Hello the Internet, and welcome to Season three thirty three, Episode four of tur Daily Zaike guyst Day production of iHeartRadio three thirty three. The half Assed Sign of the Beast. We are It is upon us. This is a podcast where we take a deep dive into America Share conscious Listeners. Thursday, April eleventh, twenty twenty four. What a time to be alive.
My name is.
Jack O'Brien aka Blind Hib with Zai Guys. I know that looking is wrong, but it can't be that bright Blind Hib with Zike guyste The eclipse is long gone and everything looks like night. That is courtesy of Steaming Chuck on the discord, in reference to our advice to all our listeners to just raw dog the eclipse with their eyeballs, just ocular raw doggery, no eye protection and our bad I guess we got to say our bad folks.
We were way off on that advice. Steaming Chuck credited that one to Manfred Man's Earth Band, which that's certainly the version I am most familiar with that I was singing. But that song is actually originally written by Bruce Springsteen before he like found his writing voice and started writing songs about like factory workers who've been kicked like a dog too much or whatever. Instead of like that song does not sound like a Bruce spring He's like curly
whorlies and someone named like go Kart Mozar. I feel like it was like the one song that Bruce Springsteen wrote on acid or something very very strange.
But that's it.
Yeah, He's like, Oh, I.
Like this, but I gotta go back to my shift, Go back to my shift. Is there something here?
Fauk Art Mozart checking out the weather chart see if it was safe outside. I don't know, you guys figure it out anyways, that voice you heard, I'm through to be joined by a very special guest co host, a hilarious and brilliant producer and TV writer. You know him from the Yo is this racist podcast?
It's Andrew the Best Tee, the Best Podcast. Occasional guest hosts, another.
One, another one there. It is all all of his catchphrases.
I just forgot. Does Miles usually look up some holidays? Because it's National Cheese Fondue Day, which I guess I assumed was redundant, but there must be actually, so the cheese lobby put something in because it's also National Poutine Day. Wow, it's unclear whether it's this nation or the more obvious nation for poutine to be national Constipation Day.
Which nation is national? Which nation is claiming now poutine Day is a good question.
It doesn't say yeah, and I'm not going to look further. I guess I guess America.
For a while there after, like going to just relax in Montreal and like having poutine. I was annoyingly evangelical about poutine, like why don't we have this for every meal? But then I started noticing how I felt after.
One of the oh single worst slash. I get this was very generous, and thank you to everyone who supported everyone while we were on strike. But one of the worst days was it was hot, it was a summertime, and someone donated a poutine truck to one of the picket lines, and it is honestly wild. That is like the single most dehydrated day I've ever had. Among many other bad feelings, I felt fucking terrible.
What if spaghetti but instead of spaghetti sauce, it was salty gravy and cheese, And instead instead of pasta it was salty French fries. Oh okay, yeah, no that I mean, it works, It certainly works.
But just like shit outside in the sun, what if it was like ninety seven degrees.
Yeah, yeah, your eyeballs just start raisining up.
A little bit. It's pretty good, pretty good.
Yeah. Wow, Well, Andrew, we are throwed to be joining our third seat by another one of our favorite guests on this very podcast and award winning podcast host, writer, producer, actor. You know from Grand Crew, How I met your father?
It's your keys Mee.
And his jockeys and it is z yay. What up? Negros? What up? What up?
What's up? Man? Man?
It's been a while. Man, while its Outli did you miss me? Zeit? Gang?
Are you?
Are you?
I hope somebody just crashed their car. Yes, I heard some. I hope. I hope people listen to the daily ight guys while they're having sex, and somebody just as soon as they heard my boys.
Your voice, that was too soon. I'm sorry, but you know I understand.
I hope it was. I hope it was a girl who never comes and she finally came.
She came so hard.
Yeah, yes, step your game up, fellas or ladies, because we don't discriminate here, Ladies cannot make you come to.
Now, that's right. Ladies can be bad lovers.
Ladies suck at sex too.
Now, I do love. I do love the idea of people for your for your playlist. Just raw dog shuffle on every piece of media you have on your phone. I love. It's just anything anything that's there. Don't don't care it rating is so weak. Will just play anything.
Just play whatever you got.
Yo.
If if Barack Obama's d NC speech from two thousand and four pops up while you're banging, yeah, don't stop.
Oh chapter eleven of Freakonomics, you forgot the week. Yeah.
I went from teenage mutant Ninja Turtles to the thirty seventh chapter of Infinite Jests. Yeah, we kept going, you know.
Just fuck through it, fuck through it, through.
Infinite If you could put curse words in your title, the title of this episode should be just fuck.
Through it, just fuck through it.
Yes, and really that's the guys we all want to live in daily.
That's true.
Fuck through it, keep calm and fuck through it all.
You know.
Well, jakeis it's wonderful.
To have you back.
Ah, good to be back. How are you great?
To hear your voice?
I'm doing great I'm doing great.
Good.
Yeah, how did everybody have a safe ocularly safe eclipse? Did anybody experience anything?
I have not looked at the sun in fourteen weeks, so I did not partake in anything to do with it.
Yeah, just staying in. Yeah, I was.
I was in a doctor's appointment at the time, an allergy appointment at the time, and I was like, oh, I think there's something going on right now. And then I looked out the blinds and I was like, it's still daylight.
Yeah.
Really, we didn't see Mike dog was kind of sniffing at the shadows. I can't tell she was freaked out or there's just something down there. I did have a friend who took a special trip to the Zone of Totality and was in like, you know, somewhere in the middle of America, and she sent me photos from my first shop of several Nazi knives, So wow, was it worth it? Of course she has all these new knives.
