.

Yeah. Getting those checks. Can't get mad. And shout out nurses. I do. I feel like I push past nurses a little bit, but nurses are truly the best and do some of the most thankless, difficult work in the American workforce. Come on. The pandemic's over. They're not heroes.

My bad. My bad. Let's not. Let's not. I'm sure for National Nurses Day, they just want the day off. Right. Yeah. How about you just listen when we were begging people to stay safe in the pandemic so we didn't have to see untold horror in the ERs for months on end.

But yeah, shout out all the nurses. Shout out all the nurses in my life. You know who you are. And arborists who are the nurses of trees, I guess, in many ways. I didn't realize how important tree maintenance was until I moved somewhere windy. And like a dude was like, hey, man, you should really trim your tree. Like the wind is it's going to be like he's going to just fuck your shit up. Yeah.

The city came by, said it was a year and a half waiting list to get a tree trimmed. And so I'm like, right. I think we're going to need to hire a private contractor to do it. Yeah. I don't know if I can wait that long. Yeah. LA has like super tall palm trees that like almost seem like, I don't know.

It's weird how tall some of the palm trees are, but then like a, a chunk of them will just fall off in the wind. We have tall trees and high winds. It's great. Yeah. Right. Well, it's cause we have like, there's a, you a you know all of our palm trees a lot of them are dying because of uh like

a fungus oh yeah yeah yeah that's why like you see a lot that are just lopped off like lopped off at the top and stuff like these like sick dying palm trees damn man yeah it's the whole thing shout out to arborist zeitgang this is this is your palm tree palm tree fungus is a hoax so yeah that's what i did hear that's a hoax okay we've got a palm tree all you have to do is drink your own uh palm tree oil palm oil what is something from your search histories so one thing from my search history recently was are there any female greek rappers okay the answer was there's exactly one i couldn't find any of her music just her name because i i really like greek rap but it's like

heavy misogynistic. And I was like, come on, there's got to be like a badass Greek lady out there that raps. Just one. Can't find her music. So that's where we're at. What's her MC name? I think it's Sandezania or something like that. Okay.

I didn't even get her name down correctly. That's how disappointing it was. MC Barba Lucas? Yeah, right? Yeah. Coming through? In another lifetime. Yeah, maybe. yeah right yeah coming through in another lifetime yeah maybe is that are you are you like do you like did you listen to a lot of hip-hop in general and then like when you're like living in greece

you're like let me check on greek hip-hop or did you suddenly be like i'm suddenly into greek hip-hop and now you're looking for the the female emcees what's what's your relationship to you know what if my friends would hear that question they would laugh really really hard i love what our friends are into hip-hop and rap in new york and i was living in new york for 10 years and i was always the one that's like not up on the culture like at all at all but for some reason when i moved here when you go to the clubs or bars here they just they just play greek music like they don't play american music at all so i had to get into the greek thing and i was learning greek and i don't know, I just started to vibe with Greek rap for some odd reason.

Maybe partly because they tend to be from the United States. They tend to be Greek Americans who rap here. Oh, really? Yeah. Which really answers a lot of unasked questions.

How rap came to Greece in the first place. Right, right. Yeah. What about you, Zachary? What's something from your search history? Well, I did a piece last week for Time on billionaires owning media properties for the past hundred years

in light of everybody's favorite billionaire maybe buying Twitter. I'm not going to mention the name just because I feel like, you know, if you don't know it, then... So there's a lot in my search history about billionaires and media ownership for the past 120 years of American media. And what are your feelings about that trend and the continuance? You know, I knew that

lots of billionaires have bought contemporary media properties like Mark Benioff and Time, like Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post, like Lorraine Powell Jobs and The Atlantic. for most of American history, well, most of American history from the late 19th century through the present, has been owned by wealthy individuals and usually wealthy men. It's pretty hard to find any media, newspaper, TV station, magazine

that has not been owned by wealthy private individuals, which makes Musk's bid for Twitter seem much less of a new thing, even if it's a big deal. That, yeah, that it's like our media has been under billionaire control for quite some

time. And we're, we're, we're at where we're at now. Including I heart. Just saying. No, 100%.

I mean, no, I heard it. The people I heard his own people iHeart is the people. iHeart is on people. We're never going to get invited by a packer. We're like the Green Bay Packers of media outlets. No, it's definitely true.

I mean, everything is... Yeah, I mean, it was Clear Channel before, and they're like, ah, rebrand, rebrand, rebrand, rebrand. That's true of everything in American culture, maybe with the exception of the Green Bay Packers, right? There's not much that is not owned by extremely wealthy people. I mean, there is independent media, but not to the levels of what we're talking about alt-media like The Nation and Harper's, you know, also owned by very wealthy individuals whose politics simply skew left. and like where we had like weeklies and things that were at some point felt like they embodied something of like oh no this this is this is ran by like human beings that you can identify rather

than where's the c-suite that makes all the decisions for this entity kind of thing what uh what's something you guys think is overrated oh other than the green bay packers. Well, I mean, on that light, I'm sort of repeating myself. I think the concern that wealthy individuals owning media platforms is a threat to free speech. It's either we've never had it or we've always had it.

And it has been neither here nor there to the ownership structure of these organizations. So are you less concerned about Elon Musk doing it? Because I think I'm assuming like part of the concern that a lot of people, including myself, are feeling is like how brazen and also like popular he seems to be. Like it's the first time I could see like a billionaire coming through and being like, no, you can't write that about me. And a bunch of people being like, yeah, you can't write that

about Elon Musk. Whereas if Bezos tried to kill a story about Amazon publicly in the Washington Post, that would probably be very unpopular. That said, I just feel like those stories never get to the front page of the Washington Post, right? And you'd certainly have to wonder if there were multiple ongoing instances of criticism of Musk himself or anything that Tesla did or anything that Twitter did being routinely shut down and then that having other reverberations. you know, one can set up a new social media platform of information. Yeah, that doesn't have the network effect, but Trump was able to set up Truth Social. Now, the fact that he's running it really badly is neither here nor there in terms of the ease of actually creating one. So even there, it's not as if Twitter is the sole and only public sphere of very sharp and often pungent commentary.

