The Daily Zeitgeist - Weekly Zeitgeist 313 (Best of 3/11/24-3/15/24)

Episode Date: March 17, 2024

The weekly round-up of the best moments from season 329 (3/11/24-3/15/24)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hello, the internet, and welcome to this episode of the weekly Zeitgeist. These are some of our favorite segments from this week, all edited together into one nonstop infotainment laughstravaganza. Yeah. So without further ado, here is the weekly zeitgeist. Miles, we're thrilled to be joined in our third seat by a real dried up piece of shit. As you said to him when he joined the zoom this morning for some reason uh brilliant comedian writer actor who's brought you comedy albums such as the blake album stuffed boy live from the pandemic 12 years of voicemails from todd glass to blake wexler

and his new special daddy long legs very funny you can go watch it right now on youtube you must go watch it right now please welcome the hilarious the chaotic the riding a recumbent bike in short shorts blake wexler hey this is blake wexler aka we're gonna get to know you a little bit better but first we're going to tell our listeners a couple of things we're going to be talking about today guys thank you for having me hey man that's fucked up yeah that's my aka that's what how people refer just through jack nobody nobody refers to you as that man constantly you're mocking me right now no no you're the south guy you always are you always are yeah i am the south by mouth what were you thinking? You just came.

Were you like tossing and turning in your bed this morning and not just in your head? Weird, weird time change. Yeah. You know, there was an alarm at my house. Like somebody opened our garage in the middle of the night. Freaked my wife out. So we're, you know, we're going on a little bit of sleep. And that's what bubbled to the surface of the night. Freaked my wife out. So we're going on a little bit of sleep and that's what

bubbled to the surface of my brain. And then you're talking about how you're philating the whole town of Austin. Philating the whole town of Austin, man. The tip of your tongue and the back of your throat. Did you ever go garaging when you were younger? Was that a term that you were aware of?

When kids would go to, I guess like parents or i guess people now our age grown-ups would keep beer in their garage and you would break into a garage i do know about this from uh cil city and yes yeah yeah that was the philly suburb of cil city yeah wait wait so that it was a good thing where it's like yo they have a garage fridge with beer let's fucking bust in there and take the fucking beer it's it's interesting i think you're even taking it a step further of uh research where there was no surveillance it was assumed it was oh there's a garage yes there must be beer kept in it because a garage is generally cooler i think like before you refrigerate it people would

just keep beer in their garage but i guess they don't have a garage but if i did i probably wouldn't keep i would keep it in my basement keep it in my gun safe in my gun we went gun safing as well yeah we would have people with their firearms oh to be white have a bad time like just whimsically break in a garage for beer it's not technically part of a domicile you know when I was a you know 17 year old

in Kentucky who just wanted nothing more than to drink at all times I can't believe it didn't occur to me like I'm actually disappointed in myself that we didn't do that. We just, like, went to the liquor stores and played Hey, Buddy, which is so humiliating. Yeah.

It's like, hey, man. Hey, come on, man. Hey, I'll suck your dick, man. Come on. They call me the South by Mouth guy. They call me. What? Get the fuck away from me.

You know my nickname, bro? All right, whatever. Wait. Man, like, Jack, if you had a time machine and you can write one wrong or change one decision in your life, it's going garaging.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Back in time and tell my teenage self, hey, there's this thing called garaging you're going to learn about in a few years because your cousins in Seattle City do it. Or actually, more likely, your aunt and uncle, like, tell us that it's out of control in

Seattle City. The youths are out of control. Fully out of control. Anyway, shout out to Seattle City, man. What a town. What is something from your search history that's revealing about who you are? Right now, my Google search history is filled with

me searching for old Mary Kay and Ashley books that i have to buy used because for whatever reason they're not selling them new anymore and you know what's crazy i keep trying to google answers like why has no one else explored why mary kate and ashley don't have those available like you could buy the damn federalist papers books that happened before you like but i can't get mary kate andashley books new that's right that's what i'm searching but you raised on mary kate nashley like are those nostalgic for you to understand that if mary kate nashley was on it i bought it okay i have all them books okay i love you guys i love them you got the first edition brother for sale listen i had when i i had a

bookcase in my room as a kid and it was completely just filled all the books every time there would be like a book sale at my school and you know what i liked it was before the internet was what it was it wasn't like you could just google oh here are all the mary kate nashley books it was just like it would be random new like oh they're on this one it's the adventures of something else i'm getting that i love mary kate nash I went up for them. Those were my favorite two white girls in the world. They were in the grade below me in grade school at the same school. And they were never at school. But look, one of my point of pride, you know, Mary Kay had, you know, she had her eye on me.

You know what I mean? Wow. I love this. Okay. Look at T. Why were they not at school? They were too busy typing out all those novels yeah i mean because they were just it's like you know like in la like a lot of times you go to

school like they're kids who just are in the business they're just they're fucking working all the time and then they also just have set teachers so like when they even even when they come to school they're like i don't know what the fuck's going on man like i just came here to just like see just to let y'all know how balling we are. And then we'll maybe see you in like another couple months. Yeah. The brand was real though. You know, the thing that I always heard was that they had like become billionaires by

the time I think we were like in our early twenties. They were ethical. It has to be true. The only ethical billionaire. I definitely gave them a billion dollars. I'm telling you, me alone. But like,

I didn't know the publishing side of their empire i knew that they had movies like it's such an underrated part of the empire because it was huge every fuck the movies like the movies they would go make the books of they had had like a little show when they were young called like the adventures of mary-kate and ashley and they turned that into a book bag every time they had and anytime they did have a show they would turn every episode of their shows into one of those books so it'd be the adventures america eating that so listen i grew up in the bahamas so understand if i'm telling you i was giving them all my money in the bahamas and there were a community of other little girls giving them all their money around the globe around the

globe they had they had it in the bag i had them all every series they had me locked in till they were like 19 and they just decided they didn't want to run an empire no more. Right. They were like, this is boring. I'm bored with this. What was your introduction to them? Like in the Bahamas? I'm curious. Like, was it full house or after that? No, my mommy. So my household, my daddy is Nigerian and my mommy is his partner. So there was no fun and joy in my household. All I was allowed to do was school and read.

And so the only thing my mommy would buy, she'd never buy like video games or let me go do anything. But she would spend a bag in the bookstore. So I'd go in the bookstore, sit on the floor and just pick things. And I liked, you know, it was appeals marketed to you as a girl. So I think I got the first one and then I got all of them. All those and the Lemony Snicket's The Series of Unfortunate Events. I had it all. Do you have a book you're chasing right now? Like a Grail, Mary-Kate and Ashley book?

You're like, man, I just gotta get my hands on this. I have like a hundred Mary-Kate and Ashley used books sitting in my Amazon cart right now. It's ridiculous. I've told myself, I told my boyfriend I'm buying them for our future children as the investment. That's why I'm justifying it. I would be so told my boyfriend, I'm buying them for our future children as the investment. That's why I'm justifying it.