But but also, if you did enjoy the eclipse, you are a Nazi. Yeah, that is what I'm hearing. Yeah, what I'm hearing.
It really is like going to the middle of nowhere and just being somewhere where it's dark outside and there's all these Nazi knives. Like that's like a real bad horror movie. Like yeah, they're just like, oh man, they try to put too much stuff in this movie.
There's not enough eclipse movies, I would say, because yeah, Miles pitched one a couple of weeks ago where the bank robbers like plant a string of bank robberies along the path of totality to like time up with the eclipse because everybody's looking at the sky. Although I guess everybody's just like looking at the sky while at bank robbery happening. Is happening is we'll see what it be a pretty quick one.
What happens is what happens is you know, and when when the sky gets dark, it makes everybody in that town in the zone of totality blind.
Yes, Ca, it was actually one of the plot points that we were pitching is that they somehow like Ocean's eleven, have a guy who gets counterfeit eclipse glasses out to an entire town of cops and then they are all immediately blinded.
And that is such a blind and one in one bank and one bank like the bank is half in like totality and the other half isn't and the half that's in totality is only the side with like dollar bills, and like all the high dollar bills hit the side where people can see. You know, you can a steel like thirty dollars.
You got to do it. I I'm surprised that no one know. I guess by the time the next eclipse, this will definitely happen. But they haven't come up with some sort of like Neon skywriting that they can just like do over the eclipse. So this eclipse brought to you by Chase Brands.
Yeah, I love it. You gave me an idea.
We all love it.
We just have to stay alive for twenty years.
I mean they try, Like I feel like Pizza Hut had their eclipse special sun Chips. Son Chips had a flavor of this is by the way, this is what I'm like at a party. I'm just remembering stories we covered on previous episodes. But Sonships offered an eclipse flavor that was available for you could only buy it during the eclipse. So if you felt like spending the eclipse huddled over.
Your laptop Delicious yeah, or you with your Apple Vision pros so you can look at the eclipse and order sonships online at the same time.
There.
You know, Jack, you say that, You say that like you're you're not fund at a party. But what I'm hearing is you bring the party to the podcast. That's the right, pure pure party. Jack is here.
That's right, pure party Jack, my other AKA, all right, we're gonna get to know you a little bit better in a moment. First, we're gonna tell listeners a couple of the things that we're talking about. We're gonna talk about the economy stupid. The consumer price index rose again, startling economists and nobody else. I've actually had this story ready to go since the last last month when consumer
prices rose and economists were like, what the heck? So we're going to talk about that because they're like, everything has stopped economics, gravity has gone away, nothing makes sense anymore, and I want to talk about why that doesn't seem to be the case to me, a economics expert. We're going to talk about lunchables, the children's meal created by big tobacco, that is, and you're not gonna believe this
apparently full of poison. No to be a Jack, Yeah, I know it's it's fucking like, if we can't trust our lunchables, then who can we trust. Anyways, We're gonna talk about all that plenty more, but first, jaquies, Yes, we do like to ask our guests, what is something from your search history?
Porn? Baby? I had a feeling all types of all types of porn. I'm looking at BBC, bb wise, BBG's, Uh, what's the what would be BGB gut big bone guts. You know I don't. Actually I have turned my like search history off on my phone, you know, because I just did so, Like I'm like, you know, what what do I be searching? What do I be searching? And I'll tell you I'm on my way to Japan, are you really? I am gonna be in Japan for about a month, so if any Zechkis fans are in Japan,
please welcome me. But I'm gonna be in Japan pretty soon. So I'm I'm kind of just in, like, you know, if I'm not looking up ways to aid my masturbation, I am looking up like Japan tips, tips for traveling to Japan.
You can combine those two interests.
Yeah, not here and not here. I can only talk about those things in private.
You're not you are googling ways to aid your masturbation.
How can I do that? Like, what's a better grip? You know?
Like if I you know, like, yeah, what's about a grip? What can I do with my fingertips? You know? What's what's the best oil?
The wrist counts as hands? Still?
Yeah, if I squeezed my dick between my elbows, will that does that? County? That's what I just I.
Just tried pantomimic that for anyone not on the zoo, just to actually, I know, this is more about me being inflexible. I can only barely do that.
I mean, it's it's about you being inflexible. And I would also say that dick size has something to do with it.
H Yeah, I have to reach so far above my head to get.
You know, who you could talk to about Japan. You might notice that the regular co host for they.
That is not here.
That's why I agree today take me a.
Quick trip to Japan. Yeah, current, do you know he right now?
He's there now.
On Monday Tuesday?
Yeah, oh fuck, he thinks I'm leaving on Tuesday. Yeah, well damn, just gonna get him.
Up to tell him to just hide you something at the airport, just to give you a little package something.
Tell him to hide me a bomb, yeah, okay, but not an explosive one. Yeah, right right, an explosive one, just some then that's dub bomb. Yeah, a confettietti, yes, that's tight. No, but yeah, I'm looking for anybody, you know, if anybody got any fun tips, shoot them my way. I'm I'm I'm open to them all. I'm gonna be like I said in Japan for three and a half weeks almost hell yeah, be a good time. It's gonna be a good ass.
Time, specifically for Japan tips and not masturbation tips, because then.
I got those. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got I got that all clear, man, I got that all clear. My elbows are greased and ready.
To What is something you think is underrated?
