Hello the Internet, and welcome to season two ninety five, Episode three of DAILY'SAI Ice Day production of iHeartRadio.
This is a.
Podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness. And it is Thursday, July thirteenth, twenty twenty three. My name is Jack O'Brien aka Oh can't you see Ronda santis Man. No one likes you even in the least he he he. What's that you say, Ronda santis Man? Your general vibe is off putting, in bleak he he he A Rono, No, that is courtesy of Pat on the discord, just Pat. Pat says kind of low effort on my part, Not low effort enough for me, Pat,
I love it, Thank you, sir, he he he. I went with a Michael Jackson direction on that one. You know, Okay, Well, I'm thrilled to be joined by very special guest co host, the producer behind shows like Fake Doctor's Real Friends, Welcome to our show. A brilliant writer who you can read at Vulture, the Avy Club team book page, the advocate. You've heard her on Pop Culture Happy. It's the brilliant, the talented Joe Almoney.
You guys have to add filmmaker to the list.
Now filmmaking.
Oh yeah, she's making her filmmaking bag now. Hell, all the film are just pouring out.
The filmmaking.
Oh my gosh. I'm executive producing a short, which is a wild thing to say. People ask me what I'm doing. I'm like, I'm still not sure yet. It's a lot of email campaigns, a lot of yes we can get that after grants. It's basically money and paperwork, which is a very interesting and news side of filmmaking for me. But I'm excited because my friend's from college. He was my cinematographer. He named David Chari. He went to a FI he's been making movies. He wanted to challenge himself
to make something he's never done before. So he's doing a one take film. So it's it is one shot, We're just going straight through. It is nineteen whoa yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a really long shot.
A bit of a Russian arc situation.
Russian Yeah.
Chat with you.
Thank you.
First.
My second film, deep cut film reference to a movie I haven't seen.
Yeah, Off, Mike, you were talking about the red violin.
Bit of red violin pitched a red violin type style film that follows a Dare T shirt off mic. So, yeah, my.
Next film, I've already decided we're just going to add it to the roster there. It is perfect. Yeah, so we're excited. It's gonna be. Uh it's a mystery thriller satire. So it's it's funny, it's kind of dark and twisty. It's very surprising if you want to learn more about it, following you over on Instagram. So that's yes, this what's been happening in my world. And I'm excited to be back here with you.
Well, we're excited to have you, and we're also excited to be joined in our third seat by another stalwart of the film scene, very talented writer, stand up comedian, podcast host of The Bechdel Cast. She also has to have a master's degree in film film. The most anagrammable name in the English language, it's Caitlin de Roda.
Glad to be it's.
Great to have you.
Now.
You are wearing a T shirt that says night paint.
It's just paint night, paint night or night paint, but paint night.
So do either of you know what paint night is?
I know, bite your shirt which is black with a beautiful splash of color right over the pea. I assumed it's either for couples and it's very romantic and or friend groups and there's some drinking and you paint an to nighttime. How close am.
I mailed it? Yes, so I'm riding this shirt. I have this shirt because I was formerly a paint Night instructor for the first few months I lived in LA That's right, not to brag or anything.
But.
I would show up. I'd set up the event and then people would show up, often either on a date or it was a lot of friend groups. It was a lot of like middle aged women who were there to get drunk with their friends. Things like that. And you would usually paint a tree, okay most always a tree, and I would kind of guide you through how to make this painting because I'm among so many other talents and a painter.
Wow.
But make no mistake, I'm not a good painter. You do not have to be a very good to be a Paint Night instructor. You just kind of it's sort of it's not quite paint by numbers because you're like it's acrylic paints and you're like blending you're mixing colors. Yeah, yeah,
those are two different things. Little known fact. But yeah, so I would be like, here's how you paint this tree, and then they would paint it, and then they would get drunk and I'd have to like sell my soul to be like, please buy a raffle ticket to another paint night event, and then I would keep the money. It was it was, you know, and then oh, here's
a fun story. Also, when I was first living in LA I was very broke, and people would usually order food because these would take place at generally like restaurants. There would be like a separate room and then people would order food and then they would leave a lot of it behind. So I would just take their leftovers.
Oh yeah, yeah, poor survival one oh one for food. Never pass it out.
Never pass it up.
I used to work at an AMC and at the end of the night, I guess were the hot dogs went? Oh straight home with me? Baby? Yeah.
I Like there would be like a half eaten piece of pizza that I would eat. I would even cut.
This was pretty covid.
I threw caution to the wind. Okay, I love it.
I I ate my weight. Like when I was a waiter, I ate my weight and leftover fries, like which fries don't even keep that well, but they had a little little sauce that brought them back to life. Just hurriedly shoveling cold fries into my mouth over a trash can, Like, no, I'm throwing us away? What are you talking about?
Yeah? Truly?
All right, Well, Caitlin, we're going to get to know you a little bit better, including I can't wait to hear your thoughts on the new Wonka trailer, which appears to be Paddington with with with Timothy Challamy as a funny little guy instead of Paddington like in there. But first, a few of the things we're talking about. Tucker Carlson. I'm kind of proud of that. If Tucker Carlson vlogs in the Woods and nobody watches, does Tucker Carlson actually vlog?
Because it turns out we had raised the question. Everybody was like, oh, he's on Twitter now, and like his first video was seen by the equivalent of like the entire US population. We're fucked. And then like the other day, I think on this show, I was like, wait, did he never dropped a second episode huh, and I was like, yeah, no, Like Fox News sent a season to sist and I think he just like never got around. He's had eight episodes since then, and just nobody's really watching them or
it's it's not making much of a mark. So we're gonna look at Tucky's numbers and just the question of, like how much of the their whole bullshit is just you know, media about their media, and like them just make themselves seem more important and popular than they actually are.
