The Daily Zeitgeist - What We Got Wrong About Mass Protests 12.12.23

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

In episode 1595, Jack and Miles are joined by author of If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, Vincent Bevins, to discuss… The Spirit of 1968, Could Raider Nation Help Win A Proletarian Victory? Fascism Playbook, Is Social Media Part Of The Problem? One Universal Truth Seems To Be ACAB and more! LISTEN: leavemealone by Fred again.. & Baby KeemSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing.

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With a hint of mischief. One episode at a time. Buckle up and listen to In Our Own World on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Trust us, it's out of this world. Hello, the internet, and welcome to season 317, episode 2 of Dirt Daily's iGuyStay production of iHeartRadio. This is a podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness and it's Tuesday December 12th 2023. Oh yeah it's a doozy. 12-12. You know what

that means. Oh it's National Ambrosia day for you people eating marshmallows in the salad it's national poinsettia day it's national it's uh international universal health coverage day yeah we fuck with that national ding-a-ling day i do have no clue what the fuck that is and gingerbread pastry no it's got a picture of santa like on the phone yeah yeah yeah it's a day to call people that you haven't heard from in a while. All right. Well, yeah, why not? You know, just check in.

It's called Santa. Yeah. Check in on Santa. He's lonely up there in the hall. Yeah. Nobody ever bothers to ask him. That's why Jim Allen looks such an asshole. Right.

No one asks what he wants for Christmas. Well, my name is Jack O'Brien, a.k.a. Suckin' Around. This candy cane, why don't this taste like shit? Peppermint candies should be outlawed and I will fight about it. That's courtesy of a Seegerful 1229. E-Seegerful.

Yeah. E-C. Careful. Anyways, to the tune of Rockin' Around the Candy Cane, or Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree, about the weird phenomenon of being able to use a peppermint stick as a straw in an orange. I don't trust it, but I'm going to try it out.

I'm intrigued. Miles. And I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray. It's Miles Gray. Yes, it's the Lord of Lancashire shouting out his very own Los Angeles Grakers who have won the in-season NBA tournament. Such a fantastic victory for us. Also, shout out to the Dodgers for bringing me one step closer to being not

only am I Hideo Noho, but I am now Shohei Smoketani because he's also wearing the Dodger blue coming up. So it's just a very, very exciting time to be an Angeleno and sports fan and fair weather as well. Well, we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by an award winning journalist who's worked for places like The Washington Post, The L.A. Times, The Financial Times of London. It's also the author of the books, The Jakarta Method, Washington's Anti-Communist Crusade, and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World. And more recently, If We Burn, The Mass Protest Decade, and The Missing Revolution.

Please welcome to the show, Vincent Bevin! Vincent! Hello. What's up, man? Thank you for having me. Thanks for doing that. Yeah. Is tomorrow really national ambrosia day is that a real thing did you yeah no no it's legit there's there's an entire website

that just has every day there's something nonsensical or of deep consequence like yeah at the same time deeply sensical yeah yeah exactly runs the gamut from sensical to deeply nonsensical deeply nonsensical. Deeply nonsensical, yeah. But yeah. Like mainly it's consumer groups, corporate groups or lobbyists just naming something a day to give themselves a reason to collect a paycheck. Exactly. The bullshit economy thrives. We like to cover the bullshit economy as much as possible.

And you're coming to us from London. Yeah, I'm in London now. I'll be back in Los Angeles by the end of the year for, you know, home for the holidays. But I'm currently in the United Kingdom. Is that where you is that your home base at the moment? Yeah, it has been. I mean, I've been on the road like actually for years for the second book between Sao Paulo and London often. But like at the end of this book tour, I've

resettled into London for a bit. You've been at some of the protests in London for Palestinian rights and survival and how... Depending on where you get your news, I heard it was a pro-Humans demonstration.

Yeah. I've been at the protests uh weekly here like not far from from from where i am now yeah absolutely and like uh absolutely that presentation they they tried it here certainly i mean the government here is quite committed to demonizing anyone like to the left of i don't know uh joe biden even or even like to the left of rishi sunak so yeah there was there was quite a big narrative that was either actually like mostly anti-semitic or quite about supporting hamas and then when i went there you know even though i should have known better i even kind of expected to see some elements maybe there are out

there but what i found was like quite a lot of families and kids and quite like uh if they're out there they'll find them yeah yeah no that's the thing well that's kind of related to what i've been working on is that yeah you can't if a protest is large enough you can usually find an element in the crowd you can usually find a fact to support your narrative if you look hard enough yeah and sometimes the narrative the narrative will be, you know, anti-Semitism and sometimes it'll be, they just like really fuck with America. They just want to like be America. Just like whatever honors

their preconceived notions coming in. This rises to the top almost all the time. Usually when you send a cadre of U.S. based or correspondence for the U.S. media to cover some uprising in some part of the world, someone will see a desire to become junior, like B-League America, which often shocked and horrified some of the actual people that I met. That put together protest movements in the last 15 years, but it almost always happens. Yeah. All right. So we're going to talk about a lot of that stuff.

It almost always happens. Yeah. All right. So we're going to talk about a lot of that stuff. Your second book is an amazing read and, you know, really touches on a lot of the stuff that we talk to talk about on a regular basis on this show. But before we get to any of it, we do like to get to know our guests a little bit better and ask you, what is something from your search history that is revealing about who you are so this one is a bit too obvious because it is kind of like quite on brand but the only thing that i searched for today on google other than how to look at your own google search history in preparation to answer that question is melee inauguration i wanted to see the ways in which uh the new president of argentina had been covered by the english language press he took power yesterday yeah i wanted to see the ways in which the new president of Argentina had been covered by the English language press. He took power yesterday

Yeah to see what he had done how how sort of controversial he tried to be at the Ceremony and what people picked up on from that from that takeover and what would you find? Well his I mean he's like a super hyper and she political guy. Do you know about the guy that I'm talking about? He has the cyber and he's an anarcho-capitalist. He's like a real Reddit president. Yeah, if Reddit became a president. Yeah, it's the first Reddit republic, I think. Argentina starting 2023.

