The Daily Zeitgeist - Weekly Zeitgeist 281 (Best of 6/26/23-6/30/23)

Episode Date: July 2, 2023

The weekly round-up of the best moments from DZ's Season 293 (6/26/23-6/30/23).See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Tahiripour. 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 Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. 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. Miles, this is a very special episode. Our guest today is an expert author of a book that I will just say explained a lot, explained everything about how modern America operates in a lot of respects.

And you'll even hear me admit in the beginning, I'm like, I was going around a lot of my adult life vaguely understanding what we're talking about. And then, but hearing it properly and like reading it have it be properly articulated by someone who's like looking at it from a legal standpoint like oh yeah yeah oh that's fucking terrible i mean like i i knew that broadly but this is uh it gives it so much texture in a way yeah but it might seem at first like a little depressing because it's like it's giving you really good texture on like why things are bad in certain ways. But I think ultimately it's kind of hopeful because it at least gives you an understanding of how things are actually operating.

So we're going to talk to our expert guest, Brendan Ballou, for a couple acts here for like the next 40 minutes. We'll come back and close things out after that. So we will talk to you guys in a bit. Just a caveat. I normally, I just, I don't speak to the feds normally. So please don't, I don't want you guys writing in about how I made miles doing. I said, it's a, it's always been fine for me. So come along, friend.

Let's talk to the feds. What is something from your search history? That's first, huh? Yeah, it doesn't need to be. We can also go overrated. No, it's fine. I'm just surprised. I've only done this show 900 times.

We haven't rearranged. Search history has probably been first for 1,500 episodes. Is that how many we've done? Yeah. Well, it's funny because it's last on the list of things that you send out that you're going to talk about. Yeah. We like to

keep you off guard so that maybe you give us your real search history instead of the pretty search history you want people to believe. So anyway, I just know that I'm angry. Right. Off top. The last thing that I,

that I Googled was where does bandit work? Hmm. And, uh, you don't know if you have a kid who's maybe just a little younger than mine. Oh, or, uh,

too old. What's your, What's your youngest? Loi. Mine is five years old. Okay, so he's in it. It's Bluey, yeah. But what's funny about Bluey is that they have jobs

and they have like dog jobs. Oh. Wait, which one's Bluey? Wait, who's Bandit? Bandit is the father. Yeah, he's the dad. He's the dad. He's the father of all fathersit oh yeah he's the dad he's the father's existence i've seen the bluey i've seen i definitely seen a couple episodes oh so oh bandit is like the okay got it

yeah so if you don't know bluey is like one of the only shows that you can watch as an adult like a kid show i think it's like spongebob you know where it's like the jokes are good enough you know and it feels good enough that adults watch it anyway right it feels good it's like spongebob you know where it's like the jokes are good enough you know and it feels good enough that adults watch anyway right it feels good it's also it can be like heartbreaking it's it's it's very it can be heartbreaking yeah it's kind of like uh i look at it as like a blueprint for how to interact with your kids because like the parents just yes and everything and explain everything and they explain everything. And they're just so nice. And so patient.

So patient. So patient. Like they have like Zen Buddhist levels of patience with their children. And that is one of the first questions that occurs to you watching it. It's like, so the dad's just like unemployed or something? What's going on? Why is he spending an entire day? Because the show's not about their jobs it's about to you know how it's so but the the both the parents have um dog jobs which i think is really funny like what like he's an archaeologist meaning that he digs up bones

and uh the mom chili just on the sidewalk is a sidewalk shitter she's a bomb sniffing dog at the airport no yeah wait there's no implies the presence of terrorism domestic and international terrorism but they're in australia so there's not as much of a worry yeah ausszzy's i can't who are who's who's bringing bombs into your country no one not with chili on the loose wait do they ever but do they reference like do you ever go to work with the dad and be like oh he's doing this and like oh this mom is you know sniffing up bombs and shit uh i i don't know if they know she's a mom at work. Oh, wait, hold on a second. Yeah, exactly. It's not her only identity. Because women at work often face extra challenges being mothers.

This is true. And some of them have really mean bosses. And my wife actually has a very mean, mean, mean boss. Oh, no. At her office. And it's you. Sounds horrible. Oh me that's right i am pretty bad what you see not what you get with this podcast this whole personality classic jerk hiding it in front of almost everybody every time you ever open up your mouth yeah it's good i'm coming for him i'm letting because i just i think i can squeeze a little more productivity out of them with the force of my personality nick for sure for sure and and my

hunger for conflict those are the two things that drive me and you started that seven day work week for which she loves that's right yeah that's how the only way we'll have it the we don't i i don't think we're fully up on bluey or at least i don't think i've watched every episode of bluey with my kids they do we don't like go to work with them ever right is this just lore no you don't go to work with them they just talk about it like sometimes but like not enough to even like know like i don't know their names because they don't mention it enough it's only like if another adult they see out calls them by their first name yeah bandit and chili yeah but yeah you know some great australian accents like the really really makes you fond of i guess it just makes you fond of everything that

it touches you know i was reading recently they had to change an episode that hadn't aired here just in australia that included fat shaming because they're very worried about everything and so right but it's when you're ascribing some kind of value to it that it's problematic. It's like the same thing, too. I've talked about in Asian culture because you'd be like, hey, you're bald. Or like, wow, look at your pimples. It's like a lot of cultures don't have like a, there's no, like you just go straight to it. It's very direct.

And especially when you talk about someone's looks. And I was talking about that with, like, my wife. And I was talking about, like, oh, yeah, we do that in Japan all the time. She's like, yeah, but that's, like, toxic. And I'm like, oh, yeah. Whoa. Whoa. That's true.

Ha-ha. Didn't think of that. I feel like bald shaming is still pretty common. Like, in the U.S., at the very least. Oh, yeah, yeah. Nobody's trying to speak up for the bald. Because we live in such a patriarchal

society. They're talking about men. The only show that really talks about being bald is Curb Your Enthusiasm. Right. And they understand that people hate bald people hate you bald fuck jit larry yo i just got on minoxidil uh-huh oh yeah i started taking hair loss pills or

the or growth or whatever because i just got i got to the end you know i'm not bald but i've got a good head of hair i got've got enough of a widow's peak. Oh, you're starting to measure it? You're like, I can notice it. You got the calipers out and went from your eyebrow bone to your hairline. And we're like, it's past the point where I need it. That's the one where that's like a pencil holder slash knife. That's the compass.