Not having to drive? Not having to drive is a beautiful fucking thing. And I know, like there are some people who live in cities where you don't have to drive a lot. I want to talk to you because you don't know the other side. You don't know, you don't know what it's like to need to have to commute, so you're spoiled and I was spoiled brat once. I used to live in Chicago. We didn't have to drive in Chicago. But living in this concrete jungle called Los
Angeles that we live in, we have to drive. And man, I love getting rides. Man, I love getting rides. I'm telling you now, if somebody ever asked me, like, you want to drive, my answer is going to be no. Yeah, it's going to be no. I'm gonna say no, you can drive. I'll take the passenger seat. I will just sleep.
I'll just I'll lean that. There's nothing like leaning that chair back on the passenger seat, putting on some sunglasses, have some music playing, and like, you know, only waking up when the person driving has to slam on their brakes. Like that's a beautiful fucking thing.
Because I don't trust other people to drive. Like this is my problem with flying too, because I'm like, it's just the feeling of not being in control, totally a psychological defect on my on my cart. It's it's not a good thing. But yeah, I prefer to drive driven.
Yeah.
See I went. I had some shows to San Diego this past weekend and I I took the train down. I was like drive down. Hell, yes, I watched I watched WrestleMania on the way back. It was gorgeous. It was a gorgeous evening of commuting that I didn't have to do anything. And then does the train sit there?
Does the train of San Diego still have that business where you have to take a like a bus for part of it? Or does it?
Is it?
They fix it?
I didn't like I. So what I did was I just I I there is a train that comes to and from Burbank, which is the town I live in. Don't come find me, uh but I but.
It's like the time, so real hard to find the black guy in Burbank.
Bank was so hard, so hard. So I just go to the Union station and park and it's like seven dollars to park for the whole fucking day train there and back.
They must have fixed it. It was at some point during last year, like part of the track washed out.
Oh San Clemente.
Yeah, yeah, that's not that's not related to That's not related to anything about how the globe is changedarming anyway, you're.
Trying to have fun. Dude who don't like slides? I like to slides.
Doesn't love month slides.
Slide, Man, I love a mudslide.
You've ever seen romancing with Stone that she looks fun as well.
She looks great man, Journey to the Center to Earth, that it seems fun.
The Coastliner, you guys have so many mudslide scenes. Q up, I can't.
Goonies kind of more of just a water slide in the.
Earth for some reason. Nothing, I got nothing.
Yeah, the Coastliner is a blast, highly recommend for anybody in LB. And you're about to go to the land of convenient train travel, by.
The way, bro, I can't I can't wait to get on the bullet train. Man. Yeah, I also was thinking of something. This is the toxic traits of my brain. Have you ever thought like, all right, so, like if you're standing on a plan, if you're standing on a platform and like you see it, you see the train coming right, and you're like, could I jump from one platform to the other and you miss the train? Like, yes, I think about that all the time.
We're raised on the same movies.
Man, Yeah, I think I could fucking do it.
That was in the movie Entrapman. That's how Sean Connery flirted with Catherine Zader Jones was even just jump through a train.
Like.
As a way to just yeah, it's so easy, and.
It feels it feels easy to me in my brain. I'm like, all right, the train is that far. I see it coming. I see I see the distance, all right if I time it, because because I don't want to just jump. I want to jump and have there be a hint of peril, like I want to jump and make it. I don't want to just jump when the train is like a block down the street. I want to jump and make it so like I think I think I could time it out perfectly and do it. Yeah, and if I don't, you know, it's been real.
Yeah, let me throw this out there for you. Sorry, I got excited because now I'm hearing another pitch for my second business idea of the episode, which is just sort of like you know those like like kind of like foam gymnastics places for kids. Yeah, one of those, but for grown men to do all the toxic shit that they probably shouldn't try. So like like a fake train tracks and I guess like a huge, like fucking train two train size blocks of foam that go by
a thirty miles, just to see if you could jump across. Yeah. Hell, there's like that. Yeah.
Have you ever been walking up the stadium and you look back and you're like, I wonder if I could jump from here to the court, you know, from the top from the top road to the court. Like yeah, like if I could jump far enough out then it wouldn't catch it.
I know I couldn't, but.
Like I think if I jumped down, I can like jump and like grab the next level. Bar down, yeah, and grab the next level. I think I could do so much ship Yeah, yeah, you know what I am. I am the rock and Sam Jackson and other guys. Yes, when they got about that buildings like and then I smacked the ground.
Right bush or like a big a big like fake dumpster full of stuff and just like a building like I didn't know that was medical waste. That was all the used syringes jumped into. Oh fuck anyway, So yeah, that's just there's gotta be some warehouse in like city of Industry that we could we could host this. Oh man, I love that idea. Yeah.
I have an overactive call of the void, where like anytime I'm like on a building top or just anything, my brain there is a big chunk of my brain. That's like telling me to, you know, do something deadly.
Yeah, I could touch that that.
I could jump across this street.
Granted at street level, I would never think I could do that. But a here, sure thing easy keez. What's something you think is overrated?
This is gonna sound weird, but follow me, and mostly follow me because I'm thinking all this bullshit up off the.
Top of your head.
