The Daily Zeitgeist - Weekly Zeitgeist 311 (Best of 2/26/24-3/1/24)

Episode Date: March 3, 2024

The weekly round-up of the best moments from DZ's season 327 (2/26/24-3/1/24)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.

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 Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Hey, I'm Gianna Pardenti

and I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties 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. 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 non-stop infotainment laugh stravaganza. Yeah. So without further ado, here is the weekly zeitgeist. Miles! Yeah.

It's appropriate that we have a little special AKA song today because we are joined in our third and fourth seats by two of the hosts of the podcast jort center it's the them jort center boys up first we've got america's stepdad christy yamaguchi man aka will pool and we got josh robbins that they are them jort center boys welcome fellas to der dailies i guess and i'm throwing off because i think there's an aka but They are them George Center boys. Welcome, fellas, to Dirt Daily's, I guess. And I'm throwing off because I think there's an AKA, but let's give it up for Will and Josh!

Josh, I'm going to take this opening one, okay? All right. All right. Thanks for having us on again. We're going to go back to 1977. 1977. Wow. On a podcast with Miles Gray Thick thighs with no hair Warm piss and gorditas

Rise up from Jack O'Brien's chair Nip ahead for the listeners The future's not looking bright News is heavy and the topic's grim Time for Daily Zeitgeist Before we find out some more ways We're all going to hell I was thinking to myself

I could really use some Taco Bell So I lit up a 5-1 And said, first let's get placed. Then I heard the voices from my phone. It was Jack and Miles Gray. Hello, the internet, we got bad news for you. The United States, the United States is in a shitty place. Before it's too late and we die, we're here to warn you.

It's election year. It's election year. You should hate it here. Trump's mind is Tiffany twisted. Another verse! I'm just kidding. What if I made you sit through the entirety of the just kidding I really was dude I was like you're hitting the fucking solo now

starts coming into play wow hours hello the internet we've got bad news is great might as well be the subtitle of the show yeah and not to outshine the other guests that I'm on here with, but I know he just had PTSD

from high school of me breaking up the guitar. Once again, I planned something, but he will outshine me. Josh, let me take this real quick. Yeah, Josh, here we go. This is all you. Three, four. Okay, let's see. All right.

Josh, here we go. This is all you. Three, four. Okay, let's see. All right, a.k.a. Josh Robbins. And we got, every kiss begins with K. Jewelry's on the way, my wife. Please don't leave me.

Never ever leave me. I'll get you Chick-fil-A if you promise me you'll stay. Promise rings, not fake gold Waffle fries not a damn That's what I got. That's from the viewpoint of someone who went to CPAC. Fantastic. Wow, man.

I love it. There we are. Beautiful work. There was some yardling in there. Yeah, I'm actually impressed. I didn't need a guitar. Yeah, I didn't need a guitar yeah i didn't need a guitar like right i saw that i noticed that you just went straight voice yeah i'm not like a prop

guy i'm not a prop guy so you know but i know i respect like you know comedians like carrot top and stuff but yeah yeah for sure man gallagher i think yeah really also apologies to whoever has to edit this episode and level all of that bullshit that I just did because I have no idea. The WAV file, like, it looked okay, but I have no fucking idea whether any of that's going to be usable. Yeah, one eye on the lyrics and one eye on the WAV file. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it was very considerable. Very considerable. Okay, yeah, I thought you were just confused. Anyway, so what, are you both coming to us from North CAC? Yeah. That's right. I'm down at the beach, Josh's former hometown of Wilmington. Okay.

As always. And then Josh. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina. I've lived here for probably so long, I'll just say I'm from here. But, you know, my heart is in Wilmington, but yeah. Monkey Junction. Monkey Junction. Yeah. Yeah. That's where we grew up near Toteman Zoo, which is probably called something else. That's not as inappropriate now. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know. I moved away. Yeah. Yeah. Here we are. It's good to have you both.

You know, we've had, you know, Will over here christy yamaguchi uh gucci gucci main uh many times and obviously you've been a lifelong contributor to the show so it's dope to have you both on and you're both podcasting it's just dope to kind of see how you know just and then like you guys have been best friends since we said sixth grade yeah yeah sixth grade uh josh was uh one of my groomsmen in my wedding and i was in his wedding as well so yeah we've been uh so like the the first time i remember josh was like i knew josh since sixth grade but the first time i you know you have those moments where your like brain comes online yeah and you're like that that's your first like truly true memory of something

or someone is when uh josh got in a fight in the cafeteria and one of the counselors like superman tackled him and the other kid like mr mr talo was his name he was he was like a good like six three six four and he just comes out of like my periphery and tackles both of them. I think it was over like throwing French fries at each other and, uh, French fries in the cafeteria. And I was like, Holy shit, that dude is awesome. He just got tackled by Mr. Taylor. So, yeah, which is funny because it's funny that it took that long for Will to remember me because we sat at the same table for like a whole year. Is that what you were doing?

You were like getting into a fight to get him to notice you? Yes. I was playing guitar the whole time. Yeah. You just spent a long time together. Off in the corner singing softly with an acoustic guitar to like just a cloud of girls. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We'll just, yeah, we'll go with that. We'll totally say that's my middle school and high school yeah sure yeah i mean geometry teacher who's like yeah let me go get my guitar man or the weird substitute yeah well mr beverage the youth pastor who comes right actually i got a song about a uh guy named jc who was pretty all right yeah Yeah. We, we had a substitute. Uh, his name was Mr.

Beverage. And every time he started the class, he would go, all right, my initial spell tab, it's Mr. Beverage. Get the jokes out.

And like, yeah, we were like, okay, okay. All right. And then he's like, now let's crack this one open and get into,

he juggled. He did like a unicycle. He did. He did. Oh yeah. You got to know what? Yeah. I think everyone knows, everyone knows a j a unicycle and shit too. Oh, yeah. You got to. He knew what. Yeah. I think everyone knows a juggling unicyclist teacher at some point in their life.

I think so. I think, yeah. But yeah, Will, author of many of the best AKAs of all time. The voice of an angel, as you heard. I mean, as you may have just heard, there is a chance that he actually was so close to the real song that it will get a takedown notice for the first time yeah from an aka but that'd be amazing and apparently uh the eagles are very litigious i just found out that they're in a lawsuit right now over some uh handwritten notes to uh hotel california i just learned about that yesterday they got some they

got some skeletons they got some things to be litigious over. Let's just say that. I can imagine. Yeah, you might not want to look into their history. And then Josh is in a band called Late Bloomer. It's dropping an album on Friday. This Friday. The musicality of this episode is...

Out of every pore. That's right. Mm-hmm. What is something from your search history that is revealing about who you guys are? I have an exciting one. I can start. Hey, this is Alex.

Yeah, so I'm building a chicken coop because my second job, or rather one of my third jobs is kind of being a little suburban farmer. And so I'm getting some chicks delivered from a hatchery or one of my third jobs is kind of being a little suburban farmer. And so I'm getting some chicks delivered from a hatchery. And they said, you need to put this directly into the brooder. And I'm like, what's a brooder?

And I had looked up what a brooder is and then came up and found that it can be anything from a rubber made tub where you put the chickens. Well, they're very small and until like a repurposed rabbit hut. So then I started thinking all morning about how to build the chicken brooder. That's my search history. And wait, just so it's just like a like it's like a pen, like a mini pen for the chicks to just kind of. Yeah, it's like a little pen for the chicks. And you put in a heat lamp you know because they need to be warm oh yeah yeah they don't they have only got that chicken fuzz they don't have the chicken

feathers yeah yeah yeah they need to me this this sounds like a job for a shoebox but that's probably too small too small unfortunately that's what they're getting if i'm building a chicken you can also use what i got if you're in if you're in a if you'm building a chicken you can also use what i got if you're in if you're in a if you're in a rush you can use your bathtub if you have one of those and put down some puppy pads right i learned a lot about this today as i was just waiting for another meeting to start and just read everything i could nice and of course that chicken coop is going to come in handy free eggs during the robot apocalypse. Right. Which Sam Altman has told me is coming. So I have to assume that's also what you're thinking. Right.

