Hello the Internet, and welcome to Season to eighty five, Episode five of.
Dirtily's Eye Geist Day production of iHeartRadio.
This is the podcast where we take a deep dab into America share consciousness. And it is Friday, May fifth, twenty twenty three Miles May the fifth.
Be with the yes, yes, no, you messed that one up. Yeah. I mean for a lot of people who are like just sort of broad cultural holiday, they're Sinkle to Mile. Also National Astronaut Day, also African World Heritage Day.
Day, Yeah, right, because they don't get enough credit. They're not out there doing the hard work of rocketing into space.
Yeah, and we just don't put enough attention, no putting on that job, putting their bone density on the line by being up in zero gravity. It's also National Space Day as well, International Day of the Midwife, National Cartoonist Day, National.
Hogi Day, Hogie Days by Hagy you gottas to get a Hagy school lunch.
Hero Day, which I'm not sure what that is, but it's probably one of the like we'll talk about this where we just have a day to recognize a very important position in our society. And then y and then that's this one day but don't ask about it.
Lunch hero sounds like one that deserves the day, because I don't even know what it is necessarily unless it's a hero that you get for, like.
Hey, it's basically people who work in school cafeterias. Okay, well, see that's great. Astronauts. I feel like we're good.
I feel like astronaut every day is National Astronaut Day, and.
They're getting there. They're getting there, so yeah, for sure.
But anyways, my name's Jack O'Brien aka. Why are there so many songs by wopple House? Let's give someone else a try. He's a great poster, he has.
His own podcast.
I'm sure he's a really good guy. But I've heard him too many times to ignore it. There's something that I really need. Someday I'll hear it on the day.
Le Zeitgeist an.
Ak A written by me that is courtesy of right to post. He's exercised his right to post that AKA multiple times across the years, so figured might as well.
Give it up to the end.
Got to give him his it is national right to post to day as well.
You heard it?
An AKA written by you, sir, bobble House. Still still the King. I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co host.
Mister Miles Gray. It's like Gray, are you waiting day? I'm just saying that because it's raining right now now and I had nothing else to say. Also, as your boy Kusama the Black Andese experimental artist, thank you so much, Jack for having me again. You know what I mean. We're back out here, so nice to have you. Miles, thank you so much for having me. Yes, absolutely well.
We are thrilled to be joined by an award winning writer, photographer, podcast host, editor, whose podcast ten Thousand Things just launched its second season with a great episode about names.
We talked about names yesterday. So baby names, Yeah, board, baby names.
Please welcome to this show.
It's shit y piey Hi.
It's great to be here.
Well, it's great to have you. Thank you for being here. Yeah. And also a fantastic poet and don't you know it? Yes, yeah, we've got We're just classing up the joint today with our guest. How are you in Seattle? Correct? Are you? Yes?
Yes, I'm in Seattle, Washington.
How's the how's the weather up there? What do you what are you looking at up there?
Today? It's really overcast and rainy, and I will be in the middle of the night because like the roof is just getting pelted with what sounded like hale. It was like really heavy rain last night.
Oh nice, big lover, big supporter of rain because we don't get it much down here. But yeah, kind say, I woke up.
To my kids saying, our closet. It's raining in our closet.
So that was good. Wait, what happened that there's a latch.
There's like a latch that pops off into the roof and it just blows open sometimes, and so it was just open all night while it was raining into my kid's bedroom.
Oh so there was quite literally it was raining into the closet.
Yeah, it was raining into their closet.
Yeah.
I love it when you got a handyman like me around the house. It doesn't really things like this tend to happen.
Right, Yeah, I'm surprised that Scotch tape didn't hold up.
Right, you put on there, chingy, your your new podcast, or it's not new, it's the second season, but it has a new name.
Yes, yes, exactly, And.
You just did a brilliant episode about names.
We were talking baby.
Names yesterday, and how the internet, how social media is, how there are now baby name influencers. If you came across that during the course of your research.
Your episode was very.
Thoughtful and you know, a level up from what we do here. But I'm not sure if you came across any baby name influencers during your research.
No, I did not come aros making influencers. I was more looking for stories of I think people who had made very intentional name change choices and that had been transformative to their identities.
Yes, right, because you said you were you were named after Doris Day.
Really, yes, yes, that's right. My father loved Hollywood movies and he felt like Doris Day was virginal and wholesome and all American. So that's how I got my birth name.
Wow, got it, got it? Got it? Yeah, it's it's funny too. My mom's Japanese and when she when her and a lot of her friends immigrated here, they also had this idea of like, what are American names going to be? And like they my one mom best friend she was like, I like Stephanie. She kept it with Yoko. She came over. She's like, no, I'm mistake with Yoko. You know, I thought it would be Stephanie, and other ones are like Melanie. There's all like they had all
the knee endings to it too. I was like, okay, you like a bit of a sing song your American name, and then you and then you went what was sort of like the decision to sort of cast aside Doris and then have Shinni beer name. Yeah.
You know.