Uh, I think I think this is gonna sound weird. I think health is overrated health. Here's what I mean by that. I don't think being healthy is overrated, and I don't think finding ways to feel healthy is overrated. That's not what I'm saying. I think the things that we need to do to be healthy and to find the health and all the hoops we have to jump through is overrated. It shouldn't be this fucking hard to obtain health. And I know people are like preach jock
keys start talking about health insurance. Nah, man works for your health insurance yourself. I'm a Republican, but what I'm saying, so what I'm saying, but what I'm saying is I you shouldn't have to do this so much shit, like you gotta pay so much money. You gotta walk all the time, and like I can be just enjoying myself and I get the bubble guts and I gotta go put Like I'm saying that our bodies are fucking flawed design. Yeah, and the fact that we need to do so much
shit to maintain being alive is miserable. It's so miserable, and it's so overrated. And like, if we could get to a point where we are just robots and we could just plug our stream of consciousness into a machine that can on and off and be fixed and do all the things. Fucking get it to me, give it to me, it would be so much better than the human bodies that the Good Lord have given us. So that is what I think.
Fox me up, is that the sun gives. You can answer like.
That's crazy, that's crazy.
Like every one of my kids go outside, I have to just like you got to treat them like they're.
A bee keeper, my god, Like, especially.
For white people, man, y'all, greatest enemy is what keeps the planet alive.
You know.
It's terrible, man, That is.
Why they're trying to kill the planet. Just yeah, yeah, we're just.
Trying to get that ship a little bit lonelier.
You know this is this is propaganda from robo Jacques, and I feel like you're this. This does feel like like es like slowly planting seeds, and then it like five years will be like, oh he's better robot.
I don't know about this whole time.
And let me tell you you guys know, yeah, he's been a robot.
Have you heard about this thing called AI.
You know how they like implanted one of those Elon Musk chips in someone's brain. That was.
Baby.
He's really really tight with That's why he's a Republican. He's really tight with, he whispered Republican. If you could like become friends with Elon Musk and just like have billions and billions of dollars in your fingers, I would do it.
But like I would, I'll tell you what I would think about it. Let me tell you why I would do it. Let me tell you why I would do it. Because if I can like have a purely transactional relationship with a white man and you get everything, I fucking won't you damn right give me my goddamn reparations. I give it to me, Give it to me. I take out everything. I don't like him, I don't I'll take everything from them.
I think you're I mean, obviously you're a better actor than me, but most people, I'm like, just such a bad actor. I would just get fired from that job.
Is the problem of disgust that I would be flashing in my world, in my world, in this friendship. I can do that though, Yeah, I got Yeah, you fucking suck, bro. Yeah, So anyway, can I get this new Mercedes? He's so funny, he's so base, He's so funny, this guy oh man, all.
Right, Okay, well fuck health.
Let's take a quick break, and we're gonna come back and talk about the economy.
And we're back.
And so we've got another month, another unexpected sharp upturn in consumer prices. Consumer prices rise three point five percent year over year, and economists, economists are flu mixed. They and they have been like, so they don't know what to do. So last year they were like, a US recession is effectively certain in the next twelve months, according
to Bloomberg News last October, and that never happened. Wall Street was, of course supposed to take a shit during the pandemic, since the entire economy shut down, but instead corporations were reporting record profits. That was my first clue, just like pop that in your brain, that the entire economy shut down and they were reporting record profits. That
doesn't seem to make sense. And then we have this thing happening now where you know, during the pandemic, they were like, inflation is out of control.
But that's a couple of reasons there.
Actually, So the reason that we're having inflation is supply chain problems, which made sense to I think everybody. And also, you guys have too much money, like they the government gave you guys a check for two hundred dollars and
that's fucking everything up there. There's all these like part Like there's this New York Times article where they were like and people were just like went on spending spreezs, like just like evoking this image of us all like getting our checks from Joe Biden and just like waking up in a pile of like half unboxed flat screen TVs just being like I don't I don't know what happened, you know, like just we had too much money and
that was the problem. So now they're like they're like last month, the New York Times is like what's going on with the US economy, and they started making up shit like economic overheating and the economy being too good and it is, Yeah, it is dope.
How much of economics is just like it's like it's like being and like a Supreme Court justice, which is like you decide what you want to say politically and then backfill a reason for it. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's like, yeah, oh they're just making shut up to blame. Oh okay, cool, cool of course. Yeah.
It's also funny too, because like it is one of those things that like we aren't taught growing up. I'm liking schools unless you seek it out or anything like that, or what the economy really is and everything like that. And as we do grow up is just as it's just nothing but confusing shit.
Like I'm scared to talk about the economy because because of things like there's this whole section in one of these articles that's like these economic indicators are supposed to be the reason, like are supposed to drive inflation down, and it's like prices going up but unemployment being down, and like they so they let like this fucking stew of economic indicators, and they're like, usually that means that inflation is going to go down.
You know how I know when economy is right, man, Yeah, it's when my cousin who sells shrooms an accid got a star selling crack. When you got a star selling crack, Yeah, because I know who economy is bad. Bro, the economy is bad, he gotta Yeah.
That's how I wish I remember who who wrote this on Twitter, but someone was like, the fact that a list celebrities are doing commercials during non super Bowl season means the economy is real.
Bad, right, Yeah, they're they're investments are not looking good. Yeah yeah, But like I I just think it's it's
much simpler. Like all of this has started to make sense to me once I realized that the thing that the mainstream media refers to as the economy is just a metric for how rich the ultra wealthy are getting, and it's really just at the expense of people who don't own stock at this point, like they've just realized that they can raise prices as much as they want and they're completely insulated from like what the economy looks
and feels like to everybody else. So it's just like that's the rest of our money that they're making record profits with, you know, like that it's very it just seems really simple when you think about it that way. There's this economist, I think, Richard Wolf. Yeah, Richard Wolf.