We will catch up on We're in an interesting place with regards to AI and the popular imagination, and AI is the villain in the upcoming Mission Impossible movie, So we're just going to talk about that and some of the claims we're seeing in headlines and how they hold up to the truth. All of that plenty more. But first, Caitlin, I would love to ask you, what is something from your search history that's revealing about who you are?
I googled first movie to show a toilet flushing?
Yes, which one was it?
Well? It is the movie Psycho by mister Alfred Hitchcock.
It would be.
I guess the Haze Code or something.
Honestly, I feel like it maybe it would have been or like just the idea of toilets or you know, like pooping would be considered too improper by the Code. But by the sixties, which I think the movie came out in nineteen sixty, you know the Code, people were taking some liberties.
People are taking some nasty shit, and we're just ready to see it confronted in their entertainment. Yeah, that movie was like the Old Boy of its day, Like every like they were like, yeah, we're gonna like throw this twist in where like the star dies halfway through, and also we're gonna show you a fucking toilet people, Like
I do wonder if people were scandalized by that. That was That was a movie when it came out where everyone was like people are like throw going up in theaters and just running out of the running out of the theater because they're so scared of it like that.
It was a big, big rage. So yeah, I.
Wonder if it was the toilet that got it.
It was that absolutely disgusted people. Well, I googled it because I I go to a trivia night. Sometimes I'm not just a paint night person. I also do trivia.
I don't host all the nights.
Yeah, every night of the week, there's a night for me and I will go and play like pub trivia, and there's this one that I frequent and they will post like one question ahead of time that you can look up and like. So it's basically like a freebee but so you have to like follow the account and then you get this like freebe question. And the question I think was what nineteen sixty horror movie was the first movie to show a toilet flushing on screens. So I was like, oh, I have to know this.
And then I knew it and you googled it. So you googled the answer while you were doing the thing. You're a cheater at trivia.
I well, I wish, but I didn't even end up going to the trivia that night. Oh OK, So I was like, oh, no, I know the answer and I can stay home.
That's perfect. I would you guys know that it was the Hays Code. They considered toilets vulgar in sixties. They started to loose in the code and they were concerned because there's toilet paper in it, and they were like contents in a toilet disgusting. We don't know about that, but they were like, listen, you can't see any actual body material in the toilet, so relax, and they did, and then it got out there, and I think that's hilarious. We were scared of toilets for a while in our cinema.
H what would children have done? Well?
For some reason, so I was remembering the like swirling shot of like where the camera like swirls in on her eye like as she's dying in the shower, and then the camera like kind of swirls around the swirling water in the and I assumed that it was like a match to that. It just like went to a toilet and showed like a toilet swirling, but that that's not what happened.
Yeah, I'm trying to just.
Cut to somebody flashing a toilet, like finishing up their business.
Yeah. Norman Bates is like, yes, I have to take a break from Psycho Poopy.
Yeah, well amazing. What is what's something that you think is overrated?
I think that Wes Anderson is overrated?
What the job for saying what exactly about Les Anderson is over.
I think, look, I he just tells the same quirky little story over and over again. Granted I have not seen Asteroid City yet, so maybe this one will just blow me away and I will be excited again. To be clear, there was a time period where I did like his work, but I don't know. Maybe I think it's just like too repetitive. I don't know, And but like, yeah, I get it, like he's an not a tour so he's going to have a distinct style that he kind
of just keeps recycling over and over. But like, I don't know, I just like find his quirky little quirkiness a bit tiresome these days.
Yea, what era?
I would say, Well, the.
Peak for me was fantastic mister Fox.
Hell yeah, that's.
Probably my favorite of his and leading up to but then like after that, I felt like there was just a.
Dec rise Kingdom.
I think that one was like okay, fine, and then and then again another controversial take here, but I thought that Isle of Dogs was speaking of toilets.
Yeah, oh gosh, I think that's totally fair. I okay, here's my experience watching almost every Wes Anderson film. Just like, gosh, that's really pretty Ohen Wilson, He's always delightful. Costume should get credit. Wow, the fits are fitting that movie was that I'll never watch it again and don't revisit Wes Anderson films. They're like very beautiful. I feel like they have just en a story to avoid being museum pieces.
You know what I mean.
You've seen a movie in the museum.
Yeah.
Right, But it's like, tell me the plot of any Wes Anderson movie. You can't like, I can't do it, Like, I don't like, they just don't stick with me. I feel like it's just like you see a frame and you're like, wow, look at all that headroom. That's nice, and look at this misan sen woo, and then you're like, but what was the plot? And also why did I watch it?
Yeah?
I feel like he is going to be the least likely filmmaker too for you to be like, oh, he really surprised me on this one. This is this is not I did not see this one coming. I think his like French Dispatch, was his attempt to do something different, and I think it's like it's it's definitely my least favorite of his movies.
I skimmed it. I couldn't be bothered.
Yeah, but it's it also seems like I don't see that many people like writing for that one usually, like I feel like his movies are some people really like it, some people really hate it, and you know, it's it's kind of random, Like I really like Grand Budapest Hotel, but I don't like a lot of the ones around that, and that's kind of the only later era one that I really enjoy. But a lot of people like really
love The Life Aquatic. I've never really connected with that one either, But yeah, French Dispatch felt like people were like, huh, we're we're not going with you on this one. There are some really good performances in it. Yeah, I don't know. I like part of me wants to see the Asteroid City one because I don't know, it just looks like he's instead of trying to do something different, he's like, I'm going to do the same so hard.
