The Daily Zeitgeist - Weekly Zeitgeist 3 (Best of 12/04/17-12/08/17)

Episode Date: December 10, 2017

The weekly round up of the best moments from DZ's Season 9 (12/04/17-12/08/17) Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're doing all the dessert. We're doing all the dessert. We'll just skip right to it. Our second season is airing right now,

so you can catch up on our conversations that are intimate and often hilarious. Listen to Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the podcast from Hello Sunshine that's guaranteed to light up your day.

Check out our recent episode with dancer, actress, and host of Dancing with the Stars, Julianne Hough, revealing the healing journey behind her new novel, Everything We Never Knew. I am showing up for my younger self, and it is becoming a ripple effect energetically in my life, and that's why I feel so safe now. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse

Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, the internet, and welcome to this episode of the weekly Zeitgeist. These are some of our favorite segments from this week, all edited together into one nonstop infotainment laugh extravaganza. So without further ado, here is the weekly zeitgeist. We always like to have our guests do a little myth busting because, you know, the zeitgeist is full of myths and culture is full of myths. And Howard, is there something from your experience like a cultural myth or phenomenon that you can kind of take down for us today well yes um i'm originally from the state of new jersey

hey the garden state that's it and a lot of people when the uh show jersey shore came out right they go oh that's what new jersey is like right and then there's a backlash because people like that's not what New Jersey is like. But that is what New Jersey is like. So you're here to eliminate the myth that New Jersey is not like the Jersey Shore because it's exactly like the Jersey Shore? Well, let's say this. Those people are everywhere. You can't escape those people.

So they're not the only tribe of people there, but they are everywhere. And so they definitely affect daily life every day. And the way those guys are, the animal way in which they behave and stuff, that's everywhere. But it's not really a bad thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like when you're there and you live there, it's just kind of funny. So you weren't there with the fist pumping, gelled hair guys. What was your tribe in Jersey? Oh, I was just like, uh, just like me and two friends that like punk rock.

Like there was just like, there was nobody else who liked it. Just an entire state. It was just you three holding it down. Pretty much. I mean, there was one guy like three towns away who had his hair spiked up like there was just like and you heard about him you're like hey yeah the guy in red bay yeah exactly hair yeah i've seen him yeah amazing amazing yeah i grew up in that red bank area so that's yeah oh okay see i only know that because i'm a huge kevin smith fan oh okay

knowing that area is like oh what's going on in red bank new jersey yeah yeah my sister lives like a mile from that comic book store oh nice and springsteen lives over there it's like real big springsteen country well and another thing too is i was before we started i i was saying i'm from the san fernando valley which is like la's version of new jersey where people who live in la proper like to say shitty things about the valley right right so to people like what happens when you meet people who don't know anything about New York, New Jersey and just go, oh, you're from Jersey? Yeah, yeah.

Do you have like a built-in defense mechanism or a statement you give? Like I'm not defensive about it because I wasn't super like into being there. Like I listened to Born to Run. Baby, this town rips the bones from your back. It's a death trap. It's a suicide rap we gotta get out

while we're young i was like that's right so yeah i guess so jersey is a terrible place it's not terrible but i i don't i'm glad i'm from there but i wouldn't go back just for even the weather now that i'm used to the weather out here gotcha but um yeah i don't defend defend it. It is what it is. We're just going to talk about taxes real quick. We don't have time or infinite energy to get into all the many, many details. You know, the tax plan that they are passing through is probably going to repeal the individual mandate. So they're taking money that would be spent on health care for, you know, millions of people that are in need who cannot afford health care, cannot afford health care and moving it elsewhere. But there was a really revealing quote from Iowa Senator Chuck

Grassley, one of the just most egregious parts of this, and it's not one of the details that is actually going to cost people all that much money, but they are repealing what's called the death tax, the inheritance tax, which is basically a tax on the 5000 highest income Americans. highest income Americans. So people who when they die are leaving behind over I think $11 million. That money is extra taxed because that's a shitload of money that you did nothing for. Right. You did nothing for. And the logic that Chuck Grassley used to explain it was pretty amazing. He said, quote, I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing. This is in a quote to the Des Moines Register. He said, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it's on booze or women or movies. So what he's saying there is we're giving money to people who will invest it, these people who are inheriting millions of dollars from their parents and have never had to work for that money at all. And we're taking it away from people who – and this is how he views the rest of us, basically, the rest of the world, or people who spend their money on booze, women, or movies.

Movies is such a weird throw in there. That's the odd man out of history. Well, they are expensive these days. That is true. Maybe he's trying to circle back and just take a slam. It's like, oh, $20 to go to the movies? It's a setup movie. I remember what he used to cost a nickel.

Right. Which, by the way, is the only money you'll be getting getting you'll be getting paid in nickels from now on thanks to the new republican tax plan um so it really gets at what is wrong with a lot of the logic with this tax plan so people who invest their money he's talking about you know stocks and you know, stocks and, you know, the market. 51% of families in America own stocks in 2016, which is, you know, not that bad. But when you look at how much is owned by the richest, the top 1% of households by wealth owned 38% of all stock shares. 1% of households own 38%. 1% of households own 38%. So he's saying we need to give more money to that top 1% so that they can invest it.