Yeah. I mean, you guys' general thesis on the podcast and on, like, it seems to be that, like, not enough. And I agree with this in a lot of ways, that, like like a lot of the good news doesn't get reported. And so it like kind of goes into this, like we just hear the problems in the media. But then like this feels like one of the problems overall, like overarching that like we don't hear about, which is that things are generally being vetted by a billionaire class that owns all these things that are supposed to be talking to us. Would you agree with that? Or you think that this is just a kind of a misreading of the current? I think, and Emma has a kind of aversion to the idea of good news as opposed to news that points in a more constructive direction. But for-profit news demands attention that can be measured in real time compared to other people getting the same eyeballs. And that's the same incentives for Netflix as it is for a newspaper. So the issue, I think, is less who owns than the structure of these things have to generate a profit. And what generates a profit is what is most immediately emotional and intense

and outrageous and fearful and hot emotions rather than cool emotions. And that is as much the issue, irrespective of the ownership structure. Yeah yeah do you feel like something's changed with social media and like as compared to you know some of these legacy medias that like the new york times was not running the sorts of headlines that now make a tweet go viral right like they viral, right? Like they, there, there was some sort of difference or diminished heat, like for through the editorial process, right? I mean, Emma does a lot more of our, you know, a lot of the progress social media she kind of manages. And so the flip side of that is, it's also been an amazing tool to have people find information and perspectives, right, Emma, that are, that they would, they have a hard time finding otherwise,

you know, the connective tissue that these platforms still provide. I think that the difference between social media and legacy media is just that the rules haven't been figured out yet. Like the rules of journalism have been around with legacy media for a really long time. So what's considered, you's considered good editorial practice and bad editorial practice, what the rules are in relationship to ownership, for instance, those are pretty set. And if the American public doesn't know what they are, they should know what they are. Social media is still quite new. We're still figuring out the rules. We're trying to figure out what does the space look like where it's kind of a public square. So issues of free speech are

there, but it is also a privately owned company. So what does that mean? Who's responsible legally for the stuff that's published on the platform? It's just, I think we're going to work ourselves into a better place with that. It's just that we're in the messy middle at the moment. Yeah. What is something you think is overrated? I was going to say the five-day work week. Overrated. Overrated in the sense that we're all doing it. Right.

What's ideal, you think? What's the balance here? I would love to see us move towards four. I think that would be better. I mean, there are a few countries that are piloting that, right? And it seems like so far it doesn't seem to be throwing economies into like a downward spiral yeah i mean i guess i would say the only thing i would say to that is like it's a really small amount it's like of course right i can't remember which countries now exactly but it's like the government of iceland i don't know or like this

one company here or there but but that's not to damper the enthusiasm about the pilot projects. Super into it. I hope it goes well. I hope there's absolutely no economic downturn and that productivity stays high so that it'll just continue. The four-day workweek creep will continue to creep. I thought the rub on Mediterranean countries was that they had essentially been piloting the four-day workweek for generations between May and September, even if nominally it was a five-day workweek. Okay, this is the sad thing about

Mediterranean cultures, or at least about Greece in particular. When I was younger, my grandparents would always have a siesta, you know, after lunch. That has disappeared. So the Mediterranean culture is getting infected by the five-day workweek hustle cultural situation, in my view. So we got to get that back on track yeah i love that i'll bring nap culture back into it what is something that you think is overrated as a person who really like loves fashion i love reading a vogue magazine a harper's bazaar if you will love the fashion world and their goofiness and their eccentricness the met gala is really overrated to me and here's why no one

follows theme okay i know we say it every year the met gala fans go on to the twitters and we're like what they went through the whole effort of making a theme they brought in specific art pieces a lot of times the meal goes along with the theme why would you come dressed not as the theme what is the point and this year they did the gilded age one of the fanciest most like extreme time you could have done giant parasols huge hats i mean hoop skirts for days it's literally the era of corsets and everyone was like i'm going in black which first of all it's the gilded age is all about color too much black lots of like lace underwear things some people got it some people were about it gg hadid you know at first i was like i don't understand the entire like latex red leather

corset pant thing but then with the coat she was like oh no i'm gonna really i'm gonna f with this silhouette and give you you know give you perfect time period which works uh sarah jessica parker was working out of three separate centuries but it came together it was mostly in line with theme and then who's the the director of something like 40 year it's a netflix show hold on i'm gonna find her because she knocked it out of the park doing this sort of like ode to black women of the era highlighting the seamstresses who were behind a lot of the classic designs

Rhonda Blank Rhonda Blank is an incredible director she directed this movie called the 40 year old version about a woman who's interested in getting into like hip hop and reconnecting with her writing roots it is a stunning performance but her outfit for the gala was like giant white head wrap like knife um billowing skirt it was incredible and i really

appreciated what she brought to the theme i think my favorite outfit was pete davison with his uh his tanner his self-tanning spray oh god his new tattoos did he not look did he not look a little tan to you or yeah i mean listen that's what happens when you get with a kardashian okay your your beauty glow-up routine begins immediately because you're going to be on more cameras than you ever thought existed in your whole life so i get it he's got it's literally keeping up with the kardashians he's got to put in work also i love how on point like just how odd the theme of the gilded age you know it's just it's so on the nose it's frightening you know what i mean yeah massive inequality in child labor but hey you know you know, it's blip ball out.

But Hillary's dress was dedicated to Harriet Tubman. So, you know, problems resolved. Boom. See? It giveth and it taketh. True. I also think the Met gal is overrated because I don't know who any of these designers are for the most part. People are like, oh, and they're wearing Louis.

I mean, I know Louis. Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Yeah. Okay. Carolina Herrera. I know that one. But, like, there were some. I don't know.