So for the first five years of my life, I actually went by my Chinese name, which is shin Yi. And then when I went off to kindergarten, I grew up and went to school in Riverside, California, specifically like Hygrove, which is like an unincorporated area between the Sammardina and Riverside County, so it's a very mixed race, frown in black working class community and having a Chinese name really
marked me as being very different. And there was also, I think the challenge that people couldn't pronounce it correctly. So until I was five, i used Shiny, But after that, between the years of about five and I don't know, twenty two, I went by my American name just because it was something that people could pronounce and it allowed me to just fit in a little bit more easily. And then at the point where I had an opportunity to travel to my parents native land of Taiwan in
my early twenties. When I came back, I felt like I had all these unresolved questions and sort of longings to better understand my cultural origins and my relationship to Taiwanese identity. And that's when I decided to reclaim my Taiwanese name, which had been given to me by one of my uncles. And it wasn't just like you know,
a random pick from like a hat or something. It was, you know, he spent some time really doing some fortune telling and divination to look at, you know, the stars and the planets that were in the sky when I was born, and really picked this name that had, you know, certain qualities that were meant to kind of offset my temperament, I suppose, And so so for me, it's it's like a dharma name or a name of great significance in that when I used that name and when I carry it,
it really summons forth these better qualities of myself that I hoped better awaken.
Oh wow, that's interesting, because I think a lot of people are like oh that name suits you or it like fits your personality. The idea of like giving a name that offsets your personality is interesting and like very nuanced. It's like, yeah, you got too much Stephanie and you, so we're gonna need to bring it down a little bit and give you something else. But you don't know if your uncle consulted a TikTok name baby name influencer when doing that divination, so we can't say for sure.
I'm pretty sure he likes consulted the eating.
Yeah, okay, all right, Yeah that's wait. So and how does and I just don't like give me an understanding because you said your temperament, you come off as very calm and very you know, very like stable, Like, so what what is just so I can peer in a little bit, what is like sort of what's that balance of the energies and what is the name sort of doing so I can kind of understand that a little bit.
Yeah, so shan Ye translates his happy treasure, and I feel like the poetic kind of you knowing of that is optimistic jewel and I have fairly strong negative pessimistic tendencies kind of like glass half full or empty kind of perspective and a lot of catastrophizing, and so I think, you know, the counter to that is really to kind of like invoke.
The light wow answer, Okay, I need something like that. Yeah, I'm I'm right there. I'm right there with you with the glass half full, although it's slowly getting more or half empty, it's slowly becoming half full for me.
Yeah, I feel like your name to your name like fits your personality.
Like well, and we were talking about this yesterday. I always wanted my name to be DJ DJ does the Dumbest and yeah, and I was like, I don't know why. I think for me though, too, being black and Japanese and being around a lot of white kids. Yeah, like I was named after Miles Davis and like a lot of kids like what the fuck is that? And I'm like, that's the coolest motherfucker ever. But also they're like, but like their kids named We're like, oh, this is the
coolest kid. And I was like, man, I just want to be like that. But again, come around to really understand like why it's significant to your parents and your family, and then you're like, are you right? You know what? I got to embrace that, and yeah, and now it suits me for sure.
Yeah, do you think like DJ Jazzy Jeff's first name was DJ.
I'm potentially like I for a while I thought people's name like even DJs were just like, oh DJ okay, cool cool.
Sorry, Shaney, you were going to say something smart and I interrupted you and said something stupid.
Go ahead.
I will say that Miles Davis was the epitome of cool. So you had parents with like high taste.
Yeah, it was. It was funny. The only person at my school when I was a kid, and I was like, I remember I think I said I didn't like my name, and I remember the school librarian shot out, miss Barkley. She was like, no, no, she was like she was one of those librarians who, like you knew, probably smoked wheed and like listen to jazz and shit, and that's why they're like they're around books all the time because they're like, I like, this is my vibe. She's like, no,
Miles Davis. She's like she's she's like, who are you named after? Like Miles David, but no one knows who that is. It's like I know who that is, and I think it's really cool. And I was like, thank you, miss Parkley, just you helped me feel good in the library. Now.
Hell yeah, I felt like librarians were really important to my early sort of formative life, like just in terms of the resources and culture that they provided to children in a town like Riverside or High Grove, and yeah, they were kind of just like cultural agents that really opened up the world.
For me truly. Yeah, because they're the kind of people who were like, oh, what are you into? And then they can sick they can get you into books, you know, and like for the longest time, I was like, we're the comics. It's like, well, what do you like? You like adventure stuff, you like something like this, Try this, try this. And I was like, Okay, I'm seeing the light. I'm becoming a little more literate now thanks to you.
Yeah, handpicked curation before a yeah yeah right, seriously, all right, Shane, you were going to get to know you a little bit better in a moment.
First, we're going to tell our listeners a couple of the things we're talking about, just the Harlan Crow hits Keep Coming sot.
The Epstein ones.
There was a like the Epstein papers, Larry Summers, that guy Heart former Harvard president was just like going out to dinner with him all the time. We're not going to talk about that. We are going to talk about the details of the Harlan Crowe paying for Clarence Thomas's kid's tuition. Hey, it's not my kid. Yeah, a kid he was raising as his son. And he was like, well, that was a gift to my son, not me. You know, otherwise my six year old would have paid his tuition.