And he toned down things a little bit yesterday. He tried to do, you know, I think he was trying to figure out a way to actually govern the country. Whereas his campaign was really about, I'm going to destroy the state entirely we're going to get rid of the peso we're going to bring in the dollar i've cloned all of my dogs and they you know they speak to me he tried i think he tried to tone it down a little bit he did say that it's not yeah i just a dog thing he had so many videos that were like felt like low rent like tiktoker type shit where he's like this fucking bureaucracy done gone i'm tearing it up physically for you and you're like wow okay very well his thing was the chainsaw right like i'm

gonna bring it i'm gonna take a chainsaw and it's like oh you know in in south america that has a lot of cons you know there's like the destruction of the amazon which is a big thing that his friend gyro bolsonaro was all about helping to get done so that was his thing yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna destroy the state and then obviously and then what will grow out of the rebel will be some amazing uh capitalist utopia right right yeah just destroy everything and then let let the magic happen also kind of a logic that i think people on both sides have engaged in that you talk about in your book. Yeah, it's a nice, it's an appealing, I mean, yeah, it's an appealing theory, right? I mean, this is another thing that he said.

He said, oh, this is like the, my election is like the fall of the Soviet Union. Which is like, again, that was the idea. You know, there was the glorious moment that was broadcast to the world, like the day the Berlin Wall fell. But then what a lot of people actually went through afterwards was that democracy and markets didn't just grow out of nowhere uh things things turned out to be quite difficult for for quite a lot of people afterwards so you know that thinking it's you know it's it's appealing the idea that all you have to do is smash everything up and some magical force will will provide the solution but it just doesn't tend to work out that way right because the thing i got just at least from like gleaning the headlines sounded like him just basically saying

like here comes austerity and that was kind of but he's like there's going to be some hard times like because i'm that's fucking lost it's not it's austerity time baby yeah i mean things are bad i mean things are ripe for someone like him right like the economy inflation is very high in argentina you could see why an anti-political sort of attack on the system kind of i'm an outsider candidate might be able to do well but yeah i mean it's absolutely going to be awful i mean even he admits that but i think it's i don't think i don't think he knows exactly how it's going to go and neither does anybody else right yeah does anti like because obviously, you know, your book covers a anti establishment impulse that we saw sweep around the globe. We have covered a lot just that that impulse in the United States. Trump presidency kind of came about because Bannon saw an impulse and was like, somebody's

going to win who's not the who is like railing against institutions. Right. How do you like, do you see that kind of continuing unabated, picking up steam? How do you think about that? I know that's kind of a big question and we'll get into more specific permutations of it. and like I'm from California like Arnold Schwarzenegger was one of these you know he's one of the way ahead of the curve on this one and it was a ha ha ha we're voting for Arnold Schwarzenegger ha ha ha often what happens is that that person unsurprisingly doesn't do a good job

and then they bring in the guy who like really knows how to actually do the job so after Arnold Schwarzenegger we get Jerry Brown who's like actually from the 70s after Bolsonaro in Brazil you like bring back Lula, who was the last guy who finished presidency with really high approval ratings. That's like tends to be what happens in each case is that, oh, yeah, it was really appealing. This idea that being from outside the system, which is usually like half a lie, right? Like there's you're usually like encouraged not

to pretend that you're really an outsider, even if you're right and then oh yeah that's that's not actually how you govern and then you replace that the anti-political candidate the anti-political politician with like the most establishment person you know again after after trump you get you get joe biden who's like the guy that obama grabbed in 2008 to put on his campaign to prove that he was kind of a regular Democrat, that he wasn't too wild. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But then again, but I think all of this anti-political sentiment is like the wrong answer to a real question, which is why is it that everyone feels that governments don't represent them properly? Why is it that everyone wants to say fuck you to the system whenever they can? And that question, I think, still remains unanswered.

So the underlying crisis is still unresolved. But I think one by one, states or nations are realizing, oh, well, this response doesn't work. Yeah. Just all getting the wrong, the same wrong answer all at once. Well, Millet is a different type of wrong answer. The anarcho-capitalist approach is a relatively new one usually you got right populism or like dictatorship

or like whatever trump is or dictatorship justification like in bolsonaro but like the really online like libertarian meme guy that's a new one yeah yeah hell yeah it's gonna be hilarious the wolves are gonna be worth it alone yeah well and rama swami didn't do too good because he was peeing on a hot mic over the weekend during like a twitter spaces thing so our our meme lord as president may not may not come to fruition this time around oh he did he did a full naked gun yeah dude he's gonna full piss and they're like uh what like came back he's like oh sorry my bad yeah that's it that's a true like as somebody who spends a lot of time on zoom with airpods and i that's a constant nightmare of

mine yeah yeah that would happen yeah i don't know what oh no what uh vincent what is something you think is overrated movies wow just generally Yeah Moving pictures Rit large Moving pictures They don't Why are pictures Why are they moving Yeah

Make them stop No thanks Yeah you know It's fine They're fine But I've had enough I still I would give them

Some ratings But not They're overrated Generally I'm tired of it I'm tired of it What was a recent Who hurt you

Who hurt you What was your most recent Pain Cinema one No no pain I had like a dull Adult like a I'm tired of it. I'm tired of it. What was a recent one? Who hurt you? Who hurt you, Vincent? What was your most recent pain? Cinema one. No, no pain. I have like a dull, like a dull feeling of pleasure when I think of them.

But, you know, that's about it. Right, right, right. Which is a lower rating than society gives the movies. I think it's been great so far. I'm over. I'm done. We talk a lot about movies like filling in for people's like images of how things operate.

Like when you ask somebody to imagine a country they've never been to, they're generally going to be like, OK, well, I think I saw that in like George Clooney's Syriana or, you know, I don't think he directed that, but, and you're somebody who has like been to you, you go to those countries and like, you know, learn the languages and, and meet the people there. Is that, do you think that's partially where it comes from? Or are you just like, think they suck? No, I think they're okay. I mean, to, to move this into a more serious territory now that you bring it, bring that up, I guess guess with this book i did think a lot about technology and what is new and strange about the way that we live compared to whatever 20 years ago and like a big narrative about the mass protest that i cover and again this is not why i said movies i'm just starting to think about it yeah is that oh it's social media social media is

a new technology social media is technology right like the more i considered what was going on in the the last 20 years i started to like think about photography as technology and like a pretty new one in the book yeah yeah like i do it really quickly but like in the history of humanity it's pretty new that we're able to see stuff that's not happening like directly in front of our head yeah we're like photography definitionally everything that you're seeing in a photograph or in a moving picture isn't happening anymore right is a it is a technological trick to reproduce the the light patterns that makes the human brain think that they're seeing a thing that did happen in the

past but has no longer happening and like obviously that's not going away we're gonna have to learn we're learning to deal with that as as as humanity. But I don't know, for whatever reason, I've just been thinking about it a lot. Yeah, it's kind of strange. I mean, it's kind of strange. We come home after, you know, being outside, and then we watch a screen of people pretending to live lives. like ability to look at images or short you know video clips of things actually happening around the world and now we're moving into an era where it's like or things that somebody just edited you know or deep faked to to make so like not that that really matters because like we said when you're using an entire globe's worth of like inputs of you you can find somebody doing anything you need them to do and yeah exactly but yeah but like the deep thing the deep thing is weird right like yeah it's gonna we're gonna have to learn to deal with it as like a human race like how do we because the human body it's constituted to react to things as if they're really happening right