Jean-Louis. you're like where my favorite designers Gildan Haynes what is something you think is underrated yeah this one is just cool Willie Nelson is doing great yeah he turned 89

last week and he put out a new album on his birthday and it's great it's called a beautiful life it's very good and he's just generally always been on the right side of most things as far as i know he's great yeah really into it he is one of the like musicians that my parents listen to all the time that still holds up for me and there you know there's a lot that probably the fact that my parents listen to them all the time make me associate with like being nerds like billy joel maybe that's not fair and you know anita baker at the time i was did not give a fair shake because i was just like come on this is so slow put on axel rose he will be cool forever and that wasn't the case but willie nelson i always liked his voice

even back then and he stays stays cool what a what a voice guy stays cool huh yeah and he's like a joint in the white house he did yeah with jim With Jimmy Carter's son. It's great. So that's fun. I and I miss country music completely when I was a kid. Like I've only started getting into it in the last couple of years. So I have no associations with it, really. I'm just like fresh and it feels great. He's very cool. He has like the way he sings. He'll do interesting phrasing kind of like Sinatra. If that helps people on board. I don't know. He's great. Yeah, yeah. Really good. I used to, as a kid, I used to think him and George Carlin were the same person. Oh, that's pretty good. Like when I was really young. George Carlin? Yeah, because I was like, these are white guys with long hair.

Yeah. And like white hair. And like, yeah. And I was just, again, this was me not even hearing a single, like my visual thing was like, oh, he's wearing a headband today. Oh, he's not. Right. And then I'm like, as I got older, I'm like, they are not the same person.

I fucking hope. But I remember that very early on, I was confused when I saw the two of them. Yeah, they have kind of the same head shape, like kind of a square head to me. Yeah. Kind of the same facial hair. And I think it's just a little bit of gleaming long hair in the back. That was enough to say as a four year old, be like, and that is the same person and i know everything about popular culture yeah i mean willie nelson's hair i always associate with like being in the uh pigtail braids yeah yeah the fact that he was

able to pull that off and still just be a complete icon is is pretty cool 89 though, though. He got Texas on board with that. The state of Texas. Think about it. They don't change fast, but they did for him. Yeah. They're like, I guess we're doing this now. It reminds me of, this is a very specific reference, but Jock Peterson on the Braves

was wearing pearls when he plays baseball and i was like look at all these braves fans i'm men coming out with their pearls on i'm like okay the power of sports there you go it's okay because he does it yeah him straight him hit home run i'm now where pearl also man he should he should push it like this year when he's in the postseason he should just like have more accessories just keep accessorizing until the breaking point right so like every man in georgia is weighed down by an insurmountable amount of jewelry i've been thinking a lot about the carter white house i think we talked about it a little bit on

yesterday's episode which i have mostly blacked out but the um we can't go back we can't go back the like the fact that the new york times is addressing you know centrist democrat in power as being like wow there's just a mood issue that nobody can quite pinpoint and the fact that that was followed by like just 12 years of like hardcore republicanism in the mainstream worries me a little bit that we're like back back at that point where they're like i don't know we're we're out of answers here folks i guess we turn it over to them hot potato there you go fuck that up here take it and and i feel like that whole thing is sort of like the the response to inflation going up or something else like people are like oh i guess this is just how people feel

and i don't know look at the context man like right he's exclusively been president during a global pandemic. Like, that'll impact people's mood a little. That's not his fault, necessarily. Yeah. And I think the other part is just sort of like, what could it be? Do we point at the little breadcrumbs that fell out of his jacket pocket that were legislative wins and hope that's enough? Or do we dangle a bunch of existential threats in front of them to get them to fucking vote and it looks like the latter right now yeah so well i guess we'll be

talking about that in a moment yeah so let's take a break gird yourself and we'll be right back i'm jess casaveto executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high control groups and interview dancers, church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine. Through powerful, in-depth interviews

with former members and new, chilling, first-hand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives. Forgive Me For I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these types of abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do,

like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it? Like you miss 100% of the shots you never take. Yeah. Rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Every great player needs a foil. I ain't really near them boys. I just come here to play basketball every single day and that's what I focus on. From college to the pros, Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Angel Reese is a joy to watch. She is unapologetically black. I love her. What exactly ignited this fire? Why has it been so good for the game? And can the fanfare surrounding these two supernovas be sustained? This game is only going to get better because the talent is getting better.

This new season will cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet diet coke i've been thinking about you i want you back in my life it's too late for that i have a proposal for you come up here and document my project all you need to do is record everything like you always do one session 24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not.

What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing.

They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And so Democrats find themselves in the, like the New York Times called it Democrats mystery. How to brighten a presidency and a national mood. It basically seems like, you know, just the mood's basically seems like you know just the mood's down folks yeah the mood's down and the article also seems to you know take them at sort of

face value when it comes to like what the mystery is here like they're like i don't know, like, should we emphasize the small gains we've made or try to make larger gains? And it just feels, I don't know, it feels weird and disingenuous to treat people's feelings about this administration like it is a mystery illness that, like, they don't know the cause of and they're just trying to figure out, you know, they're floating some weather balloons up to see how this works and how that works. But I don't know, we talk a lot about like sort of a disconnect between the reality as people live it and experience it, including on like social media versus the reality that i feel like the mainstream media and the mainstream democratic party seem to exist inside of or at least like sort of message from the planet of but i don't know i i think it like comes back to sort of an unacknowledged like i think 2008, like probably in the financial collapse,

like kind of ties a lot into this and just the fact that there hasn't been like sort of a reckoning in the mainstream media or with the Democratic Party with what happened there. And, you know, you had like Bernie Sanders as an insurgent candidate who wanted to address that and Trump addressed it in his way. And the Democratic Party was kind of still in the middle. And I don't know, it just feels feels very much like, well, there there are concrete things people are asking for. You kind of said you were going to do something with that or around that and have not done those things. But like, so why is it being treated as like, are they depressed? Like, what's right? What are they so upset about?

Why is everyone sad? How do we make them happy? I was just curious. So what would be the, you know, top three list of things that they said that they were going to do that they haven't done? I think voting rights is a huge one. Yeah. I think, honestly, looking at things like the unemployment insurance, the weird math that happened around things being like $2,000. I'm like, well, if you add this from over here and you carry the two, that adds to 2,000. The child tax credit lapsing, student debt, like, you know, student loan debt.