So we'll talk about that. We'll talk about the Proud Boys being found guilty of sedition a little little sedish. We'll talk about Greg Guttfeld, the only the last late night show host standing because his writers are not part of the WGA, because he doesn't really have writers, because he doesn't really have jokes.
But he is the second.
Most popular late night comedy show going.
So we'll look at his background.
You'll be shocked to learn that his background is Maxim magazine and magazine. Ah, yes, the Height of Thought. Yes, all that plenty more. But first, SHINYI, we like to ask our guests, what is something from your search history?
Yeah?
I looked at my search history last night, and I was actually looking at event venues for a friend of mine who was hoping to produce like a public event in Seattle, and so I was just like pulling information for him about some of the venues in Seattle. For about twenty years, I was a public programs producer and curator and spent a lot of time in the public event space, working for organizations like Atlas Obscura and for
different museum and cultural organizations. And so I was just pulling together that information for my friend and telling him I don't think that you should pay for the space. I think you should find a way to devise a pitch that makes you so mission aligned and just get the space.
Nice. That sounds smart.
That is the most serious search history I think we've ever had, like the most practical and like you're getting shit done search history that I can remember on that.
Oh what am I doing. I'm helping friends do some things with an events, very cool and strategizing on how to minimize the cost for that. Wait, so what did you do with Atlas Obscura.
Yeah, so I was like the head of the Seattle Obscure Society. So I basically established and grew their in real life presence in the Seattle market and produced events here for four years, but my role grew and expanded, so at the point where I was kind of finishing up my work with them in twenty twenty, I was actually overseeing our events programs in places like Philadelphia, San Francisco, LA, and Chicago DC.
Yeah, oh fantastic.
You're also currently civic poet of Seattle. It's like, yes, my introduction for you could have lasted forty five minutes. It feels like, oh these yes, these are these are plotteds. Yeah, they're like all these art installations in background.
It's really cool. Yeah, Dick driving just want to get your thoughts on that.
Well, I don't actually eat wheat. I'm gluten free, so I can't eat a burger and they won't customize your burger. So like, for instance, if you go there and you say I would like to let us wrap no bread, they won't do it that way. They only do it one way, which.
Is like if you're a burger and wrap it like with the bread and wrap and lettuce.
No, only make it one way. The fries are not bad. My son really loves them. Yeah.
Oh someone after my own heart. Yeah, people like I like, I love the fries there. I have a thing with that sort of texture of flock. Oh are they the mushy?
Yeah, they're the Mushye they're not crispy, They're not krispy soft no potato sticks saturated in oil and green?
Yes, yes, yes, yes? What is something you think is overrated?
Well?
Yeah, I was thinking about that. My mind could change on this. But I recently tried earlier this week of floating float tanks and sensory deprivation, and I had an interesting experience, I think, and I'm not quite sure how I feel about it as a as a practice that could be like relaxing or even like creative or contemplative.
I was, I just had this really hard time relaxing, I think into just trusting that the float staff would tell me like when my hour was over, and they told me like they would play loud music, you know,
like when the time was done. And I just kept waiting and waiting and the music didn't play, and I finally like climbed out of like the float tank and it was like an hour past the time and they hadn't played the music, And I think I was just also like when you're in the tank, you hear like this dull drone and I listened to like a lot of experimental music and then I was hearing what sounded like echoes, like a female voice, and so I was just I didn't even know what the music was like
supposed to sound like. So I just got like really neurotic. And so it maybe more like, you know, I had an expectation and you know in that way, I I you know, I couldn't manage that properly. So it isn't really overrated, but I found it a little bit overrated, Yeah.
Because like in your mind half of the time that you thought spending to be sort of contemplative and like you know, still space, you were just sort of had like this anxiety about like do they know like when to play the music? And am I hearing it? And because I don't.
Want you were correct, they just left you over time and then.
Yeah, they left me over time by four minutes. So like by the time I had I was just like this is like this is late. Maybe they forgot or
like the music's broken. So I just like climbed in the shower and then they just started playing this really loud instrument instrumental music and I was like, oh, okay, I get it, you know, right, there was like this other moment where I was like in the tank and you know, like you float around, and so there are these like buttons where you can access like the lights and the music, and you.
Know, so well, I don't know anything about it, so please the stage. I know, Jack, you've done it right once.
I did it once, I'll talk about my experience after.
So it's like a giant salt water kind of bath design for like somebody who's the size of like an eight foot athlete, and they put like ninety four degree warm water in this bathtub thing, and they put like twenty bags of epsom salt in it and basically you
float in it. And then there's some buttons on the side console where you can basically like turn on like the blue light or like you know, kind of like constellation style lights, and they recommend that you do it in the dark, and I was like really going hardcore. I was like, you know, they wanted they said, you know, the best experience is if you do it in the dark. So I'm just gonna go for it, even though that might make me anxious. And so I didn't do it
in the dark. And then there was this point where I wanted to turn on the lights and I couldn't find them because I kind of like floated off like towards the back or the side. And then I got like really really anxious and freaked out a little bit because then I'm like feeling around the panel and the sides and the seam of the thing, and it was just like me not being able to relax. And I'm sure if I went like a couple more times, it
might be like a different experience. But it said to me a lot about like my need to like control and to know and like my challenge is around like surrendering.