Right. I mean, she's prepping. She's prepping for the eventual demise. Yeah, I think during COVID, I think there was a run on chicken eggs. And then so I go to Costco and you couldn't get the gross of chicken eggs. And then I don't I go, hey, hey, and I went to my backyard. Sold them to your neighbors at a market. Got them for eight bucks an egg if you want them. Yeah. They are still really expensive. Emily, how about you?

What's something from your search history? So I took a look and it's a bunch of boring stuff. I can't be bothered to remember the website of a certain journal that I was interested in. So I'm searching the name of the journal. But then like down below that, we've been watching For All Mankind, which is this like alternate timeline thing that that's a what happens if the Soviets landed on the moon first. Right. So it diverges in the 1960s.

And but it keeps referencing actual history. So my search history is full of like, okay, so when did the Vietnam War actually end? And like, you know, which Apollo mission did what? So it's a bunch of queries like that, sort of comparing what's in the show to actual history. How does that line up based on your sort of cursory research as you watch the show?

So interestingly, so there's a point where Ted Kennedy is like in the background being talked about not going to Chappaquiddick. Oh, and then an episode later, he's president. Wow. So there's and I suspect there's way more of that kind of stuff that I'm not catching. Right, right, right. Just subtle things. Right, right. The media is like and Ted Kennedy missed a barbecue this weekend in Chappaquiddick. like, and Ted Kennedy missed a barbecue this weekend in Chappaquiddick. That's super interesting.

Yeah, this is, you know, third or fourth person who's mentioned For All Mankind to us. I think this is pushing it over the threshold to where I have to watch this damn thing. It's enjoyable, but it's tense. You know, anything where it's like people in outer space really creeps me out because that degree of loneliness and lack of fail-safes. When all the fail-safes are there, the ones that you built,

and beyond that, your SOL, that's creepy. Seems uncomfortable, outer space. Caitlin, what is something you think is overrated? I might have said this before, and I am running out of thoughts and opinions also. Because my brain, along with the rest of my body, is deteriorating. Have you done the massage gun on your brain? Oh, on your temple.

Just really intense. massage gun on your brain. Oh, on your temple. Yeah. Just read a little intense. Just like chatter all my teeth and just break them. Bite my tongue off, you know. Something I think is overrated is soup.

Just in general, soup. Someone, who was, I feel like two weeks ago, someone came in, hot soup was overrated. Yeah same yeah yeah and we're talking about this is pretty is it filling or not yeah so one person came in i forget who so that forgive me they're overrated was soup because it wasn't filling that you would have to drink or eat a lot of the soup for it to feel like a meal now that's right what do you say to that i I know, I agree. Because this is, soup is my overrate. I think it's,

I think it's hot, salty water with some shit in it. Like, like, oh, okay. Hey, can I get some hot, salty water with some shit in it? Thank you. Yeah, you mean I'm going to heat up this,

whatever I just scoop out of the toilet? I just think it's a racket. I don't like broth. Yeah, you mean I'm going to heat up this whatever I just scoop out of the toilet? I just think it's a racket. I don't like broth. Yeah. There's just, I find it to be a frustrating meal to eat. I don't think it's filling. I think broth is a racket. I do like a tomato bisque.

Yeah. Wait, you're saying it's underrated? Over, Miles. We're on the over. The massage gun was underrated. Dude, my brain is rapidly deteriorating. Dude, I'm telling you, the massage gun to the temple, a.k.a. the hard reset. I learned about it on the Huberman lab.

Factory reset on your brain. Yeah, man. Oh, my oh my damn what is wrong with me sorry yeah wait but we had someone who said it was overrated you should fight them yeah my god sorry my brain it's whoever that was was it more maybe i think it might have been more burke was it more or jody abrogate i think it might have been Mort Burke. Was it Mort? Or Jody Avergand. I think it was last week. It was one of them.

It was one of those fellas. I have a new best friend because anytime my friends are like, let's go get some soup. I'm like, to what end? You have a very specific group of friends, though. I've never had a friend come. Or maybe you just have more friends than me. But I've never had a friend suggest we go get soup. I've done that. I don't know.

You have? Well, here's the thing. I like the lobster bisque at Hamburger Hamlet in the Valley. I would always go there. That was my fancy meal, I remember, when I was in high school. But do you say, let's go get Hamburger Hamlet, or do you say, let's go get a soup? No, I say, let's go get bisque. And they're like, what?

And I remember it gave me the worst gas. It's like to this day, my friends remember, we call it hamburger Hamlet when I fart really loud because it was so intense. But I haven't had it since, to be honest. Let's take a little trip down to Biscayne Bay. Exactly. You know what I'm saying?

Exactly. And then you do a thing. You gesture with. And then you like do a like thing. You gesture with your hands like you're doing a Coke reference. Yeah. But I really mean just like, are you doing a line? No, I'm eating lobster bisque. Yeah, yeah. How do you eat bisque?

And then fart a bunch. Yeah, dude. Saturday night. Get with it. Sleepier. I like soup that eats like a meal, you know. Like a stew? Yeah, I love a stew.

Oh, fuck. Yeah. I can respect a stew wow i guess i just don't like anything with like just like a thin chicken or beef broth yeah i feel that so yeah when when i'm having soup for dinner there's a part of me that's saying this isn't this isn't what i signed up for. This don't count as a meal. This is a drink. You gave me drink for meal? It's a hot, salty drink. And who wants that? Now, how do you feel about smoothie for meal?

It's a rare. Similar object? For me? Yeah, a meal it does not make, I would say. Yeah. I need solid solid i'm not a baby okay i have some i have some babe rotten apple headed baby yeah that's right i'm gonna go and i want solid i'm a grown up yeah my tummy thank you i will just yeah just on principle i will eat like a something solid to go with a smoothie.

Like I just can't, my body will not accept it as a full meal. What is something that you think is underrated? I think being a hater is underrated. And we talked about this in one of our episodes. Haters really are the impetus to so much. Like if you had somebody hating on you, you just feel like you have to prove them wrong. You have to go so hard. And a lot of things that we have in society wouldn't be there without haters, but they get a really bad rap. And I was like, y'all need to like genuinely thank your haters and not like, I'd like to thank my haters, but like for real right right right you yeah you gave me a pose yeah your outside opinion of me sort of spurred me on to do something different something great for sure yeah if you're just being nice to me i would have just been sitting around doing nothing i i just like in my search history is somebody so sony had this like outspoken critic who just hated all things sony and like criticized everything they

did and his he made so many good points when he was criticizing them that they hired him and he became the president of sony eventually whoa that's not how i thought that was gonna i know so i mean truly you can find a well-informed hater where all their criticism is like, Actually, the reason I'm so mad is because they make some really good points. Then maybe listen to them. Maybe keep them close for reasons other than that you're just watching them. Make them your boss. Yeah.

I feel like the United States should do that for me. For what do you mean? Right? I'm the biggest hater of the United States. Like, make me president. President? Yeah. But you don't want to be president, though.

I would do some stuff that we would not come back from. Same, same. But I was thinking it could be, this could be, everybody could just be a hater. Like, in the aftermath of the quote-unquote great resignation. Right. Like, everybody could just focus on hating. And that'll be our pathway to employment. be a hater like in the aftermath of the quote-unquote great resignation right like everybody could just focus on hating and that yeah that'll be our pathway to employment yeah hey i'll take it here first we heard it here first plus it's such a thin line like whenever somebody gets

caught doing something really bad their first response is always like i'm not listening to the haters on this so it's a real thin line between hater and like person who is just calling out you know horrible behavior you know yeah for sure yeah especially if like you see your fave getting hated on you sometimes you're like yeah they're just hating but it's someone you don't like there's like it's a very principled critique that person yeah right right the ten dollar words start coming out. Yeah. It's a principle critique. And I will stand by as it's made. Yves, how about you?