There's a, I mean, there's a lot. Talking about like law enforcement reform, not necessarily about defunding the police, but looking at that with a real clear eye and thinking things, looking at things like qualified immunity. These are things that were talked about. I never in a million years would think Joe Biden would ever touch anything with qualified

immunity. But a lot of gestures were made in that direction. And I think, especially for Black people, we look at something like voting rights as being completely threatened. And we see countless laws, like in places like Georgia, Florida, Texas, where it's becoming increasingly difficult to vote, even for fucking, you know, the people that they want to vote for. So I think those are like big things that feel very existential for people. I think like, one, if we're if we're meant to believe that

if this the sort of equation here is to vote the representatives into congress that represent you know the values that we have that if we can't even do that what what is the point here like we're not even looking at like that should even i'm surprised that wasn't the big one of the biggest things democrats even saw just like in the cynical game of staying in power which is like hey they're trying to take away the their ability to for us. But that's been, you know, we've seemed to let the obstruction happen, like within the party and just kind of keep it moving. I mean, look, part of it is that Biden was unpopular by the fall of last year, within six months of being in office when it wasn't even clear that those things weren't going

to be passed. And there was some effort. There was a, you know, a voting rights bill that the House had passed that was at the Senate. And there was also the Build Back Better omnibus was going to retain the child tax credit, was going to provide universal pre-K and more time off for working women. But he was unpopular even before those things didn't pass amongst a wider swath of the public than one would have thought. And what's odd is the lesson that government, including Republicans, learned from 2008-2009 was that if you don't bail out people who are actually working and you just bail out institutions, you're going to create a lot of ill will. So there was, you know, $4 trillion of money during COVID, both in 2020 and then in February 2021, a lot of which did go toward, it was the first time in 40 years that lower quintile people

saw some income growth largely because of transfer payments from government. And, you know, that did not engender like, oh, we're doing well. You know, I mean, there is a degree of, you mentioned malaise at the beginning, Jack, that there is that aspect of what's going on that isn't purely about, I think, something one can point to specifically. That doesn't make it an undiagnosed illness. It just means, first of all, it's almost impossible to do anything right now other than those two stimulus bills during COVID that has anything resembling bipartisan support. I mean, there are actually things that have bipartisan support. Like, weirdly enough, criminal justice reform was the one bill passed that had genuine bipartisan support during the Trump years in December of 2018,

that actually for the first time moved away from like a lot of the draconian sentencing that have become commonplace in federal courts right doesn't do anything for state systems which are which are different but it it you know it does speak to and part of why em and i are trying to do this our own our own show of getting people to look at what what people are trying to do to solve things is, you know, the United States definitely is in a culturally massive question mark verging on kind of despair and cynicism in a way that would have been really familiar in the mid-70s. Right. You know, it's not like we haven't been here before and would have been really familiar in the mid-1930s, you know, would have been really familiar in the mid-1870s. and would have been really familiar in the mid-1930s, you know, would have been really familiar in the mid-1870s.

At best, these are like cyclical things where we snap out of our somewhat illusionary view of us of being the greatest of all nations that has solved everything, right? As a comforting narrative that's never been true, but which we buy into really easily for long periods of time. And then it's like something happens and we wake up and we're like, wait a minute, right?

No, we're not all those wonderful hyperbolic Hosanna things that we said that we were. We've got real problems and we've got real issues. And the challenge, of course, is to have that clear, gimlet-eyed awareness of what's going on without sinking into despair and cynicism, you know, without that then trending into the other direction. And we're clearly, whether you're on the left or the right, easily heading in those directions. And I think that's partly reflective of the fact that, you know, no political leader has anything resembling a majority approval, let alone much of a plurality. I would just add really quickly, Miles, I agree with you 100% about the child tax credit.

I think that was a really, you know, that was terrible that that lapsed. One interesting thing about voting rights is that it is a very serious issue. There are several states where they're rolling back, you know, they're making it harder to vote. But what's interesting is that the Brennan Center also put out a report about all of the new pathways of voting that were open during the pandemic with mail-in voting. And what was all the hubbub about mail-in voting during the last election?

There's actually like 26 states that made it easier to vote. They took the new pandemic pathways that had put into place about voting, particularly around mail-in voting, and they kept them. So this is just a side to it that is not often discussed. And, you know, it's the same thing with what Zachary's saying. We're not trying to paint, like, you know, let's look at everything through rose-colored glasses. It's just a balance question. Right. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I do think, too, that, you know, there are some things that Biden is at fault for,

like the massive cash transfers that went into place during the pandemic, like Zachary mentioned, were massively beneficial for people. It also seemed to have kicked up inflation. I'm not sure how much we can blame Biden for, you know, gas and gas prices going up and up and up with the war right now. So I think some of the malaise does have to do with like the Democrats are not delivering. And I think they're particularly not paying attention to voters concerns about working and wages and worker power compared to corporate power. But some of it, too, I do think it is kind of like there's a bad vibe right now. And I'm not sure that the Democrats are all to blame for that. I don't think that they are all to blame because this is this is centuries built up. We're now

like the lived experience of an American person as such, where the American dream is, you know, not very accessible to most people anymore and that the feeling that people have is like oh my god all that like post-world war ii uh glow is completely faded away and we're looking at like crumbling infrastructure stagnant wages and like really massive societal issues where it looks like the leadership in the country can't really like really address the elephant in the room which i think for voting people is inequality and like broadly tackling that issue to say we absolutely hear you that being able to live in a city has become it's prohibitively expensive even if you're just trying to if you're a a single parent, like good luck, like trying to do that. We hear you. We understand that that is something that societally feels like we need a realignment

to say, what is the minimum that an American deserves? You know, like many other countries have that defined where it's like, you will not go broke because you've, you know, because you've gotten to medical debt or things like that. If you want an education, go at it. Here you go. you got into medical debt or things like that. If you want an education, go at it. Here you go. There's a place for you to attain that. And I think by not really getting into that part, I think it's probably messy for both parties because at some point they have to acknowledge their connection to it. And I think that's what makes it a little bit difficult is that both parties in this country have been so entangled in that inequality that it's like they're finding it very difficult to a acknowledge that they're the policies that they were supporting and with the hopes of thinking like yeah this is this is the way to like have

all of the abundance flow to many people isn't working and to really acknowledge that to really say that that is completely failed and we actually need to think about i think that's what some people are waiting for is like can we just acknowledge that this has failed because it's failed so many people at this point it's hard to say that this is us moving in a beneficial direction yes i mean i have two pushbacks on that one is i think it's not about inequality as much as it's about what you just talked about. I mean, you could reduce inequality, the amount of inequality, and still have people not be able to afford living in cities and going bankrupt for medical debt. It's the abundance part. It's the non-proliferation of sufficient abundance to enough people in an otherwise highly affluent society. in an otherwise highly affluent society. And inequality per se is not,