Right right, Yeah, for sure, it's It's there's definitely something unnerving about it, and if you have any claustrophobia, I wouldn't recommend it, or at least the one that I did, I did not have like the Constellation option or anything like that. Mine was just it was the closest I've ever come to time travel. Like I went in there, I closed my eyes and then the music started playing
and I was like, wait, what what just happened? And I went out and an hour had passed, and I don't know what happened other than I just like had the deepest sleep and like didn't realize I was even asleep.
It was. It was really weird. It's like the.
Yeah, that's a very positive experienced, I think so.
But then I was like incredibly tired for like forty eight hours after that, So maybe it was just it reached a level of like relaxation that my body needed. But nice, what you're saying you're listening to, good for you today. You were listening to experimental music. You said that you're kind of into this experimental music or that was just part of what was playing in the float tank.
No like in my in my life, I listened to like a lot of drone and experimental music. And I think actually the hum that was coming from the float tank was just kind of like the mechanism of like the machine itself. But I don't know, I hear music and a lot of things that just seem inherently musical.
Yeah, I've even like I have a newborn and even the White Noise machine, like I hear like harmonics in the White Noise where I'm like, I was like my part was like, hey, I think the garbage truck is backing up, and it's like what I'm like, you don't hear that beeps, Like, no, it's the white noise machine. But it's just it's just weird how I'm the same way, like I can pick out a lot of sounds or
there aren't. I don't know if that's also part of like my sort of being up like wound up sometimes and being in a state of like sort of like like threat assessment on occasion, but yes, yeah, I can. I can definitely. Uh, that resonated with me.
Is there a particular like mechanical object or just a sound that you think makes really good music even though it's not actually music like a mechanical.
Object, you know, Like I used to have this really cool like heating event in one of the apartments that I lived in, And when I could clean the heating event with like Q tips, because the dust would get like in the metal vents, it would make like these really wonderful like pinging noises and mmmmm yeah, yeah, yeah.
There are those radiators in New York City apartments and they make some of the strangest like little pinging and like weird noises because they're just chunks of metal that heat up. And that's how you like heat your apartment in New York City and like they make these weird sounds.
Anyways, Wait, so shenew was album coming out Never with the Q tip? With the QTIPVN. Do you listen to Matt Most?
I don't know who that is, No.
Matt Most. They're like these producers who like would do like bro. I got into them because they did an album that was all just surgical sounds that they used to make an album with, and then like they worked with like B York and stuff like that. But they're they're kind of like in that world of like sort of audio sort of artists kind of thing.
Yeah, I would love to shout out a group here in Seattle called the Seattle Phonographers Union. So they are this like collective of composers who go around gathering found sounds from wherever and then they like play them back and live mix them in live performances, usually in like really weirdo places, like there's this abandoned or repurposed military
airhannger in Magnuson Park in Seattle. And I hosted them once when I was working for Obscura in this place called the Georgetown steam Plant, which is this defunct steam plant that stopped operating like in the nineteen seventies or eighties, so they collected all these like steam plant like noises and then they played them live and.
That was just is that The park that's like right on the water.
Georgetownstein Plant is down by the Dwamish River in South Seattle, south of downtown, and it's owned by Seattle City Lights, and it's not operable, but it's this historic space that people do activate with like arts and music and dance and it's super cool if you come here.
Yeah, no, I'll be sure to hit that up along with my Dick's driving fries. There you go.
All right, you make Seattle sound very cool?
It is it, dude, Seattle. I can't, honest I always I'll say this. I love Seattle like I had been once when I was really young, and I went recently in October, and I just love like how rich it's history and the muse. It's such a music I feel. It's like obviously people know about like the music that's come from Seattle, but when you're there, like seeing live
music in Seattle. I was so blown away to the Sea Monster and I saw like a really good band there and like, and I was like, what's up with these? Like what band is this? They're like, oh, these are some locals who like to jam. And I'm like, this is like the best band I've heard, but they're just doing this for fun. Okay, yep, I'm here, I'm here.
Yeah, we have wonderful musicians. Tomo Nakayama did the music for my podcast ten Thousand Things, and he's just like Seattle indie rock Darling that's been like touted by the New York Times. And we live in an incredible city of music and musicians and people who are so deeply invested in the arts.
Yeah, I got to hit that next tour, Jack, We've got to go there. Ever since I.
Started this show, you've been talking to the Pacific Northwest calls to you, Miles.
I as a just like urban concrete boy from North Hollywood, California. I fantasized about the forest as a kid, like I think a. It started with Endoor from Return of the Jedi. Yeah, because I was like, wait, there's places where it's just trees like this, And then I remember I went to the Sequoias once. My grandfather took me to the Sequoias and I blew my mind. And then I've just I just have I don't know, a connection with like very
wooded places and you know, cooler climates. So yeah, yeah, love the love the Northwest.
Yeah all right, let's take a quick break.
We'll come back.
We'll do underrated and talk some news. We'll be right back and we're back and shiny. We like to ask our guests, what is something that you think is underrated?
I think that running is underrated.
I used to hear problems or.
No, like long distance running, Oh okay on a trail, yes.