I will be so upset if my children tell me they don't like it. Right. And it's going to rise up like the after the apocalypse. Like it's going to be the Book of Eli type thing that everybody like uses as the gospel. I'm waiting for them to make a bounce back. I don't know. I want them to sell new books. But Mary Kay and Ashley, like I don't even think there's a place to put pressure on them they just off the grid

somewhere they just quit us they were like yeah we could continue to like build an empire and at this point be challenging bezos's fortune but we're just like it's boring to us we're gonna go and that's the thing right because that's obviously an executive choice because it's one thing if they don't make new things but they won't even sell the old things like how is a book just out every book y'all have hundreds of books in there all out of print why are you doing this who's this for is one of them still with the brother of jacques chirac i have no idea i remember one that was with the old guy i respect their pride yeah okay the old guy but i don don't remember what came of that.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Oh, no, it's Nicholas Sarkozy's brother. That's who it was. I was like, what French president was it? Yeah, the brother of Nicholas Sarkozy. That's money.

Yeah. I feel like those books, I read every Hardy Boys book that came out. I read the Red Wall series of books, and I feel like if I went back and revisited them and read them now, I'd be like, oh, this is what my entire

imagination is built out of. The fabric of these. And Hardy Boys, talk about fucking propaganda. My mommy loved the Hardy Boys. My mommy is also a propaganda establishment Democrat. Nancy Pelosi loves us. Absolutely. I feel like their story was that mommy is also a copaganda establishment Democrat. Nancy Pelosi loves us. Absolutely.

I feel like their story was that their dad was a cop and then they were like, but that's not enough cop for one family. And so they kind of like moonlit as they were like high school students by day and then crime fighters by night. Yeah, riddled in copaganda. Every boy's dream.

I love that I find out childhood me didn't like propaganda before she knew it was propaganda because my mommy loved those books she bought me that and nancy drew the collections and i wasn't fucking with it something about me knew the ops was around right but mary kate and ashley solved mysteries didn't they yeah but with like a magnifying glass kind of shit you know not like yo get your fucking ass against the car and they started moving

with that they would make little like new new collections would come out as they ate so they had the they had the American Ashley Adventures American Ashley then they had the Starring In series then they had the So Little Time and then they had the My Sweet 16's you see I know too much yeah I felt I, I know too much. Yeah.

I felt myself know too much. Hey, man, it's like, gang, if you have any extra copies laying around, hit up a Limey, you know, slide them for a way. They will be appreciated. I would love that. Jason, what's something you think is underrated? Third-party presidential candidates this year. Not that they're going to win, that Robert Kennedy Jr., not that he's going

to, he's not going to be president. But you think they should win, you're saying. But for example, I hit Twitter yesterday that one of his shortlist for VP candidates is quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Wow. Of the New York Jets. That is not a joke. That was a story that came about that he is one of the people he's considering adding as a running mate. And right now he's polling between like nine and 12 percent. Robert Kennedy Jr., that is not Aaron Rodgers. That's super high for a third party candidate in the United States. Now, traditionally, by election day, most of that support melts away because people don't want to throw away their vote because our system is specifically set up so that only two people can run and anyone else

there just wasting their time. But if he gets only, let's say, 4%, that is more than enough to throw the election one way or the other. Because if you say of whatever, however many million votes that is, if maybe 20% of those people would not otherwise have voted, of that remaining 80%, if they break, say, 47 to 53 toward Trump, as in that's who they would have voted for otherwise, that flips the election. Because again, all of our presidential elections come down to like 20,000 votes in three swing states. You don't have to flip that many votes. So there's not a ton of coverage of Robert Kennedy Jr., although he's very popular on social media because it is mostly just a sideshow and he's big into the anti-vax stuff and conspiracy stuff. But I think people are badly underrating how much this election is going to come down to

how much those third parties peel away because these are two historically unpopular candidates. The pool of disgusted voters is probably literally all-time high. Right. Yeah. I guess it's just we don't know which way it will go. So it's just this kind of free radical kind of variable that's out there that we're like man that's gonna fuck shit up and we don't know exactly how at all right yeah yeah yeah uh i mean i mean he's like he's like i'm not gonna be a spoiler or whatever i mean like that but it may be if your intent is that or not the fact remains like to jason's point there are a lot of people who are like man fucking neither of these two guys and yeah how will that break down because already you're seeing people already begin to like protest vote whether that's to vote uncommitted like in a primary

and what that appeal looks like again in november but yeah this would not be unprecedented like a lot of people think that bill clinton the reason that he ever became president in the first place was because Ross Perot was a third party candidate who took a bunch of the Republican vote away from George Bush won. So Clinton won with 43 percent of the vote. Yeah. Like that changed the course of American history. He won with 43 percent. But of the three, you know, obviously the three candidates, that was the most because Ross Perot peeled off. It was a bunch. It was like 15 percent or something. And it is it is extremely difficult to poll where that that support is coming from, because if you do a poll that's just it's just it's just between the two candidates. You don't let people pick, you know, a third party. You get a decent chunk of, I think it's like 12% saying either neither or undecided. It's a very high number. But it's extremely difficult to discern of those people who would come out for

a third party. Again, how many of them, if like if RFK dropped out, how many of them just wouldn't vote? Versus, okay, well, I'll go with Trump or, okay, I'll go with Biden. It is extremely difficult to pull. It's difficult to know this. And I suspect that on election night in November, we are not, even then, we are honestly not going to know who's going to win. And this will be a big reason why, because of the high number of voters who just hate both candidates and trying to figure out how they're going to behave. who just hate both candidates and trying to figure out how they're going to behave. Will they stay home or vote for somebody else or hold their nose and vote for whatever candidate they think is least bad? Right. Yeah. It'll be. Yeah. Because the other thing, too, is like you see with a lot of people who even they poll about RFK,

not many people know all of his positions. But then again, people even like we're not even sure how much that's going to affect thing once they learn of what his positions are because like on some polls it's like 16 percent of republicans will vote rfk 18 percent of democrats would do it other others it's kind of like inverted so yeah it's a truly uh it's a we just don't know oh rfk junior junior oh shit that changes that was way off i I thought RFK came back because that would be fucking tight. That would. That guy had some riz, as the kids call it. Yeah, it's funny.

And even into the future, if this ends up swinging things to a pretty drastic degree, it will probably be written out of it the way that the Ross Perot thing, you know, the way that ross pro thing you know it's the way that we like to think about history is with a single protagonist and it's like well they won because they were the talented politician and you just kind of write out the third place

person who you know so even even if he swings it as the spoiler, I feel like that won't be the story that we all get. Aaron Rodgers, it's just... Is the truth, as you're about to say? It's just my favorite politician quarterback. No, it's just so funny to me. I was reminded recently how hard he was lobbying to take over for Alex Trebek after Alex Trebek announced that he'd be stepping down from Jeopardy. And it just hit me a second time how weird that is. Like, what did he think?