reducing inequality doesn't solve those issues. Just like, you know, as we see with inflation, right? Expanding incomes doesn't do you much good if the cost of things is rising more quickly than your incomes are expanding. If costs went down, which was somewhat happening with the deflationary effects of technology, then you wouldn't necessarily need more income, right? Because net-net, it would be the same thing. Your dollar would be buying more

if the costs were going down. If costs are going up, your dollar is buying less. So I think it's more about the non-sharing of that abundance. And one of the real obstacles for the United States is the set point of the mid-20th century, which we look at as some normative moment where everything worked, but so many stars aligned in that moment that were both of our own doing and also global. World War II ends, the United States is 50% more than that, actually, of all global industrial capacity, the entire world. We were this engine because we hadn't been bombed. We were the one bombing. We weren't the ones getting bombed. We had emerged victorious. There was some degree of collective unity that had to do with white America, right? And the GI Bill was great, but it didn't extend to African Americans. It certainly didn't extend to women. as the validation of a system that worked.

And I'm really of the mind that we hamper ourselves more by thinking that we had a formula that worked, that we are now failing, rather than recognizing that we never really had the formula we think we had, and it never worked the way we idealize it having worked. You know, that we were always much more flawed than we like to tell ourselves. We're always more just like a group of humans

who had an interesting formula for social organization that did allow for things a lot of other societies didn't and still don't. But I think the fact that we look to that moment in the 1940s and 50s and 60s as this is when it worked and now we failed, I think that's a false story of who we were. I mean, who looks to that, though? Who are you talking about when we talk about looking to the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s? I don't think that's who we're talking about. Well, when I even say that post-war glow, I think that's that. That's not to say that's I don't I don't idealize any moment in American history. No, I'm not. I look at you guys are. But I think a lot of our public debate speaks of a kind of something worked and then we got off track.

Yeah, the Republican Party and Fox News certainly do, right? Yeah, but the Democrats do as well. This is a time when there was more democracy or more egalitarianness or more rights that are being, you know, I don't think it's just one side here. Sure. What I see is that the media, like when I say this post-war glow, is that that is, like you're saying, that is looked at as like something, you know, like we were doing okay or whatever. But again, you look at even as you lay out, there really hasn't been a great time for those people in this country. And to say that, like, whether it's thinking that something worked and then failed or just saying that, like, nothing is going right. I think what we're saying is like the same thing is that we're not we're not we're not actually arriving at a moment where we're trying to actually reckon with what's going on. we're trying to actually reckon with what's going on. We have ways to kind of shroud the discussion in something else than just silo it off into like a separate thing and just make it about, okay, well, let's look at how we can help out student loan, like people with student loan debt,

or maybe we can look at how Pell Grants are distributed and how that's working. But again, all of these issues are sort of part of this larger problem that we have is that most American people on some level have these like feelings of like, I don't know if I'm going to have enough to make it or to be have a level of financial stability. I look at that with my friends who are in their mid thirties who work at grocery stores still and talk about the stress they have from doing like smaller jobs because it was harder for them to go to college. They didn't, they weren't taking out student loans and things like that. And there's, I see firsthand a lot about how ground down people get. And that's

my concern is that I think, you know, even in a past episode, you talk about this idea of nostalgia that we have this idea of the return of the king, and someone will come to right all the wrongs. And it's really not that simple. And I know people still think that's like possible, but we have to sort of on a put all of that shit out of our mind and say that there has to be this basic reshifting or really looking at the things that we're saying, what is the minimum? And I think that's, I think that's an easier place for a conversation to start for in general to talk about this is what's the minimum an American deserves by being a citizen? What is that? What is that? What, how does that enable you to live a prosperous life? Yeah, that I totally agree with, you know, that there should be some baseline understanding of what does an affluent society provide

as its contract to itself as to the basics of healthcare, education, shelter, food. Not a particularly high bar or shouldn't be a particularly high bar of security that once we've established that, then everybody's lives can go

in all the different directions that everybody's lives go. And one concern I have with the malaise, like, storyline is, you know, the last time the Democrats got, like, blamed for a nation with malaise, like, you know that that ended with or that led to eight years of reaganism and republicans like just sort of staying hyper focused on like

the wealthy and like you know america's great because of this small part of what is happening in america and i just i feel like that tends to be, I don't know, I don't, I don't want to see that dynamic again, but if the Democrats continue to be just like the holding, the holding bag for like everything that's negative and the Republicans can just, you know, invent new versions of themselves? Like, are we going to just be like yo-yoing back and forth between, you know, just insufferable, like, Republican leaders who are saying wild shit about what they're going to do and, you know, threatening horrible things and, you know, being horrible leaders back to like a, you know, sane democratic alternative that then everyone's like, yeah, but like this problem is still there. Like, I feel like that's the dynamic we're currently at is that whatever you diagnose the problem being and i think that there's a a huge unacknowledged like wound from 2008 that like

the end from like you know corporate you know when we talk about like biden not getting things done in office and like it's stopping with like mansion and cinema like that was they are like heavily influenced by like dark money and corporate interests and you know it just feels like we're like the the democratic party and like that mainstream has like chosen to be the sort of holding bag for like all of this malaise but like they don't have like some alternative that they're they're they're not choosing to offer an alternative i guess i definitely hear you about like the wound from 2008 i talk about this with my friends a lot because i'm a millennial and a lot of us got really screwed going into college during college and coming out of college

and it did lead to a lot of us you know know, sort of getting behind as far as not being able to settle life for ourselves with enough money to buy a house, particularly in a city that's relatively expensive. But I also just think like the Democrats are not working with the things that they should be working with. Like Miles brought up the child tax credit. That also is something that has bipartisan support. There are Republicans who support various versions of that. They should be going straightforward towards that. Why aren't they? The whole discussion around student loan debt I find really odd because once you cancel out everyone's student loan debt, you're still left with the undiscussed problem, like you guys are pointing out, that it's prohibitively expensive to attend a lot of