Yeah, yeah, all right, yes, fair enough. That's the kind of running. Jacks used to are you were you? Were you not running before? And you got into it and now you're like, wow, are you just sort of like a running advocate overall?
I got into it during the pandemic. I used to be a swimmer, and then when the pandemic came in twenty twenty, I just felt like I needed to take a break from it. So I just started running because I needed to be outdoors kind of just processing and moving around. And I run about three miles four times
a week. And for me as like a creative person, as a writer, I feel like it's when some of my best ideas come to me, or like things that I'm trying to process, they somehow shake loose in a way in that time, and it's just like really beautiful self care time that I love for myself. And there was a time when I really hated running when I was a kid, Like I feel like it took me. It used to take me when I was like a young person, like fifteen minutes to like run a mile,
and I just hated it, every part of running. And I grew up in southern California, where you don't really want to run in that heat anyways, But here it's just a really beautiful experience of like being with the birds and the rabbits on the trail and just like paying attention.
Right, how do you? How do you? Kind of cause I'm just sort of the same way. Like we had to run the mile in pe Yep and I hated it drag I would just because when I did it, I was like, why are we doing this? That was like my first thought. And then when they said all right, go, I'm like and then like a.
Whole while like Paul Rudd and Wet Hot America, Oh yeah, exact limp exactly would I wouldn't even drive my arms. I wouldn't even drive mynd they would be limp in front of me, like and in the in the same thing in the pandemic. I also would got into running, mostly just as a way because I was like one of the only excusable reasons to be outside. I was like, well, I'll take advantage of that.
But it took me a really long time for like to shift it from feeling like it was exercise or something to kind of I'm still not quite at that place where people get that like real stillness like you're talking about like you can process. Is that because you found your right pace to run at or you just engage with in a way where you're like, I need this. This is how like you're saying, this is how I just shake things loose.
I think it's like it's it's a practice of just kind of like synchronizing the breath and the body and the mind. And if I can just like stay off my phone and just like pay attention to what I'm doing,
it comes, you know, fairly quickly. And I think that was probably aided in part because I had for a long time have had a meditation practice, and so it has in a lot of ways supplemented that or replaced that in that I have that body memory of what that can feel like, and so it just kind of clicks in.
That was when I was running a lot. The thing like it was a big improvement for me to go from like trying to listen to podcasts or like read books on tape while I was running to just like not doing anything while running and just like focusing on breath and just like mindfulness while running, which is a lot of time to spend, Like if you're running a lot,
it's a lot of time spent. But I mean, yeah, if that can kind of supplement a meditation practice or you know, be your meditation for the day, yeah, it's actually helpful and you run. I found that I ran better.
Yeah, I always had headphones in. So I think that's probably the reason why. I mean I was probably splitting my attention from like sort of entertaining myself because I'm like, oh, it can be so boring, rather than kind of like you're both saying, let it be a little more meditative. Yeah.
So I find that to be like a really interesting gender difference, Like for me as a woman running alone. I will never run with head headphones, right, yeah, I get safety.
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah when I run now, I need some distraction from the pain of running. But that's what I was really good at running that Like I was able to just be like, ah, this is I'm like, I can't. I can just focus on my breath and then I get a little better at running. Anyways, all right, let's get
into a little bit of news. Yeah, I'm glad we have a poet on because the star of this first story I think has a poet name that I don't think his uncle came in and was like, we got offset what you've got going on there, and instead this is like the perfect if you were creating a villain of his type for a film, you would name, and you consulted a poet, you would the name that would come out the other end is Harlan Crowe.
Sounds like a Mark Twain character for sure.
Yes, Texas billionaire Harlan Crowe. Who is you know? It has been the great Expectations style benefactor to fucking you know, multiple Supreme Court justice but specifically Clarence Thomas for the past two decades. Nobody's nothing was being reported. Pro Publica has been reporting on it for a couple months now, and people are like, the audacity of these people trying to stir up shit just because I'm giving him presence. I'm just a nice person. Who oh, who's interested in education?
You don't buy Frederick Douglas's Bible? Yeah? Yeah, I mean this is the latest thing to come out is like first it was like, oh, they go on trips together. Oh, he bought him like their friends keep him. He bought him, Abraham Lincoln bust. He bought Frederick Douglas, Frederick Douglas's Bible
at an auction and gave these things to him. And then the next thing was, wait, he bought Clarence Thomas's mother's house and then she was living in there rent free, and he renovated the bathroom and some other stuff.
Oh, he works in real estate. He didn't even know it was his.
No. His answer was, I wanted to make a museum to honor a great American Clarence Thomas by having his boyhood home. Fact check, he did not grow up in that house with his mother. So missed us with that explanation. Now, the latest one to drop is drum roll please. Harlan Crowe has been paying for Clarence Thomas's son's tuition, right.
OK, yeah, his nephew who he raises as his son. Six thousand dollars a month?
Is that right? Damn they're saying it's been at least a year's worth going to Hogwarts where the fuck? Yeah?
But people are like, well, Harlan Crow has come out with come out strong and been like this is disgusting. Harlan Crow has long been passionate about the importance of quality education and giving back to those less fortunate, especially at risk youth. Again like as though he didn't know it was Clarence Thomas's nephew. Grand Yeah, is Clarence Thomas's child who he's raising an at risk youth? That right exactly? That is unlikely to make.