Oh, no, that's a compass. Calipers are like used in... Pencil holder slash knife. That thing is... That's how I used it in school. Oh, yeah, that was like the first weapon you could bring to school. Yeah, was allowed, allowable in school. But isn't the compass the ruler?

Or they're both called compasses? No, it's a protractor. That's a protractor. For angles and stuff? Yeah. The way you said shit, like a lot, like you just fucked up majorly with that. You just fucked up. Hey, Nick, you just fucked up big time, man.

Yeah, because I just bought my kid school supplies and I really got him the wrong things. You got him a compass? Yeah. They generally don't give those to kids. I got him a whole orienteering set. Yeah.

I don't know that phrase. Oh, that's where you would have a compass. That's for like looking, you know, like tricking the woods. Nick, what's something you would have a compass. That's for like looking, you know, like tricking the woods. Nick, what's something you think is overrated? What is something Caitlin you think is overrated?

I think that, and this might be controversial, but I think that nachos are overrated, especially the kind you get as like at a a restaurant when they load on a bunch of ground beef and cheese and sour cream and all that stuff. I think the flavors are good, but the execution is bad because the chips get soggy almost immediately. it is very hard to get a good like distribution of all the toppings onto one chip yeah because you got one that's like nothing but beef which is gonna be my new catchphrase nothing but beef yeah get out of my swamp and if you come in my swamp

there's nothing but beef here for you. Exactly. And then other ones, it's like, you know, only sour cream. It's just, I think, again, poorly executed. How would you optimize? Because my biggest gripe with bad nachos at a restaurant is it's all top heavy. Yeah. And so you have it all on top

and then underneath is just a bunch of dried chips and then you got to kind of use those to like scrape out the top i like when people layer them i'm not i'm not as upset about the crunchiness because for me i just want to have just shit on every chip basically is how i look at it but how would you optimize if we're going to get around this? I think we just need to do, and this will become a surface area problem because you're going to need a big ass tray. Yeah. Just like one single layer of chips and then the toppings evenly distributed. So you're talking like a tray. It's going to need to be like three by three feet kind of thing.

The best strategy I've ever witnessed, my friend Blake in high school, shout out Blake, went through and would put cheese on each chip and then a dollop of salsa like on top of the cheese. And that would keep it from getting. And then you put it in the microwave. It's very time intensive, but it is truly the best way to do nachos is think of each chip as its own moment, its own nacho. Wow. As opposed to just dumping chips out and then like kind of scatters scattering toppings across. They're not just numbers on a spreadsheet, man. Yeah. They're individual chips.

Yeah. I get it. Each chip is a moment. That's beautiful. Restaurant nachos are are a real mess that i still love i just do you order them though i feel like i have to there always needs to be one person who's really into nachos to order nachos should we do the nachos guys yeah yeah exactly that kind of person i'm like well you know i was like because they

look really good i'm like fine yeah fuck it get the I was like, because they look really good. I'm like, yeah, get the nachos. Like, yeah, they always look good. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. All right. But you go after nachos pretty consistently, Caitlin? No, I avoid them for the reason that I think they're overrated.

So if someone said, hey, should we get them? You're like, let me just actually tell you why. Everyone open up your phone. I say, um, actually. Yeah. Yeah. I promised myself I wouldn't do this today, but. Yeah.

So I'm like, let's get whatever. I don't know. The sampler platter. Clearly, I'm only going to Applebee's like restaurants. I'm like, let's get the mozzarella sticks. But no nachos for me. Yeah. What a shame.

I love to get some nachos. I like to, I have ordered nachos as a main course before. Wow. Brave. Just eat them by myself. Pardon me. Fending people off with my arms.

Yeah. Anyway, what's the main thing that's underrated, Brandy? If you're having like, I've had like a rough couple of weeks with some, and I decided, you know what, fuck it. I'm going to get my car detailed because I just wanted my, I just was like, if my car is nice, I'm going to, it's like a reset. Yeah. And I think, like, that's something that, like, I have not done a lot in my life.

And I was like, oh, shit, this actually does make me feel really, really good to have, like, a car that just, like, is clean. It's got no trash. There's no no trash there's no dust there's no dirt it just feels new it just feels nice yeah i'm not i'm not the best at taking care of my vehicle yeah on the outside like you know i have a like my passenger seat is i go in the carpool lane because i have so many receipts in my passenger seat it looks like a human being is riding with me that's kind of the state of my car at times but now like with a child i've become much better at it but the way i love going to like the fucking car wash now yeah like i feel the same way i'm like i sit there like i

bring a fucking newspaper like i'm fucking 70 and shit and be like check that out leave it for the next person boom yeah what are we saying jackie i also listen i love i love it i love a car wash i love like going to a car wash i love like going to the car wash and having them clean it and see it and having to wipe it and walk around and inspect it it's like hey brother spot like i love that shit i love it but i also still love i just did this recently because i didn't have enough time to like get a real car wash so i just went through like one of the drive-thru joints yeah it's still lovely it's still a lovely time how often do you how often do you see somebody in the self like the do it or like the drive-thru ones and they're about to crash into everybody

else like like because i know some of them like you have to put in neutral other times people like oh yeah don't know what to do their shit is moving inside and like you see them shut it down and someone's got to pull somebody. I'm like, you're about to fucking rear end this other car. Yeah. I feel like I see that every time I go through one of those. I, the ones, the only one I've been going to recently is the like little gas station ones that show. So like you just stay in place and the thing moves around you.