What's something you think is underrated? So I think rekindling old friendships is underrated. And this is. Oh, underrated. Okay. Underrated. Yes. She's thinking.

Yeah. I'm coming for you. Yeah. Because that would Yes. See, and she's thinking, I'm saying overrated. Yeah, I'm coming for you. Yeah. Because that would have been how I kind of felt in the past. I was like, you know, it's a new day. It's a new dawn. And I don't need to go back to these old friendships. But, you know, I'm rethinking it now after having communications with, you know, somebody who I used to know's mother today.

And she was like, oh, y'all should talk. And I'm like, I'll think about it. You know, somebody who I used to know's mother today, and she was like, oh, y'all should talk. And I'm like, I'll think about it. You know, I'll consider it. Because before, I'm like, you know, if they're not in my life anymore, then it's for a reason. You know how all the kids say, they're in your life for a reason or a season or something like that. Yeah, right.

So I don't know if I subscribe to that anymore. So that's what my underrated's going to be. Okay. All right. Yeah. And I I subscribe to that anymore. So that's what my underrated is going to be. Okay. All right. And I actually needed to hear that. There's somebody that I've just been like toying with the idea of like, man, I should really get back in touch with them. I haven't talked to them in years. And yeah, that needed to hear that.

Thank you very much. What's something you think is overrated? I think biopics are overrated. And this is coming from someone who is I love biography in written form. I love it in podcast form. I love it in those forms. But for some reason, I have something against biopics. Like, my husband coerced me to go to the Bob Marley biopic the other day. And I'm just, for some reason, it's just something about seeing somebody who looks nothing like the person and sounds nothing like the person. And it's really hard to get somebody's accent down. Like that's not an easy thing to do

for the best of actors. There's something that misses the translation. And I think also it's like very hard to cover a person's story in an hour and 45 minutes in a way that feels really meaningful. Not that I think it can't be done in that like it's just to me they always come off as mediocre or right or like someone who could do no wrong or something like that like and he was actually the hero of everything right yeah

because they have to follow the structure there's some complexities there with his life for sure and also we were hating on the wig first of all the first thing i said are like no no no no nobody gets black wigs right nobody does that's i'm like you couldn't find a jamaican a jamaican actor who already had dreads or something like that you had to go find this isn't he from the uk like the dude that they yeah i just remember being like this is trash man like i can't even i can't i can't look at this because the wigs were the wig was so bad the wig was wiggy okay it's always the scalp with locks it's the scalp that they get wrong it's really hard to do and it's always like a helmet with like it feels like a helmet with some tentacles popping off. Yes. It was giving Tyler Perry wigs. Or was it Michonne from Walking Dead?

Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what it was. And they tried, too. Like, shout out to the wig makers. I know it's a hard job. I'm not saying that they aren't fully talented and skilled and have been working on their crafts. They lengthened the wig throughout the movie and all of that.

And I'm like, okay. Okay. All right. Wow. You did the church. Oh, okay. All right. Take your time.

Take your time. Yeah. Okay. Bless your heart. At least you tried. Bless your heart. Is there a thing too, like with,

because we were talking about this, I think maybe off mic, Jack, but like some people are just kind of so cool. Like, don't even bother trying to get somebody else to capture that cool on screen. Like, there was like a Miles Davis biopic. I'm like, you can't, this dude is also all over the place. You can't just be like, yeah, now you're Miles Davis, you're Bob Marley or whatever. And they're so iconic that you either have to, like, cast the person who looks the most like them, like they did with that Tupac one,

but then that person may not be able to act. So then, yeah, it's a real, like, you are trying to thread the thinnest needle. And also, yeah, like, it may be like a Tupac biography in a hundred years maybe you know like but right now like when no one remembers yeah when no one remembers and they're just like they've seen the pictures but like the right right now bob marley tupac like way way too soon i feel like yeah it needs some distance and it didn't make it any better that at the end of the bob

marley film i don't know if i'm going too hard on this right now. No, go ahead. But at the end of the Bob Marley film, they show actual footage of Bob Marley and comparing his energy on stage to the energy that the actor was giving was just miles away. It was like, it was so spirited and you could really see that coming out in the clips and having just seen the actor do it in the film, I was like,

something was missing. That Jenna Sequa wasn't there. Who could have done a good job? Chadwick. If Chadwick was alive, I feel like he could play anybody. You need an all-time great actor. Yeah, that's what you need. Sometimes it works.

Because it was an incredible actor. I don't remember he played someone super super nice you better quit it um in that in that yeah i think he did he did pay marshall i believe i wasn't mad at it actually yeah yeah what's his oh what's uh kingsley ben adir that's the name of the the actor who played him but yeah like i'm sure when you see that juxtaposition of actual Bob Marley footage, it really feels like your parent being like, yeah,

we got Bob Marley at home. Don't worry. You're like, Ooh, yeah. Katie, what's something that you think is overrated? I think Chick-fil-A is overrated.

And I think once we all band together and stop eating Chick-fil-A, that's when the revolution will happen. Wow. Cause they don't the revolution will happen. Wow. Because they don't like the gays. Right. They don't like the blacks for real because the blacks and Latinos being a back and not in the front interacting with customers. Wow. The chicken.

I haven't had chicken in maybe 10 years. It was good. I ain't gonna hold you. But other people make good chicken. They're not the only ones and people be acting like they're the only ones just because they say

please and thank you and my pleasure we gotta have higher standards for ourselves the hard thing about this is that they're expanding

they're expanding like crazy especially in Georgia across the country across the country yeah there's like four of them on my exit

yeah they're a franchise model and it's like super hard to get into like their franchise because they have a specific way exit. Yeah, they're a franchise model and it's like super hard to get into their franchise. They have a specific way of doing it. Oh, it's a franchise model. And they're never going to IPO. They're never going to go public.

Right. I don't know how. But I believe it. If you believe it, I believe it. The revolution is going to start right when we give up Chick-fil-A. When people can be like, yeah, the first principled consumer decision, like the entire country can collectively make. They'll be like, aside from the morality, the chicken also like Popeye's is better. Man, when I was in the Atlanta studio, that's by Delilah's.

I had a chicken sandwich from there that blew my socks right off my feet. Like I saw that I was like a Willy Wonka exhibit. But yeah, that was definitely like, yeah yeah i think it's just one of those things and i said this before when i think was it dulce sloan who maybe or somebody was talking about it or maybe it was dr john anyway somebody was also saying was coming with that overrated and it's probably one of our most common overrateds and yeah with yeah i think it's time i think it's like one of those things it's like one of those things. It's like one of those things too, because in the West coast, we never had it. Like,

so when it came on the West coast, it was like what in and out is to other places. Like Chick-fil-A is here. The thing I heard about from my relatives that live in the South or the East coast or whatever. And yeah. And I think once that subsides, maybe people can,

you know, we can all band together and break. The novelty needs to wear off a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think if anybody, Katie and I are actually from the land of truett kathy spent a lot of time growing up there where he uh lived and i think if anybody can do it we can do it because we can be

like yeah we have original claim for the land of the chick-fil-a and if we can do it anybody in this country can do it you know i went on a field trip to Chick-fil-A Ranch in elementary school. What's Chick-fil-A Ranch? I don't know if it still exists. It was so fun. They had, I'm just picking them up now. They got you with the propaganda.

Yeah. They're like, we actually, you know, second thought. I love S. Truett, Kathy. It was so fun. It was like, I guess it was like

a cow sanctuary or something because, you know, they don't furby. Oh, right, right. Yeah. And they had like those like, they had, I guess it was like a cow sanctuary or something. Cause you know, they don't. Oh, right. Right. Yeah. And they had like those,

like, um, what do they call it? Conestoga. Conestoga. Conestoga wagons. Conestoga. Yeah.

Something like that. Yeah. Conestoga wagon. The people going West was, that were in. Uh, so we slept in those. It was an overnight trip.

Mind you. Wow. We did s'mores. We like cooked on the fire. It was real fun. That does sound fun. I would do that today. We should look at that.