But that only helps them and the stock market. And it's all part of this idea that by making the obscenely rich more obscenely rich, you're going to stimulate the economy somehow but i mean as the estate tax and their anger at the estate tax proves they just want to keep the money for themselves and for the people in their family yeah there's nothing about upward mobility or anything in this bill like right when you look at like boom and bust cycles of the economy like we're in a good time right now and unemployment's low the stock market's doing great rich people are getting fucking richer yeah a tax cut is like the absolute opposite of what is normal there's already insane problems with you know wealth distribution yeah the top 20 percent of americans own 92 percent of the stock so right that money is not going it's not going yet well we need to talk about also this there's a guy named Matt Brunick, who's a

fantastic writer. You should follow him if you're still in hell on Twitter. He runs a leftist think tank called the People's Policy Project. And he talks a lot about the passivity of income, the idea that when you talk about investing, because we're not taught this in schools and the Democrats have done a really poor job of like ideologically talking about what exactly is an investment and this idea that these people are simply creating wealth by having wealth. There's no work. There's no motivation. There's nothing that benefits society. You're not creating a product.

You're not creating a service and you're not putting this money back into the economy. What it is is welfare. What it is is we need to start looking at things like this the way that the Republicans have gotten white, lower class, working class, middle class people to look at welfare moms and food stamps and shit like that. That's what this is. This is just a band-aid to allow people who don't work to not work more. And it's way worse than welfare because you see welfare be put back into the economy. Right, right, right. These people that need food stamps aren't sitting on their food stamps.

They're not like, oh, I got a mad collection of EBT cards. Yeah, look at all these rollover dollars. Yeah, that's a very pervasive myth, the idea that people on welfare just sit back and collect welfare and spend it on booze, women, and movies. But then you look at the money, like what, the extra $9 million that somebody is going to get because their fucking uncle died. How are they going to spend that money? They're going to fucking sit on it. You know about the – my favorite thing is the one Koch brother who's the least evil coke brother the one that's greg fred i think is his name the one they thought was gay because he right like didn't enjoy just

smashing people right so he owns a tiny town did you know that he owns like a western ghost town and he just like walks around in his ghost town as, like, sheriff of Tiny Town. Really? Yeah, 100%. Talk about nerds. Is it Tiny Town, like, are the people there small? I don't – I just call it Tiny Town because it's so funny to think of it. But he has, like, a little set-up western town. It's a ghost town.

It's, like, an old west town. And I don't know if he, like, hires people to, like, cosplay Westworld and shit in there. That's amazing. But, yeah, if you look up, like, Koch Brothers ghost town uh and it's like okay how is this helping giving this dude enough money to create fucking west world just for himself he's creating ghost jobs though yeah that ghost town that town didn't see jobs and who knows how long ghost jobs there haven't been ghost jobs in here in 40 years that was me mr well but yeah again the other thing too is just to think, again, we're in a good time, right? The economy is strong.

We can afford to invest this money in infrastructure or things that we sorely need, which actually creates jobs, which actually creates some kind of wealth for other people. That's why it's so crazy to try and wrap your head around what the motivations are of the people in the Senate. Oh, it's easy to wrap your head around it. They just want to be rich and they want their friends to pay them to be rich. That maybe makes me just such an out there stupid idiot that I just feel like that's wrong. But I'm like, how could you look at other people and be like,

nah, fam, we're going to fucking sit on this money and just keep it to ourselves. I think it's easy because that's how the system works. Lindsey Graham himself said, we need to get this passed or else our donors won't return our phone calls. Right. He just outright admitted it because I don't think anybody. You've lost your fucking humanity.

That's how the system works. But you think about it. Right. So, like, maybe, maybe some senators used to be poor. Maybe. Right. I'm going to say a small amount of them used to be poor. Or was surprisingly so how long though has he been 900 years he's been exactly exactly so you get to this place and and we were talking about with like my critique of tina fey where it's

like these people only see other rich people and in the beltway is so insular right that they only see rich media people uh and and that's why they all hang out and party with each other. Because this is all a joke. Because they don't ever see, none of their kids are addicted to opiates and they're not losing their houses. And if they are, they're probably keeping it quiet and getting them the best treatment possible. Exactly.

Because they can afford it because of their wonderful health insurance. Yeah. And so it's this idea of like, we don't have any bearing – like we don't see the outcome of this because everything is such a perfectly carefully staged photo op with their constituents, which is what made the healthcare thing so great is these town halls. Like for the first time in my lifetime, people showed up and like treated politicians how they're supposed to be treated. Like greedy fucks. Yeah. You're supposed to hate your boss. You're supposed to hate your local politicians.

You're not supposed to love politicians. And like that's been a big problem of america and i think trump's helping us with that that's the one good thing he's done right yeah no nobody's gonna be like ah i love the president yeah you're supposed to hate the president roy moore uh have you heard about this guy uh this roy moore fella he's a cowboy right fighting for the for the for the underdog i don't know much else about him so we have some great audio of interviews with his spokesperson because i feel like they have they're creating new levels of like logic puzzles of like how to deny something uh it's it's actually somewhat impressive so we're going to listen listen to his spokeswoman talking to a CNN reporter. He left the room and came back in wearing his white underwear. And he touched me over my clothing,

what was left of it. And he tried to get me to touch him as well. Do you believe her? I don't believe her at all, and I'll tell you why. Not only was she sought after by the Washington Post, her own mother doesn't believe elements of her story. We need to make it clear that there's a group of non-accusers that have not accused the judge of any sexual misconduct or anything illegal. So, yeah, that was edited. That was her initial, you know, rebuttal.