Oh, I haven't found too many ones that like you move through a whole thing. Oh yeah. They have a few of those like in the valley that I used to go to. There's one. Oh, yeah. Like it would sometimes I've saw people with some near misses and people were getting pretty turned up. But yeah, the thing about like, you know, having a rough time, too. I was just saying this on like Monday show and having like, you know, stressful shit going on, whatever.

having like you know stressful shit going on whatever but like the thing that i always have to remind myself is when i'm feeling shitty is to not get in the pattern of telling myself don't feel shitty like you're like why you feel shitty this is stupid you shouldn't feel bad you should feel good why are you doing this and like i have to kind of be like not like okay hold on i'm a human so that's normal and then like let me just operate from that space of being like it's all good now let's try and move on. Totally. Bit by bit. Because, yeah, I'm such a, like, ruminator. Oh, shit. The way I can get lost in my own fucking mind,

let me tell you, I look like I'm warging from fucking Game of Thrones or some shit the way my eyes look back with my intrusive thoughts. Yeah, it's just good to do something good for yourself every once in a while. And, like, that's one that, like, I had never really thought about, but I was like, you know what?

I'm in my car so much. It should, it could be nice. This is a space that could also just be nice. Yeah. Yeah. Wouldn't thought about it. Yeah.

100%. Recommend. All right. Let's take a quick break. We'll come back and we'll talk about some, the Supreme court, you know, they,

they go back and forth. Sometimes they're fucking doing the right thing. Sometimes they're just caping for white supremacy all over again. Anyway, we'll be right back. 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 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 firsthand 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. Hello, everyone. I am Lacey Lamar. And I'm Amber Ruffin, a better Lacey Lamar. Boo. Okay, everybody, we have exciting news to share.

We're back with season two of the Amber and Lacey, Lacey and Amber show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network. You thought you had fun last season? Well, you were right. And you should tune in today for new fun segments like Sister Court and listening to Lacey's steamy DMs. We've got new and exciting guests like Michael Beach. That's my husband. Daphne Spring. Daniel Thrasher.

Peppermint. Morgan J. And more. You got to watch us. No, you mean you have to listen to us. I mean, you can still watch us, but you got to listen. Like if you're watching us, you have to tell us like if you're out the window, you have to say, hey, I'm watching you outside of the window. Just just you know what? Listen to the Amber and Lacey, Lacey and Amber show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How do you feel about biscuits?

Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the Biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? The Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels with the image of the Biscuits. It's right here in black and white in print.

They lion. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch. As a leader, you choose hills that you want to die on. Why would we want to be the losing team? I just take all the other stuff out of it. Segregation academies. When civil rights said that we need to integrate public schools, these charter schools were exempt from that.

Bigger than a flag or mascot. You have to be ready for serious backlash. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. about how their insight into staffing was to trick people into using doctors outside of their network is just one of the stories in your book that is incredibly infuriating. There's also the worst hacking disaster in US history.

Do you want to talk about how that came about in partnership with private equity? Yeah, so two private equity firms bought up the tech company SolarWinds, which provides a lot of sort of like boring IT and security services to companies. Looking through the documents in SolarWinds public filings, it appears that after it was bought by a private equity firm, staffing of the company was cut. And at least according to their public disclosures, a lot of their engineering work was moved overseas, including to, among other countries, Belarus, which is in the news recently.

Oh, Lukashenko, great guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. suffered what one government official called the greatest hack in United States history. I believe the Department of Defense, Treasury, State, Justice, and others were all compromised. And at least it appears on sort of initial reporting that the leaders of the private equity firms may have dumped stock in advance of the public disclosure of that. Now, there's an investigation going on to that at the SEC. I don't know what the outcome of it was. But it was another example of that. Now, there's an investigation going on to that at the SEC. I don't know what the outcome of it was. But it was another example of, you know, you have this industry, you know, sort of IT security that really needs to be thinking in terms of years and really decades for how to make sure that you've got a secure product when you're working with the government.

And they're being bought or controlled by private equity firms that are trying to make a profit, you know, in a matter of months or a matter of years. And it's just a very different perspective for how to run these businesses. Yeah. Yeah. It's right. I mean, similar to the, you know, getting involved in ER staffing, they also took over the operation of 911 calls at one point. Like just all these things that, yeah, just when you read stories of businesses that become successful over a long period of time,

like it's really about fixating on like how to do the one thing that they do for customers like better than anyone else. And time and time again, it seems like when these private equity firms come in, like, it's just, like, that is the third or fourth thing that they're interested in. And the most interesting thing is delivering value for themselves and get, yeah, financial success. It's interesting, you know, you look at the biographies of folks that run private equity firms and it's, you know, it's not a critique of them. It's not a surprise, but, you know, it's generally folks that do not have experience in sales or IT or engineering or marketing or logistics. It's folks with a financial background. And so when they approach these companies, typically, you know, not always, but typically, you know, what they're trying to make are essentially sort of financial changes to these businesses that's going to, you know,

get a fairly quick return. You know, you look at the diversity of what some of these private equity firms buy into, you know, it's a plastic logistics company, It's a municipal water service. And it's the dating app Bumble, you know, and it's like one person doesn't really have the expertise to run all those different kinds of companies. Yeah, they just know how to make line go up. Right. And it's sort of like, oh, wait, what does that mean? It's like, well, we're not gonna have enough nurses. I don't know, man. But then when I look at these projections, I like i'm seeing let's do that and figuring out afterwards what's really difficult is like we hear about all this it is so apparent to everyone you know like i think at this point even everyone listening is like right okay okay uh pirate equity bad uh or like not not necessarily out here for everyone's best interest but then you think about like a lot of the examples that you give in your book like it's also very very hard to hold these fucking people to account because of the nature of like all of the advantages that these companies have whether it's through lobbying whether it's through like a revolving

door of entities that have been in government that end up there and then end up lobbying people they already know on the hill and things like that or just the amount of complex like like hype like whack-a-mole of who owns this thing that all come together because i think a lot of the times especially when we talk about these issues like on our show we're like well what's the problem why can't it why can't it stop right like it's we get it we're seeing it like if the cost is people losing their lives. The cost is people going bankrupt. The cost is untold suffering. And then, you know, to be real, it's like, hey, man, we're looking at you, the feds. What's going on? And I know you've said this, too. Like it's the federal like the DOJ is not the only entity that can go after this.