Oh you didn't like it when I tried something new, Well, fine, I'll do the thing again.
Yeah, how about if Wes Anderson tried to make a Wes Anderson movie. He like got jealous of all the people being like on social media being like what if your day was a Wes Anderson movie? And it's like a.
Wild to me that he was upset about that. I was really trying to ut that yeah, oh well, yeah he came out. He was like, I would never look at those, and people were like, it's like people are just homoging. You felt like that. I think that the highest form of flattery is like the entire Internet got together and was like, I think your aesthetic is so utterly charming. I'm gonna place myself inside of it. It was I really liked to meet I thought it was cute.
Disappointing court your fan base, please, I think it's This is the best a parasocial relationship can be, is just to say, hey, guys, I see you and I liked what you did, and thank you and then just move on.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I wonder if it's also like you, it would just be like he's worried. It would like fuck him up a little bit to see everybody's like version of him, the way that like seeing someone do an impression of you can be a little unnerving for the first time.
You know that is fair that okay?
Maybe, or maybe it's just an asshole. I couldn't possibly imagine a universe where that's true.
That's from Wes Anderson it's his quote directly. So okay, So Wes Anderson said about the memes, I'm very good at protecting myself from seeing all that stuff. If somebody sends me something like that, I'll immediately erase it and say, please sorry, do not send me things of people doing me, because I do not want to look at it thinking.
Is that what I do?
Is that? What I mean? I don't want to see too much of someone else thinking about what I try to be, because God knows I could then start doing it. So to your point, Jack, this is a form of self protection. And now I dismissed the love of his fans.
Yeah, okay, all right. Also he does betray in that quote like a little bit of like a thing I always suspect about anybody who got famous before, like a certain point like that, they just like don't know how technology works. Is like, if someone sends me something, I erase it. What you mean, you erase it the link that they sent to you?
They delete it from Internet dot org.
Oh man, what Caitlin, what's something you think is underrated?
All right? Continuing on the on the movie train two, Yeah, mission impossible. Four people are not out here riding for Mission Impossible four specifically the way that I think they should. People are like, oh wow, Rogue Nation, Oh wow, the number six one. Oh, I really love number three. No, there's no love ever for Mission Impossible. For Ghost protocol.
Oh, I think that's the best one.
I think so too. It's so good, I know, But no, we are alone in this world, I think Jack.
I thought I thought that one was the one where everyone was like, okay this, Like I thought that one kind of picked it up at least in like the critical consensus. Like three, two was not good. It was stinky.
It was another toilet movie hair commercial.
It was a hair like he just it was just glamour shots of Tom Cruise and then Tom Cruise doing impossible things, but not in the way that we like jumping a motorcycle be not off of something, just making it jump somehow. But and then three was like kind of but like four seemed every everybody seemed on board with it, and like brad Bird so huge, right.
Four so fucking fire. I just get up and I couldn't remember. I don't if we just say numbers, I'm like, I've seen so many.
Sorry, Joel, Mission Impossible, Ghost Protocols of the program again.
Not plot, but I remember places. You remember Tom Cruise hanging off the side of a building, just scaling.
One of the tops building in the world.
The window and then his gloves are failing, and then a sandstorm is coming while they're trying to do switch through inside the building. Fucking fantastic. But I was just on this list in fuck Tom Cruise. But man makes a good movie. I'm sorry, It's really fuck good. And it's like the intensity is so great. We have Paula Patton, a black woman in here, just being the hot lady that's walking around in gorgeous dresses. We love to see it, like yeah, Ghost and Ghost Protocol just title alone peak.
But then you also get if you're a person who really loves the relationships in Mission Impossible, there's like a lot of heart coming through with he gets back with his lady. I think spoiler alert at the end, he's like, oh God, I see my girl and I love her. This is also the movie where the final villain is just raining cars on people and Tom's got one. Yeah, freaking rocks, dude.
One of those car lift things that I've always like seen passing by, like on a highway and been like that can't be like the best way of historic cars?
How does this work?
Yeah?
I feel like that's is that not the first one? Where like Simon Peg is pretty heavily involved both as a cast member, and I think I'm the like kind of writing team.
Yeah, I think that's yeah, Yeah, It's just it's good.
But people are like, some what is the sixth one called? I keep trying to conjure faut I think fallout?
Fallout?
People are like, oh, remember the fight in the bathroom when they're punching each other. I'm like, what about the fourth movie? Though?
Ye arm slash guncock is an iconic moment and mission impossible history and sexuality of this country. We all really changed and evolved? Was that two seconds?
Henry Call? Is that who we're talking about?
He had a mustache in his arms like they were guns. It was time to be alive. We were two years from COVID, We were innocent, We didn't know, we didn't not know. But yeah, as a whole, I don't know if it beats out am I four for.
Me my best?
I wonder if there's some intentional like kind of diminishing of ghost protocol because everything since then I think has been Christopher Macquarie and Tom Cruise, and they like partner on everything, so maybe they're you know, they just don't want to talk about it and like emphasize it as much. But I do feel like, like people who are into movies,
that is their favorite mission impossible movie. So if you if you have somehow missed it, if you've fallen into the Cruise Macquarie Gray out of ghost protocol, you know that, definitely check it out. It's a it's a blast it all right. Have you seen the new one came out? I believe last night?
Oh did it?
Oh?
Like as an early release? No, I have an AMC A List stubs reservation. We come to this place for magic, of course.
Yeah, my reservation pants and high heels and through puddles.