How does he think we view him? And again, this is interesting. Like, he's not going to be the one who says no to being the vice presidential candidate right he's he's like i mean yeah i should i should probably be running for president but i guess i'll i'll be your vp for sure back to yeah yeah like for the listeners who are not sports fans aaron rogers is currently the starting quarterback for the new york jets he's not a retired athlete. He is under contract.

The Jets are very much depending on him to be their starter on opening day when the football season comes around in September. So the question of could he serve that role while also being on the presidential ticket, knowing that if his team were to win, as in if RFK were to somehow win the election, that Aaron Rodgers would miss the playoffs because he would have to assume the office of vice president of the United States. He would be out that that week when the Jets are in the, you know, the AFC championship game or whatever, like their starting quarterback would be out for the inauguration.

Yeah. And then his O-line is all Secret Service. It'd be all very interesting. He would have to be forced to recuse himself from one of the roles. I feel like he'd be like, nah, dude, I could do

both of those. It'd be so funny, he just fucks it. He's like, oh yeah, dude, I'm not going to be VP, dude. I gotta play football, man. People who are really successful in one place just gain this outsized confidence that they're good at this, like... Everything? Everything.

Because they're surrounded by people, especially in this country, who will tell them repeatedly that they're good at everything. And this might... He might be on the verge of being, like, the greatest textbook case of that ever. Like guy throws a beautiful ball,

but don't get me wrong. Guy throws one of the most beautiful balls I've ever seen that last time. I don't think that was one of the things that got mentioned a lot in the 2020 election. Who threw a more beautiful ball? Who could throw a tighter spiral? Tighter spiral. Although I feel like we're fucking,

I feel like we're headed there. Like the white house is going to be like just so you guys know like shout out at joe biden on tiktok for fucking launching this pigskin through a fucking tire with the tightest spiral folks he's doing it you don't trust this america i mean they have like talked about doing like push-up contests or like fighting each. So we're not that far off. What is something you think is overrated? Period tracker apps. Uh-huh. I just want people to stop using them because, you know.

It's weird. Because why? I have my reasons. Yeah. Well, you know, it's weird. It's weird to put your blood day in a machine. And two, like,

is the government using it to track who is fertile enough for us to go full handmaid's tale? You know, overrated. We should unsubscribe. No, I remember that was like an actual people were many people were talking about that in terms of privacy. It's like as we shift towards a weirder version of the handmaid's tale that it's like, that's also data that nobody should have access to except you. And damn sure not like,

and maybe Apple and a few other, maybe Google or something, you know, and we'll just stop there. The more advanced my phone gets, the more I know it's time for me to take my uterus out.

So, you know. It's like, nope, you guys are going to have to go. Don't need this. You do not need this information don't need this anymore just throw you just i'm just gonna throw my uterus away you're gonna get like a google news update that's like why scientists think it's a bad idea to throw your uterus throw away your uterus exactly like i never i never googled that like

i don't believe your, news. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's true, though. Like, the things that were, like, the information that we give our phones, it's, like, becoming, it's, like, it's truly becoming, like, a miniature medical clinic. It's, like, because you can be, like, think it's your blood sugar in there, your blood pressure. And I get that it's convenient, especially if those are things that you have to track.

But it does feel like there was a point when I'm like, the phones are doing just enough for what they need to do, you know, without it getting a little bit sort of like. And that was years ago. Far more than we need them to. Yeah. Because now your Apple Watch is like, why are you so stressed out, fool? And I'm like, yo, what? Why don't you stand up? Yeah.

Why don't you stand up, lazy ass? And your AI is trying to pretend to be dumber than you. You know, it's a scary world. Exactly. They're like, oh, you got some party right now? It sounds real loud, man. You should turn the volume down. On your life.

Yeah. Volume's been up too high just in general around you. Yeah. You need to go somewhere quiet and stand, not sit. Wake you up in the middle of the night. Get up! Yeah. We found you a nice suburban home in Kansas City.

Have you met Gwyneth? Have you tried her products? They're really great. I never asked. Well, you just seem like you'd use it based on all these biometric readings you've given us. Yeah. It's wild how far we've come. Not in a good way.

But as mentioned recently, I just watched the movie Blackberry. That's about the rise and fall of the email phone thing. And like one of the big scenes is them realizing they're about to be destroyed by the iphone and they show the the press conference where steve job announced iphone and he's just like it's a phone it's an ipod and it's in the same device and like that's it like right you know it's just like such a simple thing and from from there, we've gone to like it knows you are insides. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

It's giving you an alert. It knows who you have a crush on because it can read your body meter. Right. It's like maybe you should think about who you're voting for for president. Also, it's time to move your bowels. And you're like, well, how? Right. How?

We just know. Seems like you might be lying. Your blood pressure just spiked. Yeah. Don't need that. Don't need that. Don't need like cop pseudoscience built into a phone. Right.

Right. All right. Let's take a quick break. We'll come back and talk about the future AI. We'll be right back. AI. 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.

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

iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do.

One session, 24 hours. BPM 110, 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it.

That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm.

Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. We're back. I mean, we've talked about copaganda. It's like describing water to a fish a little bit in the United States, especially if you grew up in the 80s and 90s. Just so many TV shows, so many movies are fucking copaganda. Like, it is like a default that, oh, yeah, well, the protagonist of this is going to be a cop. But, Miles, you found a study from 2020 there's a lot of analysis because you know i think in 2020 is when people started being like

wait what the what the fuck are our shows saying about the police and at that time you know the studies show that like almost nearly 20 of scripted tv was about cops and that didn't even include shit like live pd or cops and not like the reality into the spectrum. And then another subsequent study took like study nine of these scripted police shows. They found, wow, this and this will blow you away. Those writers rooms, zero black people, showrunners, zero black showrunners. And the kinds of people that were in those writers room were like posting shit on Twitter about lighting up protesters. And then even Dick Wolf or I think it was Dick Wolf had to be like hey man i'm sorry bro you're gonna have to you're gonna have to fucking bounce on this show because you're kind of too out there with your opinion about how you see people uh in the streets but hey man thank you

so much for your work uh completely obscuring what police do in our society so yeah i mean like and you just the the the menu of shows is staggering like the the number of ways you can sort of interact or intersect with some kind of narrative where it's like and the police you know they're just complicated folks doing their best you know so let's not go too hard on them let's not go too hard yeah and it don't even be just a police show that police shows to me the ones that are more blatantly obvious like this is a police show are actually easier to deal with because at least i don't have to try to convince you why that's copaganda you could see that that, but it's baked into all the other things.

Like I was watching the Chippendale, the Chippendale Rescue Rangers movie, which if you, first of all, I never even really dawned on me the Chippendales themselves, right? Like they're little police of their woodland world. But in the Chippendale live action movie, the whole thing is that they're working with,

they're taking on the mission for the police because the police are being held up by all these Fourth Amendment protections. They're like, oh, the police can't do the job so the police go to the chipmunks to have the chipmunks do it

because all of these fucking constitutional protections and rights you're supposed to have are in the way. That's the whole, I'm like sitting there watching it like, ain't that part of the bitch?