And then we moved forward to her second argument, her second defense, which is, but look at all the women who haven't accused him of rape. Yeah. There's like billions. Yeah. That would put that. That's a big number. Yeah. If we're talking, you know, dead and alive.

That's trillions of women. I think he's fine. Yeah. God, people that haven't accused him. Mother Teresa. Right. Princess Diana. Yeah, lots of famous ones.

Never made a move on the princess. Who didn't like the princess? Right. So that's – I mean, yeah. What the – like, that's the kind of shit – like, that's literally from The Simpsons. Yeah. Where, like, Milhouse was, like, wearing a tutu, and he was like, Bart, but what about the times I didn't wear a tutu?

Like, that – yeah, we're, like, we're entering territory where, like, these used to be jokes. Yeah. Right. Like, when you had, like, a shitty lawyer or something. Right. Joke logic. Yeah, people are using, applying this in real life. That is fucking scary.

Yeah, they just need his vote so bad that it's just, at this point, you know, the comedy writer in me just wants him to be on camera just masturbating and talking about his lovely penis tattoos. Say Jesus the Lord or whatever. God is my shepherd or whatever. And just to see what they have to – because they're just in this position where they have to. To defend him. They have to defend him. And they're all in.

The RNC has gone ahead and endorsed him. Mitch McConnell walked it back, too. It's pretty disturbing. They're like, look, what's more important? These tax cuts. Women's lives, these tax cuts for the 1%. Yeah, Mitch McConnell did the old, the people of Alabama have to decide. Let the people of Alabama decide.

Trump came in and officially endorsed him, as did the RNC. Trump came in and officially endorsed him, as did the RNC. The Hill just released an Alabama poll saying Jones actually – so his opponent actually leads more by four points according to one Alabama poll. But a lot of polls that we've been hearing from – Was it like 52 to 48 or something? That's the first one I've heard with him in the league. Yeah, that is – 48 to 44. There was another one that DeRay McKesson retweeted. It was like an image where the math added up to 104%.

It was like 56 to 48. They're giving their all. They're almost to 110%. Yeah, right. You know, as a coach would say. And then later on in that interview, I think in the beginning of that interview with Poppy Harlow of CNN, the spokeswoman just comes out swinging, like to preempt everything. So I think this is a clip because Poppy Harlow is pregnant, for those that don't know. So this plays into what Roy Moore's spokeswoman was saying to her to start that interview.

And let me get right to it. Thank you. It's great to be with you. And by the way, congratulations on your unborn child. That's the reason why I came down as a volunteer to speak for Judge Ray Moore, because he'll stand for the rights of babies like yours in the womb, where his opponent will support killing them up until the moment of birth. Right. Who will actually come for your fetus.

I don't know if you've interviewed him, but he will actively try and kill your fetus. Extract your fetus and spike it like a football. And that's the double standard they're creating, as if that's with the left's agenda. It's like, yeah, okay, he molested little girls, sure. But they want to come and end your pregnancy. No one wants that. Nobody wants that. Abortion works, you guys?

No. I mean, look, the election is, what, a week from today? So let's let the people of Alabama decide. Show us that you're on the right side of Alabama. Come on now. Please do not vote for a rumor. He the right side of Alabama. Come on now. Please. He was banned from a mall. From a mall.

It's like classic pedophile stuff. That's insane. Not allowed in a mall, near schools, or near circuses. Weed dealers don't even get banned from the mall. They're just like, I don't want to see you hanging around this part. I don't want that smell coming off your trash. If you're smart, you work at Brookstone, Papi. Come on.

You leave the weed bag in the massage chair, you come in, you sit, you leave your 20, and you're out. Come on. Stash box. He doesn't know how to do this. Y'all didn't sell weed at the mall? Come on now. Come on, we gave you the college football playoffs, Alabama.

Yes, come on. Just give us this one. Give us a Democratic senator. Give the rest of the country a fucking win. Yeah. All right, we got to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist Thank you. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks.

Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the

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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 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. Enough of the dark stuff. Let's talk about one of the most horrifying scenarios facing the world right now. We wanted to talk about artificial intelligence and this sort of looming... Stanley Kubrick, what a neckbeard. This sort of looming possibility that artificial intelligence is going to take over jobs. There are some estimates that say 73 million jobs in the United States could be replaced by robots in the not too distant future. Jobs that, you know,

I didn't think could be like accountant and like tax preparer and stuff like that like stuff that i assumed was pretty complicated uh they're saying could potentially be taken over by artificial intelligence um like tax preparation is like i think one of the most vulnerable ones yeah like because we already use turbo tax right already not fucking with walking into a h&r block i'm like hi can you do something with this hello can you help me please? I am dumb about numbers. Which you can actually even tell because the way they're spending money on their advertisements is crazy. Like the celebrities that they have in these like tax preparation commercials, you're like,

what is going on? You're like, oh, they're in their death throes. Yeah. So they're doing anything they can. Right. H&R Blockbuster video, dude. And the idea is basically, so you take a company that has lots of human capital like H&R Block and you replace it with a company that is just a guy that programmed a thing. And so all this money that was going to all these tax attorneys and accountants is now going to like two tech trillionaires.