private colleges. So you might have solved that, you know, in a moment in time. Okay, great. Everyone who has, you know, a lot of debt is free from that. But a lot of the student loan debt that's being held in the United States is from for-profit colleges. And like I said, it's not going to solve the situation of people entering into college. You're just going to graduate with more debt. And again, you know, the Democrats are also not focusing on health care. So to echo that, there were things that the Democrats could have done in 2020 that because of the party's sort of maximalist position about a lot of these things

didn't happen. You know, even Joe Manchin had a voting rights bill that he had helped craft, that he would have supported, that was far less than the voting rights bill that he had helped craft, that he would have supported, that was far less than the voting rights bill that was passed in Congress, but was far more than no voting rights bill and would have given the federal government much more teeth to take on some of these restrictions in some of these states. There was also a series of social spendings that could have passed through the Senate. Emma talked about the child tax credit. But there was a kind of a maximalist position. And I think in many ways, you know, a lot of what is dispiriting about the Democrats is the degree to which by trying to govern as if there was this huge mandate without recognizing that,

look, I mean, there's a whole series of Democrats in swing districts in non-urban areas of the country, you know, people like Alyssa Slotkin in Michigan and Tom Malinowski in New Jersey, who's an old friend, and Abigail Spansberger in Virginia and Cindy Axne in Iowa, who support all these things, you know, and feel like they have a constituency that would support them, but not at the most, you know, we're going to remake society a la what more urban, you know, younger, educated voters want. And by not taking the half loaf, you know, the proverbial, like not taking the deal that was on the table and going for the wish list, I think that's, I mean, it is almost impossible to overstate what a mistake that is. And it changes the narrative in a way that didn't have to be, you know, there's more support for a lot of these things because they affect a lot of humans' lives, irrespective of what party they affiliate themselves with. And, you know, I think that's going to be part of the real challenge for the Democrats, other than the fact they've done a really effective job counter gerrymandering. Well, and I think the issue, though, too, is right, like they'll come out with these maximalist solutions on the campaign trail to court the voters. And then when it's time for the rubber to hit the road, the lobbyists step in and completely derail everything. And I think that's a huge part. I think that's why, for me,

I'm not sure how the current setup is equipped to actually take on these issues because they're so systemic. I used to be a lobbyist for a for-profit education institution, and the work I did had nothing to do with education. It had everything to do with exerting pressure on, you know, politicians to convince voters that this politician was using X policy to benefit them when they weren't. And my whole existence was predicated on a wealthy donor wanting to make sure that his business was doing well. And I think that's a huge, huge blind spot in the discussion is that it's not just Joe Manchin sat down and looked at the Build Back Better infrastructure bill and said, you know, cutting it back a trillion dollars every couple of months, which coincides with, I think, why Biden's numbers by the fall hit such a weird point, because we started off this spring thinking this this bill is going to work then slowly you got to see that a lot of the like sort of more corporatist elements of the party

you could see where their interests were people suddenly are now voting to block bills that were going to bring prescription costs lower and lo and behold it's coming from people whose biggest donors are from the pharmaceutical industry and i think think, yeah, like, well, and all of that is pretty disheartening. But I think if when that's completely absent from the conversation, we're, we're going to keep, we're going to keep getting stuck in this like abstract version, like what's really going on without, again, reckoning with what the, how the system is actually operating and who, who actually can, you pull those levers at that at certain points when they want to yeah i'm with you about health care for health care for sure miles i mean coming

to greece and and living in uh that's probably one of the worst european countries as far as health insurance goes the dramatic difference between here and the united states is like it's unbelievable it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. I feel like I should recommend everyone if they can, like, go live in Europe if you can for some time. See what the health care is like. Then come back. You'll have a crystal clear idea of how much better it could be in the United States.

Yeah. And unfortunately, too many people are just living the version where they're experiencing the worst kind ever without any idea of how much how good it can be and we're just grinding people down to like nothing i feel like that's it it's like meant it's like we i've gone through periods where i ignore my mental health and just like grind myself and then like you know there are negative consequences but if you just like don't take that as a as a factor into consideration but but like the the reality of like living in America in a place where like getting sick or hurt can like bankrupt you is so fucked up, like so dark. have to like that you feel like you need to suggest to people like you guys have to see this shit it's crazy like over there you can get hurt and not be bankrupt is like that that feels i don't know i i think there are a lot of things that we kind of lose track of because we're so

used to them as you guys kind of talked about but that need to be improved and are the thing that is like grinding people down, like you were saying, Miles. I mean, I will say, too, there's pros and cons everywhere. So I would be remiss to say that if you're on public health insurance here in Greece, part of your medical experience is not going to be bankruptcy, but it is going to be bribing the doctors and the hospitals that they'll actually take care of you. So. Yeah. I mean, health insurance is hard. Let's just say that. Yeah. Well, cause again, like, I think it speaks to the, this perversion of like certain industries where we're not taking certain things and saying, that's not a thing where you need to go and, you know, exploit and extract trillions of dollars out of like, that's,

that's, that's at a minimum, a thing to keep people healthy and alive like don't don't begin to to mix that up with growth and shareholder value and those kinds of ideas because yeah we've we come when we do that we completely reduce people to just shit on the spreadsheet abstract numbers and at a certain point, one person being like, I need to crank this up by half a percent means tens of thousands of people going into bankruptcy. And we're like,

we're completely, I think, divorced from like the humanity of it all, which I think is just it. Unfortunately, when that happens, a lot of the people who are the most vulnerable, we forget about it because it's not necessarily maybe presents the greatest threat to the most people all the time, but it simmers and it ends up, you know, where eventually that that rot touches number of us, I looked to Western European national health systems with a degree of admiration of some sense that this is a public good, right? It shouldn't be those national systems were no more able to cope with the demands of a pandemic for the most part and showed many

of the same fissures between sort of haves, have-nots that the United States did, partly because their own budgets had been eviscerated over the prior years because people didn't want to really pay taxes to support that collective good. And they were susceptible to the same mantras of efficiency. And efficiency means you don't have spare beds. It means when a crisis hits, there's no slack. The slack costs money. All I'm saying is it is true that we have massive structural impediments to delivering some of the goods that you talk about. But it is eye-opening to see the degree to which it's very hard to find a human assemblage on the planet that does this particularly well, other than some smaller homogenous societies. You could say, look, Denmark does this pretty well. But Denmark's like Manhattan plus Queens. And that's

not said with any pejorative, right? It's just, I think it's easier when there's fewer people and they're all somewhat related. I do have to say, I bribe all my doctors just to, like, get better reports, better, like, test results. Wait, what'd you put for my height there, Doc? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What'd you put for my height?