like a lot of what i saw powering mass protests in the 2010s was like a deep revulsion like a like a like a visceral disgust at something really horrible happening and like imagine because like the human body when it sees like violence it kind of gets keyed up to maybe either run away or participate like imagine now you know in 10 to 20 years we're able to see scenes of violence that aren't happening at all but yet the human body still responds as if it's a yeah it's material reality anyways i don't know i don't know what any of that means or what we're supposed to do about it but i spent a lot of time thinking about how new all it all kind of is yeah i think it it also brings up this other point like the guy who invented the loudspeaker like perfected it in the early 20th century always

felt like responsible like doomed throughout his life because he had altered just minutely the ability for somebody to speak to people who weren't within a 20 foot radius you know without raising his voice like that he was like i feel partially responsible for the rise of fascism in the in the 1930s yeah yeah is that is that a real story that he i'm pretty sure unless i got my sources wrong a long time ago but yeah like he he really felt like he had fucked up and well it's interesting that he would it's interesting that he would hone in on that phenomenon because arguably he did help make fascism happen. But he also helped make like a million other things happen.

Like, why is that the one thing that he thinks? Right. That he gets gifted to or the, you know, the poison. Big story at the time, I feel like. Yeah, I guess it was all over. It was all over. Yeah. It's a good thing to say, like at a family dinner.

He's like, well, y'all don't feel guilty about basically bringing on fascism. So go ahead. Like everything that happens after photography and everything that happens after the ability of us to record sound is like you can't undo it. It's like everything after 1930 is a result of recordings of sound, you know? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. What's something you think is underrated? I'm changing this now because I just wanted to mention Ambrosia, Ambrosia salad.

Hey, yeah. So it is my middle name. Number one. Ambrose. Okay. Oh, nice.

And I used to know a performer back in San Francisco whose drag name was Ambrosia salad. And I thought that was a very good. So yeah, that's, that got me out of that question because it allowed me yeah that's my yeah i mean i'm not sure if in if the dish is named after or like i think maybe the old roman name is named after like the nectar of the gods and then that's also what the etymological story behind the salad is that right yeah yeah exactly right but apparently it's like the earliest recipes are from like the 19th century.

Like people have been tinkering with the sweet ambrosia for a long time. And now it's we're just at a place where it's like whipped cream and sugar and fruit things. Ambrosia definitely like has its proponents to a level like I don't I am not experienced enough with Ambrosia to have a strong take on it, but I do respect something where people are like, yeah, we're just naming this shit after the nature of the gods.

That's how good it is. It's the fucking real best. It's one of those things that's not gourmet, but when you eat it like how the fuck am i gonna get mad at like fruit and cream together like yeah it's not offensive it it is often upsetting when like a really good name is given to something that is not good like amazon makes me upset yeah because the the amazon as a forest the amazon as a like a classical myth are like both very cool things yes and then jeff bezos turned like a mail delivery company into amazon i think that's not

fair somehow there's like injustice done there i think that amazon we need to think of either the island of warriors back in antiquity or like the amazon forest not like how do you order something it'll really piss you off when he was trying to call it amazing and someone was like you should change it to anthocyanin that's not right that's not a good idea like what about amazing well elon musk did try to name like 25 things x and everyone's entire life was like you can't do that that's stupid until he became rich enough that he could. And now it's X everything. Isn't the AI company XAI too?

He's X-ifying. He's Wayne Campbell. He's Wayne Campbell from Wayne's World. He wishes he was Wayne Campbell from Wayne's World. He's incorporating all of his mannerisms. The X thing is like the producer That seems to be, he's incorporating all of his mannerisms. Yeah. The X thing is like the producer who just really wanted to put a mechanical spider in his movie.

And Kevin Smith was working for him on a Superman script. And he was like, what about like a giant robot spider? And they were like, ah, it doesn't really make sense for this particular thing and then he like watches the guy's movie wild wild west movie that takes place in the wild west somehow has a robotic spider in it there you go god is fucking robot it's steam powered that's how i get around all the technological plot holes yeah taking, just having an idea and never taking the number, the sheer number of no's that you are receiving as any indication other than, well, they just, they don't get it. It's the world that doesn't understand. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back and get into the book. We'll be right back. Yep. How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits. I was a lady rebel.

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And we're back. We're back. And, you know, one of the kind of central questions that I went into the book with and that I just think is is interesting and you kind of open up talking about is just the way that like a you know we're interested inherently in the zeitgeist the idea that there is a zeitgeist or a collective consciousness and you know you open your book which is about like one of these things where for a decade there were these movements that seemed to resemble each other in some ways, kind of often superficial, but

spreading around the globe. You also open your book talking about the spirit of 1968 and the idea where like revolution is happening across the globe all at once, almost like there's something in the air. And this is, you know, 60 years before social media and, you know, these protests and uprisings sweep around the world and even in communist countries. So I'd just be interested in first, just for framing of the entire conversation, like hearing you speak about what are the dynamics that are at play there? How do you think something like that happens?

Yeah, absolutely. Whether or not we really truly understand, I think we can come up with theories. But historically, revolutions, uprisings come in waves. They cluster around certain years. And the best way we have to explain

this is people hear about things happening else where they think maybe I can do this here, even if their conditions are different, even if the things they're protesting against are different. And I think media has to be part of the story, right? Because before media would be impossible for people to find in Germany to find out what's happening in France. And, you know, unless somebody came and told them that's the story so even like in 1848 like you know the spring of nations in europe you saw like common commonalities across countries and i think you've seen an acceleration of that process the more mediatized we become so 1968 you have quite a lot of back and forth happening between western europe and the united states

especially california and but also like they're doing slightly different things like if you if You have quite a lot of back and forth happening between Western Europe and the United States, especially California. But also, they're doing slightly different things. If you just look at the pictures of it, it may look the same, but there's different things happening. And certainly the people in Prague or in China or in Egypt, which in my book I kind of say that they all do kind of have their own type of 1968. They're all very different types of movements and protesting very different types of governments. But like, this seems to be a thing, at least in the histories,

in the history of revolution, most serious thinkers do think that there is some kind of like a zeitgeist of rebellion in the air, that there are waves of rebellions, there are clusters of uprisings. I think media has to be part of that story. But again, that's an explanation we pose on retroactively to make sense of what's happened after it all explodes. Yeah. I mean, there's also the phenomenon of parallel invention where the light bulb is invented in multiple places around the world within months of each other, like at least, you know, years of each other. And so like, we're all kind of working from the same book and coming up with the same ideas. So yeah, I'm just interested. It's not really the central thesis

