The Daily Zeitgeist - White House Goes Coup Coup, Kamala Harris Has Receipts 9.7.18

Episode Date: September 7, 2018

In episode 227, Jack and Miles are joined by comedian Max Silvestri to discuss Democrats grilling Brett Kavanaugh at his senate committee hearing, the death of Burt Reynolds, the New York Times anonymous op-ed piece from someone inside the Trump Administration, the normalization of Trump's corruption, Qatar lobbying to hang out with Trump, India abolishing gay sex ban, the signs of gentrification, and more! FOOTNOTES: 1. WATCH: Brett Kavanaugh admits there are no laws governing the male body2. CSPAN has posted the entire nearly 8-minute exchange between Kamala Harris and Kavanaugh on the Mueller probe. It is worth your time.3. WATCH LIVE: Democrats Release 'Confidential' Kavanaugh Emails4. BREAKING: Brett Kavanaugh was asked in 2004 about whether he was involved in the nomination of Bill Pryor. He said “I was not involved in handling his nomination"5. BURT REYNOLDS DEAD AT 826. I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration7. Anti-Trump op-ed prompts guessing game on author's identity8. ‘The sleeper cells have awoken’: Trump and aides shaken by ‘resistance’ op-ed9. The Big Melt10. Lindsey Graham faults Jeff Sessions for "zero-tolerance" policy11. The New Lobbying: Qatar Targeted 250 Trump ‘Influencers’ to Change U.S. Policy12. India Supreme Court Strikes “Sodomy” Ban in World’s Most Significant LGBTQ Rights Decision13. Starbucks, florists and other warning signs home prices are about to go up14. WATCH: The O'Jays - Back Stabbers Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. woman had done before, tried to assassinate the President of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson. 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nicknamed Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer, this season on the new podcast, Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to iHeart True Crime Plus, only on Apple Podcasts. In 1982, Atari players had one game on their minds, Sword Quest.

Because the company had promised $150,000 in prizes to four finalists. But the prizes disappeared, leading to one of the biggest controversies in 80s pop culture. I'm Jamie Loftus. Join me this spring for The Legend of Sword Quest. We'll follow the quest for lost treasure across four decades. Listen to The Legend of Sword Quest on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side,

the podcast from Hello Sunshine that's guaranteed to light up your day. Check out our recent episode with Grammy Award-winning rapper Eve on motherhood and the music industry. No, it's a great, amazing, beautiful thing. There's moms in all industries, very high-stress industries

that have kids all across this world. Why can't it be music as well? Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, the internet, and welcome to Season 47, Episode 5

of Dear Daily Zeitgeist. For Friday, September 7th, 2018, my name's Jack O'Brien, a.k.a. SpaghettiOsBrian. And that one was courtesy of AtMusicCityFC on Twitter, and I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray. Oh, yes, and I'm going to keep it short today, a.k.a. Marco Dubio, because you know how I stay with the loud, and that one comes to us from Holiest of Rollers at Will Pool for you.

And we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by one of my favorite comedians and funniest people in the world for many years. He's got a new Netflix special, season two of The Line Up. Yeah. Yeah. Please welcome Mr. Max Silvestri. Thanks for having me here, guys. Thanks for saying that I was one of the funniest people for years. Yes.

The idea that I had the title briefly. And I would admit that I don't have it anymore. Oh, no, no. I had a run in my late 20s. Once and future. But just not right now. Because you're on our show. Exactly.

Yeah, once Vine came out, his reign ended. That's right. I couldn't be that brief. One of my favorite comedians. And all my comedians showed up. All right, Max, we're going to get to know you a little bit better in a moment. But first, we're going to tell our listeners what we're going to be talking about. We are, of course, going to be talking about the Kavanaugh hearings

and the Democrats potentially growing some balls. Yeah. They're doing something. It's been- Better late than never, I guess. Yeah. We're going to talk about the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times, the game of Clue that has spawned.

I'm going to talk a little bit about the normalization that's going on. Trump basically telling Sessions to leave his friends alone and prosecute his enemies and just how bonkers that would be in any other setting or if we hadn't just lived through the past two years. It's basically worse than anything on the Nixon tapes. We're going to talk about how Qatar is trying to get to that adult megalomaniac who runs our country, India striking down their anti-sodomy laws, and how to tell if your neighborhood is about to be gentrified. But first, Max, what is something from your search history that's revealing about who you are? So this is last night I was trying, basically it's Highlander

black immortals. Okay. A friend was like, it's Highlander black immortals. Okay. A friend was like, that show Highlander, they were all white, right? And I was like, no, the Highlander was Scottish. He was very white in all its incarnations. But, you know, there were immortals of all races. And I needed to confirm that. And then he was like, and they used a katana.

And I was like, I had to Google Duncan McLeod's sword to confirm that. But really he used a katana, but really any way you can cut off a Highlander's head is an immortal's head will work. So some had broad swords, some used like chains or things, you know, they kind of mixed it up as the TV show got deep. And then finally Wagville webcam, which is I was on vacation and I wanted to see my dog.

What's a Wagville webcam? Wagville is a dog boarding place in Los Angeles. And they have a webcam where you can watch a lot of dogs in low resolution and just be like, oh, there she is. Oh, look at her. She's missing us. Nope, that's not her. Actually, no, no. Nope, sorry.

That's a bigger dog. I think that's all. Look at her tail. Her weird tail. Nope. Also, not her. Oh, that one's shitting. That one's shitting.

I feel like one time I had to board my dog or we tried to but some of the reviews of these places were so bad but i also don't know if it's also because people are very protective of their pets so if anything goes wrong they're like it's basically an enslavement camp for pets right and they beat them yeah when they're just like you didn't put on the gravy packet that i do every night you know what I mean? Right. So it was weird because – She needs to eat at 5, not 5.15. Yeah, no, exactly. She's going to lose her mind.

And then I see ones that it's like, well, they have a webcam. You can see everything. So Wagville, you're saying they treat the dog right? I think because I have that attitude towards my dog, I've never read a Yelp review of one. It's always been just like someone been like, no, they're good there. And it's like, well, you didn't sleep over. You didn't look

into the window. Your dog came back not dead or whatever. So I don't know anyone whose dog has died at Wagville. My dog has come, came back alive every time. Nice.

A little mangy, a little frightened. She sleeps for 24 hours, but we call it camp. It's like you must be having so much fun with these 75 new friends that scream at you

the entire night. Yeah, I feel like dogs always sleep so much after they come back from something. Oh my gosh, so exhausted. It's traumatic, Jack. Don't people's dogs die at that shit? Don't people always have horrors? Like, my dog died at a boarding place. Maybe they're old. I don't know if they always do.

My cat died. My family cat died when we were kids. Everyone's got those stories. You know, we all have those stories. How many dogs have you had die on you, Jack? Imagine if you went to a summer camp and like some of the kids were seven times the size of you. Right. It would be pretty terrifying.

And there was a sign up that was like, a kid hasn't died here in like 58 days or whatever. Like one of those number things that change every day. It's like, why would you put that right up on front? You're reminding people that kids could die. We're also reminding you how well we've done. Yeah, right. Come on. That's almost two months.