Is that a knock against Ginny Thomas and Clarence Thomas Like we're growing up in that home that's at risk youth.
It's disappointing that those with partisan political interests would try to turn helping at risk youth with tuition assistance into something the fairy us or political I have to assume Clarence Thomas is like yo, He's like yo, call him at risk because he's my child at risk?
What are you talking about? I mean it's very coded too, at risk youth, you know what I mean. And because this is Clarence Thomas's nephew, had to like serve a prison sentence and as a result, like they had to figure out what to do with his son. And in his biographer, you know, he talks all the time about how Clarence Thomas his own father wasn't there and how he was taken in by his grandparents. So this felt
like a thing for him and Ginny to do. And you know, they're telling his nephew like, yeah, he's gonna have a great life with us, et cetera, et cetera. But yet when it comes down to reporting it, suddenly he's like that ain't my kid. I don't know him from Adam, Like that's a something.
So I work in county government in the Seattle area, and I've also worked in philanthropy, and there are often really rigorous policies and practices around conflict of interest, and yeah, are people talking, you know about like the violation of those policies.
Well, the only partisan people who hate freedom. That's Crow's interest in at risk youth.
Yeah, I mean he did. Obviously. There's this lawyer that Clarence Thomas has worked with ever since, like the Anita Hill stuff, and has also been like, you know, at Ginny's side when she was doing all that January sixth stuff. And let me forget his name is Mark Poletta, Yeah, Mark Palletta. Yeah. So he has come out and basically done this thing. Just I'll just read you how he's
sort of describing it. He's like Harlan Crow's tuition payments made directly to these schools on behalf of Justice Thomas's great nephew did not constitute a reportable gift. Justice Thomas was not required to disclose the tuition payments made directly to Randolph Macon and the Georgia School on behalf of his great nephew because the definition this is where they start getting into it, of a dependent child under the Ethics and Government Act does not include a quote great nephew.
It is limited to a son, daughter, step son, or step daughter. Justice Thomas never asked Harlan Crow to pay for his great nephew's tuition, and neither Harlan Crowe nor his company had any business before the Supreme Court. Okay, that is that is the defense to all of those And while that might be true, I think this whole idea of like, well, none of his companies had business before the court. All of these wealthy conservative donors, they're not.
It's not about their specific business. They're trying to change society. That will be a more yeah, it will be a more inviting place for the kind of business that they want to do. They want to change the environment they're operating. It has nothing to do with this. So that's sort of the line they're taking.
We're in a period of like unprecedented flagrant abuse of you know, normal like workers' rights in favor of billionaires and corporations, and like this is what is happening at that time, Like it's it's not like so this is a thing that could sway him. He is like part of a Supreme Court that has been doing just disregarding like any sort of pushback on these sorts of people
for decades. And right, he also had previously disclosed a gift of five thousand dollars for this kid's education from another friend, but he suspiciously didn't do the same with Crows because I think he knew that once you like pull at that thread, you start to see that Crow is giving him so many gifts, and then it could be a bad look. So yeah, it really feels like this is the one where they have like absolutely no leg to stand on.
No, yeah, it's really like most people of legal observers and analysts were like, it's pretty clear that you would want to report this, Like you'd have to be really disingenuous to try and bend your mind and redefine what a dependent is to try and avoid reporting this, because it's like, you know, they're like this is merely a ward of their home, Like you know, like they're trying to distance themselves from this person despite the fact that
they're they've been patting themselves on the back for raising this kid, like publicly and in written interviews and things like that. So again, it's just a yeah, terribly frustrating situation, especially when you have like all the Republicans who are like in line to be like, we're not gonna have any ethics standards. Let's not we're not voting for that.
So let's just keep this going because this is our most useful tool in combating any kind of progress that we've made in this country is to you know, rig the Supreme Court. Yeah.
The only yeah, the only possible excuse for not disclosing these gifts would be the argument that the payments were to his grandnephew, not Thomas directly. But everybody points out like it's minor. Children rarely pay their own tuition. Although if the GOP has their way, as we've been talking about, with what they're doing that count the laws, then you know, this kid would be able to pay his own way with just working forty hours a week.
He was consulting. He was consulting with Harlan Crowe's real estate business as a ten year old. Okay, and that's where the money came from. Any other questions, Can we move on? We have serious business in front of the court, all right?
Uh Sidish? Should we talk about the sedition by the Proud Boys?
Yeah? Well yeah, I mean it happened. I thought that for a second. I remember, I think one of the people in the jury is like, what happens if we don't all agree? Like was a note that came out of the jury and I was like, oh, no, what's happening now? But no, turns out they've delivered a guilty verdict. Yeah.
Four members of the Proud Boys, including Enrique Ontario, were found guilty of conspiracy. The conspiracy counts alone could carry a sense of fifty years in prison. The case hinged on testimonies of two former Proud Boys who made deals.
With the Feds.
Testified that the group were intent on staging and all out revolution to stop Biden. Which this is why it's always tricky when you're like rooting for the side that the Feds are on.
Because they're shady. That's shady as fuck.