He's like this old guy who's like kind of a left leaning economist, and he did just his description of like what happened during the pandemic is like what we had was a situation which corporations across America understood that the money pumped into the economy to cope with the crash that we were due to have coupled with the
pandemic was an extraordinary time. The government pumped in enormous amounts of money and armous amount of fiscal stimulus, and this made it possible to raise prices to improve profitability. So it also like bakes in this detail, which is that they were price gouging during a pandemic, like during during a time when they were like where their commercials were so fucking solemn and were like now more than ever,
but they were price gouging. Like that's that's what the that's what inflation is is companies price gouging and they're just being a complete disconnect between the corporations and the people who control them and own stocking them and everything else, like the vast, vast majority of the other people.
The the way that we as a collective society, and especially those of us who aren't ultra wealthy, have been taken advantage of because the pandemic happened that we did not ask for, right, you know, I haven't.
Had a little hand in it, but go ahead, I did, And this is true. I did say before it started.
I mean, I feel like we.
Could all use like a snow day from if we're going to be closed for like a week, like that could be fun. That'll be a nice relaxing thing. I did not know it was going to be closed for a year.
But if we're admitting things, I guess I did let my pet, my pet bat out that night.
Listen. I've said this before, maybe even on the show, but now I gotta try bat at some point.
Ye see, if see, if it gives you some other like if it's that good, if it's that good foods or mammals. But it's crazy, man, and like everything everything is so much more expensive than it was before the pandemic, and everything is so much more like less available. It
feels like and and and we're starved. They'll those little like eighteen nineteen months when people were like, okay, do not like we're so starved to like do things and want things and experience life because so many people feel like they missed out on life, and so many people passed away, and so many people are dealing with things mentally and physically emotionally from that pandemic that like everybody who is in charge of how we spend our money
is taking advantage of all of that. It's taken advantage of so wild to me that we I don't know, we're not letting it happen, but I don't know what It's just at some point it feels like something has to break. Yeah, and I don't know when that's gonna be or what that is, or even if it's going to be, but or if we're just gonna be how we normally are, which is just find a way. You know, gas has been five dollars in California for almost two
years now. It's fucking crazy. It's crazy, man, It's insane.
You know, all of this is it's like the reason ostensibly we have like a government like we do, is that we don't solve these problems with people throwing bricks in the street. But yeah, yeah, that's for now, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, there, it's like they're forcing that to be the only way to make change. I'm not saying that is going to happen or it should happen, I guess, But it does seem like what the options ever narrow for a normal person.
Yeah, there's this The Hill article that you know, The Hill is like a very centrist like political thing, and it says experts thought they knew how the economy worked
after the pandemic, They're not so sure. It like lays out this mystery of like all the things that aren't working the way that they're supposed to, and like how they're so surprised that like President Biden's economics, like ratings from voters is so low, despite the fact that like it's getting all these great marks when like according to
Wall Street, you know. But then like when they get to the end where they're like, what are some theories that could explain this complete mystery, it's like a bunch of occupied talking points. It's just like the top one percent owns more than half of the stock market, the
bottom fifty percent owns less than one percent. Like it's just it's the shit that people have been saying for fucking decades at this point, and they're just like, I mean, maybe, like I don't know, like this is this seems crazy, but maybe it's this that it's a very small portion of the population determining how much we all pay and they get to raise prices and it doesn't affect them at all other than giving them record profits, Like that's that's yeah, and it it hurts us, but they are
not us. They couldn't be further from the rest of the world who have to like consume things, and they're I don't know, Like the people are also like talking about the seventies and you know, that was a time when there was, you know, inflation was a major concern. But back then there was like a strong enough labor movement that inflation hurt capital, like it hurt the people who are in the c suite more than it did workers.
And we are just so far from that that like there's going to need to eventually be like the government being like yo, like you you have to stop price gouging like that like that's it seems crazy, but like that, I mean they did that in the seventies. They did put like price controls in place.
And like the fucking dickheads who are economists would say, wow, this is just a ripe opportunity for someone to outcompete these corporations, to which it's like super clear. It's like the competition is not in selling stuff, it's in your stock price. And they have all agreed that the stock price like could like it's better to gouge people than not. Yeah, like there's no there's no reason except for the fact that that, yeah, the economy is the stock market and it's not the economy.
Listen into or just like read reports about their earnings calls, and their earnings calls are just them being like, so we had this fucking crazy idea to just raise prices on people, and wouldn't you know it, our profits went way up. And now we're choosing to with all that extra money we made, we're investing in our own stock price to like to make ourselves richer, essentially just make
our stock holders richer. Yeah, it really like I think there's a fascination right now with airport pricing, Like in the zeitgeist. Like there was that meme about people keeping track of like checks mixed prices at various airports around America and like HOWK yeah exactly, and it was like
almost random. It just didn't totally make sense, but it I think people are interested in that at some level because like we're realizing everything is airport prices, Like everything is airport prices now, yeah, because like it's not like airports, Like it costs more money to sell to get the checks mixed into airports. The reason they sell you that for a marked up price is because they know you are captive because you're in the airport and you're not
going to go back through security. And I feel like the entire country, the entire economy, is just like, yeah, what if this was all an airport and we could just make everybody pay as much as we fucking wanted, Because like people don't have the time to like do all the cost comparisons, and if everybody's raising prices, there's no.
Good option for them.
Let's drive then, or the ninety nine cent store out of business.
You goddamn hash Brown at mcdonald'says over three dollars, right, insane? It was ninety nine cent before the pandemic, and breakfast was all day yeah, an hour, you know, and and now is you know, I go get me a go get me a little bacon, egg and cheese mcgriddel meal, and I pay. I'm paying eleven fucking dollars for that shit.