Give us some credit. Counting February. What is something you think is overrated, Max? Soup for dinner. I think pho. I think ramen. I think in general hot broths with limited protein is just an overrated thing. I get that people like it. I get that people line up for ramen, especially in colder

climates, like pho. It's my girlfriend's favorite food. And I'm just like, I don't want to eat soup for dinner. Hot soup for dinner. Yeah. I would eat some soup, but then I want to eat the real thing. I don't want to slurp up this. It's a course, not the whole meal. thing like I don't want to slurp up this you know it's a course not the whole meal exactly I'm a big course guy I do five courses I'll do like uh yeah thin kind of consomme to start and then you know some sort of terrine is usually how I start warming up my teeth uh and then I'll you know do like a whole fish and then salad after because I'm very French. Yeah, exactly. It helps digestion. And then assorted cheeses and chocolates for hours as I sip espresso. Just a light meal. I wouldn't argue about trade.

Cheese plate and some port wine. Exactly. And then, yeah, I just. So what's a great meal then? Is it the fact that there's too much broth and you just feel like the noodles plus the toppings is just not hitting the spot? Yeah. I mean, I like the flavor of them. I just feel like it's difficult to eat.

Like it usually requires like multiple utensils or it's like, well, you get a little bit of broth with the spoon and then you got, you know, chopsticks or a fork to kind of get the heavier stuff. It just feels like a lot of work. It feels like I'm helping cook it or whatever, you know. So I guess I, you know, I guess I just enjoy a dryer. A dryer food. Yeah, yeah. A bouillon cube.

I'm like my dog, and then I prefer dry to wet food. I mean, maybe wet's a treat on my birthday, but you know I'm going to be shitting my brains out after that. Can of food. What is something you think is underrated? Well, this is related. I think hot dogs are underrated. I think hamburgers have gotten a lot of attention in the last handful of years of just like being

this new elegant, you know, both like every restaurant has them, but also like Shake Shack and this idea of like, you know, a burger is worth exalting and just being and throwing barbecues in the last summer too. Hot dogs, they hit the spot constantly. And you can't fuck them up.

You can't, you know? Like, I mean, I guess you can, even bad ones, even bad ones are good and they're smaller. Like I like that I can just like throw a hot dog in the mix and it's not like, oh, I need to lay down, you know? Right, right. Yeah, that's true. Hot dogs like a between.

It's an afterthought. It's very contained. What does Taco Bell call it? Fourth meal? Yeah, yeah. Hot dogs are like fourth meal. I love mustard. I love pickles, hot peppers, things that you can just throw on there.

It's just like a delivery device for spicy vinegar. I don't know. Yeah. So you're outing yourself as a bit of a foodie here, I think. I like to, yeah, I have strong opinions about it. Yeah. I don't know. It's just like when I looked at, okay, what do I think?

What do I have strong opinions about right now that don't depress me? I need the news. It was Hot Dogs and Soup. Do you like fancy sausages and that sort of thing? Or you're just straight up? Oh, wow. I mean, like I'll eat one, but I just, I'm never going to be like, oh, they've got this. Oh, it's like a apple and sage and it's expensive.

And I went to a butcher shop. I'm like, no, I want. I'd also like my hot dogs boiled. Like I like steam. New York City street style. Exactly. I put a little like a toaster grate over the pan with the water and I steam the bun. Wow. Holy shit. So you get that kind of spongy. When are you having us over for the hot dogs? Have you ever had a spiral cut hot dog? No, it's a spiral cut. So I found you, so you would put it, take a hot dog and you put like a kebab stick or something,

or, you know, any kind of stick through it. So you can kind of cut it into a spiral. So you create more surface area. So if you're grilling it, you can get more crispy surface on your hot dog. So it's not just like a split once. It's like long. No, yeah, long. So it's like ribbon cut almost.

So it's like the fingernails of that guy in the Guinness Book of World Records. Right, exactly. Or whatever the one's hanging over the stairs. And then mostly what we want our food to resemble. Well, what you do, you render a bunch of bacon fat. Oh wow.

Then you, in that bacon fat, you fucking fry up your spiral cut hot dog. And now you, now you have some shit that will put you to sleep. Oh my God. My second question is, is a hot dog a sandwich?

Uh, wow. I personally think that no, it's not a sandwich. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. I think think that no, it's not a sandwich. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. I think the way in which it's – I think there's not a really good answer why it's

not. Yeah, it's a tough question. But I think one has to draw a line somewhere. One has to have a code if you're arguing about, well, it's meat nestled in some sort of kind of hammock. Well, then now are we talking about, is a taco a sandwich? Is a, you know, gordita? Is a hammock a bed?

Is a hammock a bed? Is it okay to be friends with those people that bring hammocks to public places and hang them up? I say no. If they have a hot dog in there, I think you can be friends. I think that's settled law, actually. And finally, what is a myth?

What's something people think is true that you know to be false? A lot of people my age and like me live under the myth that Bosch is a bad show. They're just like, what is Bosch? Why is there just all these bus ads in LA for Bosch? Bosch is for dads. I don't know. It's like a guy who looks like my dad who seems like tired.

What is this? But I'm here to say that Bosch is a fantastic show. I think it's one of the best police serialized procedures we have on TV. And it's the best depiction of LA. Really? Since the movie Heat. I'm going to say that.

Really? That boldly, yes. I always associated it with Monk for some reason. You know, I know exactly what you mean it feels like one of those like kind of like not bad but kind of disposable that like okay you know usa has that like procedural bright blue sky right but no no it tells um serialized long stories about like crimes in la and it's the the guy whose books they're based on i mean he was like a crime reporter for many years and like they like live and breathe LA.

Like, I mean, a lot of the show was like, let's meet up at this LA restaurant and then it's shot at that LA restaurant and then like he talks about traffic a lot. But I mean, it really, but it's filmed beautifully in like 4K and it just, it feels more like LA than anything else. It really embraces its LA-ness of like,

oh, I gotta go over to Mulholland right now. Okay, well, why don't you meet me here at like El Compadre and then we'll have a flaming margarita. Like, it's great. So it's, I think it's a fantastic show. Margaritas are dangerous. They don't show him sitting in traffic, just complaining about it after the fact. On the show, they don't.

In the books, you'll get a straight paragraph. The books are really written with like the day to day of like what a cop's life is like. I got to check this and this so he's like so he took the 405 and tried to beat the rush hour traffic back going the other direction and then he took you know Wilshire all the way down like the books will fully describe like

Matt Quest printed out directions from the 90s so if you're from LA they'll probably just stress you out you're like oh bro I wouldn't do that actually oh no but then you read the older books and you're like oh man Pico used to be so fast. He lives in a different time. Right. Who was the last guest that was extolling the virtues of Bosch?

I forget. I was just trying to figure out if that was on our show or in my life. It was, and they were shouting out the author, too, because the books they really liked. Oh, yeah, it was Andy. The books are great as well. It was Andy. It was Andy Beckerman? From Couples Therapy, yeah.

Oh, interesting. I'm seeing him in a couple weeks. That sounds like we have an appointment to fight or something. Over this. Yeah, over this. No, they really, I got into the TV show first, but was so into it. Oh, you just said, for the record, you got into the TV show before Andy. No, no, no.