And you know what? Yeah, actually, let me change my overrated really quick. Actually, they're underrated. Chick-fil-A Ranch is underrated. Yeah. Chick-fil-A, the restaurant. Yeah. I think I've talked about this before, but but i got as an award in middle school i

got to go on this field trip and it was just to the long john silver's headquarters like corporate headquarters so it's like the worst version of your field trip right not even like they didn't have any fun themed thing you just like sat and watched the fucking them go through some spreadsheets and then got to eat oh no yeah they need to work on their propaganda game you know yeah i think it would be pretty cool if they would have showed you all the different kinds of fish that go into the to make amalgamation what actually yeah yeah right we actually shop at a pet store to get this stuff put together. That would be wild if they admitted that. Poor memory for sure.

Goldfish mash is what you're actually getting. Oh, man. All right. Well, that's disgusting. Sorry to leave it on that note. But we are going to take a quick break and we're going to come back and we're going to talk some news. 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. In a galaxy far, far away. No, babe, that's taken. We're in our own world, remember? Right, in our own world.

We're two space cadets. And totally normal humans. Sure, totally normal humans. Embark on a journey across the stars, discovering the wonders of the universe one episode at a time. We'll talk about life, love, laughter, and why you should never argue with your co-pilot. Especially when she's always right.

Right, and if we hit turbulence, just blame it on Mercury retrograde. Or Emily's questionable space piloting skills. Hey, join us on In Our Own World for cosmic conversations, stellar laughs, and super corny dad jokes. Listen to In Our Own World as a part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't worry, we promise to avoid any black holes. Most of the time. 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 podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. We're back. And Josh, you want to kick us off with a little bit of a, what do you think? Something underrated? Underrated

is, uh, it actually ties into my overrated, but playing Zelda Tears of the kingdom because you're unemployed because yeah because it's it hits different yeah when you're unemployed it has helped and probably hurt my job search uh playing tears of the kingdom not like a game player guy but i got laid off uh around the holidays and my in-laws gave me Tears of the Kingdom. And I was like, I don't have the time. Right.

And I was like, wait, I do have the time. Yeah. And so, yeah, I've logged many, many hours on it. So I'd say that is my underrated. You should be playing Tears of the Kingdom if you aren't. You mentioned that it has both hurt and helped your job search. Have you met prospective employers while

playing Tears of the Kingdom? How has it helped your job search? I brought it to a job interview and I was playing during the interview and I forgot to go to interview. I need to figure out why I can't find a job. I have no clue. I think it hurt because it's probably hours I could have spent. Oh, the hurt is clear. The hurt is clear. I think it hurt because it's probably hours I could have spent.

Oh, the hurt is clear. The hurt is clear. How's it helping? Oh, it's helped because it's helped my mental health. There you go. I have this. Yeah, I have this to look forward to today. I have to finish this temple.

Right. You know, I tell my wife, like, hey, I know you're in a meeting, but I really have to beat this boss. You got to knuckle down right now. Yeah. I'm focusing. I tell my wife, like, hey, I know you're in a meeting, but I really have to beat this boss. You got to knuckle down right now. Yeah. I'm focusing. Daddy's focusing. Can't you use headphones, Josh?

No, I can't. I think you should use headphones. They didn't have headphones back then. Yeah, in Hyrule. So then what's your overrated? My overrated is being unemployed due to tech layoffs it is it is uh fun enough when you start out you're like you're getting some money in when you get unemployment and things but then that runs out because we live in north carolina i'm not sure what the how it works in california but here in South, we get like a certain period of times and then you're

like done, you're cut off. You can't like reapply and you're just got to figure out what you're going to do. They actually come to your house and kick you in the nuts. Yeah, you can get, I think like somewhere around 20 something weeks in California. I think it's like 12 weeks or something. Paltry. 12 and the swift kick in the nuts. So with that,

it's led me into, oh, I need to figure out where I'm going to go in tech. So that's where those UI UX classes come in. There you go. Because you've got to get things on your resume, I think. It's like catching Pokemon. You've got to have these little things so that

people will look at you and go, ooh. Something besides Tears of the Kingdom, you can also add Pokemon to your resume. Yeah, I put that on a bunch and they said, please take that off. They're like, yeah, we're looking for people who play Pal World. Sorry. Oh, that's my problem. There you go. Will, how about you?

What's something you think is underrated? What's something you think is overrated? Underrated, I would say normal human beings attempting to fight professional football players. Did you guys see the video of Cam Newton? Yeah. Handling those three dudes, four dudes, however many there were. It was incredible. And disclaimer, disclaimer, don't actually do this, but you should absolutely attempt to fight

Disclaimer, disclaimer, don't actually do this, but you should absolutely attempt to fight former football players who are used to having 11 people trying to kill them, you know, being paid millions of dollars because they're good at preventing that from happening. getting your ass kicked by a football player. People do not understand how big these human beings are and how strong they are and how they're used to just like, again, like Cam Newton's one of the greatest runners of all time, not for a quarterback, but in general, just period, just period.

He's six, four, six, four, six, five and 245 pounds. And he's just, he handled those guys.

His hat didn't come off. His hat literally stayed on his head. What kind of hat? It looked like he was wearing a witch's hat or something. Yeah, he absolutely looks like he's in Wizard of Oz. He's got that hipster, flat-brimmed, pilgrim hat with his dreads coming out of the top. He looks like he's Dick Tracy almost,

or like a Dick Tracy villain. But it's this specific brand of hat that he's dick tracy almost or like a dick tracy villain uh but it's this specific brand of hat that he's been having made custom for him for a while now he looks like the old guy from poltergeist 2 yeah he does have like quaker oats guy old guy from poltergeist yeah yeah a lot of people don't realize that i think kids i feel like kids forgot do you all remember the mike vally fighting videos? He was a professional skateboarder. Oh, yeah. They were like in CKY and stuff.

Kids need to watch those. And that's like probably like Cam Newton is going to fuck you up. It's like Mike Vilely can take on five people. He was like a big guy. But that's on the lower end that's a lower as far as professional athletes you need to understand especially like yeah like a a quarterback who then starts growing dreads like that's because they've had some kind of evolution you know exactly so like they're probably on top of the physical prowess they're like mentally now on another plane too where

they're like oh the three of you against me and the amazing thing is that Cam didn't even, like, he didn't really get violent back with them. He just used their momentum and did the quarterback thing of like, it's like he went, it's like he had a, like a Vietnam flashback and went into soldier mode and just didn't want to get sacked. So he's like, immediately, it's like, it's like the pocket closed in on him by three guys who are also swinging on him. And he just, he just moved them around. Like they were absolute rack. Unnecessary roughness. Yeah. 15 yard penalty.

Yeah. Uh, it was, it was super funny to watch and obviously don't want people going and trying, uh, professional athletes, but also I kind of do because then I get to watch the videos. So you get bonuses as a professional athlete. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. What's something you think is overrated? Well,

I'll keep this one short, uh, not wishing things on your worst enemy. No, not there. Your worst enemy. You should try it sometime. It feels great.

You should wish all the worst things on your worst enemy. So yeah yeah it's pretty straightforward are we you think we're right now like america's just it's just chicken shit now we don't even worse wish the worst on our worst yeah it's like too nice to our worst enemies yeah so what happened i'll say you know because so much of my uh i guess like persona revolves around twitter and shit so i get scolded on there a lot. Like there's been a few recent tweets where I've, uh, started fake rumors about awful people dying and, uh, like, like Mitch McConnell and Ian Miles Chong recently, I started a whole like time quoted my tweet, uh,

on their website and stuff. Uh, I said that the president or the premier of Malaysia executed him. And I just like popped, I just tweeted it and then went to sleep and then woke up and it had like, like 50,000 likes and had like millions and millions of views. And people were like, what the fuck did this really happen? And people, and of course I get scolded by people who are like, this is, it's wrong when the right does it. And it's wrong when the left does it. And I'm like, yeah, it and i'm like yeah but i'm correct and my brain i'm not a piece of shit this this

this quote came out of a dale earnhardt avatar account exactly exactly the only reason it got traction is because i used the little red light alert emojis and put like breaking uh ian miles strong executed signed by the premier of malaysia he was 34 years old or something like that and posted his picture hey man dale would know because he's up there exactly thank you thank you very much but yeah people so i i have fun online and people get mad about it and i'm just saying get off your high horse stop being high and mighty and like wish you know they're your worst enemy. You should wish bad things. And it's a wish. Your wish

doesn't matter shit. Exactly. There's no magic in one game. I will say the M.I.L.E. Trunk thing was kind of annoying to me because I started my painting of Dale Earnhardt and Ruth Bader Ginsburg welcoming him into heaven. And a week later

it was debunked. Yeah. Fake news. Yeah, it was fake news. Well, I'm glad to know that you're going to have the same, uh,

post like, you know, second career as, uh, you know, George W. Bush. You're going to start.