So one side of the equation is this could be the apocalypse and we're not going to have employment in the future. And what are we going to do? It's going to look like an 80s dystopian sci-fi future. But then another side, I read an Economist article that was like, yeah, but you can actually pull out articles from the late 19th century and other times throughout history where people thought the same thing was going to happen. Yeah, like the Luddites were fucking smashing up printing presses. You know, instead of technology just taking over the world and everybody losing their job, what happened was technology took over certain jobs, but it created different jobs. So some people like The Economist in this article I recently read argues that that's what will continue to happen. We won't have a complete break from history.

AI will just take the jobs that exist now, create new jobs that we can't possibly conceive of. But there are reasons to think that might not be the case this time around. distribution jobs and they're not replacing them you know they become multi-billion dollar companies that you know six shareholders get really rich and you know that could be run by a handful of people but the difference that i see is that the luddites didn't know shit about printing presses they just came in they were like a sex those like this thing yeah whereas uh the people who are saying that we need to start thinking about this possibility are the people who know the most. Right. It's like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. It's like the people who are like, oh, you guys don't know what we can do.

Yeah. Like this is coming. You're like, because I'm looking at it and I'm fucking scared. Right. Yeah. I just made it and I'm fucking tripping hard. I fucked up really bad. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I just made it and I'm fucking tripping. I fucked up really bad. Yeah. There's a great New Yorker article from a couple of months ago about how Silicon Valley millionaires and billionaires have all taken to survivalism.

They're all like, you know, building these island fortresses because I think there is a nascent understanding that this is coming uh they take so many of the jobs that there's just an entire hungry underclass that needs to be fed and it will look like world war z except those zombies are fucking just hungry yeah right just fucking coming through your city right yeah so some of the solutions to this that have been suggested are nukes. Nukes. Just end it all. Or universal basic income. Yeah.

Which is – it's something that's been tested out. But Josh, as a leftist, as our resident leftist, can you explain the idea of UBI? Sure. And granted, I'm not an expert, but I've read a lot of articles. That makes you an expert on this show. Hell yeah, dude. So UBI, it was in a series of books by James S.A. articles. That makes you an expert on this show. Hell yeah, dude. So UBI, it was in a series of books by James S.A. Corey. It's the first time I saw it.

But the idea that we are rich enough to give everybody essentially negative tax. Instead of you paying money in taxes, everybody gets like a median standard of living income, 30 grand, let's say. Let's put it at 30 grand. The idea being that the reason why we created these robots is so that we as a society could be benefited and wouldn't have to toil all day in a society dominated by work for work's sake. And that's what you're seeing now in late capitalism is, I mean, I know everybody that's listening to this has or currently is doing a job that is mostly redundant, where, you know, you're just like, I don't need to be doing this technically, or I could be doing this from home remotely. And we're all just kind of just going through the motions. And so the idea would be like, there is enough food for everybody.

There's enough fucking money for everybody. And UBI is sort of an attempt to level the playing field to be like, okay, well, if you just are an existing person, part of your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is a fucking house and heating and air conditioning and a fucking food and yeah, just enough money for basic survival yeah so wait how does the math work like where's the money come from that gets distributed so first and foremost the pockets of the super wealthy um that there would be a progressive tax they would reinstitute things like the fucking estate tax and shit that just makes sense and then there's so

much money in our military budget. We spend two times as much, I believe, as China, which is our next competitor. And so if we halved our security budget, we would still be spending significantly more than any other country. And all of that money could go where it belongs, which is into making people's lives better so between um progressive taxes on the wealthy wealthy wealthiest closing corporate loopholes like the fucking panama paper shit um actually enforcing that stuff and then um like lowering the military budget by like even you know a fraction you can easily get thirty thousand dollars for each American. And it works when it happens. You see in Alaska, for example, everybody has a universal basic income because of oil money that comes through there.

So that all gets split among everybody. And Alaska is super fucking Republican. But you try to take that away from them and they'll lose their goddamn minds. It's literally the most socialist thing that's ever happened in Alaska. Right. And the people of Alaska love it. Think of it like social security, but for your life. Wait, they get distributions on the oil?

Yeah. That's pumped out of there? That's pretty awesome. Everybody gets a check. And you see it happen in, like, right now there's a lot of tech people that are experimenting with this because they see the writing on the wall that we deserve this. Like the fruits of our labor have produced this excess time, this surplus of time. So what do people do when they have time?

countries where, based on what I've read, the outcomes of these studies are people are better parents and more integrated in their community and start gardening and doing all these things that make their communities better when they're not, newsflash, chained to a fucking desk all day. Well, and most people spend their money because they hate their job so much in just whatever ways they can to sort of distance themselves from the toil, as you say. Exactly. And I think, yeah, another thing about the UBI is like it's to sort of distangle this connection between work and quality of life. Yes.