Look at this. Or I was watching, that's the new one? The one, the new one, the live action go watch it it's crazy yeah that's what happens in the live action or even if you look at me and my boyfriend talk about this a lot because he's a he loves spider-man and and the spider-verse and i went and watched the second one and i was i went with my friend alex lol overruled on tiktok who's also a a pd and he he we were just both like what is this so spider-man is like they have it specifically spider-man would otherwise string it all over the

place but suddenly he needs to take the subway just so he could stop in you can see the subway station stops for which areas in brooklyn which black neighborhoods they were choosing and just having him fight crime there and then leave, go back. I'm like, look at this shit. Look at it. Look at it. That's the second one, the Tom Holland, the second Tom Holland one? No, the Spider-Verse.

With Black Spider-Man. Oh, that's where they get that cop again. The Sony. Oh, yeah. And his dad's a cop. Relentless NYPD promo promo the amount of nypd cars in that in that spider verse is crazy yeah yeah i was watching zootopia with my kids recently like that is wild copaganda just yeah like the protagonist just all she wants to do for her whole life is be a cop even though people don't think she can be because she's too small. And then she, yeah.

I mean, it's just like every 80s crime movie, like partners with like a wily criminal. And then they like kind of, you know, figure shit out. But like Zootopia, I wouldn't have even really thought about it that much until you watch it. Paw Patrol, we've talked about on the show. Absolutely, Copaganda. The worst. Those, to me, those kinds of shows and stuff are the worst. Because, especially when people

like the character, like, people think it's not Copaganda if they like a character or something, or if they like it, right? That's the thing with Spider-Man. I'm like, that's what makes it bad. Like, all the other things, bad Copaganda, is that it's effective that all the other things you like about it this animation is amazing that they gave you a black kid uh you know it's not lost upon me that they gave you a black spider-man and they said his dad his daddy's gonna be nybd his best friend's

daddy gonna be nybd we're gonna have him like that's what it is and so yeah those to me are more harmful than even the cop shows it's when you think you're not watching cop again because at least you could go into a cop show which you're like antennas up but if you think you're gonna go watch a cartoon you're gonna go watch lucifer and all these things and they find a way to be cops who's even charmed why are the witches why are fucking witches and wizards working with the police why do they need the police assistance they are working with the police they had they need the police assistance they are working with the police they had they had uh what's her name uh uh prue was in a relationship with a cop wow you

know just for her safety i guess or not safety it's very hard to tell the one thing too about miles morales that character his dad's name is jefferson davis you're like the president of the confederacy it's just a coincidence man his dad happens to be jefferson davis like let's just also throw that in there for our history buffs but like i think also too like i think about like new york undercover i think that's one of dick wolf's most underrated contributions to copaganda like the and for the entire genre because he took two detectives of color and put it's like a for the hip-hop generation look at this we got we got the we got like a latino detective a black detective

and we'll even cast rappers in the show you know and i remember worst kind of cop again that disarm that was so disarming for me because i was like oh shit like this rapper's in there okay cool this is cool oh what are they trying to do you know what's you know because like now kids that were like raised on here in nwa and fuck the police or public enemy are like well you know detective williams and detective torres like they are right though yeah right that's how it works in real life right like that media media is replicating a strategy that they use in our politics in real life that's why eric adams is a cop right the mayor in new york city is a cop the biggest cop the lover of nypd but that's what makes him so dangerous is because they're able to advertise

him he calls himself remember he calls himself the hip hop mayor. He brings a bunch of rappers around, even though he actively criminalizes hip hop music, like declared a war, declare war on drill music and rap music, like days after he took office. But people aren't, that's not what they're hearing. What they're getting presented to them is a black guy putting on earrings,

telling them, you know, and that's why it's bad. Right. And he's like, I'm at the after parties. You know what I mean? You see me in the background celebrating the launch of this new Chase credit card. And you're like, 100 percent, because it allows people it affords people a protection. Right. Because then people get to say, oh, it can't be racist or it can't be problematic or whatever has to because we have this diverse, this marginalized person as as the avatar for it, when in reality, that's the whole thing with systemic institution. Once you put, you diversify a systemically

racist institution, what happens is those diverse members have to go even harder about punishing their own people to prove themselves to that system, and then, ah. I mean, that point about Dick Wolf taking, like, putting

rappers in his show, tea who was like when i was a kid was at the center of a controversy about like having a song about killing cops and then the thing he's mainly known for now is playing a cop on tv and his politics have moved that way too right but like, it's just capitalism is so insidious like that. You know, we talk about capitalism being the singularity that everybody was afraid of where it's like it gets smarter and more advanced than any single human mind can conceive of. Like that's just if you if you had a million years to map out, OK, so how are we going to deal with this swelling from like actual people who are struggling, who don't have enough to eat and who are living victimized by police? really connects with people like the idea of like taking them and putting them in the most powerful copaganda like is so insidious but it's not it's not a thing that like any one mastermind had to

come up with it's just like the forces of capitalism and the media just like kind of put that shit together you know exactly and it's funny you should bring up ice tea because it was ice tea that actually declared eric adams the hip-hop mayor of new york city holy shit i mean it's the very first episode on my show on my youtube i think a lot of people like because we've talked about on the show we've had you on we've had we've you know had alec eric on and talking about these issues i think a lot of people are pretty well like they they're able to recognize like the cop of the copaganda element pretty well but another thing that i hear you talk about in many others is not it's not just

the cop part it's also the law propaganda as well yeah like copaganda isn't just about when people hear it they think of it as just police but it's what it is copaganda refers to any way like the media tries to feed you or indoctrinate you into supporting policing or prisons and policing. That's what it is. Anything that essentially

reiterates a cop's narrative, what a cop would want you to think about of a situation. So it's like, people will say, you'll tell them law and order is copaganda and they'll act like it's not

because it shows Stabler doing illegal things. And it's like, that's the fucking point. love stabler enjoy you you spend it gives it feeds you a show where you love him you watch him you you recognize why this character does this and you see it as necessary or you come to to see it as normal there's a reason why if you watch if you watch shows all the time you're you're in law and order is is the influences is uh cannot be understated but so if you take a law and order if you watch influence cannot be understated. But so if you take a law and order, if you watch for years, it become a normal part of policing that the police you love, who you believe are just and are trying, they want to do the right thing and their intentions are so good. And you watch them regularly be aggressive or beat up people is a reason why police brutality is the narrative of police brutality is only ever when someone dies, but never just a regular aggression and abuse that we see as a regular part of policing. No one thinks anything about

you. You see police roughing people up and you don't think of that as brutality or illicit. You think of that as that's policing and that's normal to you. Right. Yeah. Can you talk just a little bit too, because I think the one part that I wasn't always wrapping my head around was how like the prosecution element of it works, because while the police are the people on the street the this harmful system it continues through the actual like judicial system and things like that and i think that's another part that like when you watch like law and order you're like oh okay so like they get mad when like they take a plea deal they're like oh he got away because like he pled out it's like oh it's a loophole that these people

are are like uh you know being able to abuse or whatever but meanwhile prosecutors love plea deals more than anybody else like they're the ones like they they want plea deal they're the ones they weaponize plea deals and cash bail in order to get convictions that they otherwise wouldn't get they're the ones that do that so whatever what often happens in the criminal system is police someone someone will be arrested take take for example like a homeless person or someone with mental health issues who has a long rap sheet because that's what the media likes to sensationalize. What happens how they end up with that long rap sheet is say they'll they'll arrest somebody for something, something petty that shouldn't even be criminal or whatever. They'll arrest a homeless person because they can. And then what will happen, even though this case would if this if this were a case against me or you, the case would end up being thrown out or resolved some other way. It would not end in a criminal conviction under any circumstances.