Could I get an extra inch on my body? Drop, like, 20 pounds from the weight, and that cholesterol needs to come way down, bro. You can bribe people here to get a driver's license too, which is why it's really scary to drive here. Wow. All right. Let's take a quick break.

We'll come back and talk for like five minutes about vampires, and then we'll let you guys go. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films

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And this is kind of a weird one. This is just like, you know, something I noticed, but I'm curious to get you guys' thoughts. But I just like hadn't listened to npr in probably a year um something happened with the way my phone was connected to my car so it started popping on every once in a while around the time of the russian invasion of ukraine and it like i was hearing it again like with fresh ears and it just felt insane to me like it's like it's so gentle and like it's explaining the death of a of a pet to a child but they're explaining the news of the world to an entire generation of adults um and yeah so i mean that's basically my thesis is that if we weren't used to it from like decades of npr being like a one of the primary neoliberal sources of information, we'd all be like, this is so fucking weird. the amount of cognitive dissonance that's required for the type of people who listen to NPR,

sort of that gentry class of liberals, like where there's just a lot of calories, a lot of mental calories. Like you could mint a Bitcoin with the amount of mental work that's required to, you know, both be aware of all the inequality in the world and also believe that like the mainstream DNC is the answer and, you know, buying into mainstream corporate media narratives and like still feeling like you're the good guy. Like it's just, it all feels very, like it's a lot of work it's a it's a weird position to be in as a neoliberal and so i feel like there's something something about this aesthetic that like helps just be like no

it's okay that's this is all happening so you are right uh you are you are good because you're listening to stuff about the bad stuff happening enough to get like a cursory understanding of of the details um but don't worry we're gonna make it down go down very smooth and we're gonna talk to you in the way that uh you know your your snobby friends talk to you and you know it's we're just doing this over a glass of like pinot grigio don't worry like it's all cool um i don't know what do you what do you guys i i know i totally feel that because and we talked we talk about this all the time because none of no mainstream media outlet like it's always meant to sort of frame all these conversations in a very tidy thing where it's it's not going to bring too much it's not gonna bring

the reader or listener or viewer to ask really tough questions about like u.s foreign policy or domestic economic policy it'll describe a problem you know somewhat you know about in a balanced way but also not really confront the problem or offer solutions to the listener which would actually spur the next first thing of like the next thought on because if it's just enough you're like and it's all bad but it's being contained there and due to that like the people do have a more optimistic outlook on the chances of russia being successful in their invasion of ukraine and you're like oh okay i don't really i know that's happening i don't need to fucking think deeper about this i don't even need to think of like what does this mean for the military industrial complex in the United States? Why some factions of the U.S. government are like all in on this.

Others aren't. What's the deal there? Why there's like, you know, it's it's again. Yeah. Like you're saying, it sounds like an illusion of being tapped in and that you're you're on top of it all without challenging you enough to really kind of begin. I think it doesn't have anything to do, you think, with that annoying thing? What is it, ally fatigue? How people are just like, oh, man, I cared about this cause,

but can we take the black squares off our Instagram yet? You know, that kind of thing where it's like you want to be there and you want to support and fight, but you also want it to be kind of easy and simple and short. And maybe there's something to that. If it goes down with a little bit of easy and simple and short. And like, yeah, maybe there's something to that. Like if you if it goes down with a little bit of sugar and a smooth, you know, airy voice, then it's easier to handle. But yeah, then you're not necessarily hearing it all or understanding how big it could be because you're just like this is just it's like neatly contained. Right. Yeah. And it's the emotion is removed.

contained right yeah and it's the emotion is removed um it's very much like hearing a professor talk about a thing that like an event from history more so than it's like hearing somebody at that this thing is actually happening to that there's a you exist in the world where this is happening um but yeah i i think like the ally fatigue syndrome and like NPR, which has been doing this for, you know, decades now, but I think they both come from the same place of, you know, wanting to feel like you are on the right side while also wanting to stay at a safe distance from the, like what, what is actually happening. Yeah. I have this clip that I pulled and I literally just like, was like, Oh, it would be helpful if we had a clip this morning.

And I went to the NPR website and was like, well, let's find them. The thing that made me notice it was a story about uh russia's invasion of ukraine so i just went and looked for a story where they were talking about that and i like four minutes in i thought this is you know this isn't like that i'm catching them saying something wild or anything this is just an example of what i'm talking about um i don't know miles do you want to like i i have the link there i could just pull it up yeah so for 410 is this a podcast

no well this is on the npr but they so they serve everything as a podcast i should say like in relation to the podcast um when we started like our little shingle of like how stuff works which became iheart like one of our stated goals was to create shows that were not influenced by the npr aesthetic because it felt like so many shows were just like you know this american life and then this american life descendants and like everybody was just like hey so this is a one-note story you know um but yeah the npr is wild influential to the point that like this might not even sound that crazy to people who listen to a lot of podcasts intelligence capabilities including so this is just the end of a report of how the u.s is helping

to investigate war crimes npr justice correspondent ryanent Ryan Lucas. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you. Isn't that soothing? Yeah. We get some nice, soothing voice. There's some nice, soothing music. Yeah. Now, the first step in confirming that anything happens in Ukraine is for independent observers to look for themselves. Very calm. A few days ago, our colleague Scott Detrow had a look around Borodyanka. That's one of the cities near Kiev from which Russian forces recently withdrew. And today we hear Scott's stories of two people who survived the Russian occupation. Natasha and her daughter's family spent a month hiding in a cramped... This guy is keyed up, friend.