Yeah.
It's crazy, man, it's crazy.
You's got to make your own.
Yeah, I can buy I can buy you know, new elbow grease for that much money.
Yeah. Like even John Deere, which like had one of the highest profile strikes during the pandemic.
Yeah, they held.
Out to like their workers held out to get a tempercent raise. The company is still expected to earn more the following year than the record profit it made the year before. Like it, they're just all making record profits and like fighting, kicking and screaming to when if it comes to paying anybody anymore.
Yeah, yeah, well it's only one thing left to do. Yeah, yeah, kill them, that's right.
Like, but it is just it's it's wild to read year after year, month after months, the mainstream media just continue to be like, just treat it like a mystery. Like the way they talk about inflation uptick this month is increasing. Inflation was also bad news for workers, as real average hourly earnings were flat on the month and
increase zero point six percent over the past. It's like, oh, no, way, it's bad news for workers that they don't get paid more while prices keep going up, like that's yeah, that's inflation. That's that's what is happening here, and they treat it almost like it's an accident instead of it's like the whole point.
I guess I'm don't understand enough about economics the terms of art. But isn't that not inflation because doesn't inflation imply that the wages also go up?
Yeah, I mean they that's supposed to be a cause of it. Yeah, yeah, so I guess consumer this is a consumer price index, and like inflation is supposed to be like all money is becoming, is changing.
But all right, that was when they were like, if you give poor people money, it's just going to raise prices on them. And then it's just no good. Why don't we not give poor people money or not even poor people workers? Just pay people normal wages. Sorryn't mean it's not that, but like you know, it's like yeah, fucking oh oh. That was just a political position that you try to make a like an economic justification for weird.
Weird, Yeah, they're still reeling and Andrew call me poor, but yeah.
They supposedly it was the you know, the relief checks that were causing inflation, and then those ran out years ago and they're like, huh, inflation is still going.
They don't want to cause they still want to say that's why I really cost so much. It's like, oh, they're so mad about those like couple hundred dollars checks.
And so they're saying, literally, the economy is too strong and that's what that's why we're all fucked, because the economy is just too damn strong and people are gonna have to start losing their jobs before the imflation goes down cool or maybe stop you know, prioritizing profit over everything else and stop being like allowing companies to do that. But that doesn't see like it sounds childish, like you know to Also.
It's like it's like one of those things where like it's continually the other place that there has barely by an inflation is how little it costs to buy a fucking politician. Yeah, I'm just like, it's it is shocking every time you hear what campaign finance, like all the shit is asking for Like I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a lot of money, and there's too much money in politics, but blah blah blah, it is depressing how she it is to buy a fucking congress person.
Yeah, it's yeah.
I'll be thinking about too. I'll be thinking like, oh, yeah, man, like, oh they're being bollved, you know, give one and then I go look at like the actual donations and it'd be like twenty thousand dollars. I'm like I can do that, truly.
Yeah, it's like, what the fuck are you talking? Like you can change laws laws for like low six figures sometimes hot, that's crazy. It's just like what is happening here?
We all can be bolted. It's just it's just how much have some.
Fucking self respect corrupt politicians like raise the price at least.
God like I gave I gave Andrew one time f one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and I won't tell you the unspeakable things Andrew, but you don't want that money.
Yeah, at least there was there was like a reason that cost.
I gave Hill more than I gave Mitch McConnell, man, it's crazy, that's crazy.
You need to hear that. And them both of those bribes were not election related, as.
All right, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back, and we're back. And Consumer Reports, which I never took them for being like a muck raking, you know, like Voice of the People, but they just issued a scathing statement alleging that Lunchable's meal kits contain not just crackers, processed meat, and sadness, but also relatively high levels of lead and cadmium.
Yeah.
Yeah, So this isn't that surprising, given that Lunchabulls have a pretty terrible history, starting with the fact that it was literally launched by tobacco giants Philip Morris after they acquired Craft in the eighties. So around in the nineteen eighties, like the science had caught up on tobacco and they were like, all right, we've got to stop putting all our money into making up fake studies that say smoking
actually increases your vertical wears out your lungs. Yeah, clearly, it helps your healthy nerves and makes you actually really fast. Carl Lewis smokes menthol smokes cools. They had given up on that, and so what they did with all of their massive amounts of money is they bought Craft. And you may recognize the eighties as the time that America started having massive problems with obesity due to in retrospect
pretty clearly due to addictive food. So it's like they were like, all right, so let's take this business model that has worked incredibly well for us, killing massive chunks of the population while making them addicted to giving us money, and we'll just do it on the food side of things. And that is essentially.
What they did.
So Lugiple's actually began as a way for so Craft owns Oscar Meyer, and Oscar Meyer at that point was like, pooh, nobody wants to eat bolooney anymore. They've found boloney was like the cigarettes of foods where people are like, oh wait, it's like mostly like the shit that you see health informational video clogging lungs. That's like literally what Bologney's made of. So maybe we shouldn't.
And so in order to get.
Rid of all that excess, you know, they had the machines and they had like the everything up and running making blooney. They're like, how about we just like fucking unload that shit into kids' lunches, extrude.
A different gauge of meat. Yeah, their profit different gauge exactly.
So they they studied mothers and discovered that their most pressing issue was time and that it's hard for working parents to find time to put together lunches, or, as Oscar Meyer saw it, a potential quote and this is a quote from the gold mine of disappointments and problems.
Yes, it's like they have that and yet they don't put it on the box. And it's a real l for their marketing department. Yeah.