But like how how do you explain like when people talk about the frustration of like, well, then what, like, something's got to give. Where will it give? Yeah. Yeah. It's a huge issue because, you know, as you started off, you know, private equity, I think, has been uniquely successful in lobbying. firms have hired. It's former secretaries of state, treasury, defense, two former speakers of the House, a vice president, former chairpeople of the FCC and SEC. I mean, it's a really deep bench. And that means that they have just been extraordinarily successful at sort of advancing their legislative and regulatory agenda. I think the other challenge that we've got, and I think you hit on this exactly right, is it's really hard for ordinary people to hold

private equity firms accountable. We have this doctrine called corporate veil piercing, which means that it's very hard to hold an investor responsible for the actions of the company that they invest in. That makes sense for you and me, where we've got our little Vanguard account and have like one share of stock in a company. You know, we don't really have much say over them. That doctrine doesn't necessarily make sense for a private equity firm that has a controlling stake in these businesses and can essentially tell them what to do. And then lastly, I mean, I think you hit the point exactly right, which is a lot of times it's just hard to even figure out who owns what and who to sue. I talked with folks that sue nursing homes on behalf of families whose parents died or were

injured or whatever it happens to be. And they're telling me, you know, look, these guys have these really broke organizational structures where they're shifting assets across multiple shell companies and, you know, sort of across different shells. And it's really hard to figure out who is responsible and who has the assets to recover. So it's a really tough problem. Yeah. And it's something that's becoming normal, too. Like other industries are like, you know, what kind of works is if you kind of spread it all around and no one knows how to get like seek damages.

Right. Yeah. You tell this one really memorable story about ashford which is you know a franciscan university of the prairies is what it's called but it's like a really small college run by nuns and then it gets taken over and turned into ashford university which becomes this you know phoenix university like adjacent thing. And it's really this like outraging thing. And then you also mentioned that like the private equity firm that now runs it is Warburg Pincus, which is run by Obama's former Treasury Secretary, Secretary Tim Geithner. And it's just like,

you just see that over and over again. Like the amount of people from positions of power who like know how things work better than anybody, you know, most people listening to this and like know how things really work behind the scenes are going into private equity. And it just really feels like a looting, a plundering that's happening. I, yeah, I heard this third hand, so I don't know how true it is, but there was a senior government official who ended up doing some work for a private equity firm and somebody was chiding them and they said, look, you know, it's not who's working for private equity, it's who isn't working for private equity right now. So it's it's pretty extraordinary the breadth of of their success. Right. And just like the greed, how it compounds

itself, you know, because now it's like it seems like you're almost incentivized to get into private equity because of how little repercussions people face. And I'm curious, like when you have a case like like the ones we've talked about when it's like yeah man like they own this company and they basically started throttling back their level of care which led to someone losing their life okay well then tell me who owns this and that person's responsible like when these cases get like dismissed or things is that the cynical part of like i think the cynical shorthand version of someone who believes in how like cronyism works and things like that, believe that like, oh, the judges are in on it, too. Everybody's in on this. That's why it's happening. But I think you've also raised the point that it's

not necessarily like like there's there's a huge barrier to get over, which is informing people of how this even works, too. And like having enough public pressure, like around this idea or this industry of private equity that gets people to sort of be on the same page to understand the issues. Yeah, you know, I think one of the challenges that we've got is exactly what you're saying is education. And that's not just educating, you know, sort of your listeners or, you know, people and, you know, you know, people that are just generally interested in this topic. It's also informing judges, people in government, you know, what private equity is and what the practical consequences are. One of the challenges that I think people who are critical of the private equity business model have

is, you know, private equity firms have an enormous amount of money to lobby and to litigate their issues. And the other side, you know, just has a fraction to do the same thing. You know, one of the cases was over this obscure sort of retirement law issue and at stake was like $4.5 million for the private equity firm. It was essentially a rounding error. They spent 10 years litigating the case in order not to have to pay out because they had the resources to do it and they wanted to set the precedent that they could. And so, you know, we've got to inform people and we've also got to figure out how to sort of empower activists and folks that want to work on this stuff so that they can do this work for the long term. Right. Can we just list some of the industries where

people might have seen their work? Because just going back to that initial statement about like we have a anecdotally everyone seems to have a feeling that things are getting worse but you know it it's kind of hard to we don't have much to compare it to but there you know there's presence in the dental industry veterinary i think you mentioned grocery stores at one point. Yep. One of the reasons there are like two grocery stores in the country that didn't used to be the case. Yeah.

Yeah. So private equity is, you know, I don't want to overstate the case, but they're active in, you know, most every industry that you can think of, whether you're talking about sort of retail things. We were talking about Toys R Us and stuff earlier, or grocery stores, as you say. When we're talking about healthcare, it's not just emergency rooms and ambulances. It's ordinary sort of OBGYN and urgent care clinics. Buying up literal insurance companies, you know, life insurance, claims worker compensation companies, to things like manufacturing, infrastructure.

In some places, private equity firms literally bought up the municipal water services that you might use to drink, you know, water from your tap. How'd that work out for them? Unfortunately, it didn't work out terribly well. So the private equity firm operated it with a joint venture, ultimately dramatically raised the price for users to such an extent that local reporters were saying that people, quote unquote, became water Nazis, would time their family members in the shower and would only buy flowers that didn't require a lot of water. So unfortunately, that's a contract that those two cities are now going to have to sit with for the next 30 years or so because of how it was negotiated.

But to the extent you're interested in these things and you're concerned about a business, you know, private equity firms rarely advertise their ownership. So what you should do is Google the company name and just add private equity and see what comes up. Yeah, chances are it's almost like what industries aren't they involved in? It might be an easier question. Yeah, it's like, oh, yeah, they involved in it might be an easier question yeah it's like oh yeah they're they're not behind the push for medicare for all i'll tell you that they don't have they don't have a dog in that fight unless it's on the other side of it yeah yeah i

don't think they're active on that one yeah yeah interesting how do you talk about like i've i've there's been in a couple social settings since reading your book and just been like, it's crazy, but like unable to like really fully, you know, put into words because it's the problems like so big and so acute. But like, how do you usually introduce the idea of your book to people? Like when you're just like talking to them at a cocktail party or something? I always explain the basic business model. And I say that private equity is going to transform the country in this decade the way that big tech did in the last decade and subprime lenders did in the decade before that. And I say what the three basic problems are, short termism, a lot

of debt and fees and insulation from liability. And if we can fix those three things, we can basically solve the problem. Yeah. And that's kind of another thing I want to talk solving the problem, because, again, a lot of the times it's easy to fall into the nihilism of being like, well, this is it. Like, I don't know, like, I don't even know. We don't even know who to sue. You've talked about how, like, again, activists have helped to, like, you know, offset or alleviate the cost of like phone calls from prisons, you know, and like actually have made headway there. And like, that's a victory. What are some other specific areas where we are seeing some bit of the clawing back of the fuckery, as it were?