I am seeing it on Saturday morning.
Nice.
I think I need to get that my last trip to the movies with my kids to see Across the Spider Verse, which, by the way, I do want to get your opinion on that. Calen Gosh, you are the person who made me watch Into the Spider Verse with my son when he was You didn't make me, but you told me.
I held you.
You got me so excited about that movie. I was like, we're going to watch this even though you're three, and he loved it and he loved this one. But the line at the concessions, they finally wore me down where the line was like a Disney World line, like it was just it was not moving. It was thirty minutes of waiting to get the concessions.
Oh yeah, so you get yourself a little stubs car. You could just pre order that. Yeah, and why do you walk up your radio? Although I do recommend not pre ordering your popcorn if you go first thing in the morning. Listen, here's if you go on first Thing in the morning, like Kaitlin's going Saturday morning, you can preorder your popcorn because they pop their popcorn fresh in the morning and it's totally fine and it'll be tasty.
If you're going to a movie after three o'clock, I'll get your popcorn in the AMC goal line, because it's popcorn that they popped like four hours ago and it's all crumbly and it's just not good.
All right, let's take a quick break and we'll come back. I have two different films that I want to ask Kaylin about we'll be right back, and we're back. And Kaylin, you are famous famously a huge proponent of Paddington, Paddington two, and Paddington three, the Willy Wonka origin story, which seems to be, well, we've just seen a trailer for so we took a little break. We stopped down during the break to for.
Everybody to watch the wank.
Is that what it's called? Wonka Wonka? Just Wonka cut the Willie and Chocolate Factory, just Wonka. It's cleaner, that has a lot of like the Paddingtonian like charms, and like it feels like it takes place in the same universe as Paddington and certain certain parts.
I mean, from what I can tell, they're recycling sets from yeah, Paddington movies. They're recycling the cast of the Paddington movies. And obviously it's the same director and screenwriter as I mean, Paul King directed both Paddington one and two except for not three, which I'm a little nervous about.
But uh.
And then Simon Farnaby is that his name?
I hope it is Simon Farnaby the fuck out of here, so British get me.
He co wrote the screenplay for Paddington two. He's also the guy who plays the guard in both Paddington movies. He has a.
Little bit part does he have a mustache and kind of a round face.
No mustache, but he's got I was actually called it more of a square face, okay. And he's the guy who the joke is that he's attracted to men who are dressed as women. So the implications of that and it being framed as a joke is a little questionable. But he that's like his gimmick in both movies.
Wow, yeah, I mean so okay, this guy that's about what I'd expect to Simon Farnabye to look like it's got wild hair. But yeah, it just seems like and there's some like mildly problematic like I don't know, white saviorism stuff happening here. And somebody who like at one point steps out of a car that seems to be completely full of shit, which I'm not sure what or maybe that's chocolate.
Chocolate, that's chocolate.
You know the movie about a man who makes chocolate. There's a car full of shit corn. Also, I think Keith and Michael Key is in a fat suit at one point, like killing him. I'm not sure about this movie. I also have so much Timothy Charalamaie that's the word fatigue. Yeah, I'm very fatigued.
Yeah mmm mm hmmm.
So the young lad is talented. I quite liked his performance in Dune. He was doing the thing. Yeah. Here it seems I can't even necessarily say miscasts. It just doesn't. Nothing seems to quite be coming together in a way that gives you the warm guey's that a Paddington gives you. Perhapsicus Paddington is an animated bear and precocious and able beyond all measure. And that's a boy. He's a very
famous guy who's face for all fail. It just lacks the whole suspension of disbelief required to kind of sink into like, oh it's a cozy British movie. And it was funny because as the credits wereroll and they're like from the team that brought you Paddington as producers of Harry Potter, I said, of course, of course they did this. Look at these aerial shots, so CG spaces completely unnecessarily. Britain is no shortage of adorable little shops you could fill matt and or imitate why are we here in
this like cement circle space. I didn't understand any of the choices made. I wasn't getting the tone or story that I think one would hope for. And I also think oopah oompus are so problematic and you can't just keep doing this with rolled all properties and being like, so we know racism was involved, but we just ran in the other direction. So it's totally fine, we are not addressing it. But also we're not giving up these properties. So here, Yeah, formerly racist thing right in your face.
Enjoys keep now though it's charming, it's not. It's very annoying.
Now Hugh Grant plays that would ask.
The question what if Grant was orange?
Yeah, I will say I got the smallest chuckle out of once we start, we can't stop dancing, and Hugrant's ass is just in the air. I was like, yeah, I bet this movie gets me at points because they know how to trigger someone into crying and or like being like, oh, but I doubt it's cohesive as an entire film. Is where I'm asking off that trailer.
We will see. Willy Wonka is a creep in the movies that succeed like he's so I'm not sure what they're doing, what they're going to do with that part like that. That is kind of what's fun about him is there's like an edge of danger there and this just seems to be like he's the story of an amazing, magical kid who's good at everything and yeah, has a lot of a lot of whimsy and gumption. Anyways, and then across the Spider verse, just a full triumph.
Oh, best movie I've ever seen, maybe people.
Yeah, I loved it. Okay, all right, speaking of it the best movie we've ever seen, that's yeah, I mean it's it's great. Yeah, not great. Tucker Carlson's Man of the Woods era seems to be so I don't know, his show dropped. There was like the announcement that everybody made a big deal about got one hundred and thirty seven million tweet views. That's not people who viewed the video, that's people who saw the tweet episode one one hundred and twenty million. That's like a big portion of the
US population. And then it kind of disappeared off my radar. I did not know what was happening. But yeah, so there's like this new thing making the rounds because he's interviewing accused rapist Andrew Taate for what appears to be two and a half hours. Oh seems to be too many hours for that interview to take place. But the most surprising thing for me was that it is episode eight of his show. We've they've kept making them and just like nobody like really noticed or gave a shit.