Also, is the funny part about this too, is like we hear all these things and also like lunchables have also degraded in quality since we were kids. So it's so funny. It's just like quality can get worse. Yes, But then sometimes I also be thinking, like I'll be thinking, I'll be looking at like some of the ship, like you said, lead was in lunchibles or all the bash shit that's in processed food, and I'm like, why does all the bash it taste so good? Why does lead
taste so good? Man? Like lead is delicious, man? And you know, if lead is an ar Caprican. That shit was delicious, and it's so funny to me that, like all, see this goes back to what I was saying earlier. Health overrated.
Yeah, I have no problem integrating lead.
You can't taste, you can't enjoy good tasting lead. You gotta eat nasty ass vegetables from the dirt. Which one would you rather have?
They used the same strategies that worked with tobacco for lunchables, including what they're mine extensions, so like new flavors and formulas. So yeah, Marlboroughs will do Marlborough lights and you know Marlborough wis Marlborough Wrens. You know, like all the so lunchables started having like Snickers bars or Rees's cups for kool aid or lunchables, hot dogs, tacos, pancakes.
When about those pieces? Remember and we used to ma'm as kids were like this ship is this is high ass value?
It really was such a grainy bread.
It's so nasty. It's run cold marin airas and soft cracker bread. Yeah exactly.
One pediatrician called lunchable is a nutritional disaster, and a craft books person responded, this is what kids want. There are very few kids out there who will eat rice cakes and tofu so like they just like use the language of like fucking children to be like, what do you need to make us eat fucking rice cakes?
Loser? And then.
And then the guy CEO of Philip Morris, Jeffrey Bible his name, Yeah, love that when he was confronted with the fact that, like there's way too much sodium in these like children, school children went from like being normal human beings to being like forty five percent sodium, just
like pillars of salt. That his defense was, We're not putting a gun to their heads to eat it, which but you're like they designed the packages to look like gifts to like brainwash kids into thinking that and brainwash mothers into being like, oh see, they love it, like I'm doing a nice thing for my kid.
We're not putting a gun to your head. Again, really good marketing copy.
I don't know why they didn't use it, except now they kind of are putting I mean, they're like forcing it down kids sorts. Because last fall, Lunchables became eligible to be served as part of the National School Lunch Program due to lobbying efforts and the company altering two of its products to qualify, because it's just they have degraded all forms of regulation to the point that like, it just there's nothing protecting us from whatever is going
to be the most profitable thing for these companies. And then the mainstream media launders this shit and makes it our fault. They're like, you guys don't exercise enough. Look at these countries with or look at these which states have the highest obesity rates, and it's like, yeah, okay, but like let's look at the rate of obesity over time, and you will see that people in the seventies, before exercise had been invented, yeah, like had extremely low levels
of obesity. It all happened in the eighties when fucking cigarette companies started making our food.
You know.
It is like we were healthier when you could smoke on planes, which is, yes, not not so good, right, Yeah, that's a that's a problem.
And instead now they like make sell you grown up lunchable boxes on planes, and that's yeah.
You know, it's funny too, because like fast exercise also became pretty big in the eighties, you know, or home video exercise or you know, the richer Simmons of the world or everything like that. That all. And it's just so funny how like one thing can lead into the other, Like, oh, people are a little more unhealthy. Let's make money off of that. Hey, yeah, let's have you pay for health. Yeah, let's make.
The human exercise came, Hey, human.
You want to exercise instead of just being efficient being.
Yeah, speaking of efficiency, like they kids like have less and less time for lunch at school, and that's like one of the ways they're pitching lunchables. They're like students have about twenty minutes to just like fucking swallow their lunch pill, you know. Great and Craft also admitted that their altered school friendly version of lunchibles that are approved for like to be the school lunch in public schools actually contains more sodium than the store bought versions.
Yeah good, yeah, good for that. Good for lunchable, Good for lunchibles.
You know, listen, if lunchables can't survive in this world, then what can you know?
It is kind of nice to see that.
Yeah, I'm saying, everybody criticizing lunch haters, they're just on their grind and they're getting you know, how many fucking lambos.
The inventor of so many, so many, so.
I do like how this, like like the Philip Morris ethos, is just stronger than anything else. It's like, no, no, we fucking kill people. That's what we were put on the start to do. We come here to fucking kill people, and it does not matter what we do it with. Where the John Wick of murdering people with anything?
I mean, yeah, yeah, it the key to like my first indication that like this form of capitalism we live under and have lived under for a long time might not be great is like the cheat code is addictive substances like Coca Cola Classic is massive because it started out with cocaine in it and everyone was like obsessed for a while, and they were able to use that to like you know, it's it's yeah, they're going to do the thing that is bad for you to make
as much money off free as possible, and then they're going to in the media call you fat and.
Lazy if if your name is on a building within two generations you have a drug dealer in your family exactly. That's not just how it works. That is just how it works.
Yeah. Yeah, And then it's funny too, because like Coca Cola, like when it was when they had cocaine in it to make you buy it more, but still exponentially cheaper than it is and like even comparatively, you know. So now if I want cocaine to my Coca cola, I got to pay extra for that shit. Yeah, And it's just like it's so crazy how when all these things started, whether they were bad or the reason they started, like, it still was priced in a way that made sense
for people to be able to afford them. And now a lot of these things are worse in many ways, Like coca cola is probably worse today without cocaine in it than it was when it was first created, just as a product, and it costs three times as much as it should. And it's just it's so funny. It's just so funny to me, Like we aren't getting better, we just get worse. We just get worse.