Before the books. Oh, okay. But then I became so starved. They're the only show, and I watch a lot of TV and serialize stuff. They're the only show I binge the first two days they're out. I'm done. But I was so desperate for more Bosch content that I started reading the books from the beginning. They're Netflix, Amazon? Amazon Prime. Wow. A lot of people spending near billions of dollars for you to know that

fact. Yeah. We didn't know. Shame on them. Yeah. More Bosch ads. More Bosch ads. Also, my dishwasher is Bosch, so I feel like I'm keeping it in the home. And their pears are good, too, right? Yeah. He's literally named after, he goes by Harry, but his name, the character name is Hieronymus Bosch. Oh, really?

Like, just like the artist, like not like Bosch is a nod. He's just like, no, my mother named me Hieronymus Bosch. He has a print of the painting. It's like a real ham-fisted metaphor about, I don't know, punishment or justice. All right, let's get into the events that are taking place right now. So the Kavanaugh hearing is ongoing and it got very contentious, I guess would be one way of putting it. Wednesday night was spicy night. Yeah. And then his interaction with Kamala Harris felt a little like the conversation between Jules and Brett at the beginning of Pulp Fiction. Yeah.

Check out the big brain on Brett. Or is it Brad? Brad. Yeah. Sorry. English motherfucker do you speak? Yes. Yes.

He got fucking grilled and again we've seen something throughout this entire hearing that clearly there are a lot of documents that haven't been made public because they probably show brett kavanaugh's capacity to lie to the senate or lie to other people or just do just generally yeah just do generally underhanded shit to get whatever needs to just to get shit done uh which isn't new but again if you're trying're trying to put someone to be a lifetime appointee or a lifetime position in the Supreme Court, these are things we should know. So yes, this is from Wednesday night when Kamala Harris was basically insinuating that she knows something that we don't know.

And he's trying to know it as well in a really, he was like, please, you know about, can you just tell me what you're, oh boy. Yeah, just listen to this quick little exchange and tell me if it gives you the tingles. The law firm wins. Have you ever discussed special counsel Mueller or his investigation with anyone? Well, it's in the news every day. Have you discussed it with anyone? With other judges, I know. Have you discussed Mueller or his investigation with anyone at Kasowitz, Benson

and Torres, the law firm founded by Mark Kasowitz, President Trump's personal lawyer? Be sure about your answer sir well I'm not remembering but if you have something you want to are you certain you've not had a conversation with anyone at that law firm Kasowitz Benson Kasowitz Benson and Torres

which is the law firm founded by Mark Kasowitz who is President Trump's personal lawyer. Have you had any conversation about Robert Mueller or his investigation with anyone at that firm? Yes or no? Well, is there a person you're talking about?

I'm asking you a very direct question. Yes or no? I need to know. I'm asking you a very direct question, yes or no. I need to know the, I'm not sure I know everyone who works at that law firm. I don't think you need to. I think you need to know who you talked with. Who did you talk to? I don't think I, I'm not remembering, but I'm happy to be refreshed or if you want to tell me who you're thinking works.

Are you saying that with all that you remember, you have an impeccable memory? You've been speaking for almost eight hours, I think more, with this committee about all sorts of things you remember. How can you not remember whether or not you had a conversation about Robert Mueller or his investigation with anyone at that law firm? This investigation has only been going on for so long, sir. So please answer the question. I'm not sure I, do I, I'm just trying to think, do I know anyone who works at that firm? I might know. Have you had, that's not my question.

My question is, have you had a conversation with anyone at that firm about that investigation? It's a really specific question. I would like to know the person you're thinking of. See, I want to know what you know. Yeah, my goodness. And he's doing that thing where she clearly is holding an email probably, looking at it right now where there's a conversation happening or evidence of a conversation between him and someone at Kazowitz's law firm.

And he's trying to be like, well, why don't you say the thing that's confidential that I know you can't say? And it's like, what I mean, people you say the thing that's confidential that I know you can't say? Right. And it's like, what I mean, people were, you know, I watched that clip this morning and people were like, oh, man, she ripped him apart. Like, what an embarrassing, like squirmy thing. To me, I was like, well, she's just saying the name of the law firm. And like those big law firms, there's probably like 900 named, you know, 900 partners. I think there's like 700 people that work for them.

Right. And 200 partners so like the idea that like you know she knows about him being you know in a room or like or over email having like a conversation he shouldn't be having with like like clearly he has done it but he's just like i i just don't know if it was someone from that law firm like i've done a lot of bad things i'm just trying to track well so what's the significance of that law firm. I've done a lot of bad things. I'm just trying to track which one you're getting. So what's the significance of that law firm? Well, it's Mark Kazowitz's law firm, who's Trump's attorney. So clearly it's like, well, were they discussing something about like, hey, if you were to become Supreme Court justice,

how do you think you would rule on this? Or in your position as a judge, how do you see this? Like, what's the legal maneuvering we could do to help the president? Now, we don't know if that's what the substance of their conversation is. But to your point, Max, the Kaswitz-Benson Tours, they have 350 lawyers at all locations, but their DC office is a block from the White House. And that DC office only has seven lawyers. So it probably makes sense for someone who is in the Beltway, that area doing business or having conversations with people at the law firm. It's probably one of seven people. And then Mike Lee from Utah came and was like, oh, there's so many lawyers all over the earth that how could he possibly –

Lawyers don't wear a badge. They should, and that's another thing I'd like to bring up. Lawyers should wear badges. It was one of those moments, too, where this happened even yesterday with, you know, Cory Booker talking about, I have an email about racial profiling, I think, that we need to discuss. And there's a lot of these things that are being obscured by the Republicans on this Senate Judiciary Committee that we're just kind of not getting our answers to. And that's why people like Cory Booker, they leaked stuff. Right. Well, there's all these documents that are they're calling committee confidential documents that I just assumed because everyone was referring to them

by that term that that was just a thing that always happens with Supreme Court nominees, but it's not. No, this is unprecedented. Yeah, this is unprecedented. They just released a bunch of documents to the senators, but wouldn't let the public see them. And the only time they would do that typically is if there was like national security issues at stake but that's not the case here it's just basically like emails gonna look really bad yeah or give proof that you did lie to the senate before years passed and you know again this is why it's become so underhanded now i that's why we're thinking oh wow booker is out here saying like i don't care if I have to leave the Senate. Like, I'm going to fucking drop these emails out of nowhere because the people deserve to know. Now, what a way to announce a presidential run to be kicked

out of the Senate by the Republicans. Oh, my God. So I need to be president. But I think it is important, too, because even Senator Hirono from Hawaii also tweeted some confidential stuff to her committee confidential. And then, you know, Kamala Harris also again, she had another really great line of questioning to Brett Kavanaugh, too, because they moved on to talk about Roe v. Wade. And this was just a very simple exchange just to kind of, you know, understand that. How many laws are there that actually govern the male body? Can you think of any laws that give government the power to make decisions about the male body? Wait, is the tape broken? No, that's real.

More specific question. More specific. Male versus female. There are medical procedures. What? That the government has the power to make a decision about a man's body. I thought you were asking about medical procedures that are unique to men. That's really what you thought. I'll repeat the question.

Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body? I heard about this one guy. I'm not a biohacker. I'm not thinking of any right now, Senator. Yeah, okay. That was just another fun moment where, I mean, Kamala Harris, she's also running too. She's doing a really great job.

She is. Oh, I love it. I'm loving how, just because if you guys have to watch the video, you'll see that in the footnotes, but her face is so like, mm-hmm like that's what you got and he is there's a few moments that it reminded me of being like a teenager where my mom would be like so did you smoke weed this weekend and i'm like what no what are you talking about so are you sure did you find a joint or something yeah and it's like maybe what are these zigzags in your pocket and i'm like oh

shit like for a second i had that moment like, did I get away? No, I didn't. But yeah, I mean, again, the fireworks are going off and it shows you too because the protesters are not stopping and you really understand that this is a really, really important moment because now we have a person who is so clear. There's so many question marks around how fit they are to be a Supreme Court justice and we're not really getting the entire picture of who they are as a person.

Keep in mind, too, he also said some shit. He's like, I think he made a statement about how he was from a city that was plagued by gun and gang and drug violence. He was raised in Bethesda, Maryland. And if you don't know much about the area, Bethesda, Maryland is not the Baltimore Project. It's a rich suburb of D.C., basically. And the school that he went to, Georgetown Prep, has a fucking literal golf course on campus. Right.

So I'm having trouble. Your high school didn't have a golf course? Fuck no. Bethesda maybe is in firing range of Baltimore. Like if you were to shoot a rifle into the air at a specific parabola in midland. Of course, you would hear about violence, but I wouldn't say Bethesda, Maryland is plagued by that. Also, shout out to Bethesda Bagels out there.

Love your whitefish salad. No, it's about whitefish. Great part of the country. There's nothing wrong. No, yeah, but it shows you how this man is willing to obscure facts to either make himself look like he's more in touch with the realities of today or whatever, or his constant harping about being a basketball coach. Yeah, that is still an open offer. We will play his daughters two on two. If he's such a good

basketball coach, two on two, game to 11, ones and twos, or he can pick any of the girls from his fourth grade basketball team. I'll play two on five. He claims to be such a... Two on five. How many points will you give up? How about this? We'll play to 15. They have 10 points already. Okay. Two on five, eight foot rims.

Yeah. Eight foot rims. Oh, I'm fucking smashing. I'm going to fucking tomahawk on all these kids. I got beaten at wiffle ball by like six-year-olds this weekend. Wiffle ball is tricky, though. It is. Hey, man. I'm not going to talk shit about wiffle ball.

It's tough. I tried bringing power to a finesse game and I got it handed to me for exactly that reason. Have you seen YouTube videos of people doing like the sneakiest wiffle ball pitches? Oh my God, because that ball moves. They just move, yeah. It's wild how they're like professional wiffle ball pitchers

and they're moving in ways you're like, I can't, no one can fucking do that. It's like one of those hot dogs. It's like the spiral. Yeah, it's just all flapping. It seems like the protesters, speaking of the protesters earlier, it seems like they got lessons on like projection or something. Towards the microphone.

Yeah, towards the microphone because now you can actually hear what they're saying. Yeah, be a hero, vote no was one I heard a lot. Yeah, they did a good job with that one. And a couple of other things, there's some documents being leaked today saying that seemed to indicate that he's perjured himself before under oath, Kavanaugh, having to do with his knowledge of the warrantless surveillance programs. He said he found out about them when the New York Times reported on them in 2005. And there is a 2001 email that he wrote to somebody about those. Are you just seeing Burt Reynolds?

Yeah, Burt Reynolds died. Yeah, Burt Reynolds passed. Shout out to Burt. Anyway. I just bought his autobiography from him a couple years ago. Oh, really? I haven't read it yet. I was very excited to.

Yeah. He was 82. That's crazy. Well, shit. I sorry to to digress um well you know the thing about brett cavanaugh too is he's been a life he's a he's a political operative yeah with a law degree right you know so he's not one of these people who's like sitting in the ivory law tower just just, you know, thinking about law all the time. He's a, he fucking works for the party. He does what the party needs and he's managed to make his way up

to the point that now he can be considered for being a Supreme Court justice. So I don't think anything, you know, I think some people believe that, oh, well, you know, he might do right or whatever, but his record shows he does what needs to be done in the name of the party. What do you guys feel about the idea that he's like the best we're going to get from

like a Republican controlled White House? I don't know about that. I mean, I think it's weird because if we lived in a, again, I have to even like answer the question by like living in a time that we don't anymore, where when we used to, you would think that Merrick Garland would get a fucking hearing because now we're just dealing with stolen Supreme Court justice appointments

that I'm like, I guess, but I don't know. I think everything will feel like a violation ever since that. But I mean, yeah, Amy Coney Barrett, I don't know how much better that would have been. But I think it's just, it would have been easier, I think, for her to get confirmed because they don't have to hide. And I think that's just, it would have been easier, I think, for her to get confirmed

because they don't have to hide. And I think that's what they were always saying. Like McConnell's always been like, well, I think, you know, Kavanaugh might be tough because he knew

they would have to obscure a lot of shit. All these documents. I guess I just, like I'm all for like stopping the hearings on account of like we have a president

that's like facing imminent possible indictment and this is a specific constitutional crisis or whatnot. Like we shouldn't be confirming one. And it feels like the and maybe I'm not informed enough. It feels like that the Democrats are trying to make both arguments that like we shouldn't have this hearing right now for a handful of reasons. But also we're going to stop this justice from being confirmed on his own merits or lack of or whatever and it it feels like a complicated two-pronged well it's because they don't know which argument is gonna work right yeah you know yeah because they can either shame chuck grassley constantly and this is a fucking stain on whatever legacy

he has left right but like you know they think maybe we can shame him into seeing the light and the other one's like well this shouldn't be happening anyway there's so many things wrong with it that yeah that's like i even have trouble articulating why this is such a bad thing but yeah on the surface you can't have someone who is clearly with everything that's coming out is unfit to be president making decisions to like completely change the supreme court right for a generation if you're a guy that is perhaps specifically on record has the opinion that sitting presidents can't be indicted or whatever. Yeah.

And I mean, that's when McConnell said he has too much of a paper trail. Trump ignored that fact for a reason. Of all of the extremely, extremely right wing candidates, he was the one who was on record saying like, I got you. Yeah. You know, I guess to answer your question, this is maybe the best Supreme Court justice that the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation could approve. Right. But I feel like if this if business were normal and we weren't just like insourcing that stuff

to those interest groups. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Like they could easily find someone. I just mean of the range of the people that would make us angry. Yeah. Right. You know, they would pick. Right. All right. We're going of the range of the people that would make us angry. Yeah, right. You know, they would pick. Right.

All right. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state.

And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session. 24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people.

There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. to Gen Z. We're covering everything from body image to representation in film and television. We even interview iconic Latinas like Puerto Rican actress Ana Ortiz. I felt in control of my own physical body and my own self. I was on birth control. I had sort of had my first sexual experience. If you're in your señora era or know someone who is, then this is the show for you. We're your hosts, Diosa and Mala, and you might recognize us from our flagship podcast, Locatora Radio.