They seemed there seemed to be a promise with like the announcement in the first episode, like Elon and Carlson together, now you know you're in trouble friends, And it's just it doesn't seem to have taken And now I think that's where the Andrew Tait thing's coming from, presumably like the liver King is coming to the show soon, because it's just like, well, this person's popular on the internet, right, we'll go with them.
Anything for ratings.
Anything for anything for them, sweet internet ratings. But yeah, the numbers go from one hundred and twenty million tweet views on the first to sixty million to uh there was Trump got indicted, So bounce back up to one hundred and four but down to thirty two million, then seventeen fifteen eight point six million tweet views on the last one, which, yeah, I think in the world of
trend forecasting, that's known as a death spiral. But you can actually see the spiral shape because there's a trailing tale of panicked diarrhea. Yeah, that's the official I'm just reading that off and it is chocolate, right, Yeah, But I don't know. I'm sure there's gonna be an uptick with Andrew Tait interview, but I don't know.
I wonder if he's a victim of like atomic habits. You know, he's no longer on his like main network, right, so people who are routinely watching Fox and like, okay, so there we are, we go, it can easily find him, Like now you have to kind of go searching for him. And then Twitter is imploding like rapidly. And so because I don't think his base, at least from what I know has been, is discouraged or off of watching him, I doubt it's his actual popularity and so much of
shifting I wanted to be his popularity. I just think it's probably more likely that all of the shifting of platforms and the ever changing social media landscape as it exists currently might be interfering overall with people just naturally being able to find him.
Yeah.
Also, these numbers are tweet views, right, so it doesn't even mean that the person watched the episode, right.
So we actually found those numbers for like people who actually watched the episode. And first of all, these numbers are wildly inflated because in order to count as a video view, you just have to have watched it for two seconds. But they're like all a fraction of the numbers were that you would see the tweet views, Like his episode one was not viewed by one hundred and twenty million people, the actual episode was viewed twenty six
point seven million times for at least two seconds. And his latest one was not eight point six million, it was three point eight million, which again that's two seconds of viewing. That's about as much as his like TV show ratings, where like people actually have to watch like a chunk of the episode in order for it to count.
Like and this is like, you know, three point eight million people glancing past it, watching it for two seconds accidentally and then being like no thanks, So and the trend is just very has to be a little discouraging.
So I'm assuming there's going to be a lot of tweets from Elon Musk being like these numbers are actually great, and you know he's going to be pushing these really hard to get the numbers back up because this drastically undercuts his narrative the Twitter is like the future of media, and that he's doing a good job, I think is
actually the main part of his narrative. But I also I also just think that there's there there's certainly a sizable portion, like too large a portion of the population that watches Tucker Carlson and thinks he makes sense and shit like that. But I think they have in the mainstream media and like our media echo chamber have like
over made us over estimate how big that is. And like they're like the far right movement, Like I think they're finding out like in a bunch of ways, across a bunch of different stories, like we're finding out the book bands are like only like there's like a handful of people who made the book bands happen, the like Mothers for Liberty is like a loose assortment of people like from across the country who are like they're not even from the school boards or the school districts that
they are terrorizing, and like the midterms, where I think a lot of people were like, oh, this will be a wake up call. There should be a wake up call people don't like when the Republican Party goes in this like far right direction, or at least not enough people like it. So I don't know, it just feels like we've been seeing stories repeatedly that's like people aren't
like this crazy. You know, like the the like super far right is not as big as they appear to be when in the mainstream media, and like when you're when you're seeing the news stories that like they generate. There's like a lot of the Westboro Baptist Church effect happening where that organization, which actually was just a family out in Kansas, was able to like dominate mainstream media coverage for like a decade.
You know.
It's like the by being outrageous and infuriating, you were able to make yourself seem like you're one of the biggest, most important, like cultural movements instead of just being you know, kind of making a lot of people uncomfortable.
Yeah, there's a whole digital masking as well. If you think about, you know, the way Facebook drove us from written work to video with false numbers. A lot of people are claiming they're seeing similar trends on Twitter, and that as soon as they started showing stats under tweets, people were like, these numbers seem off as compared to like, you know, people have independent trackers that like get all of this information from their Twitter handles, and the numbers
are not correlating. And so it wouldn't surprise me if even the generosity of those numbers Undertucker's show were you know, being doctored from within.
Yeah, oh for sure.
And like, I don't know how they could have foreseen that a pivot to video would not work, you know, decades after that like basically broke the rest of the media. But that seems to be one of his main strategies. It's almost like Elon Musk's not that smart, almost like Sean Musk is not as smart as we've all been pretending he has. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about.
AI and we're back.
And so the latest Mission Impossible dropped last night or two nights ago. It's getting great reviews. It does indeed seem to be about Ethan Hunt battling a self aware AI program known as the entity which I don't know this like he might as well from my perspective, like that is as dramatically impactful as like he's battling a wizard this time. It's just like okay, well that doesn't really make sense to me or like does it's not
like really a thing, and that does. When people are critical of the movie, they seem to say, like all the stuff about AI kind of drags a little bit, but and visually it is depicted as basically an evil screensaver from nineteen ninety nine, like it's just the black circle with like white dots of light. Three hundred million
dollar movie, by the way, but it can so. The main claim that the movie makes about this AI and I guess AI in general is that the program can also see the future, like very specifically through its predictive technology. And that's like based on what we're seeing in news headlines like the you know, deep learning teaching computers to
predict the future is like a headline. I feel like I've seen a hundred times spooky Artificial intelligence can accurately predict the future, and it's about to be asked more questions, a I can now predict crime before it happens as well. We'll get into in a moment.