of your book, but just as somebody who spent a lot of time thinking about that, I was curious to hear your thoughts on that. So, yeah, I mean, I guess zeitgeist is kind of a Hegelian idea, right? And like in this book and in like this, the understanding of what's supposed to be happening in protest, there is kind of some like deep Hegelian assumptions that there is kind of like a world historical spirit, like this, like history with a capital H moves forward in some grand and mystical way. And so whether or not that's true or not, I think we can all,

you know, probably most people are not Galeans, but some people, but you know, I think a lot of people do kind of have this deep, deep down feeling or assumption that there is kind of like a history with a capital H that moves forward. And this,

yeah, this, this ends up actually coming up in the book or for better or worse. Yeah. Another thing you talk about is just this sense among revolutionaries of, and this is something that I've just noticed across, you know, reading about history of like the joy that people feel and,

and reading about protests, like the fading out of these capitalist roles. And, you know, you, you mentioned the idea of a medieval carnival where they would kind of topple hierarchies for a set period of time. In the book Dawn of Everything, David Graeber talks about, like, you know, doing archaeological studies of these tribal Native American civilizations that have, like, that was actually built into the structure of how they operated, where there would be these holidays where people would change and, you know, the chiefs or the police, the people who acted as the police would become clowns and, you know, just all of these, like, switching of the roles that people had. And it was kind of built in that if somebody had a really great hunting season, they would then be kind of ritualistically humiliated in front of everybody so that they were not attached to their kind of hierarchical role.

But, yeah, I don't know. role. But right. Yeah. I don't know. It's just interesting, like giving people an environment where they can forget their capitalist lives and dissolve into a collective seems to more and more like connect with people. And I feel like is kind of an important part of the equation and part of what makes me hopeful about the fact that there could be some people-driven change is how much there is just that urge there. But obviously, you know, this is something you think about and put in the book. So just curious to hear your thoughts. Is that part of the thing that makes you come away from this and still be hopeful, even though the aims of the protesters often get thwarted repeatedly in these stories? Yeah, it's part of it. I mean, I guess the main thing that makes me hopeful is that I came away from this book that I did, you know, through 200, 250 interviews in 12 countries. And almost everyone, even if they had been, you know, apparently defeated in the short term, had experienced some kind of a crushing defeat.

Almost no one had given up on the idea of getting together with other human beings and tried to build a better world. They had thought about new strategies. They had thought about doing things differently. They maybe had to leave their home country or gone to jail, but they had not given up. And a lot of people have said, even if they knew, even after they knew how things ultimately turned out, even if they now know that the story ended in disaster, they would say things like, I could relive that day every day for the rest of my life. It's the most alive that I've ever felt. And that feeling is something that I will never stop reliving.

And I think that the, that feeling is related to not only what you said about this historical practice of, of inverting hierarchies and sort of creating more direct links between people that you see in all kinds of any, any civilization of any complexity. I think when you see these things, kind of kinds of things popping up,

the medieval carnival, the case you just outlined, I've read a lot of Graeber's books, but not that one. But I think it's also related to that other phenomenon we spoke about earlier, like the feeling right now, which I think drives the elections of people like Schwarzenegger and Trump and Bolsonaro and Millet, that we're not actually in control of what's happening. The structures that you're supposed to represent us are not actually representing us. There are a few moments in your daily life when you really feel that you're making history, that you're part of something like a zeitgeist, that you're actually working, connecting with other people and actually imposing your will in the most positive sense, in actually imposing your will in the most positive sense, like trying to reshape reality in a way that actually matters at all. And so when those feelings come around for people

in this day and age, at this level of like social complexity, and in a world of interconnected political systems, which I think it is right to believe don't really represent us that well anymore. It feels so incredibly powerful. It feels like this is something that I've been starving for because the, like right now what I'm actually doing feels like it's really changing things. And that is a feeling that I, I think that even if we didn't have to improve the global system, which I think we do,

it would, it's, it's like, there's a deep, there's a deep yearning for that in humanity to connect with other people and build something, connect with other people and do something really like to make a difference. And there's not, we don't feel that way very often. Right. There's like a meaningless that has like been encoded into everything that is pretty frustrating. And I think people assume might be like something that we just like take for granted as like part of day to day life. But it really when you read, you know, historic accounts and like interviews with people who are parts of things like this in your book. And it's really like there is something that makes you feel alive, yeah suggests to me maybe that's how we're supposed to feel is like during our lives you know yeah i mean yeah you don't feel a lot you know yeah you feel something when you you know like scroll in social media all day and like get mad at a post and then do a post and people get mad at you you feel something you

don't exactly feel alive right yeah yeah it's not that omnipotence that like being in the streets or being with a collective can kind of bring you when you're just kind of yeah when it's the digital response version you're getting to feel something and i'm like i'm curious like in that you know like that feeling that allows people to come together and be like yeah you know what i'm i'm also not pleased i'm angry about this thing you know in your book you know for people who aren't fully aware you're examining a lot of these mass movements that you know most of the time didn't actually end up bringing about the change that the people were seeking and in fact movements get co-opted and you know can turn into as you say like almost bringing the opposite effect of what they wanted initially right is there something do you think

there is something woven in that like that the like obviously there are very politically minded activists and people who are organizing and understand like maybe mechanically what has to happen but because so many are just sort of taken up by this larger feeling that we kind of get stuck in the loop of doing the explosive, like, this is our feedback to the leaders of the world kind of thing, and then forgetting what happens after that? I think that, yes, partially, I think that. So the phenomenon that I choose to build this history around is mass protests that get so big that they either overthrow governments or fundamentally destabilize governments. So these are movements

that at first, unexpectedly, appear to be incredibly successful. Like every so enough people came on the streets that actually the president or the dictator is like fleeing the country or is so scared and so desperate to stay in power that they want to that they'll give something up to the people in the streets in order to stay in power. Now, what happens next ends up being the focus of my book is what I try to do is I go back and see what actually happened in the years that followed after a lot of the foreign journalists have stopped, you know, reproducing the very inspiring images on screens around the planet, what really happened? And to answer that question as to what actually happened, I think is related to your question, somewhat indirectly, but related, is that the way that we are living, starved of this feeling, starved of this actual connection with other, you know, we are like digitally quote unquote connected because we're, you know, we're, we're sending, you know, messages on screens, but we're, we're, we're living more individualized lives

than I think most of humanity ever has. We are often responding to like hosts. This, this way that we've been living for several decades shaped the types of responses which were easiest to put together to real injustice. They shaped the types of things that we did first when confronted with real abuses of power. And I think that is, yes, part of the story. And a lot of the people said this at the end.