Yeah. You're just going to get into both war criminals. Yeah. A lot of people don't know that about me. Yep. Little known fact. Little known fact. I'm glad. Do you guys like my flight suit that about me. Yep, a little known fact. A little known fact. I'm glad.

Do you guys like my flight suit? My mission accomplished? Don't ask. I love the banner behind you, too. I had to ask. I said, don't ask them. Let them compliment you organically. They'll do that if they like it.

Don't compliment them. Sorry, I'm taking this pickup course for miles, and he's got to teach me a lot of things about how to carry myself with self-confidence. Don't fish for the compliments, man. Just let the outfit do the talking. Do you guys like my shirt? Ah, shit, man. Alright.

Should we talk about libs of TikTok? Yeah, here's a daily zeitgeist, a typical hard turn into dark shit. Yeah, so, libs of TikTok. Shia, Chia, Raychick, Rychick, you know, this account has seen massive growth over the years. And like, you know, what started out as like a place for election denialism and COVID misinformation and tales of child trafficking has turned now into like a full blown LGBTQ plus hate machine and sending like, you know, the accounts followers on harassment campaigns

against innocent people. And recently, right? Check the accounts operator was interviewed by Taylor Lorenz. And while at times there are moments that make you laugh at how stupid and ignorant and uninformed she is, uh, her views are inspiring, you know, like real world violence, like bomb threats, death threats, doxing, you name it. And she has this pattern of directing followers towards LGBTQ plus teachers or school administrators, other figures like that. And when things get too wild, she'll delete the post and act like nothing happened. Even though she recently said that she wears the label of stochastic terrorist with pride. terrorist with pride. And like in the interview, it's clear that like right chick doesn't really give much thought to her beliefs in like a way that she can actually articulate herself,

probably a symptom of just being in your little bubble of hate speech and people like rah rahing the shit on. So so here's an excerpt where Taylor Lorenz is asking her just sort of like, what exactly is your issue with trans adults? What harm are they causing? And again, really unable to articulate anything resembling a thought. It's a lie. And what harm is it causing, do you believe? I like the truth.

I like truth. Right. But I'm saying what's the harm of people expressing their gender identity differently than you believe it to be? What harm are they causing? Like I said, we are a nation of truth, and I seek the truth. But I'm asking about the harm. What's the harm? You might believe it to be false, but what's the harm? The harm is that there's a lie that is very mainstream and is being embedded into every institution.

I guess I'm wondering what the material harm is. Aside from it's maybe something that you disagree with, as in your version of the truth is different than their version of the truth, what is the material harm of them living their life as a woman or man or gender that you don't agree with? Not anything that's wrong is there a material harm, necessarily. So there's no harm. Not everything that's wrong. Is there a material harm necessarily? So there's no harm. Not everything that's wrong is a material harm. Eh? Not everything that's wrong is a material harm.

And then there was this other clip, too, that kind of summed up just how like all over the place this interview was. This is this is like another section of the interview where Taylor Lorenz is asking a question and then gets interrupted. Oh, this is my favorite part, I think. It's good.

I'm curious kind of how you're thinking, you know, when you think about your, the way that you put out content and the way that you think about growing your media empire. Here, this is a blowjob. What? I don't know what. I don't know what. I don't know what, what, what are you showing me this for? And yeah, like I I said like the interview

it's not anything where you're like wow this is one of these like this person has really interesting here this is a blowjob it's like two middle schoolers I found it on the internet I found it on the internet what do you want me not to show it to you

so now what it's a blowjob do Do you deny, sir? Right. I don't. I'm sorry. How is this relevant to what I was asking about, about the real world harm that your account is causing in your actions? And, you know, this thing has taken evolution. Like rather now it's just beyond like just sort of this right wing, you know, account where people are just, you know, get to all the people can fill their tanks

filled with hate by ingesting her content. She now has, you know, she found a fan in this guy, Michael Walters, who's the Republican school attendant, school superintendent of Oklahoma, and gave her a spot on the Oklahoma Library Media Advisory Committee, where she can sort of continue her campaign to get wokeness out of schools. It should be also noted, Rajik has only been to Oklahoma once in her life. She doesn't live there. She like lives between California and Florida, but her posts on her lives of TikTok account did lead to a school receiving a bomb threat in Tulsa. Oh, so she's basically a resident. Yeah. And once you've almost gotten a school blown up in a state, you basically live there. That's how you register to vote. Yeah, that's how that works. And so now a lot of people are noticing her role in Oklahoma, especially after this death of a 16 year old non-binary student next Benedict.

school bathroom in suburban Tulsa and passed away the following day. Police say they don't think that they died as a result of physical trauma, but Nex's friend who was also attacked that day said that Nex had indeed suffered head trauma during the incident. So it's like a very murky but fucked up incident. And like the timing of when Nex's parents were informed is just like a total fuck up at every level. And a lot of Ray Chick, Ray Chick's allies are saying, well, she has nothing to do with this. Like, why are you saying that she has blood on her hand?

These kinds of extreme political views absolutely have real world effects on kids. just as an example, said that the bullying began in high school right after Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed a bill into law that forbids trans and gender expansive kids from accessing restrooms consistent with their gender identity. So it's not hard to imagine how the hate that was inspired by Rachel's past posts would translate to danger for these marginalized kids. And like, especially when you look at the fact that two years ago, a lot of people were pointing to the fact that the Libs of TikTok account went after a teacher in the exact same,

in the very school district that Next Benedict was part of for saying that, oh, like this person is like a groomer or whatever because they support LGBTQ plus students. And according to Next Benedict's mother, this was like a teacher that they looked up to a lot and then two years later this tragedy befalls their family so a lot of people like this is just like we're like what the fuck is going on and you're inviting this person to be part of the

school administrative body or at least the overarching or overseeing body of the school district and again you look at like there there's a recent report that found like only a quarter of trans youth who are victimized at school were able to report this to a teacher or staff member. And of those who did, half reported that staff helped only a little or not at all. So like the current backdrop of these hostile bills that like target these students only makes this kind of behavior acceptable to their peers, like in this very indirect or direct way. And yeah, I mean, like, we're also just looking at a whole, just a total failure on the part of schools and administrators to actually protect kids.

so yeah i mean this is like i i don't right now there's a lot of people there's a lot more pressure for ray chick to be like ousted from this school body but as i mean it seems like there's enough support within the people that make those decisions to keep her there at the moment but yeah it's like but it's just also alarming when you have these kinds of people like like you know running this libs of tiktok account. And they truly have no idea of like what their, like what their actions are doing, how they reverberate in space. They're just kind of like, yeah, I get clicks like this and it's fun.

And I don't know, they call me stochastic terrorist. I think it makes me feel important. I think that's cool. Tough as hell, dog. Right. But yeah. And then meanwhile, just attacking the most vulnerable people in a society,

like children struggling with gender identity and just, and then attacking the people who might support them and make them like slightly less vulnerable. It's just like going down the list of like the, the easiest, like people to fucking bully and harm in a society and making that your mission. I, like, people to fucking bully and harm in a society. Yeah. And, like, making that your mission.