And you mean like.
That movie Minority Report.
Also, yeah, Tom Cruise Cruise, Yeah, he's he. I feel like his sense of reality is probably more blurred by the movies he's in than any other movie star.
Well, yeah, because he has an entire organization blurring his reality. Yeah, before he hits set and then you're in that magical landscape where he's made himself king. Yeah. I mean that that guy's not living on planet earthly, he doesn't need to.
Yeah.
This movie actually was like written, it was supposed to come out like years ago, but the production famously shut down due to the coronavirus outbreak, which, according to reports in February twenty twenty, was putting a real damper on offshore location shoots. Wow, he gave us the Tom Cruise thing where it was clear that he thought he was the last barrier between like the end of the world and you know, coronavirus just like killing everyone where he
was like shouting at everyone. But first of all, I just want to say to AI, speaking of I'd like to issue a big where were you on that one? Dipshit to the AI on predicting the global pandemic, Like we couldn't we couldn't see that one coming. A lot of people saw it coming, people just mere people saw it coming. But yeah, the whole predicting the future thing seems to be vastly overstated. Like there's a so the MI T researchers who had created a computer that could supposedly.
Mission impossible technology Mission Impossible Technology am I technology.
Yes, yeah, they are loosely associated. But it was basically like they were predicting. They would show the computer a picture and then the computer would predict, like what would happen for the next one point five seconds in that picture? And like that it was like someone walking across a golf course and they were like, that thing's about to keep walking across that golf course and they were like, holy shit, you guys. Or like one was a wave crashing,
they were like, I think it's gonna keep crashing. Call me crazy, and they were like, fucking a, do you think it's brilliant? Thing's magical and yeah, and then like MIT Mission Possible Technology also developed an algorithm that could predict how people will greet each other and got a lot of cool headlines for that it was trained on YouTube videos and reruns of the Office and Desperate Housewives amazing, and it was only right just over forty three percent of the time.
We never greet each other like we do on Just for Housewives. I wish we did, but like, I can't just walk up to my enemy and slap them across the face.
It's not reality, I know, and that sucks. And hopefully we'll get to that world soon. That's my future that I'm hopeful for. But so one second away from the greeting, they could only predict it forty three percent at the time. So this is what I'm always wondering, Like, what how does that compare to humans? Humans making the same prediction were right seventy one percent of the time. Oh so much better than this AI that everyone did. You guys ever see the sixty minutes where they like this sixty
minutes about AI. I think it came out like back in March or April, and like Scott, I think it's Scott Pelly, like one of the old journalists on sixty Minutes is just like okay, like write a speech for me about this, and then he seems to be blown away by the amount of text it produces like he's like that just rolled a whole speech in four seconds, Like he's it's like he's never seen a computer before.
But I do think we're at a weird place where people will you can just be like magic AI is bad guy in movie, and everyone's like, yep, that makes sense, because like we we should be afraid of AI, but people don't really know why necessarily we should be, and so we just you know, like it's the same thing that happens with all our conspiracy theories, and you know, we should be scared about the pandemic, we should be scared about the government's response to the pandemic, but people
create like vast conspiracy theories just to make sure they're like scared about it for nonsensical reasons. It's like we need that like cognitive dissonance transference happening, and I feel like we're starting to see that with AI, where they're like AI is going to be magic and tell us everything that could happen to us for the rest of our lives. And that's that's not the scary thing about AI, right.
The scary thing is like Skynet, and that's the thing, like movies have been having AI as the villain for like decades now, and I feel like I don't know what my point is gonna be. But remember Terminator one. I remember the Matrix from nineteen ninety nine, over twenty years ago. Like, I just think it's funny that AI, I guess, hasn't evolved very much in movies.
Yeah, I don't know.
No, I mean for real, like we've been knowing though, is what I'm saying.
Yeah, and I think it's interesting. You know, movies, by their very nature have to heighten and dramatize in order to effectively bring home their matches, particularly if we're looking at genre films, and the AI has always been like, you know, turns into a cop and now it's hunting you, or you know, it takes away your freedom of choice, you know, if we look at the Matrix, Yes, what's the other one that report about minority report Like they're that crime.
And it's said in the future. It's like a sci fi movie where sorry, mission impossible is supposed to be, like even though they can take masks off that make them look exactly like the other person, like you wouldn't see Tom Cruise fighting robots necessarily, or like no, you know that that feels like it's a step into this is ship that can actually happen.
Yeah, yeah, and I appreciate the grounding. I think we got there because it's so much more tactile in this moment. I think between if you think about your grocery store workers who have been concerned about self checkout for like over a decade, a lot of those stories are unionized and have actively been like, hey, you're taking jobs from like checkout counter people, some of whom are elderly, and this is like the last place they can work and
make money consistently. To the writers and actors who may be on strike by the time this comes out, and there feared that not only could AI bes to take their job, but I mean for performers, can my face be doing things long, long, long after I'm dead? And what will that look like? I think, as we're sort of confronting these things. AI is a really freaking dope tool. I'm so much more concerned about these executives who are like,
oh great, now I don't have to pay people. Did you guys see the I on nine article that was written by AI. They came out a couple days ago. They have Internet in a tangle.