But what they'll say to the homeless person or a person with mental health issues or someone who they know don't have any resources, they'll say, plead to the charge. You can plead to the charge and be released now or we'll set cash bail on you and you have to go to Rikers while this case is open. You know, so someone wanting to go to Rikers for every other time they will plead to the charge. So they'll take the and then that keeps happening. And now they have this long criminal sheet that can be weaponized against them. But what happens with copaganda when it comes to prosecutors is, first of all, a thing America loves to do in general is America likes to discard parts so it can preserve the whole. America likes to discard parts so it can preserve the whole. America will allow you to criticize police or it will feed you a narrative about private prisons so that you don't criticize prisons in general overall or you don't criticize the criminal system overall. So police are who the narrative gets rested on.

You know, they never let it get past police. So people go, oh, police are bad. Police do this. Police do these things. But they never recognize that it's the prosecutors who have to carry that out. Right. Right. do this police do these things but they never recognize that it's the prosecutors who have to carry that out right right so and also how copaganda i think really is really really probably one of the most harmful things it does is it encourages people to talk to the police throughout across all mediums of copaganda all the different top shows or shows that are not even about cops

and they just happen to have that kind of scene they always have where people are faced with this dilemma of talking to the police talking to the police they're negotiating with the police about their case right in real life the police don't have shit to do but your case police make the arrest and then you're dealing with a prosecutor in the criminal system the police will just be witnesses at most in the case they have nothing to do with what would deal you end up with or what you even get charged with but the shows are always like hey man you talk to me you You know, you come clean to me. I'll make sure this isn't messy for you. Just don't ask for a lawyer.

And you'll get good graces. Good advice. Good advice. Right. So people talk to the police. You're also fed this thing, too. Like, if you watch shows like Dateline and stuff that are about, like, you know, like murder cases and things like that, the detectives will always be like, the second they asked for a lawyer, I knew they were guilty. You know what I mean?

And it also feeds this thing to sort of like, you know, create this subtext that like actually exercising your rights makes you more suspicious. And maybe you are actually, because why wouldn't you? Or all the true crime, you know what I think is so funny?

Every true crime you go and watch is about some case where the police failed to do shit. Right. Like every single one. And that's the entire genre. Yes. But they will somehow. And what is very obviously policing failure.

The whole thing is about policing failure. The argument will be how the police like their arms were tied by some bullshit that their arms were not tied by. Oh, they didn't have this. They didn't have have that and it will become this like indictment of of of the defense or people having rights or blah blah blah rather than the fact that the fucking police don't do shit right yeah yeah the the law and order thing is so insidious like you just you don't get to follow a single criminal prosecution anywhere else, like from arrest through trial. And it really feels like, you know, the thing we know about Hollywood is they like an underdog story.

There's this massive machine that is swallowing up innocent people and just making them disappear from their everyday lives. And we never really see how that machine actually works. It's just, yeah. A big aspect of copaganda that doesn't get talked about in all these shows is the investigation. Because in real life, there is none. Like, there is none. There is no fucking investigation.

All these shows show you police just fucking beating their heads in trying to get to the bottom of something. Police don't solve no fucking crime. What happens in real life is someone someone accused of something of something. The police arrest them. And that's what they knew at a Raymond's is the case. Like the information you got, like they don't go trying to figure something out. No one is on a quest to get to the bottom of it also another thing propaganda does is it makes the fence it reinforces this idea that the only people who are deserving of representation or can be victims in a criminal system or who are innocent or what have you right because they'll always have defense

attorneys they'll paint defense attorneys as these people who who believe their clients are innocent or who are who are either scum who know that they're representing these bad terrible evil people they're getting out and they're rich for doing it. Or they're naive and think that they're innocent and they're on a quest to find out that their client is innocent, to confirm that the client is innocent or otherwise they can't represent them. I just watched a Tyler Perry movie just the other night where he had it where this defense attorney is supposed to be representing this guy accused of murder. And all she's spending her time trying to do is trying to like undermine the story trying to find out whether or not he's he's innocent and then once she thinks he's guilty she quits what the fuck that don't have nothing to do with the price of tea in china like you have to

represent him like what do we what are we doing like that has nothing to do with nothing but that's how it paints it to you so the defense are automatically made out to be bad people on the side of bad or otherwise if they weren't on the side of bad if they would give these were people who deserve they would be washing their hands in this case or they would what they love to do in propaganda is have a defense attorney quit and become a prosecutor right they love that like i saw the light i actually saw the light after this they did that in lucifer they actually had in lucifer a show about the devil, about Satan, Satan. They have Satan himself come to earth. And the only way for Satan to reconcile himself with God is to work with LAPD.

And the worst person he comes in contact with, they say, is the defense attorney who in order for her to make it to heaven she had to become a prosecutor is that real that that's what the fuck happened in that show wow imagine you're me thinking you're gonna go and watch a nice wholesome show about the devil and you get nothing but propaganda wow even here it's like well why are the lapd the arbiters of who gets into okay whatever and all the fucking lapd in the show are corrupt they have like like corrupt but somehow that's not the problem they had like the the wife of the main cop that he works with the husband of the main cop that he works with ex-husband is a whole crooked cop doing all kind of shit and they have his real moral dilemma to be like when he's dating

the prosecutor i say ain't this part of bitch right it's yeah it's just wild like how the effects of the you know obviously copaganda helps is like pr for the legal system and police and things like that and helps support like the biggest myths we have like so you know it's completely just deads our ability to think critically because if you go like like i wonder man are police are they a threat to marginalized communities you're like no no no man because i've seen tv and most of them are just good and you know some of them are just going through stuff like the characters on the shows or what if can they do like more with less money it's like well no absolutely not because they're the only thing that keeps us in our society from

fully devolving into the purge and then on the other side too it completely we have no idea actually how the legal system works so if you actually begin to interact with it, you're like, well, based on what I've seen, I don't I don't know if I have rights or maybe I should talk to the police. Or do I go to trial? Because you don't you also don't see the part about how coercive like the whole plea deal thing is in real life where they're like, hey, man, if you actually look, if you go to trial, like you're looking at 25 to life. But or they make it feel like that's what good aggressive policing is. Right. Like when Stabler and these people are blowing down on these people and being real aggressive and confrontational and see those on the shows, they act like that's what's needed. That's that's what tough on crime is. Right. Like tough on crime as a whole concept. Law and order, which Republicans speak all the time. Law and order is an actual term they use 24 seven. So is it a coincidence like what law and order is and what that is? Like it's a direct correlation.