You know, we, at the end of the book, you know, after I've that is, yes, part of the story. And a lot of the people said this at the end. At the end of the book, after I've interviewed everyone, I asked them to look back and what happened. And a lot of them said, yes, it was not only this system that we thought that it had been oppressing us, but that shaped the way that we understood political change. It shaped the way that we could put together responses to injustice and that ended up meaning that we couldn't get through that first apparent victory to the next step which was actually creating something better so yeah i do i do think it's all related i think that we we and you know that that's part of the learning process right that's part of the what happened in the 2010s is a lot of people got much further than they expected and then realized where the barriers were. But I think

that the fact that we have been living this way for so long is part of the reason that explains why it was the mass protest that came together very, very quickly. That was the way that that often was the the automatic response like why the 2010s the the the dominant mode of the 2010s rather than other of these you know years of of of uprising was uh mass protest or the mass but why it was a mass protest decade if you want to use the subtitle my book you know i i think one of the things that you end up pointing to is that a lot of these protests were coming at the right time, right? There was this energy and this desire, but they were specifically horizontally organized or organized to resist leadership. And is that kind of the big takeaway that you just you think that future protests protest movements need to kind of take away from this book is that some manner of organization some manner of like you know if you

aren't prepared after you create the change to step in to lead somebody else is going to lead for you is that would that be kind of the big you know because that there is the example of this actually working right and the big thing there was that the leftists who created the change then involve themselves in national politics. Right. Right. So like, would you say that is the big takeaway that they just need to be ready to organize and then lead? The,

that dynamic, I think that you just outlined is, goes a big, goes a long way towards explaining a lot of what happened in many of the cases in the book. There's like 10 to 13, depending on how you, how you count them. But that damn dynamic, if many of the cases uh in the book there's like 10 to 13 depending on how you how you count them but that damn dynamic if you you know if the book the book is indeed uh built around the question how is it possible that so many mass protests led to the

opposite of what they asked for you've outlined i think yeah a major part of the answer which is that what happened unexpectedly is that more people came out into the streets than was planned for. They joined a very specific type of response to injustice, a very specific type of mass protest, which has various elements. It is apparently spontaneous, leaderless, digitally coordinated. Often people are finding out about this because of social media or media in general. And then horizontally structured, which means that there's not hierarchy and there's often an idea that there shouldn't be. And then these are protests in public squares or in public spaces.

And when more people come than are expected, then, yeah, the government is perhaps dislodged or the government is so weakened that power is up for grabs. And often what happened in, you know, this is where, you know, cases really diverge. But often what happened is whoever was already there, organized, waiting in the wings, steps in and takes power. The person that was like waiting, you know, off camera, off stage, takes over. Or, you know, sometimes that is the local national elites. They're not always on the right. Sometimes they are on the right. Or especially in the cases of countries that are weaker than the US, you often had some neighbor or the US itself

coming in to to to fill that vacuum and crush the movement. And then when that kind of counterattack comes, just like it did in 1789 or in the revolutions, in previous eras of global revolution, there's usually a counterattack, a counterrevolution. That protest that hadn't planned on going to war with anybody, that had not planned on even actually overthrowing a government is really, was really not ready for it, was really not ready to defend this project, which really concretely consisted of millions of different people with different ideas as to what it was because they came together so quickly. And, you know, that part of it, I think, is a strength in the beginning is you can get so many people together very quickly because sort of everyone's invited.

But once you get past that first moment, often there was a brief moment when there was an opportunity. And usually the people that took the opportunity were already organized, already ready, and already waiting in the wings to seize power, whereas the street movements couldn't decide

if they believed in taking power or who was supposed to do it or what they they do with it if they would. And while that sort of non-conversation was not happening, like the military sweeps in or a right-wing populist sweeps in or NATO bombs your country and so on. Looking at the book and just kind of thinking about everything, I'm always thinking of like, you know, like how this like relates to the United States, too, and how we dabble a lot. I mean, yeah, we've seen a lot of mass protests. I mean, like in 2020 felt like a huge moment with Black Lives Matter and people beginning to sort of be able to articulate like sort of what is wrong with our system of policing, only to get like nancy pelosi kneeling in a kente cloth at the capitol right and then like we're like what about qualified immunity there's like a lot of things we could do and so i look at things like you know like united auto workers or organized labor right now and they've been able to wield some really inspiring like collective

power and we're able to extract tangible concessions. But I feel like that a lot of that is because these groups are organized around worker power and in a specific industry, and their tool is to withhold their labor, which then affects revenue, which then affects the leadership. And then that's how they bring them to the table. When, you know, how do we take sort of like, you know, what's from your perspective, what are the learnings like, that's a very obviously potent tool that is like, it's very specific. And I think that's probably the benefit of those kinds of movements is because they're all they're very focused on like some very specific things. But we're talking about sort of like,

the discontent that people are experiencing in the United States based on inequality or et cetera. How do we take that going merely past the point of these sort of huge gestures, you know, these expressions of anger and translate that into outcomes? Because a lot of the times, like you're saying, these movements, they're not, they are horizontally organized or they get so big, like people are like at the picket for police brutality. Some guy's got a sign. He's talking about like batteries give you cancer. And you're like, well, what the fuck is what? Like, what are we doing now?

Like, so what do we do when it sort of falls outside of that realm of something as specific as like the workplace or outcomes as workers? Yeah, that's a good, that's a good way to pose the question. Because those two, those two phenomena, I i think are interrelated in different important ways on the one hand one of the things that people said in egypt or brazil or or or libya or around the world at the end of the book is i wish we would have been more organized before the explosion came i would i wish we would have organized when organized before the explosion came. I wish we would have organized when it seemed like nothing was happening. Like the lesson, the lesson of being essentially

building the off season, because you don't know what's going to come. And when something, an opportunity does, does arise, you want to already have, you know, connected with other people that believe in the same things as you. And this is kind of the story of the UAW, right? Like in 2017, you do have people that are from the kind of the world of progressive politics realizing, oh, we could try to reform the UAW. There's the UAW Reform Caucus. This is a process that starts in 2017 when it seems like, you know, there's no opportunities for organized labor right now. You know, Donald Trump's just won the presidency.

You know, but it ends up paying off much, much later. And it pays off because, as you say, you withdraw, you withhold your labor. And not only do you withhold your labor, because this is a really hard move that is almost impossible for the horizontally structured mass protest to pull off is that you withhold your labor asking for a raise. You may ask for all kinds of things that you think you're not going to get. You ask for them. But you know that there is a amount of money that you can get that will lead you to go back to work. And the boss also knows that.