Because that's what we're all – whatever your job is, that's going to determine your quality of life. Right. And this is to say, let's set a base standard of quality of life. Right. And then around that – And here's the thing. You mentioned like what your job is is your quality of life and that presupposes all of the privilege inherent in why people get certain jobs. You know what I mean?

And the idea of like, oh, yeah, well, I work at a bank, so I have a lot of money. How did you get to that bank? Where were you set up? Where were you given a head start that gets you? And this exactly like you said levels the playing field and makes it so that literally everybody i mean this attacks poverty at the core and not just symptoms of poverty like something like an earned income tax credit would go after that's something that the democrats have means tested to be like oh if you're making under fifteen thousand dollars then you get this but if you make over fifteen thousand dollars you get and

and it's all this convoluted you know obamacare fucking shit um this is just like social security and that everybody fucking gets it and everybody starts at the same place right so that you can go be a doctor and cure cancer or go write the most beautiful fucking concerto or raise a happy family you know not worry about how you're going to do that right and the one thing that you never see in these stories is uh somebody going like yeah i started heroin you know right nobody just like sits back and just does nothing because as human beings we are social creatures and we crave you know cooperation and so this is like a huge blow in the idea of cooperation versus competition and that myth is out there that, you know, of the welfare queen, these people who, you know, are on the dole and just sit back and they become, you know,

drug addicts. And, you know, there's a famous story where old dirty bastard, like, as he was, like, cashing his checks for like his, you know, number one selling album, like went and cashed his welfare check. And I think those stories are famous because, like for a reason, because powerful people don't want us to think that sitting back and having money handed to us is a valid way for a society to function. But actually, when you look at how charities work in other countries, when you just give people money, this is like the one thing that charities never do, because charities, it's more fun to be like, oh, I gave this farmer a cow. And like, isn't that clever that I was able to do that? If you instead give that farmer $30,

or however much a cow costs, I'm way out of the cow market in Africa. Wow, you just showed your ass. But, you know, that is actually way more beneficial to him because he can, you know, he knows what he needs. Exactly. He knows what the job... He's like, I don't need a fucking cow.

I need water. I need a fucking cell phone. I need a shovel to dig for fucking water. I need a fucking cow right i need yeah i need a fucking i need a shovel to dig for fucking water i need a cell phone to call yeah right and so i mean that's just been shown time and again that if you give people cash that they they know what to do with it and they're rarely going to just sit back and you know be shitty citizens right i'm sure there are people who are just yeah there are but that's not the majority or necessarily a large share of it and that also has nothing to do with class right that's a it's an internal like borderline personality disorder or whatever you know that that's there's just as many fucking rich people that would just sit

around we're just like oh i'm gonna spend everything right yeah so yeah uh you know there's this idea that maybe we will be existing in a post-work world uh fairly soon uh we should and i mean we're kind of like facebook is a good example of this because you know it's taken over how we get our information completely and you know there are very few people getting rich off of that. And also you were talking about like where you get your head start. All of these Internet, you know, monopolies were built on the back of tax funded government. The government created the Internet and laid the foundation for the Internet. So like this is all stuff that, know the public invested in and then a handful

of people are becoming billionaires off of it so uh you know the idea that the public should get money back yeah is not insane or as insane as it might sound we foot the bill we foot the bill for the bailouts we foot the bill for you know like you said starting the fucking internet that all came from our tax dollars and then we don't reap any of the benefits. And another interesting point that you made was the idea that like this post-work world – like I was thinking about it. And really it's only been a couple lifetimes that capitalism as we know it where like your job is tied to your standard of living like is the case like you know i mean you go you only have to go back a couple generations to the idea of feudalism of you know like like can you imagine a feudalist like looking at like the liberalism

that swept napoleonic europe and and just being I don't know, if we give these reforms to the people, there's going to be some fucking crazy shit that happens. And it's just, you're in the way of progress. And now that we have more information and more power and more resources than ever before, these switches are going to happen faster. And these things are going to evolve faster. And we need to let them evolve. The thing that scares me, though, and this is not to be negative about UBIBI necessarily because it's so much better than anything else we have on the table right now.

The thing that scares me is a Huey Long situation. Do you know Huey Long, the kingfish? Yeah. of you that don't know basically here was this guy who is the governor of louisiana who saw that rural white folks in louisiana weren't learning how to read because the schools charged for books so he nationalized basically whatever he he put the bill for all the books taught an entire generation of people how to read uh and then like put in electricity in the rural areas and everybody fucking loved him because here's this guy. And you look at the same thing with like FDR and Social Security.

And what happens then is that the people vote for you for fucking ever because you gave them this stuff. And so when you gave Huey Long a fucking blank check of voting, he went nuts and became the governor and the senator at the same time and just like went on this crazy power trip that ultimately ended in him getting assassinated. FDR obviously was a better president. But the Democrats were in power in Congress because of Social Security for 30 years. So the thing that scares me is who's going to implement UBI? Because that person will be worshipped. And that's why I was so afraid of fucking Steve Bannon. Because he seemed like the only dude creative enough to realize that.