So I think the prison area is really encouraging. So I think the prison area is really encouraging. So, you know, private equity firms bought up prison. Phone companies started charging extremely high rates for these short 15-minute calls. This was a many-year effort to sort of make progress here. Ultimately, you know, they were able, activists were able to get legislation passed in cities, New York and San Francisco, capping rates for phone calls, then passed state legislation in Connecticut, and ultimately passed federal legislation. So they were really, really effective working on this specific issue. Beyond that, there's been really good work on, for

instance, you know, we're talking about nursing homes. There's rulemaking going on right now at the Department of Health and Human Services to try to establish national standards for minimum staffing criteria for nursing homes, which will be absolutely transformative. So I think when activists have chosen really specific issues where the effect on people is clear, I actually think they've been really successful. You know, private equity firms have the money, but activists have the people on their side. And I think they've shown that they've been actually able to get a lot done. Right. So rather than being like, when you're going to pass the down with private equity bill, it's like about kind of getting a little more specific in a way that connects to people.

Because again, like we're saying at the top, just saying the word, it becomes nebulous and abstract. And I'm like, I don't even know. Yeah, 100 even name. Yeah. Yeah. One hundred percent versus shouldn't there be a number like a minimum number of staff in a nursing home? So someone doesn't like like needlessly lose their life and be like, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That part. But then again, is there is there is there a similar thing that gets at the accountability part? Because I think that's the part that really like frustrates me is how easily they can walk and hide behind being like, I don't know. I don't own it. I just tell these funds what to do.

That's where it ends. So I don't know where the buck stops. What are is there like where can people put their energy in terms of like finding that part out or at least making that augmenting that movement a bit? Yeah, no, I think that's a really good question. And, you know, you're talking about private equity being a boring term, like they're working to make it even more boring. A lot of the leading firms now don't even call themselves private equity firms anymore. There are alternative asset managers. So be on the lookout for that. Cool. Yeah. So in terms of what is it where like it wears flannel and has a nose ring and, like, has Doc Martens? Like, yeah, like the alternative rock movement. All asset management, actually.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sort of inheriting the grunge style. And an alt fund, which is kind of like being an alt band in the 90s. Exactly. So they, you know, in terms of sort of the deeper sort of accountability issues, obviously Congress is one sort of avenue and there's important legislation, you know, sort of being proposed there. But I actually think that there are a lot of levers of power here, whether you're talking about federal regulators like the SEC, Treasury, Fed and so forth, but also states and localities. You know, we're talking about some of these tactics that I think can be harmful for companies in the long term, you know,

sale leasebacks, dividend recapitalizations. States could the long term, you know, sale leasebacks, dividend recapitalizations. States could just simply say, you know, we're going to legislate to say if the company's headquartered in our district, you know, in our jurisdiction, you can't do some of these tactics. Or if you do them and the company goes bankrupt, the workers are going to get paid first. And I actually think that there really is interest at the state level on this, but we've got to, you know, folks need to draft up the legislation and there needs to be the push for it. I think that's where the real change is going to happen in the next few years. Right. Towards the end of your book, you talk about different scenarios that the country could take. And some people financially think it's like

Japan in the 80s and 90s, like heading for a financial fall fall and some people think it's like weimar germany and but you kind of say there's also this hopeful possibility that it's like america at the turn of the 20 like 1903 and you know emphasize that we generally today don't recognize how bad it was at that time and how like incremental the changes were. We just see, oh, in the early 20th century, the New Deal happened. So must have been must have been good. There were Gatsby parties and then the New Deal came through in response to how lavish the Gatsby parties were. But it was generations of people working on very specific changes, right, that got us out of that very similar situation

where it was just unregulated capital running roughshod over the country. Yeah, the Gilded Age worked wonderfully for a select few people, but was immiserating for, you know, so many, whether it was the movement to stop the labor movement, to use the antitrust laws to actually break up labor unions, but protect monopolies, the movement actually to rescind suffrage for working class people in New York and the institution of Jim Crow in the South. That was endorsed by the New York Times, I think you said, right? Yeah, yeah. The New York Times endorsed, yeah, rescinding suffrage for, I think, working class white men. So, but, you know, in some ways it was a politics or an economy that's very similar to ours. The trusts of the early 20th century legally are

very similar to how private equity firms work. And a century ago, we managed to constrain the trust. You know, we created the first, you know, the most robust antitrust laws. We created the Federal Trade Commission. We passed labor laws, environmental laws, passed women's suffrage and so forth. It was a time that was really, really transformative for the country and ultimately, you know, sort of set the stage for sort of the greatest moment in American middle class history, you know, the 1940s and 50s. And so if we've done it once, we can do it again. We just need to have the patience and the will to do so. Yeah. Yeah. And a way to offset all the lobbying efforts, which I'm sure if a state starts saying things like, yeah, we're thinking about enacting some laws that would really constrain

private equity, you're just going to start seeing ads like, don't vote for this because we're going to leave your state and you're going to be broke. So don't even think about it. And then off we go. And I think part of that is for people to really understand the threat that this sort of untethered greed operates and how it affects us in ways that are just so tangible. But yet we think are like, again, like for me, it was like, this is so nebulous. I'm like, it's just part of this vast thing of all the money moving in one direction versus also very specific groups of people looking at it in this way. And we're just sort of experiencing the lack of investment on the other side. I wonder how many triangle shirt waste fires it'll take for us to wake up out of this one, because I feel like we're averaging like one a day.

Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, you sort of look at the number of legal tragedies that are happening in private equity portfolio companies, and yet the private equity firms, you know, are rarely held accountable. I will say just, you know, as a workaday, you know, held accountable. I will say just, you know, as a as a workaday, you know, bureaucrat, I will say that don't underestimate your power and influence as a person outside of government. People inside of government listen to complaints. And, you know, if you're saying this is a broken system, this is not working, it really empowers people in a bureaucracy to try, you know, who want to do the right thing to feel like they've got people on their side. So I felt that personally, I know others people do do too. So I, I know that can be a somewhat people respond to. It is an all-out war being waged on the lives of people who aren't extremely wealthy by people who are extremely wealthy. It is that simple. They are taking away comforts and things that people rely on and getting rich off of it. It's pretty, pretty straightforward. And I'm glad you told the story in your book. I'm hoping more,

more and more people kind of continue to tell it. So, and thanks for coming on and talking to us about it. And I got to say, normally I don't talk to the feds, but this has been fantastic. Well, thank you guys so much for the time. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Where can people, can you remind us the name of the book and where people can read it

and all that good stuff? It's Plunder, Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America, and you can buy it anywhere you might buy a book. Perfect. Or Barnes & Noble, also private equity.

I think they might have been. Yeah. Yeah. Brendan Ballou, thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. All right. That was our interview with Brendan. Man, I learned a lot from this book. I feel like, you know how when I read a New Yorker article, I'll like reference it at least five times over the course of the next week. Like this is it's over for you hoes. Like this is all I'm going

to be referencing from now on. Wait, so is this going to push out coal gas study, Havana syndrome? No, those are just the, those are the keepers. Those are the ones that I read. The triune God of your mind. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Those will not be usurped.

But yeah, I, again, I think it, it's, it's so helpful to like be able to be like, that's why these certain things got shitty. Yeah. Or again, obviously... The toy store really fucking did it for me, man. That was the one where I was like, oh yeah, there's no reason there shouldn't be... Like kids still... Children, yeah. I can speak for kids who really still fucking like toys.

I can tell you that much. Now we just have the toy section of target and there are no toy stores and i remember at the end of the toys r us run like going to toys r us to like for a kid's birthday party get get a toy and it was just wildly understaffed and it looked and like it looked like Sears did when it was going out of business. The floors are kind of torn up. They're just like boxes of pallets laying around because they just

are totally understaffed and it makes total sense that they just It's not that these workers are lazy. Right. Exactly. Which is what I was yelling. But you know what? But that is the kind of shit older people would say of course they're like i don't know what the hell happened here these people are so lazy and then you're like no it's being like suck the life sucked out of it from the

inside financially and what you're seeing is like the husk of a once operating business yeah and this is the fact that this is like and like a an epidemic that is across the entire economy like more people are being asked to do more work or fewer people are being asked to do more work like just everywhere and so yeah everybody's going to be like immiserated as you know like i think he used that word and it really you know both on the customer side and on the employee side these companies absolutely spread misery as part of their business model yeah and become billionaires that's the wild part too is like you get you know we talk about all the time how like human life gets reduced to

like a number figure on a spreadsheet and that's truly how these people are looking at it when you have only guys who have finance brain being like yeah yeah i can help operate a health care provider watch this snip snip snip and then you know we just continue to talk about the the ongoing movement of privatization and how that's only going to lead to a fucking disaster yeah it also made me realize too like when i was lobbying for for-profit colleges like how like yeah the for-profit college section is really wild i mean that was the thing that helped loosen my brain to be like i don't i can't be doing this like i can't be consulting like this at all but then really even then the private equity part was a little bit abstract to me sure like i was only thinking the company levels the company yeah yeah yeah

anyway i'm stupid and that's easy to say now but we yeah we're we're all part of this system that has just been attacked invisibly. And this is the first time I've just seen somebody say it out loud, you know, in print, just be like, this is the company. This is what they're doing. It is like the most deeply anti. I don't know. It's just it's it's so clear cut. It just seems wild that nobody said it out loud up to this point. People probably have been. It's wild that I haven't read it to this point. And it's probably because the phrase private equity made my brain go to sleep.

I also blame the New Yorker for not making a cartoon about it. Thank you. Understand. take one more break. We're going to come back and hear from a reader who has some job experience that is somewhat related to this. Seems like it's operating on the same principles. With one of the industries we were just talking about. Yeah. We'll be right back. 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 LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. kind of 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 firsthand 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. How do you feel about this, kids? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits.

I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? The Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels with the image of the biscuits. It's right here in black and white in print. A lion. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch is a leader. You choose hills that you want to die on. Why would we want to be the losing team?

I'd just take all the other stuff out of it. Segregation academies. When civil rights said that we need to integrate public schools, these charter schools were exempt from that. Bigger than a flag or mascot. You have to be ready for serious backlash. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello, everyone. I am Lacey Lamar. And I'm Amber Ruffin, a better Lacey Lamar. Boo. Okay, everybody, we have exciting news to share. We're back with season two of the Amber and Lacey, Lacey and Amber show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network. You thought you had fun last season? Well, you were right. And you should tune in today for new fun segments like Sister Court and listening to Lacey's steamy DMs. We've got new and exciting guests like

Michael Beach. That's my husband. Daphne Spring, Daniel Thrasher, Peppermint, Morgan J., and more. You gotta watch us. No, you mean you have to listen to us. I mean, you can still watch us, but you gotta listen. Like, if you're watching us, you have to tell us. Like, if

you're out the window, you have to say, hey, I'm watching you outside of the window. Just, 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. and we're back and the un's annual world drug report which i hadn't been paying attention to but now we'll anticipate uh every year when it comes out uh was released the biggest mover this year you guessed it folks it's cocaine rising up the charts yeah yeah i mean i guess traditionally the main markets were north america western central europe now in this report they're like it's fucking everywhere now like it's people are starting to use it more in africa southeast asia southeastern europe uh use is at an all-time