The boss believes, the boss will make an offer and then the union says, oh yes, if we get this amount of concessions from you, we will go back to work. And that's why the boss gives it. Because there's this exit ramp, right? Like everyone can, you know, even if you could, even if you use the, the strike to raise consciousness about working class power in the United States, even if you make all kinds of some demands that

you're not going to get this time, the only reason for the boss to give the raise is the credible promise that the labor is restored the next day. And this is something that this was a very strange, like, it really confounded everyone that was living through it. Like, as it was happening, the politicians and the original organizers, for example, of this unexpected mass explosion in Brazil in 2013, didn't know how to deal with this phenomenon, because the president wanted to give the streets something, but could not figure out what it was that would that could be given and then that the streets could say oh yes that's great we'll take that for now you know and again in these movements you you may ask for really

really radical reforms you may you know bring up um the possibility of entirely changing or getting rid of the current policing or carceral system. That is a thing that can be part of this larger process. But when there was no ability for the people in power to understand that they would somehow get out of this, because they're often, like I said, they're scared. So if you're not willing to actually overthrow the government and form a new one, but you can scare the government, then what you

want is to use that moment where they're kind of on their back, on their heels to get something. But they're only going to get it if they think that, okay, well, then that means that I can stand again. If I do give this thing, it will be demonstrated that, you know, mass protest extracts goods from me. It will be proven that mass protest extracts goods from me.

It will be proven on the other side of this equation, there might be all this radical energy that's born, but at least I can hold on for now. And a lot of times in the 2010s, the government couldn't even figure out what to give in order to restore order. So then they just, they end up opt opting for and this depended on context repression just like crack like just cracking down or just waiting it out which turns out kind of works and and that that that that that dynamic that you brought up too like because i you know

in 2020 i mean i didn't write i know very little about the george floyd uprising i spent a lot of time learning about the rest of these in the book, but I did get like, I did watch of course. And, and this was something that I started to talk about with my friends that were in, you know,

involved on the streets that if the government just kind of does nothing, the longer things go on, the more likely it is that that guy with the sign that says batteries give you cancer will get on television. Right. Even if and again, to go back to the very beginning of our conversation, even if like that's an FBI agent, you know, if like, it makes sense for the government to just send three people out there to do the dumbest thing that you could imagine point a camera at them and be like, this is what you are. Is that what you are? And in the case of these horizontally

structured uprisings, the uprising cannot say no, we're not no, it be like, this is what you are. Is that what you are? And in the case of these horizontally structured uprisings, the uprising cannot say, no, we're not. No, it's not. Which is something that the Black Panther Party and CORE and SNCC, the civil rights groups in the 50s and 60s that inspired so much of contemporary protest as we know it. So much of the 60s

movements in the student new left were really inspired by the civil rights organizations in the 50s and 60s. They absolutely would had an ability to say that got we don't know that guy right but that but that that was lost in the you know it's a it's a mixed bag there's um um positive and negatives to the to the dynamic which allows people like a lot of people to come to the streets at the same time whereas often it took like two years to put together the mass demonstrations that were common in the 50s and 60s because they had to like slowly, slowly,

one by one, recruit people and vet them. Whereas now we can, everyone can show up, but then there's no one to say really anything on behalf of the streets. Right. Yeah. Like when Boogaloo Boys showed up at like BLM things and they're like, wait, what?

Well, hold on, y'all. They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We like this too. And it's like, okay, no on y'all they're like yeah yeah yeah yeah we like this too and it's like okay no this is not it not over here but yeah let's take a quick break and then yeah I want to keep talking about this we'll be right back how do you feel about this kids

hi I'm Akilah Hughes and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? The Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels with the image of the biscuits. It's right here in black and white in the prints. A lion. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch.

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

Hi, everyone. It's me, Katie Couric. Have you heard about my newsletter called Body and Soul? It has everything you need to know about your physical and mental health. Personally, I'm overwhelmed by the wellness industry. I mean, there's so much information out there about lifting weights, pelvic floors, cold plunges, anti-aging. So I launched Body and Soul to share doctor-approved insights about all of that and more. We're tackling everything. Serums to use through menopause, exercises that improve your brain health, and how to naturally lower your blood pressure and cholesterol.

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

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

you're out the window, you have to say, hey, I'm watching you outside of the window. Just, just, listen to the amber and lacy lacy and amber sean will ferrell's big money players network on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts and we're back and what one just kind of universal observation from a lot of the stories you covered the you know 2020 protests in the u.s like there seems to be a universal just like people are like fuck fuck the police like a lot of the times like the police really end up being you know you talk to somebody who is in ukraine and is like the you know these maidan protests are kind of seem weird and like neoliberal to me and so i'm not into it but then the second the police show up and start being the

shit out of people it becomes like a national movement right so i don't know like that that just seems like it kept coming up like what wait why are we putting up with this a universal truth that like we all agree on like around the globe is like a cap like fuck this institution please the i mean i think this is really so absolutely and this again this was i put together this book as a history it really kind of like if i'm if i've done it right it should hopefully read like a story and you can go through the events like a movie and and sort of see what happens and and connect with different things and understand how things are interrelated and i think that if there was any value to doing that is to see what things pop up as similar and different. And one thing

that surprised me is how common this was, the dynamic you just outlined, where the first demand, no one cares that much about. There's a small thing at the very beginning, or there's some issue or some, some interaction between one, one individual and one police officer. But then the, the image of the police doing what they are literally trained to do, which is to repress populations in moment of moments of apparent illegality shocks the country so much that that that's what really sets

off the explosion. That's what really, what gets millions and millions of people in the streets. And then at that point, there's sort the explosion. That's what really what gets millions and millions of people in the streets. And then at that point, there's sort of this discussion as to what it is. But I think there's two things there. One of them is that dynamic we are, we spoke about at the very beginning, like photography, like, like, the ability to instantly see because before, you know, the camera, but certainly before Twitter and Instagram, Before, you know, the camera, but certainly before Twitter and Instagram, the average person is never going to see the things that cops actually do. Unless you live in, you know, unless it actually happens to you or you're walking in front of somebody.