Whenever they the FBI is like basically being like, we're gonna put you away for life unless you tell us these things that are on a list that we want you to tell us. But I don't know, like it also seems like these are bad people, so oh.
Yeah, yeah, yeh one hundred percent. I mean, like you know also too, like I think when the prosecution was telling them, they're like, we don't have to prove that they had anything specific they were going to do to
prove conspiracy. They just we just have to know that they had like sort of an agreement, whether that's verbalized or not to execute X, Y and Z. But I think it's you know, for all of like the nice, nice nice of seeing some of these people who had a huge role in January sixth, like you know, have to answer for it. It's like we're still you know,
we're still waiting for that other shoe to drop. Because one of the things that uh Tario's lawyer was saying was like this is all because Donald Trump, though, right, so like this isn't it's not his fault Donald, It's like Donald Trump gave them the motivation. I don't even know why we're here, man, it's so unfair. Okay, well maybe maybe that shoe will drop. We'll see, yeah, probably not, probably not. Yeah.
And people are pointing out that, like it's wild to see these people who like it seems like hadn't even contemplated the idea of facing consequences for their behavior, like face consequences, right, But in terms of the practicality of like taking down the leaders of these two groups, I think these groups got a lot of attention, but the majority of the people on the far right aren't part of specific groups. They're just like connecting through social media.
But you know, law enforcement mainly knows how to go after formal organizations. So this is the strategy they're taking. But well, we'll have to wait and see what the what the consequences are of taking.
What does sociologists say are their roots of extremism? Does nothing to do with the inequality, right or like a really unstable economic situation. No, no, no, no, no, lack of those kinds. Okay, all right, so let's focus on these groups. It was stop the steal. The main thing. Has stopped the steal, right right, sorry, sorry, all right, let's.
Take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about Greg Guttfeld. Yeah, and we're back, and the w GA strike has continued. And one of the most noticeable consequences for you know, people who aren't in LA or who aren't in the w g A is the absence of late night comedy shows since they're normally on TV every single night. But one late night show that's still going strong despite the strike is Fox News is Gutfeld Sorry.
I mean Gutfeld. Yeah, it has exclamation points. Jacket's all caps and an exclamation point, so yes, please please, still.
Gut felled still on the air because his writers are all non union.
Because of Wow, do you think do you think that's because anyone in the union would be too talented to take a job on Gutfeld, or that the business practices of Gutfeld is to only use non union.
Writers, probably like a chicken radiation and like Fox News being like, I can't believe, I can't imagine. Fox News is very a very friendly place for unions. But like Nick Depolo, do you remember that guy from like Tough Crowd with, Yeah, he's one of the writers.
So oh yeah, and that's okay killing it? Wow, how the Mighty fall.
Yeah, So just that this gave us a chance to our writer JM checked in with Guttfeld to see, you know what we've been missing when we're tuning into Fallon and all.
Those other late night shows.
So you know, if you if you tuned into Guttfeld, you were able to hear him talk about the seventh anniversary of seeing Kim Kardashian's butt in person.
He wait, that's a that's an an that's a celebration for Greg.
That's something that he said, and he was like, her butt is so big it kind of felt like it was staring back, which I feel like it was like a nineteen eighties joke. He also made some Joe Biden fart jokes, so that's just killing it. A Brittany Griner weed joke called CBS News is Gail King a lesbian? And he is just behind Colbert and ahead of Fallon and Kimmel in the ratings, which is, yeah, crazy.
Your your face just dropped hearing that. Yeah, that's uh, that's where that's where this, this powerhouse of late night is And yeah, what I know, like he's always We've talked before he like on this show. He would always be on Fox saying stuff like I hate radio Head. It's like it's not even a band, like radio Heads not music, and we're like what, yeah.
His so his background also, by the way, if you tune in, it's it's interesting, like hell, I don't I don't know, maybe they don't have union like people who like warm up the crowd for him, because his audience like doesn't even seem.
To like him.
Like there's like no jokes where like one person laughs.
There's I'll play the script for you because he's talking about the Dante Wright protests in Minnesota and I'm talking about some serious shit going on in the country. And then like he has like a punchline. And I think that's what's so weird is because he pivots from I'll just let you hear kind of like the slight setup and punchline, if you want to call.
It that, protests and looters nail a bunch of stores, and the destruction spreads.
It's now part of the process.
Video followed by outrage, followed by coverage of outrage. It's as predictable as CNN's programming, because it is.
It's a scene that's.
Gone from shocking to expected to gleefully anticipated by the media, as familiar as a rerun of Friends, except it's the one where Rachel sets central perk a blaze.
The explanation for.
I mean, he paused for laughter at one point and there is nothing, so he just pressed on. And then on that one, they were like, okay, okay, here, I'm ready for this one.
Okay, anybody else? Can we add that? In post? No? All right? Moving on? Where was I? Where was I? Yeah, it's it's it's not the height of comedy like we thought. Yeah.
Right wingers are claiming that gut Field is gut Gutfeld is evidence that the right is starting to get better at comedy. And it's making lefties nervous shy.
I'm curious, like, as as someone who's like a creative person, a writer and everything like that, how do you look at the chasm between like sort of these like conservative of hateful people and how when they try and engage with creativity or art and like like why like there's this like dynamic We're like we got to prove that we can do funny too, or we can do art or whatever. What How do you see what's holding them back or what do you see is the difference in it?