Right. And to get the jump on that. Right. You know, there is a way to run this whole thing. Right. If you have a right-leaning autocrat with, like, fascist tendencies and you give them something like this, then we could be in a situation like Saudi Arabia where, you know, you have this kingdom that rules with an iron fist on everything. But people generally don't do too much revolting because they're on the dole right because they would not have money otherwise because

there is like a weird you know sort of like um petro state ubi that goes on in saudi arabia so like ubi in general in a vacuum is a great idea we just need to make sure that it's being implemented for the right reasons by the right people right and and and making it so that it's still not impossible to jump into power you know because this could be seen as a way to allow your peter teals your elon musks and and and you know young zucks to fucking still maintain power by pacifying all of us i am just getting this in now. We have established a connection with Jack O'Brien, who is reporting live from the fire-stricken part of Los Angeles right now.

Jack, are you there? Miles, this is Jack. I'm here in the Los Angeles area. I don't know if you can hear me. Fires are raging, I'm told, over by my house, but I'm safe about 10 miles away, so I don't know why I'm talking like this. Why are you screaming? I don't know, it just seems like what people do whenever you throw to them in the field

and there's a disaster going on. Again, we still have people, you know, like you're obviously not in studio because, yes, you had to evacuate your home because of the fires here. And you sound very relaxed for someone who had to evacuate. But you're OK, right? Yeah. Yeah. I've been up since my parents called me this morning at like 430 and, you know, from the East Coast, and they were aware of this before I was, which is a great testament to what a provider and protector I am of my household, that they are like a thousand miles away.

And we're like, hey, your neighborhood's on fire. And you're like, huh? I was like, huh? How do you know? Your neighborhood's on fire, dad. God. But then I went out into my front yard and looked, and, you know, we live kind of right on the mountain slash hill that goes over into the valley. And it was glowing.

Like, you could see it glowing. And there was smoke kind of billowing over, just a big, looked almost like a patch of fog. So yeah, we got all our stuff together. I am fortunate to have an amazing aunt and uncle who live further east in Los Angeles. And we just took the family and the dog over there. And then I drove back and did all the stuff you're supposed to do. I didn't, I didn't know about this.

What did you do? You're supposed to water your house. Like I, I basically took our backyard hose and like hosed down our whole house. I unkinked my hose. So that's probably another reason I sound relaxed is like a lot of the stuff that I was doing was very not like, didn't feel, uh, urgent or, you know, like I was in an emergency. I was like sitting in my backyard, like untying, untangling my hose. Uh, and you know, eventually got it on kkinked you're supposed to like have them laid out and then turn all the lights on outside of your house and then i continued to uh just grab random things like i think i have um one pair of pants and all of my t-shirts for some reason and uh assume you brought all your sneakers uh i only i don't i don't even have my jordans uh so yeah couldn't find my jordans and i couldn't find my passport

those were the two most important things well how will anyone know that you're an international player no exactly i mean my jordans are kind of my passport when you think about it. That lets people know you're locally respected. Right. But yeah, so as I was leaving my house, there was ash kind of snowing down. And you could see helicopters kind of circling. Copters kind of circling. We're basically across the street from where on the south side of Sunset and the north side of Sunset had been evacuated. And you could see like these big cool planes with fire retardant just circling in, getting ready to dump the stuff. So it was pretty, I don't know, pretty dramatic morning, I guess.

You live below Sunset? Yes. dramatic morning i guess you live below sunset yes like i don't know if you remember clueless when she gets real mad when she says when she calls her housekeeper mexican and she's like she's from el salvador and she's like what's the difference and then paul was like you get mad when people think you live below sunset that's a deep cut that i had to just you weren't in there because that is a deep cut i think it's a clueless reference we made. I'm on the wrong side of the tracks from Bel Air. Like the, the Bel Air people look down on my neighborhood and you know, it's pretty tough, pretty, pretty bad-ass.

Are you, I mean, again, I, you're, I know like today we almost had to convince you to like just focus on evacuating and doing everything because you were so dedicated to coming in or at least calling in to do most of the show. But are you – so other than obviously the imminent danger that your home is in, are you feeling good? Did the fire department give you any assurances or give you any idea of sort of what the situation could look like? So I didn't talk to anyone. My neighbors talked to a cop who said that he thought our neighborhood should be okay. We're basically right now, uh, sort of command central where all the fire chiefs and police chiefs are, uh, hanging out and, you know, figuring out next steps is, you know, a stone's throw from where I live. So that's somewhat reassuring, assuming they don't have to,

you know, double back and change where Command Central is. I think we should be all right. And that's what they said. We should be all right. But, you know, there's this thing in Los Angeles. So Los Angeles, people from Los Angeles love to brag about how it's always 72. And it's true. But there's the one kind of bad piece of weather that I didn't know about heading into living here is these things called the Santa Ana winds, which it's these just crazy strong winds that are unlike, you know, I've lived all over America and they're kind of unlike anything I've ever experienced anywhere else. Like they're winds that actually make you have to slow down when you're driving there

because they kick up dust and also like push your car around the street. I'm not telling you guys, but, uh, you know, people who might not have lived in Los Angeles during this time of the year. Uh, and, uh, those are going on right now. And, you know, this is just, uh, somewhat unprecedented for there to be wildfires at the same time as Santa Anna wins because wildfires are usually not going on in December. But because of global warming or, you know, naturally occurring climate change, whatever you choose to believe. But I mean, obviously, it's manmade.