like a decade and they had a description of his like extremely rare car from like one of his first crimes and it was like he lived like blocks away from it and they like knew this all the time they just like didn't chase it down like it's just they don't because it was a while yeah they don't give a fuck they don't like they literally don't give a fuck like it's funny like people who so believe in policing and believe police solve crime don't be the fuck like it's funny like people who so believe in policing and believe police solve crime don't be the people who have experienced having to try to you ask the police to solve a fucking crime like you've obviously never called the police if you believe that they solve shit like you know what happened so when i went out like a year ago my tv got stolen right i ordered a new tv and i left it in the hallway right and i left it in the hallway

because i was like oh my guys coming and mounted in in the morning I don't feel like carrying it up the stairs wrong decision um the minute I left to go to the gym clearly some girl who lived in my building told her boyfriend to come jack this tv it's very clear to me that this was what's happened and I know this because I have proof now anyhow I'm not the ops and I'm a defense attorney so I have no interest whatever you lost your lost your TV. Like they took the TV, Amazon replaced that for me. I have no interest in getting, I don't care nothing about nothing. But what I think is interesting is that even if I did want them to go to jail, let me tell you how the police don't give a fuck about nothing, right? Because Amazon, I go to Amazon to put in that I need a new TV because my TV was

jacked. Amazon goes, oh, you'd have to, you have, watch how the police state works, right? Amazon goes, you have to file a police report in order to get the, for us to give you a replacement, right? So you got to call the police. My landlord, I tell my landlord,

my TV was stolen. My landlord goes and gets the security footage and shows me the guy stealing my TV. Like, oh, seamless. Dude, it was excellent. I couldn't even imagine, it was excellent. It was very clear. They had their eyes on that TV. It was excellent. I couldn't even imagine. It was excellent. It was very clear. They had their eyes on my TV

all day. The minute I left that building, someone texted them. They buzzed. They came in with their face mask. COVID protection. They came in with their face mask and they literally, they picked up the TV like, walk right out the door. You can see them. You can fully see the people. The police

ain't even asking. They don't give a fuck. They were like, they know I have a video. They were like, yeah, so anyway, that's what you need, right? Something didn't ask, didn't get the video. They were like, we'll write that you had a video. Didn't look at it. Didn't look at it. Didn't ask for it to be sent. Nothing. The other day, there were

two little girls. I was walking in my neighborhood and there were two little girls running, a seven year old and a four year old running through the street. And I'm like, what the fuck? Where are their parents and stuff? So, and then I see them run to this white lady and me and this white lady end up going on and spending the quest the rest of the evening trying to find where these little girls came from. Right? One is seven and one is four. The seven year old's badass was in on it. The seven year old snuck them out of the, like when, when, when the, the people at the daycare and I'd figured her out at the daycare and i'd figured her out

at the daycare turned their back she took the little four-year-old she went running she want to go to her little friend's house and she don't know where she's going she is seven but she's not trying to go back so she won't help us so she's like actively leading us in the wrong direction spent hours the little four-year-olds who did it anyway when i finally get these little girls back to back to the uh um the house um as the police are coming outside to us, there have been police inside the house just looking at these people for hours. Like, I don't know where the kids is or whatever. Hadn't gone searching around the neighborhood. Nothing. Right. I returned the kids.

They did not even they didn't take my name. They didn't talk to me. They didn't make not a statement, not a check. But how the fuck do they know? I didn't snap. I didn't talk to me they didn't make a not a statement not a check but how the fuck do they know i didn't snap though i didn't like take those little girls they didn't know that anywhere they'd come from if something happened to them how do you know they don't know that but they didn't check because they ain't shit yeah yeah it'd be a lot of work if we have to look into this so i'm just gonna say yeah all right cool thanks uh literally i promise you literally i

had to like volunteer like like trying to tell them, hey, this is what happened. This is where this one was. I did not give a damn. They had been in the house for hours just looking at their mother's cry. Just like this. They weren't even outside. They weren't patrolling the neighborhood or anything. They were just more of them coming, just looking at the house like,

I don't know where the kids are. Also, you got some more of this food? We were walking around the same neighborhood in broad daylight until they fall in. All right. Let's take a quick break. We'll come back and talk about some more of how this shit works.

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. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions. Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed?

Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote, what is it like you miss 100% of the shots you never take. Yeah. Rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career

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All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110, 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out?

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

They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And Justin Timberlake making a comeback. That's a phrase that we've never heard before, right? Just every five years, I feel like. I was just, I wanted to, you know, I wanted to bring this to everybody today on the show. A few nights ago, he performed at the Wiltern in LA to roll out his new album, and it turned into a mini NSYNC reunion. Some people were like, wow, that is so cool. That is really smart. That is how to get people interested in the album.

album but part of me is like i wonder if the reunion is a way to get people to remember the justin timberlake that people were like less annoyed by because in the last few years right i feel like his reputation has like faded like as he like more people were talking critically about like he's like yeah man you threw janet jackson straight under the bus like what the fuck was that about justin or what was going on like you and britney spears like you kind of you kind of come off as like an asshole and his like response wasn't that great or other times being like you sure love black culture but you didn't really say much in 2020 justin are you there and like i think he's i've saw his recent snl performance with the gospel choir like that definitely also got mixed attention so i'm like i liked the justified album

of 2002 sure the subsequent records not so much but i'm also not his target audience but like after a future sex love sounds the 2020 experience and then man in the in the in the wooded plane or whatever that album was where he's wearing a vest and shit and jeans. People just like started to care less and less. So like personally, I'm wondering for Justin Timberlake, is like the NSYNC reunion his version of smashing the button that says do not break glass unless in case of emergency to be like, shit bro, like I need to fucking get like a jet fuel injection into my relevance. Let me bring like, let me bring NSYNC back because

it's something he was very reluctant to do in the past. But I think maybe deep down he knew it was something that could be potent. So then I'm like wondering if by embracing his clean cut ramen haired past, he can try and get people to remember why they liked him when they were 13. And that's that's what I bring to the two of you is what it like because i don't i just don't i don't think that he has the same amount of pull that he used to when people like oh my god justin timberlake's back just like like every subsequent justin timberlake's back has just been met with yeah yeah i guess and is it more a function that like he peaked during a time where we weren't having like really honest conversations about like sexism racism appropriation and he's just a weird fit in like how we view all

these topics now in this current era or is he just washed and i'm thinking too much it feels like if they're like this one could go either way if there's like a bunch of great songs on the album that people respond to then they'll find a way to get over all that other stuff maybe right maybe all that other stuff and like that there just might not be like maybe all that combines to me to make whatever he's putting out there just not not resonate with people you know right i don't know the man of the woods like i'll just say that man of the woods was not an album that no thought was put into i'm sure like an entire you know ivy league university's graduating class worth of like marketing minds and like songwriters and all

that shit like put we're working around the clock on that shit to try and make it as successful as humanly possible. And it just fucking flatlined. Just belly flopped into that pond in the middle of the woods that he was standing in for some reason on the album cover. Because it felt like his rightward turn. But I don't know. Shayla, what are your thoughts on the Timberlake cycles that we experience in popular culture?

I think it goes back to taste. Does Justin Timberlake and his team have their thumb on the pulse of anything that people are interested in or believe in at the moment? I can't remember the last time that a Justin Timberlake song hit me and I'm like, yeah, this is a banger in a way that I will forget all of his past offenses. I'm still waiting for the recovery of Janet Jackson's career. I feel that that is owed the world. And I feel very much like the scorched earth of his continued Sisyphusian role back up the hill is what's due to him for the fact that he destroyed an actual icon. So I used to be married to a Dutch man. Justin Timberlake reminds me of each time he rolls himself back out is how, how hard my ex would try. Every time we went to a family barbecue to pick up the steps to the electric

slide. And when he really felt like he was getting it, you know, it would show all over his face. Like he really, he felt like he was in this time and each time we were just, you know, doing our best to just like, you know, clap and clap our hands and, and parade him out and, you know doing our best to just like you know clap and clap our hands and and parade him out and you know like and make him feel good about himself we love that for you we love that it's like a child taking their first like pedals on a bike baby steps yeah you know but we don't live there anymore like that you know that was that was something

that we were all doing in our 20s that just we've all gotten over like yeah right yeah i mean that is the thing like i just feel like over the years that just like the not like every time people look back you're like yeah man he fucking did janet so fucking dirty like that you're like that like i just remember that was like early on in our show and i remember we were talking about that because i think it was when talking about less moon vez and like when his all his allegations came out how central he was also to being like i'm gonna punish the black woman in this instance and when we're riding with timberlake here and then yeah and even like as the like all of the attention was was came around like Brittany and like all of her hardships throughout her career and how Justin Timberlake wasn't the, the best partner.

Like, again, you're like, huh. And then I, again, like I said, in 2020,

a lot of people were like, this fool isn't saying shit about anything. And you out here doing collaborations with black artists, black producers, you're doing your whole R andB style is very black culture centered. Yet you're really showing yourself as one of these vulture type people who's like, yeah, all right, well, I got what I wanted. And the second it's about having a stance, I'm just going to do my Kirkland Signature moonwalk. I was just trying to get the timeline on NSYNC's original rise.

trying to like get the timeline on NSYNC's original like rise so they came out in 1997 in Germany and then 1998 internationally that first album was just like that takes me back to a time when like that sort of shit only flew in Germany like that was that was the thing that was like popular they were like yeah no that's like corny shit the german people are into and then they're like our resistances were down you know towards the end of the clinton administration and they're finally let it in and now we've been uh moving towards german history in a lot of different ways ever since. Yeah, I wish we could go to Germany in 1997 rather than Germany in 1937. I know, right? But yeah, yeah, yeah.

We'll see how it all pans out. But I do like, I like, Shayla, your observation that maybe more than washed or not washed, it seems more karmic than anything. Yeah. I mean, I'm all for a J.C. Chazet comeback. I am all for putting things together to put Lance on a spaceship, you know, but it's,

it's the Justin Timberlake comeback for me. Then I'm like, well, this is what you get. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Justin. Oh, well, he's doing what he can. Yeah. Right. For real. I just feel like I should launch in women's history month don't you guys think yeah yeah good remember but i'll do it in sync though so they remember that guy not the the the other dude with the the murky shit just remember me

when i wore that that matching denim outfit with britney please. That's me. That little boy. Ramen hair is really truly, what a look. So evocative. I can still hear it. I can still hear it crunching underneath. He puts a hat on. He's like, bro, just step on a bag of

chips. Nah, man. It's my gel. It's all my LA looks gel that I've been putting in here. LA looks. Wow. And it's my gel small my la looks gel that i've been putting in here la looks wow and it's a pro bag yeah and finally bernie sanders just introduced a bill proposing that the country adopt a four-day work week without loss of pay uh that last quote is important yeah and i'm assuming something that will immediately be ignored in the context of him proposing this bill and presumably in the execution of the bill if it ever picks up any sort of traction. But the four-day work week is something we've been talking about for a while.

On this show, it is both in line with better you know, better quality of life. And also when it has been tried out, companies do better. Their employees are healthier. It's just more in line with what a company driven by human workers should be doing. It turns out. Yeah. Well, it's like, it's one of those things too, or any ask any person who works five days a week, they're like, yeah, would you rather work four days a week? I'd imagine conservatively 98% pulling on that is, I would just say conservatively, right? Because there are 2% people who are probably just like, no, no,

there's no way I can get it all done because like, you know, the boss is like, hold on. Would your life be better if you only worked four days a week the workers yeah the workers say oh hell yeah absolutely but the people who are the ones in the c-suites that you know the the owners of the businesses are gonna then seed headlines like this in fox business that say bernie sanders moves to reduce reduce work hours for millions of Americans. Get the fuck out of here. Yeah. I mean, yeah, sure. While also giving you way more time to do things that maybe will help you have a more

life-work balance. It's so misleading. But yeah, I'm curious how long it would take for something like that to really catch like momentum here, because you see it being trialed in Europe, in Asia. And the results, like we've said in past episodes, they always it's never like and then that company crashed and burned. More often than not, the companies come out and say, let's keep doing that. That worked out really well for us and our employees. And yeah, I mean, Sanders pointed out, it's like not a radical idea. It just makes more sense. People are more productive, happier, don't have to operate within a system literally created by evil,

old-timey car factory owners. It's just a system that we've been going with forever because that's where we started. Right. It's a win-win. Right. No, 100%. And, like, when you think about, like, well, what about efficiency? It's like people today work at a tick that has never been seen in human history. We are four.

American workers are 400% more productive than they were in the 1940s. When a lot of people would say, you know, back in my day, I used to go here in the factory and then we would, you know, do a couple of hate crimes and go home or something like that. Now we're talking about, now we're talking about people doing 400% more than that. And it's still like, I don't know, man. Four days. Sounds risky. Sounds risky. Yeah. Hardly anybody who works these days is drunk the whole day. That's a huge improvement over like as recently as like 30 years ago.

And if they are drunk the whole day, like that is viewed as a problem that they should deal with and not just like the standard order of doing business. You know, Shayla, what's your what's your like work life balance as a as a writer? You know, intellect. Like, do you do you have do you give yourself a certain amount of time that you'd like to be productive? How do you sort of use your time to be productive? I'm really unsubscribed from the capitalist framework of working. So much of my work is catered around my dreams, like my literal dreams, trying to figure, you know, trying to decipher how to turn my dreams into stories

that are prophecies of the future of our nation. You know, the last time that I worked at an office, what I would really love to see is a poll, a totally anonymous poll, in which we looked at how much people are actually working within the frame of their workday. If they were supposed to, if they were going to sit down and say, because I just remember how much of the time I was a cat gif, just trying to look busy, just tapping away at a computer for no reason. Like I was really working a solid three and a half days out of the week, if I was being totally

honest with how I was spending that time. So if we actually let people have that extra day so that they regained a sense of mental health and agency, they too could go about their worlds, you know, looking at flowers and, you know, coming up with the next great idea. You know, there's just so much more creatively that would come out of us if we had that option. Yeah. There was, there was, um, super producer Anna Hosni. She shared a clip with me of James McAvoy on a talk show. And he was talking about how there's something about like how 50% of like the UK's award recipients went to private schools, like for when it comes to the arts. And he was saying

about how the way that the arts are being pulled out of public instruction are is like this very insidious way to keep people like sort of trapped in this mindset that the toil or the churn of capitalism now he wasn't using those words exactly but that that's the only way to live and without exposure to the arts you're fundamentally cutting people off from the ability to look at things in a broader context in a way to interpret things that would like with deeper meaning and that is just one way because we see this especially in like the united states how the arts are constantly being attacked when it comes to public instruction. And like how important it is for people like I look at my own life.

I'd like if my my father is a photographer. So I was just by like just osmosis around more artistic things. And luckily, my school had a music program. So I got really into playing music. luckily my school had a music program. So I got really into playing music. And I feel like so I, I really do credit so much of that to like me thinking just in general, that there's so many other things out there aside from like, well, do you want to be an accountant? Do you want to work in a trade? And not that those things are less than but like that, I've merely had the perspective to see many other possibilities.

And I thought it was a really interesting point about how that sort of affects the youth and sort of what the outcomes are later in life. Yeah. Absolutely. The possibility of us being allowed to have ideas is destabilizing. And I think that's more frightening than anything to these big companies. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we saw that when people had more time during the pandemic, everybody looked around and was like, this is fucking bullshit. But I think it's interesting because your point that we're already working three and a half days a week, like they have that data at this point, right? Like your work laptop, your work computer is loaded with

spyware at this point. Like Amazon is tracking their employees' bathroom breaks. They know what people are averaging out to. So that actually makes this whole movement and the fact that companies are willing to try out the four-day work week make a little bit more sense to me now. Because in the past, I've been like, wait, why are companies willing to, like, even entertain this? And it's probably because they're like, oh, yeah, well, people don't only work, like, three and a half days anyways. And so in this way, we actually get four full days out of them. And then they actually think we're being nice to them. full days out of them and then they actually think we're being nice to them the fact that it's not being adopted more widely is is it is a little wild that they're just like yeah but still that's

giving them too much power that's giving them too much time to dream and come up with ideas for something better so right we're gonna keep them in in the cubicle. Just we want our employees to spend at least 10 hours a week pretending to be busy. Right, yeah. Yeah. What did you write in here, Victor? But Victor was saying, producer Victor was saying

that basically every company that did this in a UK study said productivity either maintained or increased. So, but sheer inertia. Data's right there. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and I can, I can totally see how it's the kind of momentum that business owners do not want to like contribute to, you know, because then they're like, what's next? They're going to start unionizing in mass. Then what are we going to do? Then they're really going to, then they're going to ask for us

to share in the profits that, that we're extracting from their labor. No, no, let's just, let's slowly. Maybe what if we do like rather than 40 hours, we start off with like 36,

you know, and then, and then we'll go down like maybe a half day Friday. No. And then maybe we can get rid of Friday completely, but yeah, it's just, look,

the proof is there in the pudding. Just, just, it's right there people are more productive and happier don't they usually just say like 40 hours over the course of four days like i feel like that is oftentimes that's it that's another version of it too but like you know to what we're saying here most people do not need 40 hours depending obviously this is this is occupationally dependent but like you do not need the 40 hours to achieve whatever their company's goals are yeah obviously you can't do that if you're doing something like working as a like the health services or something like that but yeah many other ways specific specifies 42 making the national standard from 40 to 32 hours so right uh no no loopholes sorry

big corporations i mean shit do fucking uh you know like do 3 11 hour days you know what i mean work three days a week if you're probably gonna do 32 because i'm only gonna work you know that quarter of those anyway there you go well shayla what a pleasure having you on the daily zeitgeist yeah it's been in july where can people find you and follow you and all that good stuff There you go. Well, Shayla, what a pleasure having you on The Daily Zeitgeist. Yeah, it's been a joy. Where can people find you and follow you and all that good stuff? You can follow me at Shayla Lawson on Instagram, and you can find me in my latest book, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World, in which I say, fuck capitalism and the patriarchy.

Wait a second. Now, hold on just a goddamn second. No, I'm just joking. I thought you were cool, Shayla. I thought you were cool. I waited till the end. What the fuck? To stick it to the man. No, yeah.

Oh, hell no. Cool the whole time until we throw out what I actually do with my life. Amazing. Yeah, please, everybody, go buy the book. And is there a work of media that you've been enjoying? Fuck, I don't have one. I mean, the kind of hole that I had to stay in to write a travel book about trying to traverse the world in the most decolonial ways possible, I can't stay on the internet. Like, you know, the bots can do that for me. Yeah. That's true. People should go read your book, though. Yeah, it's true. I was good. People should go read your book. Yeah.

Let's let's go back to reading people. Yeah. I got through about the first 40 pages and I'm around the part you're in Zimbabwe. And it's very, very eye opening as someone who's half black and trying to like have introspection around blackness and what that means. And I found that just this one passage I was reading about you in the car was very like, uh, eyeopening,

but yeah. When I went to Zimbabwe right after Trump got elected and I was still afraid of getting arrested as a black person in a fully black country, you know? And they're like, Oh, that's not, Oh,

see. Yeah. Yeah. You're, you're, you're black from America. This is right. It's different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm confused. So you're black from America. This is different.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm, yeah. And man, your writing style is really, it's like art. It's like prose. So yeah, I really encourage people to definitely check the book out because it's,

and I haven't gone through the whole thing. So maybe it might take a weird turn about being anti-capitalist or something suddenly. It's on the front. You know, it's a decolonial memoir. How to live free in a dangerous world. I'm not, you know, I'm not

shitting anybody. I'm telegraphing all my punches. That won't stop there being at least one review being like, now wait just a goddamn second here. Someone said this was like, eat, pray, love. Keep your politics out of my memoir reading.

Yeah. Alright, that's gonna do it for this week's weekly Zeitgeist. Please like and review the show if you like the show. It means the world to Miles. He needs your validation, folks.

I hope you're having a great weekend, and I will talk to you Monday. Bye. Thank you. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me for I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's

sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. 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.

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