We're so excited for you to hear our brand new podcast, Señora Sex Ed. Listen to Señora Sex Ed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Like, what does that even mean? The Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County rebels with the image of...

It's right here in black and white in print. A lion. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch. As a leader, you choose hills that you want to die on. Why would we want to be the losing team? I'd just take all the other stuff out of it. Segregation academies. When civil rights said that we need to integrate public schools,

these charter schools were exempt from that. Bigger than a flag or mascot. You have to be ready for serious backlash. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And let's talk about the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times. The what? So have you heard about this?

Have you seen this? Hey, have you guys seen this? Have you guys heard about this? So a high ranking White House official has taken the drastic step of, you know, reporting that they are in a perpetual state of like a soft coup where they just protect us and the president from his worst inclinations. And that there were whispers of the 25th Amendment early on. A soft coup is the sound that pigeons make. Right, it is. Yeah, exactly. It's just kind of nice and white-noising.

And so, I mean, this has kicked off a full-on game of Clue in the White House where people are examining the language. The writer uses the word lodestar, which is kind of a weird and specific word that apparently Vice President Pence has used multiple times in the past. And he is probably the person who would have the most to gain if Trump left office. He's probably also used it most on speeches that were like spelled phonetically with pictograms or whatever written by someone else. Right.

Yeah, that's very true. But apparently Lodestar is a piece of military terminology. So it could also be any of the hundreds of people who have military backgrounds. Well, yeah, because the title that they use to describe a senior aid could be like hundreds of people. Yes. So it's, yeah, I think it's a large group. Could be a nobody. It could be a hundreds of people. Yes. So it's, yeah, I think it's a large group. Could be a nobody.

It could be a somebody. Right. The point is we should be very excited that unelected career bureaucrats, famously the chillest people, are shadow running the government. Right. That's kind of- Oh, you chose to move to DC at 21? Right.

Awesome. It seems like that's what they were expecting or based that that seems to be how people took the intention of the op-ed is that they just wanted credit for the fact that they are doing the right thing i feel like there are plenty of cynical ways that this could be viewed though either you know as somebody first all, like planting words specifically to implicate other people. I don't know why. It's like internal politics within the staff of like, let's get Pence's speechwriter fired or whatever. And also, I mean, this is coming out.

I mean, this was submitted last week, but it is hitting at the same time as the Woodward book, which, you know, has a bunch of specific names talking shit about the president. So if you were behind one of those people, you had some sense that this book was coming out that was going to make somebody in front of you look bad. And then you planted an op-ed that seemed like it could have been written by them or just to further infuriate the president. I don't know. It just seems weird that we're just kind of taking them at their word well yeah like on one side I know like a lot of liberal people were like oh that's fucking dope man like I'm glad there are people trying to do it on the other

hand too you can look at and be like this is also kind of terrifying too that oh yeah that you know people that felt the former no I think the initial reaction was sort of like holy shit man yeah like fucking stop this guy or whatever. Because on the surface. The shallow state. Yeah, because on like, you know, when you hear about military, like generals being like, yeah, they told me to do something, but fuck that. I'm not going to do it.

Which makes sense because they know when their military expertise, like to take orders from the president when he's saying like, yeah, let's just execute heads of state or whatever, do things like that. That is completely bonkers shit. But at the same time, when you hear about like the military not taking orders from like the president, like that can slowly turn into some other kind of military coup problem. But not that that's that's really not sort of this is such a bizarre case because you have someone who is doing things that are completely out of the normal and completely divorced from the reality of the, like the diplomatic situation or whatever the actual world situation is that it's hard to sort of look at and go like, oh, this is fucked up.

It's kind of unnerving. Yeah. I mean that, that it seemed to be as much like, it'd be one thing if they were just like, we think this guy makes not sensible decisions that are uninformed. So we're doing our best to keep things level headed because he's impetuous or whatever. But it seemed to be kind of shadow saying like, we believe this man has some form of dementia or dissociative, like degenerative disease of the brain. But don't worry, we're going to like keep things running until he, you know, his head explodes or he's indicted or someone else is elected. And it feels like that is actually specifically what the 25th Amendment is for. Right. Like rather than just being like, we disagree and he's a bad guy. Right. Right. That's mad. Yeah. I mean, Miles, you were saying kind of this could be viewed as a cry for help to Congress because they're just not doing their job.

This is for real, right? Congress should be like, hold the fuck up. There are people in the cabinet or in the White House who are just out there being like, yo, this guy is wholly unfit. You would call them and be like, please tell us about what's going on at the White House. Please tell me what you know, what you have seen. Because as part of the Congress, we can check the presidential power. And if there if this person is that unfit, we need to know so we can do what we can to whether impeach that or just figure out, bring to light what is actually going on. But again, I don't think I think the person who wrote this op ed, like who are the if they really felt like this, who are they going to go to in Congress? Right. Especially before Kavanaugh is confirmed.

I feel like whatever, whatever suddenly out of nowhere righteous action that might happen is not going to happen until they get their Supreme Court justice. Yeah. And there's so many Trump hacks in Congress that who do you know you can trust is tell that to and they don't they don't immediately go to the White House like, hey, this guy just said this shit. Right. You need to figure this out.

But I think that that could be the other thing, too, because I think part of it was saying, like, the people need to come together, too. And maybe that's us putting pressure on Congress now to, like, really look into this more. But with everything that we've read, and even just the last three days, like with the Woodward excerpts and excerpts and now this, you think that Congress would be like, it sounds like this guy is really fucking up, as if we didn't know that already. But now, like, how are they going to hide and completely abandon their responsibility to actually have any kind of power to look at the presidency and say, like, okay, we need to look at this a little bit and figure out what to do. There was a New York Times profile of Paul Ryan a couple weeks ago where he basically expressed a similar thing where he was thinking of himself as sort of the last line of defense because he was saying, man, you guys have no idea how bad, like how many catastrophes I've averted. Right.

Like essentially. It could have been way worse. Right. It could have been way worse. Like I'm here to prevent the president from ending the world. It seems like that's how everybody on all sides is thinking. It could have been way worse. Like, I'm here to prevent the president from ending the world. It seems like that's how everybody on all sides is thinking. Yeah. And I mean, yeah, maybe this person is just trying to bring it to a head in some way,

because there's no way that they wrote this and thought Trump wouldn't have a reaction. Yeah, yeah, right. I mean, so much of like, I feel like right wing use of the media is like to communicate with or provoke him specifically in a way that you can't in a face to face meeting, but like headlines and that is how you get to him. So it's like, what do they want out of him? You know, like, and him calling like, is this treason or like the New York Times? Like, I'm going to demand them legally that they tell me. It's like, I don't know where that goes. Yeah.

Right. Well, other people think maybe like if maybe it could be Don McGahn because he has a knack for getting things out there. And this could also serve as a distraction from Kavanaugh's hearings, which aren't going that great. Right. And now everyone's going to be like, who's the op-ed? Right.