You shouldn't choose to believe that unless you're a fucking asshole. Yeah. Depending on if you're a complete fucking asshole or not. But so because of that, there are wildfires at a time at the same time as like these crazy winds that normally like blow cars all over the street. that normally blow cars all over the street. So those are supposed to kick up later tonight, and then who the fuck knows what's going to happen. Well, I think earlier, before you came on,

I was like, we're not really a thoughts and prayers kind of show, but this is definitely a time for everybody. Send the vibes to protect Jack's house, his family, and many people in L.A., man. It's not just L.A. It's Ventura County, it's San Bernardino. So all the listeners out there, if we can collectively send good thoughts, good vibrations, maybe we could fight the fire. Yeah. Yeah. That, that'll probably work. There's no scientific evidence about that, but we're at a granola bar and I'm feeling good about that.

All right. Cool. Well, well yeah i'll probably be back in studio tomorrow hopefully hopefully i'm not like standing in front of my house with a garden hose like facing down fire like lieutenant dan uh cursing at god but we'll see to be honest i don't think the firefighters would let you fight the fire but But yes, I'm thinking you're going to be in studio tomorrow. I'm feeling it. Cool. All right, guys. Thank you so much to our on-field correspondent, junior reporter Jack O'Brien, for calling into the main studio of the mothership.

Back to you, Miles and Anna. I just wanted to say that. Stay safe out there. Hey, that sounded so official sounded so sincere too all right jack be safe bye and with that we're going to take a quick break and be right back definitely caruana galizia was a maltese investigative journalist who, on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now.

The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid

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Benghazi watch time. Benghazi! So there's all sorts of things happening in the world of Benghazi. The women of Benghazi are Time's Person of the Year. Hey! Time's Peoples of the Year. This is presumably because Trump turned them down, as he said. Yeah, which is completely not the way. That's like how time, they had to come back and be like not the way that's like how time they had to come

back and be like oh yeah that's not how it works yeah until that issue hits the stands nobody knows who the person of the year is right and then you only know the runner-up after the fact right and you know he's a runner-up yeah yeah he's number one for destroying the presidency it's not even like for being crazy like it's it's all just about like oh we've never seen someone so off the rails and like unfiltered it's's not like a great job. He is all over the person of the year story for being a sexual abuser. They interview a bunch of the women who he sexually abused. And then they also talk about this theory that I've actually heard brought up just in conversations with people.

in conversations with people, the idea that we wouldn't be having this movement of women coming out and, you know, saying that they had been abused if it weren't for Trump winning. But one thousand percent. Yeah. Yeah. Because of the women's march. And then just because of, you know, this public sort of shaming of women by Trump and by his followers, you know, they were motivated to kind of step out and yeah i totally believe that i mean it was a moral rock bottom right it's like i remember when that tape came out everyone was like this is it it's a rat and then to bring in pence to close so then to watch it just like you know still go through was just like oh wow okay you just really don't care like we're there yeah

so i think a lot of people were just like no we can't let this happen and that's why the pendulum is swinging so hard the other way it was wow there's a there's an article that came out i think last week or this week about how pence basically was like after that tape came out he's like you know i can run with condoleezza rice yeah yeah there's an atlantic article about how he basically had had a soft coup ready to go right and then trump had his second debate where he just like stalked hillary around the stage like he was fucking jason vorhees and uh and people were like yeah we love it we love it we we like this sort of menacing energy he's doubling down on making women uncomfortable yeah and so that that coup went away but pence has always just kind of been in the background just ready to step in like the

second if trump is like you know taken down by miller or like an assassin or whatever pence is gonna just like pop up out of the bushes and be like oh hey what's up didn't something happen didn't see you there uh yeah he's got a bag packed you know what i'm saying yeah there's also another thing that came out someone tweeted a thing about how he's you know increasingly under pressure because of the russia probe and they juxtapose that with an article that came out a few years ago about when he was in a frat he ratted out his frat brothers because they had a keg and they're like oh i wonder how this is gonna go pensted yeah like that's um couldn't even keep his mouth shut to print his fraternity.

That was like the New York Times or something like that. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, but. That's the best. I hope he rats. Of course. We just fucking, let's find out everything. If he rats, he can come to the cookout at my house.

So back to the persons of the year. So Trump did come in second for, not for any great accomplishments. It's basically for the same reasons that made him person of the year last year. They were like, he has changed the of the Year. So even though he's technically probably the person who, you know, when you think of this year in history books, you're going to think of all the damage that was done by him, you know, it's the same article as last year. You can't – Yeah, it doesn't change, but you just add more fuckery to the list. Right, exactly. And also keep in mind, remember when Hitler was person of the year, too. Hitler won it twice, but he didn't win it twice consecutively.

No, no, no. Yeah, he didn't do it back to back. People are over this Hitler stuff. Let's move on. I think they went Stalin. That reminds me of a Kanye West performance. He was on VH1 Storytellers, and he was doing a song, Amazing, and he did a speech afterwards, and he was just naming people.