high like sometimes they would see like it ebb and flow. Now, they're just like, it's all upward arrows. Consumption's up, production's up, and it's the 80s, baby. There's cocaine everywhere. And I guess traditionally, no, I'm sorry. Even though production is at an all-time high, they're also saying seizures are actually outpacing production. So mark one up for the drug war. But yeah, apparently this has only led to like the drug traffickers to go next level with the chemistry. Now, in my mind, the last time I was like watching drug documentaries, it was like probably about like eight, like eighties or nineties, or if you were just like smuggling them in little tchotchkes and stuff or like on a janky submarine, but they've stepped the game up traffickers are now

quote increasingly smuggling cocaine based by dissolving it into plastic and charcoal objects because it's much harder to detect then they set up super labs in europe where they extract the cocaine base out of those materials and turn it into powder i feel like this is going to be huge for push it t's next album like he has so much material to work with oh yeah like he's like hold on plastic and charcoal objects right scanners x-rays and canines usually can't detect cocaine that's been smuggled in this manner and they said now there are clandestine chemists can use certain chemicals to quote lock the cocaine into the carrier product making it impossible to retrieve the drug without knowing which chemical to use. Wow.

I was. Whoa. Yeah. I mean, this is like Cheech and Chong made their whole van out of the weed. Right. Can't arrest us if it's the whole van. Can't find the weed. Nice try, asshole. This whole van's weed.

Let us go. But yeah, I mean, it's again, this is just like some next level trafficking thing I didn't realize. But yeah, I feel like the use of cocaine is I feel like like where was I recently? I was traveling somewhere and like people were talking about cocaine in a way that I was like, what the fuck? Like, in my mind, cocaine users were like city folk who right just getting off a break from you know the trading floor wall street and now it's in all the corners of the earth yeah the guy when you're like checking out of the gas station is like you're do you want some cocaine or do you have any cocaine that i could i noticed you seem to be from the city right right right uh so so

they put all like they got scientists working on you know it's breaking bad and they got like you know they're they're spending weeks you know putting all the formulas together and then they have a secret formula you know that turns it into a plastic bottle and then you've got to have a secret formula that turns it back into and then as soon as it gets into some dealer's hand he's like why don't i shake a little baby powder in here right right a little fentanyl and like let's see if i can just cut it up some laxative it all works yeah i get some pencil shavings the real question is where do these chemists get all the energy to come up with this stuff can you imagine like what what's the arc of that okay it's too like it's like a chemist who is super promising

and then it's like, I also got a bad coke problem, man. So I think I'm just going to switch gears and start working for them. Because I got some ideas, man. And join my drug dealer. Yeah. I don't know.

It makes sense overall, given what we're dealing with, given what we taught in our special interview expert episode yesterday, like what private equity is doing, where they're just taking over every business in the country and cutting staffing so that everybody just has to work like twice as hard it makes sense that the drug of the moment would be something that gives people the energy to keep up with this right as we all just become like husks of a human existence and it's like how about this for a little animation yeah but yeah it's back in a big way folks big way oh you know that fentanyl is the leading cause of death for men between 18 and 49 leading bleeding that's incredible that's horrible yeah i mean that's the other thing that fucking like this story like a lot of people i i've known people who died from trying to do cocaine and they're being fentanyl in it. Like that's happening a lot now.

Yeah. And I think also like to your point about we've talked about like just deaths of despair. That's like a whole category of death that like we're not actually reckoning with. And yeah, just again, like adding to this feeling of, oh, society's creeping into like this weird like stop in a weird way. But, you know, when you look at the, like, again, I hate to keep talking about private equity, but like when you think about how much job loss and access to wealth or things, uh, that are cut off from these kinds of like business moves and the effects it has on people,

especially people who are like, you know, like need to work to survive all adding to like this, this background hum of like, but what about the teenagers, guys? How do the young teenagers keep up in this world? If they don't have access to cocaine, how are they to keep up in this world

where private equity is smashing everybody down? Are you pitching us a business? I am. It's called Adderall. Well, there's that. But what if you can't get access? There is a shortage of that. And that's where my good friend Logan Paul comes in. I want to tell you guys about Prime. it became like the tickle me Elmo of last year. Like it was just,

there weren't enough of it. And, um, people were, there were, there are reports of people having a bottle, keeping the empty bottle, and then like charging people a hundred dollars to take a picture with the

empty bottle for social media purposes, because you just like, couldn't get access to the drink the so dystopian for sure it's the the drink has the legally the i i have to think this is the maximum legal amount of caffeine that you can put in something, 200 milligrams of caffeine. That seems to be where every highly caffeinated drink or product maxes out at, at 200 milligrams. But that is what they're giving children in kind of small doses.

I know you're the caffeine fact god. How does that rank? Because every time we talk about caffeinated drinks, I was like, how many milligrams? Because you kind of have an idea. What's a cup of coffee? So Celsius is the other one that is maxed out at 200 milligrams. At 200? Nothing has more than

200 as far as I know. And even caffeine pills have 200 milligrams. What's a Coca-Cola got? Coca-Cola is like in the 30s usually i think or 40s i think diet coke is in the 60s and and even and like mountain dew i i don't think it even cracks a hundred but yeah these are oh they're saying it has twice as much as red bull yeah yeah yeah okay it's cool have you seen the videos though where people like to your point

about how like it's become the most sought after thing like people are stunting on tiktok with how much fucking like prime they have in their fridge no yes like this kind of shit people are like what's in my fridge all prime bro like it looks like for my grab and goes for my kids if they don't have time to make a protein drink or an electrolyte drink before they leave for their practices for their sports they play i like these prime drinks because if you look at they don't have any artificial colors they're naturally flavored they have bcaas they also have electrolytes that come from coconut water and they only have two grams of sugar. But but 200 milligrams of fucking caffeine.