Who is this op-ed? You know, like and because, you know, Don McGahn is close friends with Brett Kavanaugh that people have seen it as a distraction to that. People have seen it as a right wing way of getting people to believe in this deep state conspiracy even more that there is like this other government working against Trump, too. But at the very least, we can see that the dysfunction has reached fever pitch. Right. But again,

it's like one of those things, man, we've been knowing how bad this is and how awfully this administration has been running that I guess maybe it's just to get Congress to run out of like rhetorical defenses of as to why they don't need to investigate the president or why they don't impeach him and be like, I'm sorry, I have an op.

There's an op-ed from people in the white house saying like, help, this thing is melting down. right? Yeah. And you're still not gonna do anything. Because I mean, yeah, the New York Times credibility has been so well called into question in that sort of fake Trump actualized fake news way that I feel like they're, it's not very hard for them to just be like, you know, the New York Times refuses to say the name, we don't believe this is real, right? Right.. So, I mean, the idea of normalization could be raised in relation to basically every Trump story that we're talking about or have talked about in the past month on this podcast. But I was listening to this podcast, Rational Security, that's hosted by a bunch of professors and analysts and experts on national security and who have worked their whole careers in the national security apparatus.

And they were just marveling over the fact that Trump openly called for Sessions to stop going after people who are loyal to Trump and pushing him to go after Democrats because it's bad for the Republicans in the lead up to the midterms. Right. And they were just saying like, that's just textbook corruption. That's like what if this was on some secret tape of him telling his attorney general,

stop going after my people, go after these other people because it's better for me personally, then it would be grounds for impeachment. But because he does it on Twitter and we're so used to him just tweeting the wildest shit ever that like, it just doesn't even register. Like no, they were saying like nobody even wrote about the fact that he did that. Right.

Yeah. Cause it's just been like, Oh, here he goes. That's how everyone's saying like, yeah, baby's whining again. Yeah. When it's not like the president oh, here he goes. That's how everyone's saying, like, baby's whining again. Yeah, yeah.

When it's not like the president is trying to fucking melt down the republic. The president profoundly doesn't understand how law or morality works. Right. Uh-oh. Yeah, that's how we're approaching it. Yeah, it's true. Stummy needs a nap. Yeah, there is this article in the New York Review of Books.

It was about global warming, but it was talking about the fact that, I'll just read the quote, the great Dutch writer and historian Geert Maak once told me that in 1933, the Dutch newspapers were full of stories of the threat of Nazism. Yet by 1938, those same papers were all but silent on the subject. Sometimes it seems threats to our future become so great that we opt to ignore them. And also I think it's like sometimes it's just you get tired of a story or you just get used to the story or like the temperature in the room gets heightened to a point that you don't even really notice when like a certain line is crossed. Cooking lobsters

in cold water, right? Right, exactly. Just slowly turning it up. Yeah, yeah. I don't know why it's always frogs, they say. Right, yeah. You don't eat frogs that way. That's for poor people. Yeah, lobster is what you would cook that way. Right.

Yeah. Then I think that's what also makes me think, too, you know, like maybe the Republicans do know that the clock is ticking for Trump, and they do know that something's probably going to go down. And then this is, the Kavanaugh thing is just the last thing they're going to get out of this is just to get him confirmed. Like, that's another reason why I feel like they've had that feeling, though, for 18 months and that they are just like people at a casino and one of those like cash grab things with

a wind tunnel where they get a minute to like 20s. But like they keep adding time to it. Like, this is insane. There's now just 20s kind of buried in the corner. I've got most of them, but like I'm obviously not going to stop grabbing the 20s, but they keep adding time to it. They're like, this is insane. There's now just 20s kind of buried in the corner. I've got most of them, but I'm obviously not going to stop grabbing the 20s until they let me out. But oh my God, they keep giving me time. And with regards specifically to the Sessions-Trump relationship, just a year ago, Lindsey Graham

was saying it would be the beginning of the end of Trump's presidency if he fired Sessions. And now he sees that tweet. He sees no one's responding to it. Now he's saying, well, he deserves an attorney general he can trust. So he's just like, we'll let you fire him after Kavanaugh gets approved. I don't know what's going on with Lindsey. And apparently Lindsey Graham was on some show yesterday saying, sort of laying out a more detailed groundwork for the firing of Sessions, saying that he bungled the family separation story.

Oh, I love that. They don't give a fuck, but then they're like, let's just pin it on that guy. Right, right. We like the idea of the child separation, but then let's just act like we don't. And then Jeff Sessions.

From a PR standpoint, it wasn't handled as well as it should have been. They're summer camps though, as they were saying on Fox. Right. All right. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who, on October 16th, 2017, was murdered.

There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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

24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out?

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

Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. When you think of Mexican culture, you think of avocado, mariachi, delicious cuisine, and of course, lucha libre. It doesn't get more Mexican than this. Lucha libre is known globally because it is much more than just a sport and much more than just entertainment. Lucha libre is a type of storytelling. It's a dance. It's tradition. It's culture. This is Lucha Libre Behind a type of storytelling. It's a dance. It's tradition.

It's culture. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, the emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Join me as we learn more about the history behind this spectacular sport from its inception in the United States to how it became a global symbol of Mexican culture. We'll learn more about some of the most iconic heroes in the ring. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. Señora Sex Ed is not your mommy sex talk. This show is la plática like you've never heard it before.

We're breaking the stigma and silence around sex and sexuality in Latinx communities. This podcast is an intergenerational conversation between Latinas from Gen X to Gen Z. We're covering everything from body image to representation in film and television. We even interview iconic Latinas like Puerto Rican actress Ana Ortiz. I felt in control of my own physical body and my own self. I was on birth control. I had sort of had my first sexual experience. If you're in your señora era or know someone who is,

then this is the show for you. We're your hosts, Diosa and Mala, and you might recognize us from our flagship podcast, Locatora Radio. We're so excited for you to hear our brand new podcast, Señora Sex Ed. Listen to Señora Sex Ed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And so there's a story in the Wall Street Journal a couple weeks ago about how Qatar is seeking to influence American policy now. And basically they've realized that because we don't have a process driven institution running the country and instead we just have like a cult of personality. Yeah.

One adult megalomaniac that like they just need to get to people around him. So they've spent $13 million lobbying people who they know just like hang out with him, lobbying people at Mar-a-Lago, putting op-ed pieces where he might see them. It's basically the equivalent of putting billboards up in his eyeline that you know he might see.

Because that's how predictable this Yeah, it's just like he's the guy and this is a corrupt authoritarian style government. So we just need to like get in front of him somehow. And so they paid for Alan Dershowitz, who has no like official role other than like dude Trump talks to a lot. Right. And the guy who just makes up cool legal theories to be like, oh, no, he's cool. Yeah.

They flew him to Qatar and he wrote a positive op ed about them in the hill. And then was like when it was discovered that this was all part of a lobbying effort. He was like, if I had known that they were doing this because they thought I would influence the president. I would not have gone. But it's just like, yo. Yeah, because the Qatari Board of Tourism really needed the Alan Dershowitz fucking seal of approval to get people to, what the fuck is he thinking? Well, he can't hang out in Martha's Vineyard anymore,

so he was like, what's another cool place I can spend summers? Qatar. Will they be cool with me? I guess Doha is the new Martha's to handle his debts too. So you've seen how Qatar has kind of entered the picture here and there to, to try and get some influence. But man, that's just so like, I guess the game is so elementary that,

you know, the tactics here are just like, dude, just get him, get to him through his friends. Right. It's like how, like I think any person starting out trying to figure out how to infiltrate

something is like, I guess I can get through their friends. Like if you, if you're like a SoundCloud rapper and you're trying to get your fucking mixtape heard, you're like, well, who does Dre hang out with? Okay, I'm going to hang outside the Apple Music offices. And I'm going to offer every person out there 50 bucks to take my mixtape. Just to take it.