He was just like, Michael Jordan, Michael like uh michael jordan michael jackson james brown oj simpson and then like the audience kind of goes like oj simpson and he's like but wasn't he wasn't he amazing think about what he did is that not amazing and i think like that's what this whole trump thing kind of reminds me of is like them like they're just like you gotta kind of just give credit where credit's due and like the amount of shit he's fucked up now yeah phenomenal to think about no he has definitely changed the entire political landscape and geopolitical landscape considering like our allies are like fleeing and we're further causing more chaos just by him saying shit yeah so trump truly is the white oj simpson we can say i think yeah they'll be honest but with not as good film appearances right you know because let's really give it up he sucked in

home alone too he's terrible honestly he was you just caught kevin in the plaza hotel lobby that's it he's not like oj out here building the od gun out of like a little suitcase and turned into like an anti-aircraft gun and naked gun what two or three 33 and a third yeah he's got one speed and that's it little man though uh second runner-up was chinese president xi jinping and uh coming in fourth was robert mueller uh so those are the people of the year but also let's not also i mean i have to call this out taylor swift is also on that cover And I'm not saying she shouldn't be because there are plenty of reasons why she actually should be. She successfully countersued someone that sexually assaulted her. I think that's great.

And she handled everything really well. Probably my favorite thing she's ever done other than shake it off. No. Well, that's for you. To me, I'm like, yes, that's credit where credit is due. And I think a lot of people, too, have been on the internet kind of like, what is she doing there? Because she also has a history of silencing people, too. So it makes – I don't know if it makes her problematic, but it's interesting that I think some people have really taken issue to the fact that –

What do you mean by silencing people? people so remember like there was that uh blogger who was like hey when you're gonna come out and tell people you're not a white supremacist or like you don't want you don't want to be associated with like this aryan you know ideal because i think they called her they use her as like the ideal woman a lot like the aryans do yeah our aryans are uh outright people like they use her as like a an idol yeah it was hitler and taylor, yeah, they call her a, quote, pure Aryan goddess. Right. And so then right after that, the lawyer, like, demanded a retraction and a deletion and all this other shit. When, like, that's, you know, that's not her saying she's a Nazi. That's just someone being critical or vocal about what they feel that her place is.

Oh, Taylor Swift's lawyer came out and was like, you better take that down. And the ACLU was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Right. Like, that's not how this works. But anyway. This might make people upset. But I don't know. I feel like I have to say it's I think Taylor Swift is a perfect example of how people are willing to swallow racism in the name of feminism. And it kind of pisses me off sometimes.

But like she does a lot of racist shit, like not only that stuff, but her attacks against a lot of black people, her cultural appropriation. But I think people just like, yeah, but she's like a female icon. And it's like, that's dope, dude. But like, I would never accept a black icon, for example, like Chris Brown. Probably what he did for like black artists, phenomenal. But I'm just like, I can't respect that because of what he's done against women. I don't understand why that's not a thing for feminism.

It's like people are willing to accept her because she's such a feminist icon, but they just like be like, we're just going to ignore that racism. Kind of reminds me of a former presidential candidate, which kind of pisses me off. But like it. I don't know. I thought it was whack to put her on there. I think that's very fair critique. Hot takes on feminism from three dudes. Yeah, exactly.

Wanted to talk about the Rand Paul saga, the mystery surrounding Rand Paul getting his ass whooped by his neighbor. So he was mowing his lawn and his neighbor apparently just came up and jumped him, beat the shit out of him uh his neighbor also a doctor uh and uh was i think like in his 50s maybe yeah and he broke i think five or six of ran paul's ribs yeah oh my god just a straight ass kicking and so allegedly the thing that they've said is that oh it was about a uh dispute because ran paul when he mowed his lawn, his clippings would go on to his neighbor's lawn and like that pissed his neighbor off. But neither of them have commented on it. That's just like through spokespeople.

And they just have kept really like mysteriously quiet about it. So I don't know. It's just one of those interesting stories that I don't totally trust it. I think I mean, on one side, right, like some people say this has been going on for years that he's like, yo, you're writing mower keeps blowing clippings onto my fucking property and you need clean and ramp. I was like, dude, I don't give a fuck. And I think so. One one narrative is like that's been going on going on for so many years that finally this dude just broke and was like that's it i'm i'm like you're gonna catch these hands but the other one is maybe there's a much darker story that we don't know about and that's the one i'm hoping it is because i don't want this to be about two middle-aged dudes fighting over yard clippings right i want

it to be like intrigue and affairs and and lust or something i mean this sounds like a movie really like it's like like a Coen Brothers movie where he wakes up every day and sees this dude just low down on his lawn and he goes to work and he's emasculated at work. He comes back and his wife's just like, I'm probably going to go to bed.

I'm tired. And he just keeps watching this dude mow on his lawn. I'm going on a baby moon with Rand. What? And then he steps out and is like, keeps watching this dude mow on his lawn and then i'm going on a baby moon with rand what what and that's when he steps i was like get your clippings off my lawn sure what are you gonna do this beats his ass that shit's funny as fuck that that is my theory is that something happened the the mowing of another man's lawn was metaphorical rather than literal. Oh, my gosh.

It's just worth keeping an eye on. 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. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated.

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