Yeah, this is like I've ever since I've been you know, working on the Internet, creating trying to create like unique interesting content. There's also been this push to just flood the zone with shit. To quote Steve Bannon, like we we used to like cracked zoned by a company that was like also just destroying Google's search results with just
like fake articles like answers to questions and stuff. And they were like trying to get us to like do that, just like there was like scale, how do we scale? And like that's been you know that that intersection of tech and media has always been scary because it's very easy for them to just create ninety nine million articles using technology now that like yeah, pass like a little bit like you have to like read a paragraph to be like wait this this wasn't written by a human, was it.
Yeah. So the article was like ranking the Star Wars movies in like chronological order, I think, yeah, And they got the dates wrong on many of them. Sometimes they weren't even listed in chronological order. The way they were dated. The information in individual movies was in correct, it was just error filled, Like no logical saying editor would have been like and publish. And what's crazy is I don't know his entire union that's actively been like, hey, we
do not want this. It does not make sense to ask an AI program that cannot consistently write fact checked articles to be publishing these and then asking somebody an editor to like go through and essentially rewrite this incorrect work that isn't benefiting anyone, because who needs this list? We have twenty seven thousand of this very specific Well, this is dumb and it's wild that, you know. I'm glad the Internet roasted the editor in chief pretty intently.
I'm really hoping that brings them back to the table and there can be working discussions about how this company decides to use AI and the future. But it's that kind of stupid shit that's like really draining, I think on workers across job titles. It's just like, what are we what are you trying? You just want to force people out of work, and that's not a logical thing for you to do to yourself. You mean the product money.
Yeah, to your point, the product sucks, like the product, like the AI as bad as it's bad at its
fucking job. Like with regards to like the self checkout thing that the AI like can't stop people from stealing stuff, and so the companies are like losing massive amounts of money on theft, and then in order to combat that, they're just like making claims that like everyone's shoplifting when it's just like no, like you just put a like inadequate program like as the thing in charge of like making sure people can't steal stuff or like that they don't want to steal stuff, and it's just not going
to it's not gonna work.
But they made it way too easy because when I was in college, we would for sure bring up like a full roast chicken as like some grapes. Man, we're good. Stop no, uh, if there's a personally, this is the possible way you could get like that used to be somebody's job to scan and bag your stuff. There's no possible way to get around. So that's I'm saying, though none of these things are thought out. They just see a way to potentially preserve money without looking at the long term costs.
And then they still have to hire someone to monitor the self checkout areas. So it's well, how much money are you actually saving, mister grocery.
Yeah, big grocery, which are now owned by just like two companies in all of America. But yeah, like so they've also been using it in crime, like predictive crime fighting technology. But of course, first of all, the data that it's being fed is from police data, so it's you know, using the it's not predicting crime. It's predicting like where police are spending their time is essentially which is in low income and you know, non white neighborhoods,
And it's just complete bullshit. There's one great anecdote where Chicago's predictive policing software, created by the Illinois Institute of Technology, compiled a list of people most likely to be involved in a violent crime and they're, oh, no ah, AI baby, check out this because it was generated by AI, you can trust this. And then an investigation later found that the software is a list of future criminals included every
single person arrested or fingerprinted in Chicago since twenty thirteen. Whoa, So it was just like copying off of another like data sells.
Ay I can do is it can gather and redistribute information using keywords that the person using inputs, which means it's logically going to be flawed because it's not understanding the words. It's just re organizing them in a way that it thinks make sense to you. It's not a thinking machine. Yeah, the technology is not there yet and people are way too eager to jump into it and
in a way that would almost assuredly collapse society. Which is why it's insane to me that we're still having to like explain this to people to be like they're like, did you see the article from was it the Hollywood Reporter that came out about the executives and how they're choosing to fight the unions.
Yeah, by just waiting them out.
Yeah, essentially, And the key part that's resonated with me was like, this is a necessary evil.
Yeah.
It was the verbatim words from this quote story. So we're pretty sure this is a scare tactic to get sad to not strike and them saying, hey, we'll wade out. The writers will wait out the actors as well. But I think what's really happened is they fired up the base of unions to be like, excuse me, a necessary evil is not destroying the beautiful industry and community that people have tried to create here for literally over a century.
It's nonsensical. I just I can't understand the end game other than I guess forty people will be a little bit wealthier.
Yeah, that's all it is. Yeah, I don't think it's going to cause society to collapse. It'll just accelerate the thing that's already happening, which is just like grotesque inequality like gets worse and like they're able to hire fewer people to do jobs. And also the other thing that that seems to be happening is like the quality of everything is getting worse, and like that's going to keep happening, you know, like TV shows, movies or But.
To my point, isn't that like if we can track revolutions based off the price of bread, right, Like, so when people can no longer afford bread, that's when they riot in the streets and take out leaders and get very serious about their actions because everybody's base staple for survival. Then we have a fairly large The entertainment community is huge.
I know some people think this is like a very small or elite space, but it's ginormous, and most of the people working in it are like working class people. And so if you eliminate everyone who I mean, because essentially, what when AI gets good enough, when it's actually usable, it will eliminate everybody who is of average talent. Right. What you do is you write pretty cute Hallmark stories and you're pretty good at that, and they're successful enough
to get commercials into air frequently. Think you can probably buy a house, and you can feed your kids and send them to college, and you can have a very comfortable life. If AI can do bad job, then you're wiping out hundreds of thousands of jobs, and that is really really bad news for like Los Angeles, the county. I just to me, I know, it's like a small first step, but to me, like the dominoes seem large and looming absolutely like probable, like if things are not
stopped immediately. And I really think that that's the takeaway from the WGH CAN and I really do hope SAG joints because it's it's not just going to stop at the entertainment industry. It's going to continue to brawl out to it. Like we are one American workforce, yeah, and we're all about to be impacted by this ship. It's crazy.