You know what I mean? It's the same sort of, the logic is very simple here. It's like taking a catering job at like a studio head's daughter's bat mitzvah and like sliding a script under the toilet or whatever. studio heads' daughters, like, bat mitzvah and, like, sliding a script under the toilet or whatever. Right. You know, I do drive by this billboard kind of often that just has a picture of a dude with a hat on,

and it just says, at Chaz Fusion, and it says, like, I will entertain you. And, like, I keep, at first I was like, who is that this is so funny to buy a billboard? Like, it's such a tall billboard, and it's in a strange neighborhood that doesn't have a lot of billboards. And then I was like, I'm kind of interested. Who is Chaz Fusion?

Who is Chaz Fusion? Who is Chaz Fusion? It seemed like he could entertain me. He got my attention, Chaz. Did you find out? Oh, man, we're giving him all this free press. Yeah, I know. I might be misremembering the handle, so don't worry. He'll have to pay me.

I'm trying to sign him, basically. 28% is standard. So, Miles, India has made a huge step. Huge move. Huge win. Yes. They finally basically did away with a colonial era law that criminalized same-sex relations and deemed it unconstitutional. And Section 377 was basically – it was one of the first colonial sodomy laws that was included in a post-colonial penal code.

And then basically a lot of other countries, like in Asia and Africa, they kind of followed suit of like that same model of law. So this not only has like reverberations for India, but could have effects across the world because I think a lot of the times, you know, people were looking at homosexuality and things like that.

And like gender non-conformity is like a foreign, like that that's something from the West or whatever. Right. And now that this has been codified in their laws, it's there's no longer you can target sexual minorities and that that is a crime. It is illegitimate. So that is a very big step forward for LGBTQ people, not just in India, but many countries. for LGBTQ people, not just in India, but many countries. So yeah, as Slate puts it, it basically dismantles the argument that LGBTQ people and rights are, quote, foreign. And if India can move past its colonial legacy and treat its LGBTQ citizens with respect and dignity, why not other countries? And so true that.

So yeah, really nice to see that happening. The world is progressing in some places. India's Supreme Court. Yeah. Who would have known? Turns out that's an important job, I guess. I guess. I mean, they must get it. We'll see. Whatever. So finally, there's been sort of a piece of common accepted wisdom that if a Starbucks shows up in your neighborhood, that's the sign that gentrification is coming for you. But people have gotten more sophisticated about how to figure out if gentrification is

coming for you. And it's actually the app or the website Yelp is the best way to track this. You know, before I think everyone has seen like, oh, there's a Starbucks, here it comes. Or you just knew that was like the seal of approval. Like, okay, now this place is about a bunch of hipsters or wealthy white people about to move in right but now a lot of harvard economists and people over at the harvard business school they're saying like yelp is way better because it's like a constantly updated data set that isn't like government statistics that people normally use because you can see oh there's a new business what's the business what are the reviews are they complaining about the price do people like it like that. And they found that you can follow the different communities having

disagreements on new businesses being like some... Not necessarily what they believe, but just the fact that in a moment you can find what the new businesses are in general. If people are saying it's too expensive or whatever. Yeah. But I guess... Does Yelp allow you to like have that data? If you could somehow plug in to the API, like show me every business that's opened in this radius or something like that. I'm sure, or something they figured out to just be like,

oh, what was the sequence of businesses entering this specific zip code or whatever? And then they can put that next to property value information and see what happens. I mean, if they're smart, that's how they're making all their money is just selling that to Harvard Business School or whoever the fuck wants it. They track on Yelp the percentage of laptops and coffee shops that are Acer and Toshiba.

And as those decrease, you know, the neighborhood is changing. But they say like, yeah, first with the Starbucks, it predicted an extra 0.54% rise in local home prices. But they found that that's true of all cafes. But then they found other businesses that actually show even greater increases in home prices. And that's predictably wine bars, florists, convenience stores, and barbers. At the top is laundromats. But even the researchers disregard that because we looked at a lot of New York City stuff

and obviously laundromats are constantly going up. So that's not necessarily the best indicator. But yeah, barbers, convenience stores, florists, wine bars let you know if the values are going to go up. It's crazy to me that laundromats, especially in New York, can induce stay in business. It's so much real estate for like a business that is quarter based, you know, like it's a lot of square footage for like, I've never would see more than 10 people or whatever,

you know, paying $2 an hour. Always. So, you know, anyway, I don't have anything to back this. Just curious that laundromats. I think the margins are razor thin. It's just profitable enough. There's that expose on- They do it for the love of the laundry.

There's that expose on nail salons in New York City where they were like, oh, these women are being treated like human, like slaves basically. Like they're treated, paid nothing and like just really treated like shit. And that makes sense because nail salons in New York are like one of the just insanely good prices for stuff that anywhere else it costs you know like $40 for it cost like five dollars in New York and everyone's like

wait how's this right possible and somebody actually followed through on there as linear right writer I feel like anytime you have a question, how can this be so cheap? Right. There's, it tracks to a pretty, pretty logical answer at the end of that road. Yeah.

Shit. Wait, with like laundromats though. What? No, I was just saying shit. That sucks. That's true.

Workers that sleep like in piles in houses. Yeah. It's true with iPhones. It's true with electronics today like in piles in houses yeah it's true with iphones it's true with electronics today are like so much cheaper or lyft or anything like any of these things it's just like oh it's only cost me it's nine dollars to spend an hour and ten minutes in traffic you've both lived in new york city yeah has there been a time when you're like god damn it was just a laundromat closer and then one popped up and like thank fucking god like is it like is that the situation with i mean because i know you know most people i know in new york don't have

laundry in their unit right or building so they rely on laundromats but is that like a thing that is constantly like being like when is that going to be in my neighborhood in brooklyn the laundromats were like the oldest businesses in the neighborhood that's why i was interested by you saying like opening i mean perhaps in like a neighborhood that doesn't have store i never lived in a neighborhood that was like barren and became not barren right even in like you know less affluent neighborhoods I was in it was like the oldest things I watched other stuff open but like laundromat was like constant yeah it was day one yeah that makes sense why they probably just like don't ignore that like laundromats just come and go because that's just the nature of the game

right but then there was that delivery laundry services became very big while I was in New York. Was that like Washoe and stuff like that? Because my local laundromat would like deliver your laundry to you years and years ago. This was a very inefficient service where they just, you could like, you know, on demand a driver to pick it up. But then it became clear like, oh, you're just taking these to like other laundromats, doing them and bringing them back. Yeah.

And yeah, but like putting a fancy logo on the bag and giving you an app that says oh i want it delivered at you know this time and all this stuff and like but they gave me did they do your laundry by the pound i believe they did yeah yeah that's don't most places do it yeah when i did fluff and folder though just weigh it and i remember the first time i was like damn okay right yeah i mean i uh when i was like on the road this last year like sometimes would be somewhere and be like well i have to do laundry there's same day at a laundromat where but i don't have time to like wait there right and they'd be like oh we we can't do it you only have four pounds of laundry we have a 10 pound minimum

and i'd be like well how much is 10 pounds and they'd be like it's three dollars you know it's okay I'll pay the three dollars yeah oh my god okay money bags max yeah you were on tour for a while were any particular places parts of these United States that you particularly liked or disliked I mean it was all very nice I did I mean that sounds we played a lot of fun city, like there's a certain like, not like, oh, Chicago, New York, LA, like a lot of cities like Cincinnati and Cleveland and Louisville and Memphis all have like kind of old, beautiful historic theaters that as the city is sort of civically and business-wise bounced back after perhaps a lower post-industrialization period, they're now like all renovated and fun.

And it's like really cool going to these theaters that some of them maybe they've only been open for, you know, 20 years, but then they're like a hundred years ago, this was the biggest movie theater in all of, you know, Louisiana and had all this history. It was just really, really cool seeing cities that way.

There's a lot of cool cities in the middle. Louisville was awesome. Louisville was awesome. Memphis was fantastic. Memphis had a haunted bar that I went to. Really? I don't know how you measure this, but if you Google most haunted bar in America, this one in Memphis comes up. Oh, yeah.

It's like every ghost hunter is like, oh, it's off the ghost charts or whatever. But they have like, it's a dive bar on the first floor. And then the second floor is just like these weird, creepy horror movie rooms, not in like a stage-managed way, just being like, this used to be a bordello. There's bad vibes up there. We keep red light bulbs go up, and it's like, no, this is genuinely eerie.

Yeah, yeah. It'd be funny if they're just blaming food poisoning on ghosts. It's like, oh, no, I'm sorry, but it's haunted. The ice, I think they're shitting in the ice or something, these ghosts. The ghosts are definitely haunting the nacho cheese or whatever. Max, it's been great having you, man. Where can people find you, follow you, see you?

I'm at Max Silvestri, S-I-L-V-E-S-T-R-I on social media. And also, yeah, the comedy lineup part two, my episode is up now on Netflix.com. There we go. Thanks for having me. Netflix.com, eh? Yeah, yeah. Don is up now on Netflix.com. There we go. Thanks for having me. Netflix.com, eh? Yeah, yeah. Don't watch it on your device, please. Only watch it on the website, on your laptop, not maximized, like in a small window.

Is there a tweet you've enjoyed of late? You know, you asked me about that, and I was like, well, I haven't enjoyed Twitter in, you know, nine months. But he's a friend and comedy writer. I love him, Noah Garfinkel. He's very smart about politics, but also keeps, I feel like he's very silly. And just, he tweeted this week, Woodward and Birdseed? Question mark. And I was like, that is what Twitter should be for. Anything else I don't need to hear. So Woodward and Birdseed. There you go. Miles.

Yeah. Where can people find you? else I don't need to hear. So Woodward and Birdseed. There you go. Miles. Yeah. Where can people find you? Oh, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at Miles of Gray. And what's a tweet you've been enjoying? This is from Reductress.

I just love their fucking headlines. Woman's still clinging to time boyfriend made spaghetti six months ago. Because my goodness, if you've been in an immature relationship, and I've been an immature man in a relationship, you point back, you're like, what about that thing I did six months ago? That's a very real way that I've tried to rationalize my lack of engagement in a relationship.

But I've learned. A tweet that Super Producer Ana Hosnier just shared with us from Dan Sinker that I've been enjoying is fix the title. And then they changed the title of the op-ed on the New York Times. They banned Muslims and locked children in cages. And I was cool with it. So I stayed quiet. But when I realized my shit talk to Bob Woodward was about to fuck me, I wrote this sternly worded op-ed. Oh, boy.

I thought it was well done. Wait till, yeah, I wonder when that's gonna happen. And if they're, what the person does when it comes out who op-ed is. I know. Like, see, I was a hero. And he'd be like, yo, bruh, you're out here saying some dumb shit on mic. Right. You can follow me

on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien. You can follow us at Daily Zeitgeist on Twitter. We're at The Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. 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. Footnotes. We link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode as well as the song we ride out on.

You can also find the footnotes and the information about the episode on whatever device you're listening to this on. Miles, what song are we riding out on? Oh, my God, with the op-ed and just all the intrigue and all the woodward fear. Everything is just— The woodward of it all. The woodward of it all, man. I just know that Trump is out here being like, oh, these people are treasonous.

And I know he should be bumping this track by the OJs. Backstabbers, because they smiling in your face. And all the time, they want to take your place because they're backstabbers so you know be strong man because your time is probably coming but yeah this is oj's backstabbers all right so enjoy that one mr trump and the rest of you we're gonna ride into the weekend on that we will be back next week with season 48. Talk to you guys then. Bye. Bye. What they do They smile it in your face All the time they want to take your place

The backstabbers Backstabbers They smile it in your face All the time they want to take your place The backstabbers, backstabbers, they're smilin' in your face. All the time they wanna take your place. The backstabbers, backstabbers, all you fellas who have someone and you really care. Yeah, yeah. Then it's all you fellas who better beware. Yeah, yeah.

All of the fellas who better beware, yeah, yeah. So ladies, I'll take it you're late. A few of your buddies, they sure look shady. The blades are long, but it's tight in their fists. Aim it straight at your back, and I don't think they'll miss. What they do, they smile in your face all the time. They want to take your place. The backstabbers, backstabbers. I keep getting all these visits from my friends.

Yeah, what they doing to me? They come to my house again and again and again and again, yeah. So are they there to see my woman? I don't even be home, but they just keep on coming. What can I do to get on the right track? I wish they'd take some of these knives off my back. What they do is smile it in your face. All the time they want to take your place.

The backstabbers. Backstabbers. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I Dirty What they do Smiling in your face Smiling faces Smiling faces Sometimes They're smarter Smiling in your face

I don't need No doubt Dirty life They're smarter Smiling in your face. Da, da, da. Da, da, da, da, da, da. Might be your neighbor.

Your next door neighbor, yeah. That's who I need. It's all in your face. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was assassinated. Thank you. a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In California during the summer of 1975, within the span

of 17 days and less than 90 miles, two women did something no other woman had done before. Tried to assassinate the president of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson, 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nickname Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI, identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer, this season on the new podcast, Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to iHeart True Crime Plus only on Apple Podcasts.

In 1982, Atari players had one game on their minds, Sword Quest, because the company had promised $150,000 in prizes to four finalists. But the prizes disappeared, leading to one of the biggest controversies in 80s pop culture. I'm Jamie Loftus. Join me this spring for The Legend of Sword Quest. We'll follow the quest for lost treasure across four decades. Listen to The Legend of Sword Quest on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. and the music industry. No, it's a great, amazing, beautiful thing. There's moms in all industries, very high-stress industries that have kids all across this world. Why can't it be music as well?

Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.