What did we eat? Mostly potatoes. I had some spare oil, then I have a cow, so I had milk. And I went to my neighbor, I gave her some milk, she gave me some other things,

some cheese. So this is how we survived. So that's, all right. That was the main, like, kind of pieces I wanted to play because, you know, so Scott Inskeep comes in, very calm, just like, you know, so Scott, Scott Inskeep comes in very calm, just like, you know, this is the story where we're going to give you some stuff from the ground. And then they bring in somebody who is, you know, very emotional and like, you know, breaks down a

little later in the interview, but then they like overlay her with someone who sounds like they're recounting a meal they prepared over a glass of wine like the chillest interpreter ever yeah yeah when you're talking about living through a military operation yeah full scale invasion yeah for context that that woman uh was hiding in her basement um starving with children trying to hide from russia who was trying to murder her and like they're like what do we eat well we had a nice little like potato saute and like it's like this kind of feels disingenuous because like they are giving people information that people need i i just want to take a moment to acknowledge the aesthetic and uh make fun of it because it is fucking weird i will say that i remember in 2016 i was watching

cnn and like watching the election results come in and i was getting so stressed out and had such anxiety so i had to turn it to cbc Canadian TV, because they were just there just talking. They were just there presenting the facts and not going crazy. And there weren't like air horns and loud noises every five minutes. And it was like the only way I could handle it. So it's like, I know that you know that that's working. You know, it gives them, you know, more listeners and people are drawn to that for that reason, I think. But yeah, what does that say necessarily about people?

Like that's how they have to handle war crimes and things. Well, yeah. And it's just how, it's just like the messaging, right? Like it's one thing if someone's like, oh, hey, that house is on fire. Right. Oh, yo, that house is on fire. It's inhuman.

It takes the humanity out of it is what is strange and so your response to it is going to be completely different too right it's a xanax like it gives you the news with a like little like anti-anxiety medication like so yeah yeah i don't need yeah people need to be listening to to the death metal of news broadcasts. They're like, it's all fucking over. But at the same time, you do do people a disservice because like you're saying, but this is even how I saw, especially the summer of 2020, covering all the police fuckery. They were like, and some have seen it as potentially being racially motivated behavior. And you're like, hold on.

potentially being racially motivated behavior and you're like hold on yeah we're all looking at this in real time and you can't even come out and properly sort of catch people up i think is the energy should be there's there's a serious issue with law enforcement i think that's just and i get that i think people see like we're editorializing by saying something like that but you also need to convey the severity of something to the people because if you say it all monotone you're gonna think oh yeah just a few bad apples meanwhile you look at the people who are in the streets and the way they speak about it they're not like oh it's this or that we're talking about existential threats and i think to take that out of the the way you're telling the news allows people to think oh i mean yeah the invasion might be fucked up in ukraine but that

woman seemed so she had a cow she had some oil yeah yeah yeah this is yeah i mean this is the whole npr aesthetic is itself a reaction to the like you know dan rather peter uh what's his name from abc or do i know p Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, like that whole, like, and now like it's unnatural. Like that, that is weird,

unnatural trying to play the center type thing. And NPR is like, no, we'll talk to you in this other way that feels less like artificial. But now it's like so uniform across so many channels and it just doesn't like it it's now its own weird artificial thing that seems to be aiming to just like make everybody feel calm about uh and like feel like they're the good guy and, you know, get, can wear their tote bag with pride. Um, and yeah, so I asked, uh, super producers, Becca and Tricia to, you know, Becca looked into

just like a history of like, what, what are other people pointing this out? And she pulled some very funny tweets and also like i think a really smart one where somebody um how alex safe cummings uh tweeted uh the system has every reason to want to revert back to the norm to the even-keeled npr tone of voice and it will probably try but trump to his credit in a weird way has blown up all duplicitous civility to the ruling class. The pretty West Wing illusions are mostly gone. And like, I think that's interesting to think of Trump as what one of the things he is reacting to is like this insufferable neoliberal class of just, know that tone like he trumps rude conversational like kind of uh weird speaking style as a breaking out of the like quiet politeness that npr embodies um is kind of an interesting way to think about that um and then and then there is apparently like straight up

gatekeeping um like we don't have them in a room telling people to like be more zanned out which was the assignment i was like can you find out if they have like a candy bowl full of like xanax at the office or like what do they do the air conditioning what do they tell the people before they go on the air is my question like i i still like well we won't find this out but if if zygang if any of our listeners have experience with this like i i'm dying to know like what are there is there a process where they're like nope okay just calmer all right now can you take it down just a little bit more you're at like a three i need you at like a one minus um like i i would love to just hear what that's like maybe when they're in person the hosts talk super quietly they're like so quiet you can barely hear so then the other person that's talking to them feels like they need to

talk quietly too like maybe it's just this weird like mirroring thing. Feel bad for the people of color who work in there. And they're like, let me tell you what I do. They're like, what? Yo. I'm sorry. Yeah. I mean, so producer Tricia pulled a story about, you know, somebody who an NPR contributor who was preparing a story for air when he became aware that he was altering his speaking style to fit what he believed to be the npr voice um and then you know there there's another story where somebody

was basically told uh that they couldn't come on the air on npr because their accent seemed to or their voice seemed to accented giselle regato wrote an essay in the Columbia Journalism Review in which she recounted her attempt to pitch a story to NPR only to be told by an editor that her piece would not air out of concern for her accent. So, you know, there's that too. Like there's obviously a crazy bias there. And it's...

Yeah, go ahead. No, just to your thing of the way you're talking about trump right and like the i get you know i get that it's soothing right that it makes it easier but at the same time it deep down we know it's disingenuous because we're only listening to it because we feel that we need to know about it but don't want to get freaked out by the sort of the scale of the issue that we're trying to learn about and i think that's another reason why a lot of people just you know like people responded to trump because if you're hearing on the news it's like yeah you know medical data blah blah blah and this guy's being like the pharmaceutical costs are out of control like that energy people like exactly that's that that actually connects energetically with what

i'm feeling about this whole situation it's not the way it was presented to me it's that i'm living in a very grim reality so to present my grim reality with you know this like you know this paint of coat or this coat or coat of paint uh that makes it really shiny doesn't help me anyway in any way. So, yeah, people are going to gravitate towards the people who at least are speaking with a level of emotion to it or acknowledging the severity, even if it's disingenuous, because that feels more real. Yeah. 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 i hope you're having a great weekend and i will talk to you monday bye Thank you. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti.

And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Teheripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way

we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. I'm Keri Champion,

and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball. And on this new season, we'll cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio apps, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect