The Daily Zeitgeist - Weekly Zeitgeist 404 (Best of 10/20/25-10/24/25)

Episode Date: October 26, 2025

The weekly round-up of the best moments from DZ's season 411 (10/20/25-10/24/25)!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hello, America's sweetheart Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you about my new true crime podcast, Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, from Smartless Media, campside media, and big money players. It's a wild tale about a gang of high-functioning nitwits who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist. Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he's still,

from the rich and gifts to the poor, I'm not that generous. It's a damn near inspiring true story for anyone out there who's ever shot for the moon, then just totally muffed up the landing. They stole $17 million that had not bought a ticket

to help him escape. So we're saying like, oh God, what do we do? What do we do? That was dumb. People do not follow my example. Listen to Crimless, Hillbilly Heist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Two rich young Americans move to the Costa Rican jungle to start over,

but one of them will end up dead and the other tried for murder three times. It starts with a dream, a nature reserve and a spectacular new home. But little by little, they lose it. They actually lose it. They sort of went nuts. Until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Chicago. A white woman's murder.

A black man behind bars. For a crime he didn't commit. 90 years of killing somebody I have never seen. The Crying Wolf podcast is the story of a corrupt detective, two men bound by injustice, and the quest for redemption. no matter the price. Listen to the Crying Wolf Podcasts on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and on my new podcast, here we go again, we'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself?

Each week, I'm calling up my friends, like Bill Nye, Lily Singh, and Pete Buttigieg, to talk about everything from the space race to movie remakes, to psychedelics. Put another way, are you high? Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now. But my goal here is for you to listen

and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to here we go again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio 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, a non-stop infotainment, laugh stravaganza. Uh, yeah. So without further ado, here is the weekly zeitgeist. We are joined today in our third seat. Brilliant guests. I, I consider this person one of the greats of where, of Los Angeles. Why?

Because they come from the San Fernando Valley. Because they know, the shit I've learned about L.A. from this person is unreal. I didn't know that the fucking Laurel Canyon Coenigua Pass. I don't know these are all Pony Express routes. But guess who taught me that? This guess. And I still think of that to this day. You know them from their work.

I don't know. Girls with Hoodies, night call. I've got fucking Heidi World. And now the upcoming Geno World very close to my heart because I grew up fucking steps away from the Vivid Video headquarters in, I guess we call that Studio City, Universal City. Yeah, Universal City. I mean, it's right across from the wonderful. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, exactly, right across from the Nissan dealership that is no more near the In-N-Out Burger where Galane Maxwell was photographed pre-arrest.

Let's just, this is a very historical area. Please welcome to the microphone. Molly Lambert! Bo-pah-pah-ba-pah! Wait, Molly, how do you know all these L.A. facts? I just can't stop. I can't stop. Maybe a journalist.

I think journalists probably, I would wager on that. Maybe journalism brought you in intersection with. these facts, maybe? Are we just that kid who was just always like spit and nerdy facts like at school? Yeah, I've always been a trivia accumulator. How did you know about, or when did you learn of like the Laurel Canyon, Coanga Pass, Coldwater Canyon thing being the routes for the old horse mail?

Oh, I read like a thousand books about Laurel Canyon at one point. Okay, this makes sense. That's part of a larger reading a thousand books about the Manson family, just to know. Oh my goodness. Just to learn. I still get their Christmas cards. It's crazy. Once you're in the family.

The Manson family just sent their card. So, okay, that's interesting. So these facts that you're talking about, they're in books. Okay. I'm going to, I'll look into this. Did AI make those? What is that? Some do.

Some do. Oh, okay. Most of these are probably. Cash for tails. coming up. Fantastic, fantastic series that I've not really been able to hear. I'm only saying that because I've lended my voice to it and seeing all the other amazing people that have lented their voice to it. I'm like, I'm excited for you to hear it because you are literally the first voice that is heard. No. Yeah. Is Miles plays. Oh, no. That's pressure now. No, no, it's so

funny. Miles plays kid rock. Plays. Plays. All right. Yeah. He's Daniel Day, Louis. That channeling, channeling, channeling, channeling. Yeah, when's, so when's Jenna World dropping? October 27th, Monday. Oh, my God. Monday. Load up your fucking iPods, okay, for this podcast. Killer up!

Producer Bay right there. Bay also working. Everybody's giving a hand on the show. They worked on the show. She's in the show. Everybody's in the show. There we go. Francesca, we do like to ask our guests.

What is something from your search history? that is revealing about who you are. This is so embarrassing. Uh-oh. I'm a big Cardi B fan. I have tickets to her first show back after giving birth in February, so we'll see how that goes. I like the new album a lot.

I think it's great. I didn't love it the first listen through, but the second listen, I was like, this is amazing. Still very good. Anyway, I've been watching a lot of Cardi B interviews, and she was on one interview, with Angie Martinez, and I was just looking at her watch.

And I was like, damn, that's a nice watch. And I was like trying to zoom in, and I couldn't find, you know, like, what is this watch, you know? So I was like really into the watch. It was like big, chunky and white. And I realized. Oh, I know what that is. Yeah, I see it.

Yes. I finally found it. And it is a $2.5 million watch that's some boy, some guy's name, some boys. It's a Richard Mill. Whatever. Yeah. What's that? A Richard Millie.

Oh, okay. Michelle. Who and a half million dollar watch? Now, of course, this takes my love of her down because I'm like, nobody needs a two and a half million dollar watch. You know, blah, blah. I'm, you know, but I did. Got your attention, didn't it? I did search chunky white watch and realized that, you know, for the rubs out there who just want a watch that looks like a nice watch...

Francesca's pointing to a chunky white watch on her own wrist. There's a lot of dupes out there for the dupes here. So I'm a total dupe, and I like, I like it. It's white, it's light, and it's guess. Let me see that. Let me see that. Bring that close to grandmother's eyes so I can look at that. You can't focus on it, but it's like, I got the clear one.

I think it's guest branch. She's not asking you to guess. It's the guest brand. Oh, my. Oh, yeah. Let me see. Bring it close. I was like, yeah, Eddie Richard Mill.

Yeah, okay. That was a joke, if anybody left of that joke. That was a joke from the Brady Bunch movie that I just stole there. So. Oh, wow. Where she's like, what brand of jeans are those? And she says, guess. And she goes, okay, Lee, Levi.

Yeah. No, it is. I haven't bought something from guess, I think, since I was. was like 17. So this is very like, I like the watch. It's fine. It's cute. It is definitely a like I saw Cardi B on an interview and I don't have two and a half million dollars. It's funny. I never clocked Cardi B to be one of your style icons because you don't dress like Cardi B at all. But your energy on your energy. I need some ribs removed first and putting I don't know where some I guess inner thigh weight into my ass. The point is no. You put the.

ribs in your ass. You put the ribs in your butt and just sort of spank. Hey, Doc, throw the ribs back there. Hey, you want to be able to knock on that thing, you know? No, not my style icon, but I was needing a new watch and I just, you know, so I was like chunky watch and I feel like Google or Duck, Duck, Duck, Go, which I used, knew that I was looking for a very, a dupe.

Yeah. Hey, dot, dot, dot go. I mean, you can find, so many people do, like, you could have found one that is pretty much like just a direct rip-off of that. Oh, yeah. If you really wanted to have that, you know what I mean? I could, I know all. But that would have been like, what, like 500,000 or something?

Like people were like. No, you get that shit on the gate for like, fucking like 80 bucks. Okay. Anyway. All right. I don't know what the Google's the gate. D.H. Gate. Okay.

This is where the Chinese websites where you get all the counterfeit merchandise. I feel like the world of reps has been under publicized because it is really like the very foundation of capitalism wobbles under its weight. Under replicas, yeah, of course. The most expensive pair of shoes. Like my wife for, I think, our anniversary, bought me these shoes that were like my grail sneakers, the Union Guwaba ice, Jordan Fours.

And I was wearing them. Miles was there. He can attest to this in Las Vegas. and a teenager walked up to me and goes nice reps and then like laughed so not only

not only like can you fool people by getting the reps but if you are stupid enough to spend the money on the nice thing that you covet people are going to think they're reps anyways so you might as well just get the fucking reps oh okay so he wasn't

like he just clocked you as someone who didn't wasn't able to get the rep I wasn't able to get the original. Yeah, he was just trying to, because reps are so pervasive. And they look, some of them are so. Some of them look really good. Yeah, yeah. And there was a sneaker convention in town.

So he was like, but like the fact that there was a sneaker convention in town at the time means that he was like, he was really saying, fuck you. Because he was like, look at this rube who just bought some reps at the sneaker convention. Wouldn't you chase him out? Like, no, not. They're actually real. I mean, like, to your point, it's really interesting. Just like, as somebody who loves sneakers but hates paying just, like, insane amounts of money, I'm like, yeah, I'll buy fakes because I'm not about to pay fucking $500 for a pair of sneaker. I'll pay $100 from somewhere else.

Yeah. But, like, it's, it's broken the brains of, like, hype beast brand focused people who are like, the whole point is like, you don't want to, like, why spend for the cheap thing? you want to spend like the $1,200 on the other thing. Like that's the whole point of it. You're like, it actually isn't. And look how pressed you are. Totally not. Because somebody just showed up with the thing that looks like the thing that costs $2,000 or whatever.

It's always, I mean, I'm not into, like, when I did go to China, they did take us like part of the tour when I visited. I can't remember if I was outside of Beijing. They took us to a place that was like, you know, number one, first of all, you ever tried to like not buy something in a like just a place that's like nothing but dupes and reps and like whatever. like fakes, knockoff shit, it's impossible. You cannot make eye contact with any vendors because they'll be like, buy my glasses, please, go here. I saw you looking. I saw you looking and you're like, oh my God, oh my God.

But I will say, like, I'm not someone who's ever been into brands. I don't, I really don't care. Like I understand. Occasionally, occasionally I'll be like, oh, like the logo, whatever, whatever. But it really is about like, no, the style is nice. It's a nice style. It's a well-designed style. Anyway, I just put it in the chat.

Look at that dupe. That's $13 bucks off the gate. Shut up. Yes. This looks exactly like what I have. There you go. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Save your coins, yo. Save your coins. Save your coins for the revolution. Seriously. What is something you think is underrated? New York City public buses. Okay. Is it going to take you 45 minutes to take a bus where it could take you 15 minutes in an Uber?

Absolutely. Or, you know, are you, spending 10 extra minutes taking a bus instead of a subway yes but like I want to be above ground dare I want to see sunlight you know do I do I want to be on a bus at 3 p.m. when teens it's like after school and there's teen drama like yes I want all of these things yeah I thought you were going to say no hell yeah that sounds amazing what kind of teen drama like are you like overhearing just like little the scuttle butt from the high school headphones on it's paused like I am listening to everything. It's on transparency mode. It's like, yeah, I'm going to actually turn up on the hearing aid to magnify the sound.

I'm just sitting closer and they're like, help, there's an old woman near us. But no, just like drama over texting someone back and Snapchating someone. It's very, it's very, it's very innocent. It's beautiful. And also New York teens are all very cool. And so I'm very interested in them. Like a couple summers ago, a New York teen said something to me so cutting. Like I was vaping, sorry, on a bench, reading the Paris Review, highs and lows. Damn. And these, like, teens, like, cool cargo shorts, crop tops, walk by me. Without even looking, they just said, imagine vaping in 2022. Which is so... Wow. Damn.

Imagine. Like, wow, it really, it really hurt. Immediately threw my lost Mary away. And I was like, I can't behave like this anymore. So it's just like, they're cool. Were they smoking a pipe like Sherlock Holmes? Like, what? was their thing. They have like a year of a latte. What's cool with the teens? I was only vaping

because I thought it made me look like a teenager. Literally, I was like, I wonder why these youths think this is cool. So yeah, teen culture, it's like they're just cooler than us. I'm very interested in what they're up to. Right. Man. So you're one of those sunlight sickos. You like the sunlight, huh? Instead of underground with a roller coaster grease and terrible smells. It's like there's a time and a place for a subway and then there's really a time and a place for the bus. And I think the bus is underrated. Give me, okay. So as somebody, I visit New York a lot. I've never lived there. I'm pretty familiar with the city. But just from your perspective, when is the time for a bus and when is it time for subway? Well, yeah. Like if I'm, well, if I'm going to Manhattan, obviously, it's time for a subway, right? Like I'm going to zip there. What am I really going to see? You know, there's one subway that even goes over a bridge and I get this like experience that I'm looking towards. But if I'm in Brooklyn and I'm trying to get to different neighborhoods, like, I'm going to take a bus.

And it's going to take me longer and I'm going to factor in an extra half an hour. But I just know I'm going to get cool joy. Like there's something I'm going to see. More stimulating. Sure. Yes. Yes. You don't like riding the bus over the Brooklyn Bridge with a look of whimsical awe on your face with a piece with a piece of hay in the corner of your mouth like in every movie when someone's coming in here?

No, because like that's giving traffic. And if I want that over bridge vibe, I'm taking the J train. Yeah, I'm doing the J train. Yeah. There's also rumors that the socialist, soon-to-be mayor of New York, wants to make buses free. Did you see that? Like, some right-wing guy was, like, riding the bus before it becomes, like, free and, like, full of homeless people. And people are like, dude, first of all, you've never ridden the bar before in your life.

But that's what I think. That's what it makes me think of. It's gross. What is something, Tim, you think, is underrated? Fireworks, guys, and I'm sick of hearing otherwise. I like fireworks. I like them a lot. It's exciting.

It's beautiful. And it's kind of one of the few things that I feel like the citizen. I mean, over there, you guys got guns. So, you know, we don't need to get into that this episode, unless you want to. But over here in New Zealand, like, we don't get access to a whole bunch of, you know, things that explode at the citizen level. And I feel like there's this one time of the year, which is around about now. because we've got a mandated legal period where we can have fireworks over

our version of 4th of July is Guy Fawkes. I don't know if you guys know much about that, but a guy tried to blow up British Parliament and I think the 18th century and now we celebrate his terrorist actions with a fireworks day of our own. But it roughly, roughly, roughly coincides with Diwali, which is the Indian Festival of Lights as well.

And we've got a huge diaspora from India here. So they go crazy on the fireworks. And everyone, like, there's always every year, There has been a conversation for the last 25 years in New Zealand that this would be the year they ban fireworks and it'll just be public displays, but you won't be able to buy them yourself. And I'm in the increasing minority. My little group of people go like, man, fuck the dogs. I don't care. Fuck the little kids.

I like fireworks. I like that they exist. I like that we have them. Yeah, we've talked a lot of fireworks on the show, basically going back and forth between my, I think the place I've landed is I really like catching. a fireworks show in the wild. Like, right, if I'm, like, walking and, oh, my God, there's fireworks. It's, like, atmospheric, but going to a fireworks show and sitting there with my kids

and just watching it and being like, you know, in many ways, this has a three-act structure. Like, it just, it doesn't really, where I prefer, like, I do love the fact that in Los Angeles, you are, like, on Fourth of July or when the Dodgers win a particularly big, game like you're driving down the street and there's just ambia it looks like a bosleerman film like it's just like going while i do love their use sporadically again that's probably not that safe it's not good advice i will say also just based on what you just said i didn't know that you could do a fireworks show without also shooting your guns in the air i thought those i thought those two went hand in hand you've got to believe in yourself man there's a way to separate the two

It is possible. We've proven it. There's, I mean, I don't, you guys, do, are there people doing, like, rogue fireworks in New Zealand, like, in L.A.? Define. Well, no. Making shit, you are like, how did you, well, what did you just do? What we lack is a version of, I guess, like, Mexico, effectively, because we are an island nation. So, everything has to be brought in by boat, and it's pretty strictly controlled.

Though, when I was a teenager, I was in, you know, again, in the minority, but not the one. I was disassembling fireworks and making bombs out of them and like making my own shit. There you go. Getting shit done. Yeah, yeah, a little Ted Kaczynski on it. There's, I, because I remember over the summer Jack and I were talking about fireworks. I remember I

sent you that one of, it was basically like a military munition that goes off in L.A. Look, let me just give, this is what some shit people are setting off in L.A. in the summer. This guy, this one was called the Dodger

Rona Grand Slam. Just the sound of this is going to be terrifying. Please put your best inside. This is a large baseball firework. Being launched out of a parking cone. On a bottle rocket. The guy's running like 40 feet away from this thing.

It's running. Holy shit. It's in the air. It's airborne. It is screaming like a surface air missile. Holy fucking it. God. It is set off every car alarm.

Every car alarm within a 10-block radius. It's like a scud missile, man. Yeah, yeah. Not good for the environment, but when you watch it, if you go, whoa, I don't know what it is. There's something so primal about little bang-bangs going off. That's the thing. And I do like reattaching to that, you know, childlike excitement of thing go boom.

Yeah, yeah. For whatever reason, it's like, yeah, wow. I think I just, I think I just really harmed an animal. but it made the car alarms go off. I felt powerful. All right. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.

Here, you're overrated and get into some news. We'll be right back. In the new podcast, Hell in Heaven. Two young Americans move to the Costa Rican jungle to start over. But one will end up dead, the other tribe. for murder. Not once. People went wild. Not twice. stunned. But three times. John and Ann Bender are rich and attractive and they're devoted to each other. They create a nature reserve and build a spectacular circular home high on the top of a hill. But little by little,

their dream starts to crumble and our couple retreat from reality. They lose it. They are actually live in. They sort of went nuts. Until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to hell in heaven on the I-Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News dives deep into one big global business story every weekday. A shutdown means we don't get the data, but it also means for President Trump that there's no chance of bad news. on the labor market.

What does a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, reveal about the economy? Our breakfast foods are consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsize indicators of inflation. What's behind Elon Musk's trillion dollar payout? There's a sort of concerted effort to message that Musk is coming back. He's putting politics aside. He's left the White House. And what can the PCE tell you that the CPI can't?

CPI tries to measure out-of-pocket costs that consumers are paying for things, whereas the PCE index that the Fed targets is a little bit broader of a measure. Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, I'm Kyle McLaughlin. You might know me as that guy from Twin Peaks, Sex in the City, or just the Internet's dad. I have a new podcast called What Are We Even Doing, where I embark on a noble quest to understand the brilliant chaos of youth culture. Daddy's looking good. Each week I invite someone fascinating to join me, actors, musicians, creatives, highly evolved digital life forms, and we talk about what they love. Sometimes I'll drizzle a little honey in there, too, from feeling sexy in the morning. What keeps them going?

And you're maybe my biggest competition on social media. Like when a kid says bra to me. And how they're navigating this high-speed roller coaster we call reality. In Australia, you're looking out for snakes, spiders, and f***is. Right. Hey, he's no train McDougall. This is like the comment section of my Instagram. Join me and my delightful guests every Thursday.

And let's get weird together in a good way. Listen to what are we even doing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Crying Wolf Podcast is the story of two men, bound by injustice, of a city haunted by its secrets, and the quest for redemption, no matter the price. White victim, female, pretty, wealthy, black defendant. Chicago, a white woman's murder, a black man behind bars, for a crime he didn't commit. I got 90 years for killing somebody I have never seen. He says the police are his friends And then that's it

They turn on it A corrupt detective How he was interrogated the techniques That's crazy A snitch and a life stolen They got the wrong guy But on the inside Lee Harris finds an ally

In his celly Robert Who swears to tell the truth About what happened to Lee And free his friend And if you're with me You're golden I'll take care of you I'm gonna be with you

You stuck with me for life Listen to the crying Wolf Podcast, starting on October 22nd, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back.

And Nilo, your book is about so many things. The revolution launched by women, oftentimes very young women and girls, to push back against the brutality and gender apartheid that, has been instituted by Iran's authoritarian government. It's also about citizen journalism. Can you talk about the story of the revolution, first of all, like what happened three years ago and also the role of citizen journalism in reporting it? Yeah, absolutely. So in September

2022, a young woman named Massagina Amini was stopped by the morality police allegedly for improperly wearing hijab. She's Kurdish. She's from the Kurdish province, and she was visiting the capital. We don't know exactly what that interaction looked like. A lot of women in Iran, like, it's a daily thing to be harassed by the morality police. Like, when you meet your friend at a cafe, the first question you ask each other is Keseigirda, like, did anyone harass you or stop you on your way? It's just like daily life, right? Yeah, except. And, and then the next thing that we see, like, and this is really the image that incensed the world, is that we saw Gina lying unconscious in a hospital bed. This was after she was in the custody of the morality police. Like, it looked like

she was beaten, you know, within an inch of her life. Her face is puffy. Like, I can still see the image and feel it when I think about it. Her face is puffy. There's tubes coming out of her face. She has dried blood on her ears. It was horrifying. And I think, like, once that image was shared, and this was, again, shared by a source at the hospital, it spread everywhere. Because this harassment is a feature of daily life, like so many women and so many Iranians could see themselves in what happened to Gina. She eventually succumbed to her injury. She died. And immediately there were protests outside the hospital, there were protests at the funeral. Like, from there, it's spread.

And we really have everything to thank to reporters for this. So there is a citizen journalist named Sajad Khad Khad Khadarrami, who is based outside of Iran, and he was the first person on his Instagram story to alert the world to what was happening. There were reporters there as well, like two other reporters that we really owe, you know, our knowledge of this two are Nilufar Hamidi and Allahi Mohamedi. These are two Iranian reporters based in the country working for major outlets, but they were under pressure while they were at the hospital to not report. Like the authority said to them, if you start reporting on this, like this could be a lot of trouble, right?

So immediately the pressure was there. But once that image was out, the movement spread. And this movement, and yeah, it grew. And it went, it's the largest and most widespread protest movement in the Islamic Republic's history. And again, like we, the citizen journalist really helped us in understanding what the protests looked like. on the ground because it's so difficult to do reporting in the country, right? Like the Washington Post hasn't had anyone based in Iran since my colleague Jason Rezayan was in prison there for for over two years. The New York Times didn't have a correspondent there as well. And so, and if you're

foreign media going to report in Iran, it's very difficult. There's a lot of restrictions. You're constantly minded. And then journalists who are Iranian and based there, like every day is harassment for them. And so when we're seeing stories about protests and what it's, looks like, what it looked like when authorities were very violent protesters on the streets, that was because people who were on the ground in that moment were filming it, sending it to citizen journalists, and it was being spread. And so the way a lot of video is shared in Iran is through the app Telegram. And Telegram can be pretty safe for people because you can make these like one-time use accounts and send them. And you can send them to a citizen journalist

channel, which will have like 500,000 subscribers and it'll spread from there. And yeah, so essentially like this is, this is the way that everything gets shared. So it's really, we have everything to think to people who are brave enough to document the atrocities that were happening to Iranian people and taking the risk to send it to citizen journalists who amplified it to the rest of the world. Yeah, those first acts of citizen journalism, is it, you know, you said that these are citizen journalists who were able to do that? Is it just, like, were they thinking of themselves as citizen journalists before? Were they just people who happened to be there and like shared the image. Like how, whoa, what were, what were those first acts of citizen journalism

looking like? Yeah, so some of these accounts have been around for a long time. And I've been able to make relationships with some of these channel administrators. And so these people had been documenting, you know, protests in 2019. They'd been documenting things like there was a port explosion in one of Iran's southern ports this year. Like anything that's shared, people really share on social media. So it's like this is a constant. feature of the information ecosystem in Iran. Got it. And now some people say that the United States is in the early stage of an authoritarian takeover of the government and media, particularly people who've witnessed authoritarian takeovers of governments before, like we've talked before

about M. Gessen from the New Yorker, who seems to be saying, yeah, this is all happening right on schedule. This is like exactly what it felt like when Putin took over. Can you talk about the role of citizen journalism in the U.S. today? Like, you know, it's somewhat nascent, but like, what role do you think citizen journalism could play and should play going forward? Yeah, I mean, people who are there on the ground are documenting events in real time. Like, I cover Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S. in 2020. And, you know, citizen journalists, which can even be as simple as uploading videos to to X, Instagram, just being able to collect a record of what happened is incredibly important. So, like, in 2020, when we were covering BLM protests in Philadelphia, we were able to prove

using visual documentation that the Philly police violated their own rules for when and how to use tear gas. So it can be incredibly important because these pieces of video, like, it's so precious, like any piece of video is a documentation, right? Like if the government is saying ICE agents aren't doing any harm, but you have people that are, documenting this, right? And we can verify that, you know, where it was filmed, that it is of the current moment, like all of these visuals can be incredibly important for future accountability or even right in that moment. Yeah. Yeah. Even like up to ICE protests and like it seems like they have gone not literally mask off, but in terms of like organizationally, just they're

shooting people in the face with, you know, non-lethal rounds that are cracking. people's skulls and like trying to think back at the documentation of those things. It's all citizen journalism. It's all just people who are there close by recording on their phone. And then eventually, you know, I was able to watch a recreation of a act of ICE abuse that was completely reconstructed on the front page of the New York Times, all from just like people who are around recording on their phone, which it feels like more and more that's one of, the last things that we have. Yeah. I mean, like, what you're describing is something that we call open source reporting, where we look at all these pieces of information that are there.

Like, we use satellite imagery to look at the level of destruction to Gaza's agriculture, for example, and we did this in 2023. It's like all these pieces of information that are there, and what can we do with it? So it's like incredibly important because you can, you know, if you go to a protest, a regular story might be, here the merits, here's someone who, is here protesting this. Here's what someone on the other side says, but once you have visual evidence that shows, you know, police use of force, if you're, you know, using less lethal rounds, but in a very, very close proximity, like, those often will go against the use guidelines of the specific less lethal round, right? So all of these pieces of evidence are super

important. Is there, I think, yeah, to that end, right, open source sort of material out there helps put like sort of demystify or really bring out the truth and things because you always get sort of like the state's version of events and then the people on the ground and then you kind of have to have a reckoning based on what you can gather. Is there a way like people should be thinking? Because I'm thinking all the time, we just have a reflex, I think, especially in this age of social media, to just get your phone out, especially when there's fuckery unfolding in front of you. Is there a way for people to think, okay, like, is it this thing I took, what do I do with it now? Rather than just maybe texted to other people like,

yo, this shit got crazy over here. Like, this is a video I took. Is there a way that people should be thinking about this and what their role is in documenting these things? Because again, this is fairly new for American people to having to be like, I'm having to see all these sort of abuses unfold, but in an era of cameras on every single cell phone. How should, you know, like, what's our role in thinking about that is people who are trying to be people of good faith in this country to try and document the kinds of things that would potentially, you know, maybe correct some wrongs. Right. I mean, any visual documentation that you have, send it to me on Signal. I will take a look at it. No, but really, it's about keeping the material that

you, if there's an important moment in there, being able to save it, archive it, keep it in a place that's not just your phone, something happens to your phone. It gets, you know, crack the next day. That's really important. Saving the metadata, that's something that we always look for. So when you take an image or video and you look in your camera roll, often it'll say if you have location services enabled, exactly where it was filmed. That really helps open source investigators. We can plot it on a map and be able to say, oh, okay, this window that Jack filmed, you can see it in satellite imagery. We feel very confident that it's up this moment. And if there's a date and time, that again is really helpful to us because we can feel like this is a piece of video that we can

easily verify. So keeping it, archiving it, and then being able to get it out to people like, me, who are open source reporters, looking at different stories in this world every day. Right, because I feel like that even happened with ICE agents, like in Illinois, where they were basically lying about some, like an event where they threw a child down on the ground. And like, oh, that's like old. And they're like, no, here's another video of that same agent, basically. And you can, we can tell from the metadata that this is very much that day. And like, they had to suddenly, I mean, they just, they didn't not necessarily own up to it.

But it was sort of one of those moments where that sort of line of. of lying about the activity of ICE agents was sort of just dispelled through. Yeah, it's super important because, you know, regular police departments will wear police cameras as reporters. Sometimes we can file information requests from the department to try to get it. We may not, they may not give it to us for certain reasons. They may take a long time. When it's federal agents, it becomes even more complicated to request that video. So it's, it makes it even more important for people to be documenting whatever they're seeing in their communities.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like I think, you know, there's a lot of bad news and the authoritarian creep is real. I do think that there's a story of like that all of that citizen journalism, all of those things we've seen from the streets is working, like is reaching people. Like Trump's approval rating on immigration is down from plus 11, like more 11% more people approved than disapprove to minus 3.2. And, like, obviously that's not nearly negative enough, but it is the thing that he seemed to be, like, kind of rioting on coming into the White House. And, like, that it feels like people, you know, by because his policy is basically foregrounding the cruelty and, you know, also being terrible at execution and, like, you know, finding the people they're looking for and instead just, like, harming innocent people, like, people seem to be getting off board. I mean, it does seem like a weapon that's being exercised and that probably just needs to be more and more foundational to how we interact with this regime. I have a question. What are the rules when you're trying to go off the record? You know, do you talk to a journalist?

What info do you have? Like, what is happening? No, no, no, not me personally, because I'm just thinking of this. I have a friend. let's call him Donald T. Okay, no, that's too obvious. D. Trump. There you go.

No, but I sort of use this as a segue because we are such, like, it's good to know, obviously, journalism is so foundational to being able to counteract the sort of propaganda that comes out of the government and bad faith actors that are in orbit of the administration. And just this story that came up today about Lindsay Halligan, it's just sort of of a lot of it revolves around this idea that this person also this woman lindsey hallion has no idea what that means to go off the record and that was a very flippant way to segue into the next story but it this there's just something very tragic and upsetting that we are being having our rights

trampled by the most inept ignorant people that these that this administration could possibly find potentially fortunate you know yeah we've talked about the concept of designed incompetence that he surrounds himself with fools because they will be grateful for the appointment and also, by consequence, bad at their jobs. So that's kind of nice. So, you know, unknown insurance lawyer turned U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan has now, she's like sort of the tip of the spear in terms of Trump's legal retaliation against his ops. She's never prosecuted a case before and has never held a job like of this kind. So it makes sense that you truly knows nothing about how anything works when you're a federal prosecutor.

But this story sort of centers around this Leo reporter from Lawfare, Anna Bauer, who reached out to Halligan to talk about this sham indictment of Letitia James. And Halligan ended up blurting out shit about grand jury materials, which sounds like a big no-no as a federal prosecutor. And, you know, also just generally complaining to Bauer about like her coverage. I just want to read how like these conversations, were unfolding again she's reaching out to a u.s attorney about a sham indictment of another attorney general or of the attorney general of new york and she's taught she apparently was complaining to bower about like

i think your facts are wrong i just want to help you out very unfair i just want to help you out like i just want to help you out give you a tip a heads up uh she said i quote i can't tell you grand jury stuff this is written in their chats i can't tell you grand jury stuff and she's like Like, okay, that's fine. But the reporter was pushing back, essentially saying that, like, the reason they're prosecuting Letitia James is that, like, she was charging people rent for this property that she didn't even live in. And, you know, this journalist was like, based on the materials that are out there, that doesn't seem to be the case. Like, she only collected rents rent once. And it was in like one of a, like, you know, sort of like the lower brackets of between one and $5,000.

So once that happened, Halligan lost it, quote, this is what she says to Anna Bauer. Quote, you're biased. Your reporting isn't accurate. I'm the one handling the case, and I'm telling you that. If you want to twist and torture the facts to fit your narrative, there's nothing I can do. It's a waste to even give you a heads up. So, like I'm assuming as a journalist, you then asked the Department of Justice, hey, what do you think about this conversation I had with this U.S. attorney?

This was their response. They were so petulant that she deigned to ask about this conversation. They said, quote, good luck ever getting anyone to talk. to you when you publish their texts as the DOJ's response in terms of her conversation with Halligan. And then basically this is what happened. Quote,

this is from the New Republic. Later, Halligan texted Bauer again to insist they had been speaking off record. Quote, you're not a journalist, so it's weird saying that, but just letting you know. And this is how they said, good luck ever getting anyone to text you again. And then, like, as she's reading that,

her phone blows up with another text from the same one from Halagan. So just, it's weird, but just letting you know, this is how Bauer replied, quote, I'm sorry, but that's not how this works. You don't get to say that in retrospect. Halligan responded, yes, I do. Off record. Yeah, that was that was a tough exchange to read. Because it's like if a journalist is coming to you and publicly identifying themselves as a reporter, I'm reaching out to you for this, the assumption is it's on the record. It's off the record when you and I both agree and I consent to you before we start the off the record. this is off the record. Right. And I'll have conversations with sources where we're chatting and they will say,

this is off the record. Okay, we'll chat about it. And then I'll say, I'd like to go back on the record now. Great. Like you just, it's all about being transparent so that everyone's aware. But yeah, you can't coming after and saying, well, that was off the record. Like that's, that's not typically how a source interaction goes. Yeah.

That's why I, the thing that you're putting in your book that's already out for publishing was off the record. I've just decided I'm saying, oh, okay. Do that retroactive. Yes, I can. Off the record. Off the record. Off record. I declare off record. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Off record. There. What?

This is Bauer's reply. I'm really sorry. I would have been happy to speak with you on an off the record basis had you asked, but you didn't ask, and I still haven't agreed to speak on that basis. Do you have any further comment for this story? And then this is what I in response. Quote,

It's obvious the whole combo is off record. There's disappearing messages, and it's on signal. What is your story? You never told me about a story. Why did you think I, a journalist, reached out to you and asked you for comment on a story? Yeah. Oh, man. Story.

Yeah. Yeah. It's all this story bullshit. You never told me about a story. It's the subject matter we were discussing in our conversation. And, like, signal disappearing messages, it's like, I just use, you know, a lot of people use signal for non-journalistic purposes or like, why do you want? People buy shrooms on signal, you know. Allegedly, allegedly, they do.

Allegedly. Allegedly. That is off the record. That is off the record. Off the record. Go on. And like disappearing messages. Like, why, I, you know, I have a friend who will, in her I message, this is when I'm like, you are unwell, conversations that have nothing to journalism.

She'll finish a conversation with her mom and she'll wipe it. I'm like, what, what are you doing? She's like, well, I just, it's just like good digital security. Everything gets breached. And meanwhile, I'm like, oh, so I shouldn't have text change from 2016 in my phone. Like, is this a bad idea? It's just like people do these for all types of purposes. Right.

Yeah. So it's like, let's just be transparent. You have text chains from 2016 on your phone? So I have, mine goes back to 2016, actually. That's when I started saving everything. I don't know why. I have like a, I'm like a weird. text hoarder. I am too. Like, I'll be on a flight and I'm like, oh, like, what about this

nostalgic time and this year? Like, I'm nostalgic for a moment that ended two minutes ago. I don't know why I'm like this. So, yeah, it's memories. Memories. Yeah. It's for posterity's sake. Yeah. All right. Let's let's get back to Trump's morality, please. Ice, who, you know, they've been making a lot of headlines doing horrific shit. And the Trump administration is doing everything they can to add more ICE officers, including expanding the age eligibility, condensing training from 13 weeks to eight, reducing Spanish classes, and firearms courses and classroom instruction. That seems bad, because they seem to not know how to operate the firearms that they are being passed with, yeah. Yeah, I saw this video, too, of the New York Times reporter,

Hamad, he went on a ride along with Chicago, with ICE in Chicago. And one of the ICE agents said to him, like, yeah, like, we like being out here. Like, we're adrenaline junkies. Like we, so hearing that and then hearing the training being scaled back. Yeah, we got, I mean, we've had to even scale back the Fourth Amendment stuff. We were trying to tell them about about seizures and searches and stuff. But we had to get that out of the way because none of these people can do anything physical. Yeah, it seems bad that they're motivated.

by being adrenaline junkies and also a $50,000 signing bonus. And so it's just, right? It's if you make it, right? It's like, you get the 50 if you can make it out. Right, right. Yeah. So even after scaling back the requirements, the agency has one big problem,

and that is that their new officers aren't passing the mandatory fitness test. It was recently reported that so many new recruits are out of shape that more than a third of them have failed the fitness test in which they must do 50. pushups, 32 sit-ups, and run 1.5 miles in 14 minutes. Okay. Okay. That seems low to me.

I actually can't do any of the activity you just described. But you're also not trying to brutalize people of color for a really existing. You're not an Antifa super soldier. I know. But I'm like, should I be able to run that amount? Like now I'm kind of questioning like my own fitness. Because I could do like if I'm being like a 10 minute mile. is pretty casual.

So if you can keep a 10-minute mile pace, you should be able to get through a mile and a half and a 14-minute. These ankles at this age? I don't know. You got weak- ankles? Yeah, I got weekends. Oh, what happened? Ballet, soccer, ice skating.

Ballet, exactly. Yeah, yeah. I've seen it 100 times. Seen it 100 times, Nilo. That's why we can't have you. What are you an off-license PT? How have you seen this 100-1-100-5? Yes, exactly.

Allegedly. Okay, I'm not like a license. No, no, that was off the record. That was off the record. He can't give you. you some off-the-record medical advice. Yes. Yes. It's mostly about shrooms. Yeah, it's really bad.

It is wild, though, to think, because part of me was like, damn, 15 push-ups and 32 sit-ups. I'm like, maybe I am an Antifa Super Soldier. I think you are. That could be if I could get 15 push-ups out. I mean, that's my max. Okay, so I know I'm just making it probably. But like, all of the stories talk about how, like, in the, I think the Atlantic was the first one to report this.

We're talking to some of like these ICE officials, and like, I've never seen. seen anything like this like there are people that ice were like this is unreal the riffraff that that's blowing into the academy right now merely because they're trying to meet these quotas they're even trying to like put the physical fitness test earlier in the academy training to immediately root out these people because what they end up doing is like they waste all this energy getting people up to speed to not know what the fourth amendment is then they get to the physical test part and they're like what the fuck first step of the 1.5 mile run my ankle.

Yeah, no, they say them. They keep getting compound fractures on the first step of their 1.5 mile run. Apparently, that run is like the great destroyer of a lot of these candidates who want to play dress up brown shirt. So, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of tension happening at ICE because even now, they're like, they're saying, like, well, we're even now inviting retired law enforcement. And they don't, but they're saying on the condition that they can just self-report that their physical fitness levels because they're just like,

fuck, man. Self-reporting the physical. Yeah, yeah, I did it. It's good. I'm actually really fast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A mile and a half. I probably did that in like seven minutes.

Yeah, I'm sitting here laughing. I haven't tried to run that mile and a half in 14 minutes in years. Yeah. I would, however, be willing to self-report that I can do it easily. Right. Yeah, I'm having a meltdown. Like, I'm modified in Pilates today. Do you know what I mean?

Like, I can't. I can't do anything. the hardest fucking things I've ever done. Like, I. No shame to modify. Pilates is so fucking hard. It's tough. It's like we're all in there suffering,

also a culture of silence, because we're all suffering really silently. And I'm like, a man will come and grunt outwardly. And we're all just like, please, like, keep that to yourself. I can't keep the ball between my knees. It's torture.

It's true torture. Boom. Babe. This clamshell. Yeah. First time I got a reformer, I was like, how the fuck am I this week? Like, I did hold on that thing and just like a unbroken line of sweat just started like running off of my nose like it was a faucet.

That's why I was doing it for a minute because I was so humbled the first time I did. I'm like, oh, this is for real using your body in ways you had it. Like you're discovering that you can actually strengthen parts of your body you didn't know existed. Yeah. Soar in places on the inside of my body that I did not. No, it could be sore. This does track. I remember they were like,

remember Dean Cain was like, and I'm going to join ICE. And then they showed him like going through the, what appeared to be like a children's playground obstacle course. And just like, even during the 10 seconds that they showed the footage of him, he was like ducking thing, like a thing he was supposed to go over.

He just like kind of ducked under it. Right. Yeah. There's also that great video of, brought to us by a citizen journalist of a 10 ice agents who were trying to catch a guy who was not on a butt, like he was off his bike, came over, picked up something that they didn't want him to pick up. He was like, I'm not a U.S. citizen.

Yeah, he dropped his phone. He was like, I'm not a U.S. citizen. And then managed to, like, as 10 of them descended on him, just like, looked like Barry Sanders, like, just like completely untouched through a crowd of people. Nobody had any chance of catching him as he, like, went from walking to getting on a bike and riding away. They were like, br-drug-d-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-do-chee. It was, I mean, this is, I don't know, I mean, like, I guess, again, like, with the engineered incompetence and then just seeing the kinds of people that are being attracted by the possibility of brutalizing, you know, people who aren't from this country.

I'm glad that it's not our country's best. It's people who are maybe not fully up to the task. But again, when you look at the money, they've spending 700% increase on like their weapons capabilities now. Yeah, I saw that. Like warheads, they're like they have access to now. So who knows? I guess maybe they'll make up for it with like some kind of killer robot ice agent

or something that Elon Musk can design. But it doesn't know how to do Kung Fu well. I take heart in the fact that that's their plan to like cut. Elon will fix it with his fake robot. Yeah, yeah. Does Kung Fu like a 65 year old. All right, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. In the new podcast, Hell in Heaven, two young Americans move to the Costa Rican jungle to start over. But one will. end up dead. The other tried for murder. Not once. People weren't wild. Not twice. Stunned. But three times. John and Anne Bender are rich and attractive and they're devoted to each other. They create a nature reserve and build a spectacular circular home high on the top of a hill.

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and so they sort of become outsized indicators of inflation. Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The crying will. podcast is the story of two men, bound by injustice, of a city haunted by its secrets, and the quest for redemption, no matter the price. White victim, female, pretty, wealthy, black defendant. Chicago, a white woman's murder, a black man behind bars, for a crime he didn't commit.

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And real quick update that Kim Kardashian. has a new product or had a new product on the market that was sold out, sold out in moments. A few minutes, as she says. Yeah, as the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. And Kim Kay must have needed a bunch of pubs recently because last week she dropped a line of what she calls faux hair micro string thongs on the world, aka fake pubs, aka a Merkin. Okay. Volcher gave a brief history of the Merkin in their write-up because I was,

like, yeah, I don't know. I was always like, that's the thing in a movie so they can just have the pubes there. But no, Merkins were first developed in 1450, per the Oxford companion to the body, and were created so that women could shave off pubic lice without sacrificing that fabulous bush. And then sex workers continued that for the same reason through the 17th century. So, well, I think most people have been able to deal with pubic lice in our modern era, but I guess everything moves in cycles. And Kim said she had a light bulb idea on on a set one day. She said, quote,

that was just a fun idea that I had. This is so funny. Let's talk about a murkin. That was just a fun idea that I had. There was a shoot and someone wanted to like have their down, have hair down there once. And I was like, couldn't this just be easy and have it on a thong?

And so we made that happen. I had no idea would get that reaction and sell out in a few minutes. What a fun little idea. I was picturing like actual underwear with like hair stuffed in the front, but it seems like it's actually like the micro thong of it all,

it's like invisible string that's just holding it in place. Holding the mercant in place. Got it. Okay. Now like using duct tape like the old days, you know,

like our ancestors had to. I'm taking a position to this of like, why not? Yeah. Porcino los dos. Shaved or not, porcena los dos. You know?

Have a toupee down there. You know what I mean? If the mood strikes and you say, you know what? Maybe I'm aware of this one backwards today. Do a little cotton tail. Is it cold out?

Yeah. Let me just toss this on. But I mean, I'm sure everybody's dying to look like me and have a big bush of hair in the back there. Yeah. They call you Jackie Cotton Tail. Jackie Cotton Tail. That's right. Twitch my little bunny cat.

Oh, God. But, I mean, unlike Elon, one of our other great adventurers, she actually follows through when she mentioned something, like the nipple bra, when she was like, you know, we're also going to do. Nipple bra is pretty genius. Nipple, giving you that peak, Rachel from Friends look. You know what I mean? Also in pierced, if you want pierced or unpierced nipple bra, she had that. And then the other thing that she came up with is face bra, that is truly, part of me is like, this is brilliant because this is probably made for 14 cents and you're selling it for like $60 probably. So the margins are insane.

But you're basically wearing up. It's the thigh of a pony. Or sorry, it's the thigh of panty hose. like that basically with ear holes cut out for some reason. It's a knee. It's like a neoprene knee brace. Yes. With a big face hole and some ear holes cut into it for sure.

Are you supposed to wear that out? I think it's supposed to train your face to stay in that position, which I don't think is how faces or physics works. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what that would do in terms of improving your face over to. I'm trying to, like, I'm looking at the photo and I'm supplanting on top of that, the biology and physics. And I'm going, what is the end result

of wearing panty hose? We're being told it's a night-time thing. Okay. Good to know. It gives the, yeah, yeah. Which you got to, it's got to tighten the face and improve your facial contouring. You know, that's it. It's that easy. It works. Yeah. Just chewed gum. I reckon chewing gum would probably be more effective. Get your job. One. Yeah. Well, remember who was it? There was that alpha male? There was that fucking weird thing where they were doing that to try and make their faces more caveman face. We're like dudes or chew, like, just do this thing and get your fucking jaw muscles all freaked out. I do 20 burpees every morning and then I do 30 eyebrow lifts where I just like do my eyebrows up and down and it actually gives me that chromagnum muscular forehead. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Oh yeah. It was the thing of just moving your jaw. out a little bit over and over again. Oh, yeah. I had seen some of those videos.

I'm like, that's crazy stuff. Can I ask you guys a quick question? We've had this phenomenon in New Zealand. When I was a teenager at high school, so I'm 38 years old now. I was born in 87. And when I was in high school, like teenagers did not go to the gym. There would be like maybe two students in my high school of a thousand students who would go to the gym and they were like kind of elite athletes trying to get into some crazy team.

You played football. if you're going to the gym in my day. But now it seems like pretty wide, weirdly widespread that the kids, the teens are going to the gym. Is that in America as well? And also, did you guys have the same thing back in the day where it wasn't that common? But like, now it is? I'd say, yeah. I'd say it's gone from being a thing that, like, the various sports teams were, like, in the gym.

lifting weights and now it feels like everybody like there there's a whole you know subculture of people who like are working out and like focusing on their macros and like you know just figuring figuring out like uh 300 grams of protein a day so that I beef maxing yeah yeah you don't have to be on the football team you just have to listen to Joe Rogan you know like it man we got I I I'm I hate to say it I listen to a podcast yesterday we they're going through like a dude who researches the social habits of teenagers essentially. And he was like, you know, kids aren't partying anymore, teens aren't partying anymore. And I'm like, fuck, man, I know it's good that they're off booze, this generation coming up,

but we might need to get them a little bit back on booze. A little while. The cost something. The flip side is too much. Like, it's just this generation that's riddled with anxiety that is struggling to socially connect with each other because they were, you know, In our country, at least, like, big time lockdown during the COVID period during that really important time. That's the double-edged sword of, you know, what social meet are not even double. It's if it cuts more.

It's fucking people up. I mean, it's the amount of fitness influencers, too, that kids see from a young age where they're like, oh, this is. Because I remember, like, if you were muscle bound, like, when I was 10 years old, you were a wrestler or you were like a fucking football player. Even the basketball players weren't, like, jacked like that. And anyone you were like who was quote on quote, like the cute men of the era weren't ripped dudes. They were just kind of like these little skinny, floppy-haired guys or whatever. They were non-threatening effeminate dudes. Thank God.

As a man who was 510 and, you know, 65KG soaking wet, thank God that was the case. Yeah. So I think a lot of it too is just, you know, it's just the normalization of like the gym talk kind of content and just seeing all these dudes starting to take fucking human growth horn. hormone or fucking testosterone, like, and... That's, yeah, it's crazy because I feel like we vanquished some version of this where we had that incredibly damaging celebrity magazine culture where it was like, you know, heroine chic where being incredibly skinny was put on the front of every magazine cover.

But we've sort of, I guess we'll just always have some version of this, like horrible messaging to the kids. Right. But I don't know, man. It does seem like... things, a Merkin from Kim Kay? Fine, whatever. Yeah.

Can I wear it on my head? That's right. I'm going to get one from my head. Yeah. What about that? Yeah. What a toupee, man. They exist.

Yeah, but if it looks like pubs, that's got to be off-putting. You got three Merkins just like striping your head kind of? Dude, what would it look like if I wore three Merkins on my bald head? Just I can go out one day. Or his eyebrows, two Merkins of his eyebrows. just playing staying alive as I walk down the street like the fucking beginning of Saturday fever just with my merkin head wagling the eyebrows that's why I was doing those

eyebrow lifts man got a got to have power yeah I do think it's a good point like it also everyone like we talked about this article and linked off to it last year called everyone is beautiful nobody is horny or like nobody's having sex and it's just about how like these every movie star looks like they spend 20 hours a week working out like and it doesn't it's not just action movies it's every type of movie like there used to be different body types and now it's just like everyone you get famous for being like chris pratt got famous for being like a sort of every man type you know he was like the pudgy dude in parks and rec and then that then he got shredded, and now he's, like, really ripped. Which, not to throw shade, but, yeah, considering the obesity statistics in America of the general population, it's just becoming, like, increasingly, it's kind of like the wealth divide, right? Like, there is just an increasingly concentrated and divided gap between most people, like, you know, 90% of people and the 0.1% that are either in the movies or have all the money.

Right. All right. We need to get to the Christmas Adventures Club, guys, because I do think it ties in really well with what we've already been talking about here, which. So the movie, one battle after another, suggests there's a secret, seems like all-male, white supremacist organization controlling the government. That's called the Christmas Adventures Club. And, yeah, as we said, no question as to whether or not there's a real world Christmas Adventures Club. The question is mainly which of several groups inspired it. So I assume. this is like such a Thomas Pinchon idea based on like, you know, the the amount of Gravity's rainbow that I've been able to get through about 200 pages, you know, and then crying of lot 49. Thank you for doing the one short one, Thomas Pinchon. It's, but it's such a Thomas Pinchon idea that it, I assumed it was from Vineland because like he loosely based on violent, but this is a Paul Thomas Anderson original and is, but like kind of inspired in spirit by the work of Pinchon.

The first one that jumped to my mind is John Birch Society, which was this far right anti-communist group that people are generally like talk about more as an antecedent to like QAnon these days and not something that's like actively out there, although people like at their peak, I think they had 100,000 dues pay. members, 60 full-time staff, and, you know, were just focused on, it was, they were basically like, we're here to fight communists at a time when America was a guy that was killed in China, right? It's like named after a guy who would, like, I think a missionary or someone who was killed

over there. Yeah. And it was at a time when America was hallucinating communists everywhere. And so they, you know, had a nice little run there, but it seemed to have died out. There's also, Paul Thomas Anderson has been into masons. There's like a bunch of Freemasons symbols in the movie Magnolia, which, you know, with specifically the talk show host, I don't know if you guys are Magnolia fans. I haven't seen it in a long time.

When I saw it, I loved it so much that I made my dad go see it with me. When he came and visited me in college and he immediately was like, are you on drugs? Like, what the fuck is going on with you? Why would you think I like that? But there's Mason-Rees shit all over, like, symbolism all over the place, which... Also, there is a Freemasons Lodge on the corner of Vineland and Magnolia. There you go. How about that?

Somebody who grew up in North Hollywood, I'm like, yeah, there's a lodge right there. Freemasonry, I will say, oftentimes when you, like, start digging in, doing research on that, it gets real anti-Semitic real quick. Like, the Freemason conspiracies are like... And you know who runs the new world order when you, like, dig deep enough. It usually gets pretty antisemitic that Magnolia was, I think, one of the best movies ever co-written by cocaine. Like, you know, and he seems like, he's like, yeah, I don't know. I just like heard the idea and I was kind of interested in it.

I'm actually really looking forward to doing a deep dive into the, into freemasonry. And it's like as the movie is coming out. Right, right. The one that makes the most sense is the mysterious elite all-male gathering known as Bohemian Grove started with like artists and journalists and was immediately taken over as most things in America are by like the powerful elite. Like Burning Man, you know? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We are witnessing this exact same thing.

Artists getting wild and now Peter Thiel is doing deals with some. government in a trailer there yeah we just have to wait for burning man to soon become invite only and peter teal can you know controls the guest list but yeah between rituals that are you know very strange involved like the burning of i think an owl one some effig yeah Alex Jones like taped taped this is he like Alex Tran's greatest hit yeah this was back when Alex Jones was not just you know, a right-wing reactionary and was just like, that's weird that all those people go out there and meet. I'm going to go and get some footage of it. But it has the actual like pedigree. It's pretty much acknowledged that they hatched the idea for the Manhattan Project

there. Cool. Okay. All right. So they're getting shit done. Go on. Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon decided who was going to run for president first there at a Bohemian Grove. Like, they're just there planning the world, like dealing out the presidency like it's a hand of cards, basically. They're like, all right, you first. Members have included every Republican president since Calvin Coolidge, current participants include George Bush, Henry Kissinger, James Baker, David Rockefeller. I think some of those people are dead now, but at the time of the reporting.

And let's not forget, remember when the Clarence Thomas, Clarence Thomas likes to take because Harlan Crow was like, hey, Supreme Court Justice. Yeah, why don't you come through to just a group of like-minded individuals here? Journalists not allowed anymore, but people who own media companies sure are. It's a type of journalist. Former CEO of Times Mirror Corporation, William Randolph Hearst, of course, Jack Howard and Charles Scripps of the Scripps, Howard, newspaper chain, Tom John. president of CNN, yeah. Just a lot of people who, and they were also just sued by three

Bohemian Grove employees, which I, of course they have employees. Like I never, I always pictured it would just be like them like blindfolding a pianist, you know, who like comes up there. But apparently there are people who like work on the grounds and they sued, three of them sued bohemian Grove for violating California labor laws. One employee claimed that he was mocked by club members for complying with a request from famous billionaire William Coke to hand wash

his underwear. So that's the sort of vibes. I don't know. Mocking the staff for following through with a humiliation request from a billionaire. Part of me is like it's obviously on brand to exploit the people giving

you their labor at your place. I'm like, of course they would be. But also, So for a secret society, like maybe you'd, you know, pay a better wage to try and get some silence out of people. Absolutely. Just be better at this, you know? Like, dot there's never been their strong suit, guys. Never been their strong suit to, in any respect, ever pay anyone a living wage. Yeah, they're like, what? We'll threaten them with death. They've specifically been responsible for hatching racist government policies, including in 1877 when the club's president gave a speech in which he argued that non-assimilated races couldn't live together in harmony unless one enslaved the other. And since slavery had recently become unconstitutional, the next best thing was to keep Chinese people out. And that led directly to the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Like, that's where they come up. That's where they, like, design racism. It's crazy that this information is just out in the world. Yeah, right, right? Yeah. I mean, they do their very best for it not to be. But I think it's because then people read it. They're like, it can't be that.

It's that these other people are getting together and doing this where there's no documentation of it. It can't be the thing that's well documented. Right. QAnon is essentially, yeah, like people like point at, like, gesture at this with the conspiracies they come up with. but they're having to invent facts when there is, like, documented facts of all of these things. Yeah, yeah. The, I mean, the John Birch thing, too, is, I mean, like, to your point,

their whole thing was about conspiracy theories and, like, real wacky shit. And when the conservatives were like, well, we can, like, align with them a bit to get them on our side. Like, that proximity just ended up, is really, like, the poisoning of the party, too. Like, that's, again, how that thing evolves into then full-blown QAnon stuff, because you have enough of this John Birch society ethos just swirling around the party. And, yeah, eventually you get this. The John Birch Society didn't really go away. It just became the modern Republican Party in many ways.

I think you can track that whole phenomenon through watching like Alex Jones across the last three decades. Because he used to, he's never a good guy, but he used to be a different guy. Yeah, a different kind of guy. very much like everyone can get fucked like everyone in government is against you everyone associated with both the Republican and Democratic Party is you know vying for one world government

like he was a real pox on both their houses dude right up until Trump came down the elevator and it is kind of like a very specific boiling down of like a lot of complex forces you can watch it you know

a version of it all happen in Alex Jones aligning with the Republican Party and actually getting behind a politician and him getting in and then like watching kind of both sides of that wager fuck themselves and have to settle and sort of sell themselves out like both the Republican Party as it sort of does this Faustian bargain to court conspiracy theorists to become a voting block for them. And then the conspiracy theorists who then have to be like we're pro government now kind of. We love the president. You know, the guys we told you not to trust, you know, with your children for forever

and that they were like reptilian shapeshifters who were trying to steal your blood and take your guns off you? Well, you also need to vote for them now and get all your friends and neighbors to as well. It's an uncomfortable partnership that the Epstein thing, like that is where the Epstein thing is like so dangerous to Trump and like his legacy is that like it's the most clear evidence that like he's exactly the type of person you guys are talking. about like yeah right the documented evidence that is is being withheld that allegedly may or may not implicate him in the the very scheme that you guys have been i've read a lot of articles that

implicate him we're all trying to find the guy who did this that's right yeah exactly 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, 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. I'm going to be able to be. In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down. Unlock elite gaming tech at Lenovo.com.

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