Yeah, and, like, we've said this in the past. Like, a lot of this is to do with, you know, trying to make mainstream the shame of not being, like, a cishet person. Because from their perspective, the world has become too inclusive. So the way to push back against that is to try and revive like this, the, the culture of shaming people to do that. And yeah.

So unfortunately it's like going after people who support these very like vulnerable kids. It's still there. Like it's not, it doesn't need to be revived that much. Like there's still a fucking hell of a shame culture for these people to deal with. They're already,

you know, the most vulnerable to this sort of shaming culture and then they're just piling on they're yeah it didn't it didn't go anywhere that's for sure uh yeah they're just like adding fuel to the fire they're dumping you know gasoline on it yeah yeah this this uh raychick is is uh watching that interview I didn't watch the entire thing. I could not take it. I could not. I could not watch how just for lack of a better term, stupid she comes across because she you know, not that I expected her to have some like well thought out reasoning behind her her hate campaign.

She doesn't know what she believes exactly she's never given it thought because she's never been pressed to explain it she's only ever you know she only sees the things that she wants to see online she is an online person like definitively that is exclusively yeah and the moment she has to defend herself in real life to any kind of scrutiny, the thing about the interview, there was not a single tough question in it. No, nothing tough was asked of her whatsoever.

It's just straight up like, hey, you grew up in this community, right? Yep. So you've never met, you don't know that you've met an lgbtq plus person nope right just online and like have you met them online have you interacted with them online nope just just seen videos about them but she had the nickelback portrait things like this is this is a blow job yeah so there's that it was it was absolutely incredible and also for the listeners if you haven't seen it

her fit that she is wearing during this interview i put a picture of it in the chat i don't i don't know if y'all can see it she's wearing like the most christian homeschool mom denim jean skirt and a picture of taylor lorenz on her on her t-shirt. That is the loser. Yeah. And then she sounds as... If you wear that outfit to an interview and then sound as stupid as you do as she does,

you've lost on all fronts. There's no coming back from that. Now, having said that, I know her fans are going to still support her no matter what she says, no matter how stupid she is. Oh, they were gassed up from that outfit. They're i know her fans are gonna still support her no matter what she says no matter how stupid she is oh they were gassed up from that outfit they're like oh that t-shirt's perfect yeah yeah you have to you have to come stronger i still i still feel like like ideally in my mind her ardent supporters were just like typing that out but then like you know with

the with the crying behind the mask face, because like there is something undeniable about that interview of like, oh, this is the leader of our little stochastic terrorism outfit. This is your team? She sounds this stupid. It is weird when you see people

that can't support their own argument because it feels like if I don't agree with someone and it's like the horrible thing, I'm like, well, if you have a thought out, so, you know, like some libertarians, you're like, oh, I guess you believe if you believe what you think. But it's like she truly doesn't take like 20 minutes of conversation to get to the bullshit with them. You're like, oh, so you're like picking up momentum. I see how you made this mistake.

And then it's like, but yeah. But with her, it was just straight up it's hard to look at that fit because i was raised pentecostal and that's like how hello yeah uh all of us dressed you know and it's but it's weird it's like but it's like if my church was in brooklyn kind of it's got this it's got this kind of thing where it's like like you shouldn't be if you have those views on top of anything, you shouldn't be allowed to dress halfway hip. Yeah. Like that should, you should, you should, I don't know what you should be dressed in, but it shouldn't be something that sort of, it's like, it's like the hip version of like the movie mimic. You know, they're like, I think that's a human being over there

wearing that that fit but it's really just like a cockroach with his hands on his face yeah i think she did a good job of basically distilling the like this this mentality of hatred down to its essence which in the end is stupid you know what i mean you can't actually say what are the damages that like a more articulate sort of homophobic transphobic person might be able to be like well then this could happen to our kids but really at the end of the day is and not there's not really not none i don't know really and it gives yeah it gives the game away of like their their ultimate goal is to get rid of trans people altogether yeah you know You know, it's like, well,

what harm are they causing? Well, ultimately I'm going to sit here and sound stupid, but that's because I don't want to say out loud, they're not causing any harm. We just want to get rid of them because we're just following them around. Yeah, exactly.

That's, that's ultimately if she had just skipped all of the hemming and hawing and just said that, like it's almost more of a noble response than, than like, you know, sounding like a complete fucking idiot. You'd think the owning the libs thing would have a platform by now. It doesn't.

But it feels like eventually you would fill in the bullet points, but the only purpose is to essentially wreak havoc, but they don't have any actual platform that they stand on. It's liberal tears. That's their platform. That's the reactionary thing is just like, I don't know why I'm so angry, but I'm angry. And as long as it upsets my, you know, left leaning ideological opponents, that's all I give a shit about.

Yeah. I mean, one thing we can learn, right wing hate mongering fascists are getting better at wearing ironic T-shirts, and the left is terrified. I am scared. Yes. I'm scared. So it's too close. Yeah. All right.

Let's take a quick break, and we're going to come back and talk about the coolest museum coming to an empty, closed-down Kroger near you. We'll be right back. Kroger near you. 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. into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? The Boone County rebels will stay the Boone County rebels with the image of the biscuits. It's right here in black and white in print. A lion. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch. As a leader, you choose hills that you want to die on.

Why would we want to be the losing team? I'd just take all the other stuff out of it. 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 2 of the Amber and Lacey, Lacey and Amber Show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network. You thought you had fun last season? Well, you were right. Lacey and Amber show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network. You thought you had fun last season? Well, you were right. And you should tune in today for new fun segments like Sister Court and listening to Lacey's steamy DMs. We've got new and exciting guests like Michael Beach. That's my husband. Daphne Spring, Daniel Thrasher, Peppermint, Morgan Jay, and more.

You got to watch us. No, you mean you have to listen to us. I mean, you can still watch us, but you gotta listen. Like, if you're watching us, you have to tell us. Like, if you're out the window, you have to say, hey, I'm watching you outside of the window. Just, you know what? Listen to the Amber and Lacey, Lacey and Amber show

on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So yeah, just in terms of juxtaposing, like what these companies are saying and the mainstream media is buying versus what is actually happening. So I was reminded of Sam Altman telling the New Yorker that he keeps like a bag with cyanide capsules ready to go in case of the AI apocalypse. So, you know, he is an expert who gets billions of dollars richer if people think his technology is so powerful that he's like freaked out by it. So, but that's something that I don't know, I've seen reprinted and like long articles about the

danger of AI. And then there's this other like more real world trend where like you talk about a Google engineer who admitted they're not going to use any large language model as part of their family's healthcare journey. Oh, that was a Google senior vice president. Senior vice president. Very high up, actually. Not a senior, a Google VP, Greg Corrado, who's one of the heads of Google Health itself.

Oh, okay. Yeah, and there's also this story from, your show has a Fresh Health segment at the end where you talk about just things, examples, headlines, that are just... It's Fresh Health. Yeah, it's just Fresh Health. It's new versions of health.

The Fresh AI Health. Yeah. The one about Duolingo from a recent episode where they're getting rid of human translators, firing them, cutting the workforce, replacing them with translation AI, even though the technology isn't there yet. But the point that you were making on the show

is that they're willing to go forward with that because the user base won't notice the product that they're getting is because they're just like not in a in a position to to know that by by the nature of the product and so just this distinction between being hyped to the mainstream media and like these long read like new yorker atlantic articles as this is a future that we should be scared of because it's going to become self-aware and Sam Altman is freaked out. And then what it's actually doing, which is just making everything shittier around us, is I think a big kind of chunk that I took away from your show that was just like, oh yeah, that makes way more sense. That feels much more likely to be how this thing progresses. Yeah. So the AI doomerism,

which is when Altman says, I've got my bug out bag and my cyanide capsules in case the robot apocalypse comes. Or when Jeff Hinton, who's credited, has a Turing award for his work on the specific kind of computer program that's used to gather the statistics that's behind these large language models. He's now concerned that it's on track to becoming smarter than us. And it's going to like these piles of linear algebra are not going to combust into consciousness. And anytime someone is like, you know, pointing to that boogeyman, what they're doing is they're basically hiding the actions of the people in the picture who are using it to do things like make a shitty language learning product

because it's cheaper to do it that way than to pay the people with the actual expertise to do the translations. Right. Yeah. And it's just leading just to, I mean, I like this kind of thought on this, I mean, this kind of process.