Yeah, especially like just from the seventies when I mean, obviously the fact that everyone thought cigarettes were healthy not great, but yeah, like the problems have just metastasized and spread since then, and now it's just unaccountable hyper capitalism without any anyone pumping any brakes anywhere.
That's why you upload your brain to Jaquise City in the Cyberverse.
Come on listen. When you feel a little down, just plug yourself in. Get some juice. There you go, so put yourself in low put yourself in low power mode official juice. Can suck on this lead, Suck on this lead lollipop. Help you help your cogs and your wheels inside.
Quies.
What a pleasure having you.
Oh my gosh, it's always great to be here with the Zeitgang family. It was great. I appreciate you all.
Where can people find you, follow you all that good stuff?
Oh well, you know what. You can find me always and every time in the streets, in the streets, ladies and gentlemen and everybody breaking news. I am back on Twitter. For those of you, for those of you who has ever heard me, because I love elin. He gave it back, He gave it, He gave it back to me. He gave it back to me, y'all. For those of you who have never heard me on this podcast, because it's
been a few months, you won't care about this. But for everybody else, like you probably remember, I got my Twitter taken away. My Twitter is now back in action. I do not fucking use it, and you know I'm not just stalling so I can find something that's not what I'm doing, y'all. I am literally telling you you can find me at Jackieth Neil on everything. I will say this. I'm not gonna give you something funny. I'm
not even gonna give you a specific tweet. I am just gonna talk for like forty five seconds about how much I enjoyed WrestleMania and and all the content that's coming out afterwards, all the life threads.
Twenty minutes yesterday on WrestleMania.
It was beautiful. It was beautiful, it was such it was one of the best, one of the best main events, and like just all the like threads about the storytelling and all the memes about it and how hyped everybody was and how people are excited to enjoy wrestling again. It's been so fucking great and it's been such a fun time. The Rock was better than ever as a heel this time in wrestling. So all the all the memes, all the social media about WWE and WrestleMania has been
giving me life over the past few days. And shout out to Samantha Irving, who is a ring announcer at w W for WWE. Who was fantastic this weekend top to bottom, great show. Loved it. So that's that's what I'm enjoying right now is all the WrestleMania talk from this past weekends. WrestleMania. There you go, Comedian, a few comedian f you come out to it if you're in LA. We're also live streaming and we got some really big
shows coming up. Man. We got two more shows before we take a hiatus for the summer in May and in June. So we've been live streaming them and we're going to continue to live stream the next two. We got some some really good ones. If you're fans will drop out. I got a couple of special surprise get contestants that we're gonna announce pretty soon. So my website is a good or my or social media Instagram, it's a good way to find tickets, whether it's in person or online for comedian feud.
There you go, Andrew T, thank you so much for joining. Where can people find you as their working media you've been enjoying.
Just Andrew T, I don't know yos is racist in my podcast? Actually my media I picked it because your kis is here. Wait are you are you a Chicago guy? Also, no, I'm no.
Yeah yeah yeah, big fan of the Bulls in their early I did.
Okay, So my my media is an old one, but it is a I guess it was originally a TikTok. I think I saw it on Instagram of the whitest man you've ever seen making Malart cookies, which is gross, and this weekend I watch it like a thousand times because it was my friend from Chicago's birthday. So I made a badge of Mylort cookies. I don't bake typically, and I mean I actually like Malart, but I recognized that they were objectively disgusting. So yeah, I don't know.
I think if you literally just search Malort cookies you can find the thing thing. But maybe I'll find a link.
I will not be doing that.
They're real gross. They have grapefruit peel and.
Just like really strong tastes that cover up.
You know what.
I take you. You could taste some alart, you could.
Take I take it back. Man. Health is a beautiful thing, y'all. Don't do Don't do this to you, do this to yourself, y'all. Don't do that.
You find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore O'Brien tweet I'm enjoying. Jason x Infarious tweeted, could we make the tweet font a little larger?
I'm trying to.
Drive, and then of course I'm just enjoying the many flow motion clips of Victor Webby Yama sham gotting into a spin move into a lefty layup, like, just what the fuck is even going on anymore? Very excited about as the season comes to an end, he seems to
just be getting better. Non NBA fans might not know that rookies are supposed to hit a wall about two thirds of the way through the season and start being like exhausted from the rigor and having to go against all these big, strong people, and he just seems to be getting stronger and doing more and more wild shit. Shout out, Shout out.
To Victor Webbin Yama, I guess.
Yeah, to the slender Man, the slender Man himself.
You can find us on Twitter at daily Zeikeeist. We're at the Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook fan page and a website Daily zeikeeist dot com, where we post our episodes and our footnotes operation today's episode, well done as well as a song that we think you might enjoy. And I do always like to ask super producer when Miles is out. Superproducer Justin Conner always comes through with the fire song recommendations. Justin, is there a song that you think people might enjoy?
Yeah, I've fast become a fan of this young artist out of California by the name of Remy Wolf. She has just such an incredibly fun and effervescent vibe to a lot of her music.
This song included.
It's called Sexy Villain and it's got that satisfying type of songwriting where like the rhyme scheme of one line is perfectly mapped over the other and there's enough space for the key stabs and guitar plucks to bleed through, creating this like well timed syncobation.
It's really funky. It's an absolute bop.
So if you can check this track out, it's called Sexy Villain by Remy Wolf and it'll be in the footnotes footnotes.
The Daily Zeitgeis is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio Wrap Apple podcast. Wherever you listen to your favorite shows that's gonna do it for us this morning. But we are back this afternoon to tell you what is trending, and we will talk to you all then.
Bye.