Anyway, so like there's I've seen so many videos like this where there's like families being like, we got the icy pop. We got cherry. And it's like you think people are doing like a money phone type thing with the amount of prime. Yeah, this is the new money phone is just having a fucking prime. So this is like uh you know you throw some vodka in there some whiskey in there and you'll have a hard failure right that's yeah but that's like young people they don't they don't fuck with alcoholic beverages they just oh they got all the good pills you're right yeah they're just slamming borgs dude god young people laugh

at us with how we try to get high yeah young oh yeah because they're like these motherfuckers are dead like they're trying to die like look at how they partied in the fucking yeah i get high through this weird music i listen to right like i don't get high if my headphones run out of batteries that's when i'm in a bad way you've got the fucking shakes i get high from getting my friend's pronouns right thank you boom thank you sir you honor us you fucking shakes i get high from getting my friend's pronouns right thank you boom thank you sir you honor us you're welcome i nailed you both so i mean you you are counting on teenagers to consume like one of these a day which i just can't imagine that's going to happen and

like there's there's all sorts of laws in place or like that people have tried to put laws in place. Like in 2017 in South Carolina, a teenager died due to a caffeine-induced cardiac event causing probable arrhythmia. Countries like Lithuania and Latvia already have active bans on energy drinks that have this much caffeine in them. But here in the U.S., back in 1980, the FDA attempted to crack down on caffeine and soda. But the soda companies, who you might recognize as having a little bit more money than the FDA, argued caffeine wasn't actually a psychoactive drug

and therefore subject to regulation. Rather, caffeine is a flavor enhancer. A? Tell me, what exactly does caffeine taste like yeah like is there some like a soda sommelier who's like oh wow finishes very strongly with caffeine like they did they were they even able to say like it it enhances this flavor they're just saying no it's in it's in the category of flavor enhancer yeah they're just lying i think yeah surge had 68 by the way yeah 68 not even shit that's more than uh this one says more than mountain dew yeah i think mountain dew has crept up into the 70s but i could be wrong yeah this

is 54 but i don't know i just just got two different numbers for surge also. So I don't know. It's hard to know. Is it Caffeine Informer? That's my go-to. No, I'm using... That's my website. Google.

Google. Okay. Yeah. It's CSPINet. But anyway, you have to get an annual subscription to Caffeine Informer to really know the fact. Oh, for sure. No, I had my dad's login.

Oh, good. But so stimulant medication with caffeine obviously has to include warnings, but energy drinks, which have far more caffeine, are somehow free to market themselves with no warnings at all or were for a long time. I think that might be changing. A Senate investigation began looking into these drinks and specifically how they market their products to teenagers like Monster and Rockstar and decided that their products were actually foods, not dietary supplements after all. Oh, OK.

So Prime didn't originate the problem, but it's like really at the outer limits of how much caffeine you can put in a product and how much you can market yourself to teenagers they're doing that too so like when kids drink it they're like oh this shit is fucking hitting you know what i mean because like as you have access to like red bull or fucking monster and shit but then you come through with something with twice that. Yeah. Like, it feels like the intention is to get the consumers to talk about how this new fucking bag is just hitting. Oh, of course. Yeah.

Yeah, and you're not getting it and just drinking one. Right. Like, you're probably going to, like, try to, you know. Be stupid with it. You're trying to get somewhere. Right. Trying to get somewhere, man. I want a full

personality change. I want to have a different personality after I'm done drinking. I want to drink enough that I'm on fentanyl. It's wild. Just yesterday, KSI and Logan Paul were in Copenhagen promoting the drink. Wow. And a lot of people

suspect it may have been set up kind of marketing because a bunch of like their fans just started throwing prime at them. Oh, wow. Like, like they were getting doused with it. And like, even on TMZ, they're like, like, who knows about histrionics? They're like, and it could just be a very clever way to get us talking about this because here we are was kind of the literal like what was written in the article um so i don't know but yeah they it's fucking everywhere like europe it's really popular they ksi is like a huge arsenal fan and somehow arsenal got him like there's like prime branding around the football club and i'm like this is fucking bad dude it truly seems like just taking a like noose caffeine pill and water but with branding added on to it all right tell me if you think this is real this is them at their prime tour and they're getting somehow suddenly the crowd turns on them they're getting doused but everyone's like laughing like the security's even like all right that was a good bit i know nothing bad is actually happening yeah you can't bring european security in on your bits

come on it's hard to connect with your like idols and sometimes the only thing you can do because the distance is just hit them with something and then be like yeah me and logan paul hung out today yeah we had a laugh yeah we had a nice little yeah wow people keep throwing it at them there's like multiple things i wonder prime just turns people into fucking animals and they're like we love it man yeah you know anything like you give the fans on like whatever day at the ballpark is going to end up on the field on the field yeah yeah oh this is a bobblehead right yeah right right because that'll end up on ebay yeah it's weird how like you can go to dodger game and like if it's a if it's a

bad night these are going on the field other things you're like they're never throwing bobbleheads they never do like a snowstorm of inflatable bats? Yeah. Oh, speaking of dropping your baby, I didn't recently at Dodger Stadium, but I regret it. You regret not dropping your baby? Because I had this moment. I had a SportsCenter moment, and I failed. Oh, to catch a fly ball? I had my baby in my arms.

The fly ball came directly towards me. Yeah. I put out my right hand it hit me in the palm and i dropped it oh if i'd had two hands 100 catch yeah and you told your you told your son that right it dropped well i will i'm waiting until you can understand me but i'm gonna fucking ream them out so the ball dropped and i went for it but some lady scooped it up beforehand again i still have the kid in my arms. So then the lady heard my story.

Kid's first baseball game. Gave us the ball. Gave you the ball. But it's still not as good of a story as it could be. You know that doesn't make you a man, right? Because you would have caught that shit. I don't care. Buddy, I mean, I know.

That's why I can't tell the story without it being sad. Nick is... I'm just going to... You just lie to your son. What about this baseball? Oh, you should have seen it. I'm going to tell him he caught it. Yeah. Well, yeah.

I was going to say it would be like a hyper, extreme, prime version of the choose the ball or choose death scene from... You got to catch this ball kid because it's public too it didn't get on tv but i had a friend in the stadium who saw it wow that was in front of me that i just found out about two days ago there must have been a collective like holding of breath when people saw a foul ball speeding at you while you were holding a baby right right? Like, was there a... It's hard to gauge. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

It's like, yeah, they were all relieved when I just dropped it. Yeah. Good. Well, that's... You would have been the wrong kind of on SportsCenter if you had chosen otherwise. Yeah, I would have made it to the real news. I commend you. 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. It means the world to Miles. 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 Tahiripour.

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 4 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. Caitlin 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.