And Cory Doctorow's got this kind of sister concept of AI hype, which is in shitification, which I think the linguistic society, America, it was their overall... Yeah, American Dialect Society. Dialect Society, yeah. Picked it as the overall word of the year for 2023. But in shitification is something very specific, right?

It's not just like we're now swimming in AI-extruded junk, right? AI in quotes, as always. It's something more. The companies create a platform that you sort of get lured in because initially it's really useful. So this is like,

you think about how Amazon was great for finding products. It sucked for your local brick-and-mortar businesses, but as a consumer, it was super convenient because you could find things. But then the companies basically turn around

and they extract all of the value that the customer's getting out of it. And then they turn around to the other parties there, the people trying to sell things, and they extract value out of them. So you start off with this thing that's initially quite useful and usable, and then it gets insurified

in the name of making profits for the platform. And that's like the specific thing about Intuitification. And I would say there's some kinds of processes you can think about Intuitification, the kind of idea that you have to rush to a certain kind of market, that you have a monopoly on this kind of thing. And I guess, yeah, I mean, the thing about large language models, I think that we get on and talk a lot about is that large language models are kind of born shitty with content. So it's not like the platform started and that platform monopoly led to this kind of process of instantification. to make a tool that is a really good word prediction machine and you use it for a substitute for places in which people are meant to be speaking kind of with their own tone with their

own voice with their own forms and their own with their own expertise their own expertise and then and so it's kind of yeah it's it's born shitty and so you know this this kind of thing i think is really helpful it makes me think of kind of a thing I think I saw a few times on Twitter where people are like, well, if you're an expert in any of these fields and you read content by large language models, you actually know anything about this. You're going to know that it short, you know, treatise on, I don't know, sociological methodology, something specific that I know a little bit about. It's going to be absolute bullshit, right? But good enough to computer engineers and, you know, higher ups at these companies. Yeah. So here's an example. The other day I came across an article that supposedly quoted me out of this publication from India called Bihar Prabha. And I'm like, I never said those words. I could see

how someone might think I would. And I searched my emails like, no, I never corresponded with any journalists at this outfit. So I wrote to them. I said, a fabricated quote, please take it down and print a retraction, which they did. And they wrote back and said, oh yeah, that actually we prompted some large language model to create that article for us and posted it. Yes, because it seems like you might have. And the large language models, they don't like that. That's isn't that what hallucinations are a lot of the time is just the large language model making up stuff. It seems like is what the person wants them to say. Exactly. But here's the whole thing. Every single thing output from a large language model has that property.

It's just that sometimes it seems to make sense. The whole thing is trying to do a trick of like, predict, I figured out what you wanted me to say. Ha ha. But it's like, well, but what I wanted you to say is not always, that's not how I want my questions answered. That's actually a wildly flawed way of coming up, like answering people.

It's definitely something that I do in my day-to-day life because I'm scared of conflict and a people pleaser, but that's not, I'm not a good scientific instrument for that reason, you know? Right, you just got an avoidant attachment style, which as another avoidant.

They've just made me a scientific model. That's terrible. I can't believe this. where Tyler Perry was like, I was going to open an $800 million studio, but I stopped the second I saw what Sora, this video generative AI could do. And I realized we're in trouble. He said, quote, I had no idea until I saw recently the demonstrations of what it's able to do. It's shocking to me. And he's basically saying, he's like, you could make a pilot and save millions of dollars. This is going to have all kinds of ramifications. That feels like quite, that feels like half like just ignorance because this person's

like, oh my God, I don't know what, like total wow factor, but also maybe hype. But I'm also curious from your perspective, what, what are the actual dangers that we're facing that, you know, cause right now I think everything is is just all about these are the jobs it's going to take. I think in the LLM episode where the LLM predicted what that what the potential of LLMs were and the jobs that it could take in a very... The GPT's paper was so ridiculous. Yeah, where it's like, huh? You know, like just sort of the unethical nature of how even these companies are doing research and creating data to support this. Can we just stop, Miles?

Can you just stop and explain exactly what the methodology of that paper was? No, please. I will allow the experts to do it because it's absolutely bonkers to hear because any person who's tried to look at a study or something and you look at methodology, you're like, um, huh? So methodology is a very kind term for what was in that paper. Yeah. Truly. tried to look at a study or something and you look at methodology, like, um, so methodology is a very kind term for what was in that paper. Yeah, truly, truly. So Alex, did you want to summarize real quick what was in there was two different things we were looking at.

There was something that came out of OpenAI and something from Goldman Sachs. And the Goldman Sachs one was silly, but not as silly as the OpenAI one. Yeah. I mean, getting in the detail, and I went through this and I puzzled this paper. I poked my friend who's a labor sociologist. I'm like, what the hell is going on here? And, you know, okay. So there's this kind of metric that you can use to judge how hard a task is that the government collects. And there's this kind of job classification. They rate them from, you know, one to seven effectively.

And so what Goldman Sachs said was, well, basically anything from one to four, probably a machine can do. And you're like, okay, that's kind of silly. That's huge assumptions there. I understand though, as a researcher, you have to make some assumptions when you don't have great data.

But what OpenAI did is that they asked two entities what, like, how well, like, what could be automated? They asked one other OpenAI employees, hey, what jobs do you think could be automated? Already hilarious, because, you know,

they're, you know, pretty inclined. They're not doing those jobs. Yeah, they're not doing those jobs. They're pretty primed to think that their technology is great. And then they're not doing those jobs. They're pretty primed to think that their technology is great. And then they asked TPT4 itself. They prompted and said, hey, can we automate these jobs? You'll never guess what the answer was. You'll never guess.

You'll never guess. They took the output of that as if it were data. And then, like, you know, these ridiculous graphs and blah, blah, blah. And it's just like the whole thing is fantasy. Right. So is the danger there just sort of prepare themselves for how this is going to disrupt things in a way that isn't necessarily the end of the world, but definitely changing things for the worse?

There's a whole bunch of things. And the one that I'm sort of most going on about these days is threats to the information ecosystem. So I want to talk about that. But there's also things like automated decision systems being used by governments to decide who gets social benefits and who gets them yanked, right? Things like Dr. Joy Bull and Winnie worked with a group of people in, I want to say, New York City who were pushing back against having a face recognition system installed as their entry system. So they were going to be continuously surveilled

because the company who owned the house that they lived in, or maybe it was, I'm not sure if it was a government apartment complex. Yeah. Yeah. Wanted to basically use biometrics as a way to, to have them gain entry to their own homes, right. Where they lived. So there's, there's dangers of lots and lots of different kinds. The one that's maybe closest to what we've been talking about though, is these dangers to the information ecosystem where you now have the synthetic media like that news article I was talking about before being posted as if it were real without any watermarks, without anything that either a person can look at and say, I know that's fake. Like I knew because it was my name and I knew I didn't

say that thing. Right. But somebody else wouldn't have. And there's also not machine readable watermarking in there. So you can just filter it out. And this stuff goes and goes. So there was, oh, a few months ago, someone posted a fake mushroom foraging guide that they had created using a large language model to Amazon as a self-published book. So then it's just up there as a book.