It's not it's not the case that every single person in the country can see what this actually looks like. But in the 2010s, everyone can see what it looks like. The most shocking thing that people have been saying about what cops do is recorded and everyone sees it at the same time and often as i said if you can have like sort of a visceral reaction and then you know and so there's the the the possibility of seeing that and the reality of what it is that in the final instance often reproduces the very unequal societies we live in which is violence right and like as i say at the end of the book in almost any country on earth if you want to

or if you do the wrong thing a cop will beat the shit out of you that is like the nature of the system that we live in globally so then even though the the the various demands from brazil to ukraine are entirely different that the spark is is very similar across countries and then what to do with this huge energy which is initially often directed at the police that is something that is hard to translate into something else afterwards even in the case where for example like in e in Egypt, they like beat, they like, they went to battle with the cops and the cops lost. Like the cops were like ripping off their uniforms and running away. Like there was no more cops.

The people would, or at least the people that were in the uprising on January 28th, 2011, like beat the police and there was no one left in charge but they hadn't planned for that they didn't know what to do and sort of pretty definitive having your opponent rip off their uniform and run away like if that happened in sports that would be yeah that's not us no you definitely won if your opponent rips off yeah and like hides their clothes but yeah but then they didn't they didn't know what to do but no yeah you're right this is something that popped up everywhere the this is this is something that often got people very very upset and willing to take risks to take action and then even when it was apparently incredibly successful that that that that energy

somehow or another could not be translated into the construction of something different, even in the most surprising cases. Yeah. The speed with which the Brazilian protests go from a protest over fare hikes on public transport to getting the freeze on the fair hikes or the the what what they were asking for to then like the leftists who organized the first protests and leftists and anarchists like being pushed out like off of the streets by these like right wing and that's that's something that like you know when you look at the definition of fascism, it's like take the ideas, just how quickly people would flood into this place and then this other thing would come. But just wild, the speed and real-time energy

with which that happens in that instance. Like the way that I said earlier that some people say, oh, I could relive every moment of that day for the rest of my life. Something similar happens with me in that week because the amount of days between the police crackdown on the leftists in Brazil that causes the country to pour out of the streets in sympathy. And then the new arrivals who are on the beginnings of a far right movement, throwing those original protesters out of the streets is only seven days. But in my memory, so much happens.

And I can remember like every morning, like every hour, something's different is happening in like Facebook groups, because like the original group is organizing on like is putting out like press releases on Facebook. Like, it seems like nothing like, oh, it's just a week. So much happened in that week. And as you say, yes, people that we would now very easily recognize as the beginnings of a far-right movement in Brazil, they came out wearing the yellow and green soccer jersey.

Only a few days later, a few days after the police cracked down, actually, you know, beat the original organizers, rip their, like, they don't like rip their, they don't rip their uniforms off, but they rip their flags down and they rip and they rip away their, their left wing banners and they throw them into the streets and then they, they just go home. And that was something that like nobody like nobody considered possible just four days previously certainly not the original organizers not the

government not i think the beginnings of the far right themselves and it was just an immediate turnaround that brazil has been sort of reeling from for the last 10 years and like i'm not the only person to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how that how that happened yeah one of the things that like i was really interesting like as you talk about how like football hooligans and ultras yeah have like played a part in some of these movements like as i got more and more interested in european football i realized how many of these groups have very like specific political views and it's not just like we fuck with this team it's like no we're also anti-fascist and like or we're neo-nazis like you don't know what the fuck you're gonna get yep can you like just like can i explain like because i think that's a very specific thing but like because in america we have sports fans but

not even it's not the level of what hooligans are ultras you know like because many of these like can be gangs in certain instances but like what is there shared ideological content except with yankees fans i guess or we're like or tom brady's the goat bro right like this tom brady's the goat bro get you out there there's like certain characteristics of certain teams like raiders fans you could kind of think of like a certain type of guy kind of right but with ultras and in general like global football culture in general the way that we do sports in the united states is like shockingly offensive to them like if if the fans if the fans of the brazilian version of the raiders which is there is one found out that the that their team was moving cities. Like, there would be big problems.

Like, that is like, I often just like tell Brazilians this and they get so mad that you can't articulate them. They're letting them? The Sonics? They just let the Sonics leave. Because these teams are really, really embedded in communities, right? Like you're born a fan of a certain team.

That means something. And as comes to matter quite a lot in the mass protests that I cover, which political ideology a given set of football ultras or hooligans has really matters. Now, again, this is unexpected. But if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Oh, well, if you are, without meaning to, perhaps, calling for extended street battles with the police, who's going to be the best at that? is football auctions. They know each other. They have coherent identity. They have been battling cops for years. They know how to deal with this, with street battles, right? And so in 2013, again, like the brush in the book is to put like events in chronological order next to each other.

There's three uprisings in 2013 that really matter in the book. Turkey, Brazil, and Ukraine in that order. And in all three cases, football fans end up mattering to the final outcome. Now, for totally coincidental historic reasons, the football fans that show up

in Gezi Park in Istanbul come with anarchist or communist football banners. In Ukraine, again, central Ukraine is not the only part of this region of Europe where you would have far-right football luchas, but it ends up mattering quite a lot to the outcome of Euromaidan that the football ultras that are in the region are on the far right they end up playing a really big role in in the outcome in in ukraine and then in brazil you get a different type of football fan which is the more the fan of the national team which is very specific type of brazilian because

like right i mean i don't want to go too deep into this but like regular brazilians don't care that much about the national team unless they're winning right they're like really really loyal to corinthians corinthians is the raiders of brazil and i'm going to explain why that matters they're really really loyal to the corinthians for example but like the it tends to be like an upper middle class white or brazilian that is in the stadiums at the world cup because it's quite it's very expensive to go so and then so then this group of people that like you know throw anarchists and leftists out of the out of the streets end up ends up mattering but then jumping forward to 2022 the election last year in which Jair Bolsonaro the far-right president who takes over in 2018 is trying everything he can to organize a coup he tried to he tried behind the scenes he tried he you know he tried in ways that trump did but

he was much better at he knew he's he's from the era of the military dictatorship he was trying in more sort of let's say informed ways and right after the the election pro-bosonaro brazilians block the highways of the country trying to make a coup happen so i'm stuck in sao paulo i'm supposed to go to rio you can't go the highways are blocked by the far right the corinthians fans in sao paulo which is again the raiders of brazil they're like the biggest most raucous fan group they're black and white like a lot of their like ultras have like ties to prisons they are for whatever historical reasons are pro-democracy pro-lula and center-left they clear the roads they go out and get to like get the fuck out of the way get the bolsonaristas off the road one because they believe in democracy and they support lula and two because they have to

get to a game that is happening up the highway so if corinthians wasn't playing flamengo that day maybe they wouldn't they wouldn't have helped or whoever they were playing right yeah i think yeah it would have been it would have been a real team um but uh but yeah i mean this is something that's unexpected and then like the original leftists and anarchists in the brazilian context at least they realize afterwards because they really believe and they really are horizontalists. They believe in sort of lighting the spark, causing the mass revolt, and then they wouldn't need to lead it because it would necessarily be good. It would be it would be pushing history forward in the sense that we talked about.