But yeah, I think if people had a better sense also of how shitty AI is at its job. It would it would help, you know, help the cause of being like we don't want you to do a like take a program that is like better than you know what we could have gotten a year ago when if we were like Microsoft word write me a screenplay, Like yeah, that's not good. It's not gonna be good, but like
it's still not good. And like, you know, all all of anything that you're applying AI to still has all the problems that your previous systems had because it's using those previous systems as input. So just the the fact that like news articles about these things fail to focus on like the main point of the study and instead are just like it's predicting the future. And then like that leads into our you know, our mission impossible films, our number, like our modern day constitution?
What what's that?
What's going to happen? But anyways, well, Caitlin, such a pleasure having you on the podcast.
The pleasure is online. Thank you so much.
Where can people find you? Follow you all that good stuff?
You can follow me on the social media platforms of lost track? What's the one that's the Instagram? One threads yeah, I guess I'm on that. Have I posted anything? No, but you can follow me there if you want and the other places. Also listen to my podcast, the Bechdel Cast that I co host with Jamie loftis Speaking of AI. The episode we released today is on the Disney Channel original movie Classic mart House. So you're welcome everybody.
Yes, what a win for us. I can't wait you listen.
And if you live in or near La, I've got some stand up comedy shows coming hit. I'll if you go to my website Kaitlin Durante dot com, the information will be there. But I have one July twenty eighth. It is at eleven pm, but that shouldn't stop you from going. That's a Friday night. And then I have That's Comedy Night in America.
And so I've.
Got paint nights, I've got trivia nights, and I've got comedy Night. I have another comedy night on August second. That one is a more reasonable hour of eight o'clock at night.
There you go, so check that. We'll go check all of those places. Is there a work of media that you've been enjoying?
Yes? These days I use plug a movie. This one came out about a month ago, but it's still in a lot of theaters, I think, so I would recommend people watch The Blackening. I thought it was super guys and had a blast.
Nice Joelle, thank you so much for guest hosting on the show. Where can people find you and follow you?
Yeah? Okay, so guys go to dinner dashfilm dot com. It's dash like a hyphen. It's as simple. If you need help finding it, it's on every app I'm on, which is all of them. Just go to the link in my bio and it'll pop up. Yeah, what's my handle? It's Joel. Want to find me all over the internet? Actual money gets j O E l O E m O N I Q you guys promoting things. It's a challenge. I'm gonna get better at it. A piece of media
I have been enjoying. It is a total cop out because everyone already knows it shocks no one but have y'allo. The Bear it's great. I honestly, when people are like I haven't gotten into it yet, I'm like, I know, there's a mass number of things you could be watching. I know it's called The Bear, and it looks like it might be dramatic and depressing. I promise you it's not.
It's so fiery and entertaining and funny, and the food looks so good and it makes your heart feel good and sometimes makes you a little bit sad, but it's totally worth it because the journey is so well written and performed. I congrats to Io with every who's so many nominations this year. Watching her career, it's so inspirational. Watch the Bear folks. Give it all the love it deserves. It's it's good for your soul. It's really good. What about you, jack.
I'm taking that one very slowly. I'm still in the first season, but every time I watched it, I'm like, man, I really like that.
Sure, there's no problem going slow. It's it will be there for you and it will remain great.
My wife, like when I was like out of town one time, like left me behind on like episode five, like she just like binge the rest of.
It, and so.
Like I'm just squeezing it in and I can't do it when we're doing our TV watch and so.
Watch it, Jackie, be like we could have watched this together this time.
Did you intentionally say my wife like borat or was that unintentional?
I didn't say, just a little bit, just.
You're like my.
Wife, my wife. That's just how I said, my way. You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore, O'Brien. You can find me on threads at Jack Underscore. Oh underscore, Brian, I'm on threads and so many underscores in the night. And a couple of tweets. I've been enjoying Sydney Battle tweeted if you texted me and I didn't respond, can you text me again to bring.
It back to the top.
I'm too scared to scroll down there, which yeah, uh. And then PJ Haven's tweeted is water and season right now it's hitting so hard, Oh my god? Which yeah, Water's good right now. It's good, delicious peak water. 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 daily zeitguist dot com, where we post our episodes and our footnotes put no link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode, as well as a song that we think you might enjoy. Miles out today, so we don't have his song Recks. He's on the road back tomorrow. But we have the special tree of getting a song recommendation from super producer Justin.
Super producer Justin. Is there a song that you think people might enjoy?
Uh?
Yeah, I do.
Considering we have two film people in the building today with us, I wanted to suggest a song that has like a very strong visual component when it comes to the music video, so I'll be linking off to that in the footnotes. This is a song called Smoke Break Dance by Mick Jenkins featuring Jid or Ji D. This track is super super good. It's very jazzy like boombab type of hip hop with you know, obviously incredible lyricism from Mick. But the video is has so many powerful visuals.
It's like a feast for the eyes. Like every couple of seconds there's something beautiful happening with the art and playing off the lyrics. It's a really cool interplay of words and visuals. So you can go ahead and check this song out in the footnotes, that's Mick Jenkins Smoke Break Dance featuring Jid.
All right, Well, The Daily zeit guys is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, the iHeartRadio, ap Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That is gonna do it for us this morning. We are back this afternoon to tell you what is trending and we'll talk to you all then. Bye Hike,