Yeah. Right. And coming back around to Sora, those videos, they look impressive at first glance, but then just like Alex was saying about the art having this sort of facile style to it, there's similar things going on in the videos. But still, it should be watermarked. It should be obvious that you're looking at something fake. And what OpenAI has done is they've put this tiny little faint thing down the lower right-hand corner that looks like some sort of readout from a sensor going up and down. And then it swirls into the OpenAI logo and it's faint. And it's in the same spot that Twitter puts the button for

turning the sound on and off. So it's hidden by that if you're seeing these things on Twitter. And it's completely opaque, right? If you are not in the know, if you don't know what OpenAI is, if you don't know that fake videos might exist, that doesn't tell you anything. Right. So these are the things I'm worried about. And the things I'm really worried about is these things doing a pretty terrible job at producing written content and videos and images. And images. And so it's not that they could replace a human person, but it just takes a boss and DC and huge studios and Magic the Gathering. And she's basically saying,

after Midjourney Stability AI produces this incredibly crappy content, jobs for concept artists have really dried up. They've gone and it's really hard. And I mean, especially for folks who are just breaking into the industry, who might just be trying to get their work out there for entry level jobs, they can't find anything right now. And so imagine what that's automated decision-making in government and hiring, those are deathly terrifying. This is already being deployed at the US-Mexico border. The Markup actually

just put out this interview with David Moss, who's at the Electronic Freedom Foundation. No, either the Electronic Freedom Foundation David Moss, who's at the Electronic Freedom Foundation. No, either the Electronic Freedom Foundation, I think it's at the ACLU. I have to look this up. But it's basically a survey of like surveillance technology that's on the southern border. And Dave Moss is at EFF, the Markdown,

but just published something about with him. It was like a virtual reality tour of surveillance technology or something wild like that. I was going to say there's also things like ShotSpotter, which purports to be able to detect when a gun has been fired. And this has been deployed by police departments all over the country. And there's no transparency into how it was evaluated or how it even works or why you should believe it works. And so what we have is a system that tells the cops that they are running into an active shooter situation, which is definitely a recipe for reducing police violence, right? Yeah, right. Powered by Microsoft, yeah. And there is a recent investigation that showed that it's almost always used in neighborhoods. Yeah, communities of color.

Yeah, the wired piece on that, basically. Yeah, I think they said about, what, 70% of the census tracts? Something ridiculous like that. text into so many different systems so that you're going to get like reports in your patient records that were automatically generated and supposedly checked by a doctor who doesn't have time to check it thoroughly. Right. And they're going to be doing things like, you know, randomly putting in information about BMI when it's not even relevant or misgendering people over the place or, you know, this kind of stuff is going to hurt. Yeah.

And I wanted to add to the issue of like entry-level jobs drying up for people who do, for example, illustration, Dr. Joy Bolanwini points out that we're getting what's called an apprentice gap where those positions where the easy stuff gets automated. And I don't think this is just in creative fields, but the positions where you're doing the easy stuff and you're learning how to master it and you are working alongside someone who's doing the harder stuff, if that gets replaced by automation, then it becomes harder to train the people to do the stuff that requires expertise. Right. Yeah. And it's easier to do in creative fields because there's such a just

inability for executives to, you know, like they don't know it. They've never known anything about like what is quality creative work. So I feel like it's much easier for them to just be like yeah get rid of that and yeah like the way that we'll find out about that that isn't working is the quality of the creative output will be far worse right i mean what i mean all those folks really tend to care about are you know content and engagement metrics. You know, you can't actually have something that's kind of known for quality or creativity, right? It does remind me a little bit about kind of, you know, the first rebels against automation, the Luddites. kind of way in which they did have this apprentice guild system in which they trained for you know a decade or so before they could you know perhaps go ahead and open their own shop in a way that

you know those folks were replaced by these these water frames that were they called water frames because they were produced by hydraulic power but then uh you know effectively powered by unskilled people and by unskilled, usually children. Yeah. Doing incredibly dangerous work. But yeah, folks that have been training for this, the apprentices were incredibly steaming mad. Yeah. And then we made their name a synonym for like dummy.

Being a hater. Hater. Yeah. Tech hater. Not canary in the coal mine but there's been some nice efforts to reclaim them by brian merchant and yeah totally some folks yeah so just in the comparison to crypto it feels like the adoption here the hype cycle here is more widespread than crypto. Like with crypto, there was that moment where we saw the person

behind the curtain who was, you know, the people, there was the fall of crypto. With AI, I don't feel like there is any incentive for anyone to, any of the stakeholders,

I guess you could say, involved us involved to yeah to just come out and be like yeah it was bullshit you know there's just so much buy-in across the board where i i guess we've already talked about where you see this going but is there do you think there's any hope for this getting kind of found out uh the truth catching on? Or do you think it's just going to have to be 100 years from now when somebody changes their mind about AI haters and is like, actually, they were on to something the way we are about Luddites? We're still trying. That's what we're up to with the podcast, right? A lot of our other public scholarship. There was an interesting moment last week when ChatGPT sort of glitched and was outputting nonsense. Yes. I mean, was it actually Spanglish or were people just calling it that because it had some Spanish in it?

It had some, it wasn't all, I mean, it was doing some Spanglish stuff, but the stuff is just even more inscrutable than usual. It was just completely nonsense. Yeah. Yeah. And that, the sort of open AI statement about what went wrong, basically described it for what it is. They had to like say something other than what they usually say. And then there was a whole thing with Google's image generator, which,

you know, the, so the baseline thing is super duper biased and like makes everybody look like white people. And there's this wonderful thread on Medium. And here I'm doing something where I can't think of a person's name. But it's a wonderful post on Medium where someone goes through this thread of pictures that I think were initially on Reddit where someone asked one of these generators to create warriors from different cultures taking a selfie. And they're all doing the American selfie smile. And so there's this really uncanny valley thing going on there where these people from all these

different cultures are posing the way Americans pose. So huge bias in these things underlyingly. Google has some kind of a patch that basically whatever prompt you put in, they add some additional prompting to make the people look diverse. And then last week or so, someone figured out that if you asked it to show you a painting of Nazi soldiers, they're not all white because of this patch in there, right? Right, right. Make it diverse. Yeah.

So Google's backpedaling of that, I think, was ridiculous. There was some statement in there about how they certainly don't intend for their system to put out historically inaccurate images. I'm like, what the hell? It's a fake image. It's not like there's no accuracy there no matter what. But these mishaps maybe sort of pulled back the curtain for a broader group of people.

There's some true believers out there who are not going to be reached. But I think it may have helped for some slice of society. Yeah, I know some people who are like, how do know that reinhard hydric didn't have dreadlocks i think it's pretty clear wow but okay sure go off yeah and i mean i think it's this is such an interesting question right it's like where does when is the ai bubble gonna pop right and i mean in some ways it feels like you know we're i mean as much as we can do we're kind of prodding it right you know and saying you know and and one thing that i

offhandedly said one one time and emily loves is ridicule as praxis so yeah one thing you know and and i will in a turn but one of emily's great quotes, you know, oh gosh, now I'm going to mess it up right now. It's I, and I, it's, it's the refuse to be impressed. Oh yeah. Resist the urge to be impressed. Resist the urge to be impressed. It's much, it's much better when, when, when she says it and it's, and it's, and it's kind of the idea of like, some of it is a bit of the sheen, right? But it feels like at some point, you know, if in the kind of operations of these things, you know,

enough, there'll be enough buy-in, especially with automation, that's hard to reverse a lot of the automation without just a huge fight. And so, I mean, I think something that helps are, you know, worker-led efforts, you know? And one of the most awesome things that we've seen, this is something a scholar, Blair Atare-Frost,

calls AI counter-governance. She calls, in one example, she is the WGA strike and how folks struck for 148 days. And after the strike they not only got a bunch of new kinds of guarantees for minimum pay when it comes to streaming and the residuals they get for it they also you know have to basically be informed if any ai is being used in the writer's room, they can't be forced to edit or re-edit or rewrite AI-generated content. Everything has to be basically above board.

I mean, it isn't as far as it could have gone and banned it outright. But if there's any use of it, it has to be disclosed, and you can't bring in these tools to hold cloth in place place the writer's room. All right. That's going to do it for this week's weekly zeitgeist.

Please like, and review the show. If you like the show, uh, means the world to miles. He, he needs your validation folks. Uh, I hope you're having a great weekend and I will talk to you Monday. Bye. Thank you. 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. Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties 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.