Like, is there is there a world historical time? They thought that that would necessarily push history forward. But one thing they realized when that didn't happen is like, oh, oh well we picked a part of town where our allies don't really live we picked a street battle in the center of the economic capital whereas we care about more more about the working class people on the periphery but we didn't think about like an extended battle we just kind of thought you you know you like the fight what is it like like bane it's kind of bane logic too what is the thing like uh what does the gut bane say in the beginning of the batman movie where he's like he throws the guy out of the plane he's like well you've lit the fire

now like everything's taken care there's kind of this you know the scene i'm talking about or yeah i know i know the scene for sure and there's also like a chant about the fire rising yeah throughout the yeah i just don't i'm not off book on bane quotes like i used to be when i was a yeah right wing and i mean but they weren't right wing at all they but they just believed okay well you know you like the spark and you step on the stage and that'll and um the selection of the bad the battleground which they didn't wasn't thought about too much because the streets were just sort of supposed to represent progress, ends up making football outros matter quite a lot across this decade

in ways that, as strange as it sounds, without in any way trying to downplay the role that, of course, Vladimir Putin played in the aftermath of the crisis and criminally invading the country. Still, to this day, you're kind of seeing things be different than they were if it were not for the involvement of those ultras in Ukraine in 2013. Well, it's an incredible book. Everybody should go out and check it out.

We've got to have you back on to kind of keep talking about this, especially in the context of, you know, what the U.S. is maybe facing in the coming years, in the coming year, I guess. Coming year. But Vincent Bevins, thanks so much for coming on. If We Burn, The Mass Protest Decade, and The Missing Revolution is the book. Where can people find you, follow you, all that good stuff? Yeah, I'm on Twitter, Vincent Bevins.

The book, I have a little kind of like launch page for the book, which is www.ifweburn.com. That's like the best place to go there you go you'll find me there indirectly if you need to but that's where i'm trying to get people to check out the book go go do it is there a work of uh media that you've been enjoying i i mean this might not be an original answer for for you but there are i've not been enjoying any of the media i'm consuming a lot of it i mean i wake up you know it's horrible right like it's there's a dark time to be online i think yeah there's things that i'm paying attention to but oh man it's it's not like it's not like a joyous time in social media you know which is i think for better worse and i think for worse where a lot of us like actually live most of the time.

But hopefully, you know, but again, future lasts a long time. And hopefully that it's not it's not always going to be like that. I really I really hope not. If I didn't believe that it that it didn't have to be like that, I wouldn't be doing this kind of work. So hopefully I can start to enjoy something again. There you go. Well, thank you. Thank you again for joining us,

miles. Where can people find you? Is there a work of media you've been enjoying? Uh, you know, at based platforms at miles of gray, find Jack and I on our basketball podcast. Find me on four 20 day fiance and you know,

all the stuff like that. Uh, media. I just said, I watched the first couple episodes of of squid game thing i'm not necessarily recommending it but like i said in the trending episode man when that guy embraced his mom it really did something to me it really did something to me unless you is it good though is it is it good it's should it exist nah like it doesn't we don't benefit from its existence that's for sure so like i'll

put it there you know what i mean like like i said earlier like it's it it's the fact that the show was so good it like is doing 98 of the lifting for the reality competition version of it yeah yeah just all the all the like set design and all that shit that they stole from. Yeah. Because no one's there being like, like, it's not a commentary on like the squeeze of capitalism on like common people. It's just like, like, it's like an influencer who's like, man, you know, Jesus was a competitor. And so am I. And you're like, fuck you. One of my favorite, one of my favorite competitors. Dude, he said it so seriously though.

He says it so seriously in this way where it's like and that justifies any kind of like reptile brain shit i do in here yeah that is really american christianity though isn't it oh yeah you just have to say jesus was prosperity gospel yeah hey man jesus was addicted to fast food have you done the jesus workout it actually worked you get shredded abs you look fucking great yeah what is it like like that that was the thing when i worked at abc news and they were always talking about like there's a inside joke in the media that if you put the words the jesus diet or the jesus workout on the front page of like anything that is like the hack for like you you will sell a million papers and then since that time i've like

seen various permutations of that you could one million percent get a lot of views on it will produce the jesus workout yeah video because it would just be carpentry carpentry it'd be a carpentry mixed with like the diet of of like and wine. Yeah. Or it's like you drink water, wine, fish and bread. Yeah. Yeah. There you go.

Like that were like miracle substances from Jesus. You're gonna need some red wine for breakfast guys. Red wine, water. Red wine, lots of long walks. Yeah. And eventually you will walk on water and also take a big bite of a trout.

Only using tools that existed at the time. Rocks. and yeah. Tweets I've been enjoying. Benny Feldman tweeted, baby Seinfeld, what's the deal with this food airplane? And then Chrissy Yamaguchi-Main just tweeted, happy Folgers incest commercial to all who celebrate. If you're not familiar with the Folgers incest commercial, I highly suggest you go find him on Twitter at the Waffle House. There you go.

Yeah. Oh, man. Just the sexual, the thickest sexual tension I've ever seen on a filmed piece of, on a moving picture. Yeah. And it's between brother and sister in a like mainstream coffee commercial that seems like it was shot to appear on the Today Show.

And they're just like, within seconds of fucking each other on the kitchen counter when their parents walk in. Anyways, you can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien. You can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist. We're at The Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook fan page and a website, DailyZeitgeist.com

where we post our episodes and our footnotes. Footnotnotes where we link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode as well as a song that we think you might enjoy uh mild is there a song that you think people might enjoy yeah there was a new track from one of my favorite producers fred again that came out over the weekend featuring baby keem, you know, keeping it West Coast. But yeah, this is Fred Again and Baby Keem. Baby Keem is called Leave Me Alone. It's one word. And if you've liked any of the electronic music that I've suggested in the past, you're going to like

this one. So check out Leave Me Alone, Fred Again with Baby Keem. Alright, we will link off to that in the footnotes. The Daily Zeitgeist is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That is going to do it for us this morning. Back this afternoon to tell you what's trending, and we will talk to y'all then.

Bye. Bye. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams.

Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I am Lacey Lamar. And I'm also Lacey Lamar. Just kidding. I'm Amber Revin. Okay, everybody, we have exciting news to share. We're back with season two of the Amber and Lacey, Lacey and Amber show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network. This season, we make new friends, deep dive into my steamy DMs, answer your listener questions, and more. The more is punch each other. Listen to the Amber and Lacey Lacey and Amber Show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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