Because I feel like to us, we're like it's there's like just this mindset. I feel like that's just maybe so exclusionary or something that they're unable to think past like these like sort of backwards tropes in our culture and like these stereotypes as humor or whatever. But I'm curious to hear from your perspective, like the the darth of creativity and the right wing.
Well, I think it's like a performative ego show that is completely based on sensationalism. And yeah, I I don't know, it's it's not like a humor that is like humanizing. I don't think there is anything humor riss about it. I think it's kind of like the it is very do you've now kind of approach that is really about getting attention more than anything. So it isn't about comedy or craft or writing or using a specific genre to make a certain point. There is no critique, There is
no sophistication about it. It is just a misuse of language.
Oh I like that misuse.
Misuse of language is like very love that misuse of language. And also his confusion of like that'll get their attention with comedy is really like that perfectly sums up his background too, because his background is as the editor of early two thousands Cringey Bro publications like Stuff and Maxim,
which kind of explains everything. When he was at Stuff, he once hired little people actors to disrupt a meeting of magazine editors with potato chip bags and cell phones and clearly thought it was like the funniest goddamn thing in the world.
Wow, it's a yunny because they're little and they have potato chip bags.
But again, it's just like making noise to annoy people instead of comedy.
What are you saying here with this?
One of the other funny things was recording audio of women in bathroom stalls and then printing it without their consent. He created a monthly photo spread called the Women of thirty ninth and six purely so he could meet women who lived in his apartment building, which, yeah, that's like stalker. Yeah, but he's just running around pulling people's hair on the playground. It seems like it's like his whole approach. That that's
the level of sophistication of his comedy. One of his contributions when he moved over Left Stuff went to Maxim. He just like started to personally harass other magazine editors. He like published the phone number of GQ editor Dylan Jones and encouraged readers to abuse him. And yeah, just being annoying is like his.
Version of comedy.
It seems like right, being the most unpleasant, obnoxious person. But I think like that is a thing that really appeals to the right. Is like, oh man, he's owning the libs by recording them when they're in the bathroom and printing transcript I.
Think, well, because I think at the end of the day, there's no there's no such thing as humor. There's no such thing as like a philosophical victory or like rhetorical victory, because the only thing is just to see the reaction, yeah, of their counterpart. That's really all it is, Like, yeah, it's all couched and like this is a comedy show, but really you're making a show that you hope like that from their perspective, like a lib would see it
and it would crush their spirit, Okay. Rather than being like, I'm informing people about what's happening in a funny way, they're trying to be like and guess what this is liberal tears manifested into a nightly show, Okay, And I guess that's not a very good guid principle.
I mean, I think there's a strong element of toxic masculinity at play too, to be honest, that dominating.
Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah, there's like there's all so the two things are hey, look at me pulling hair and then just like thorough and consistent misogyny just from his trying to recording, like bugging women's bathrooms and like recording and reprinting transcriptions what they say against like without their consent, to creating a monthly photo spread of like women in his apartment building like.
That is just so predatory too, you know. Yeah, that is the waters. Yeah, he's chumming the waters with the promise of like being in this magazine as a way to like introduce himself and then like dangle that in front of someone. Yeah, and then cut to the second most highly rated late night talk show in the country right now. Yeah, so all.
Right, well that's that show is still own folks.
So you know, you can't misuse of words every night on Fox.
That's right, misuse of words.
Excellent caps that explanation point.
Well, shany it's been such a pleasure having you on the daily Zeitgeist. Where can people find you? Follow you all that good stuff?
Yeah, so my podcast ten thousand Things is available on all the major podcast apps. You can listen on NPR or QW dot org slash ten thousand things spelled out. And I'm on Instagram it's just my name et shiny Pi on Facebook as well, and I have a website and yeah, people can find my books through small press distribution or Amazon, but I don't like Amazon. I prefer that people buy through small presses and support small businesses. And yeah, I'm in the world.
Yeah, can you have a Kickstarter, right.
I have a Kickstarter right now that I'm running for a book that I'm publishing this fall of hi Q Comics with Blue Cat Press, which is a woman led Bipock Press and Tacoma, And it's a collection of haiku poems that are illustrated by a LATINX illustrator in Oregon, and their poems about just my experiences of like the boredom and kind of just loss of identity during pandemic and the rise of anti Asian hate crime and just the weirdness of the last three years while also mothering
a young child. And Yeah, it's an incredible collection of sequential art that is going to come out this fall, and we're hoping to raise some production funds to support the printing of it.
Nice, so you go and contribute to that.
It's on Kickstarter and the campaign is through Blue Caractus Press for the book Less Desolate. And I'll share the u r L with you later so that you can put it in the show notes.
Sure.
Great, And is there a tweet or work of media that you've been enjoying.
Last night, I saw the comedian Jenny Yang post some photos of verse at our Writer's Guild strike and she had this fabulous sign that said give up just one yacht.
A lot, so good asking a lot just Clarence. Clarence Thomas loves the yachts, So what are we gonna do if we give up the yacht that Clarence Thomas likes, you know, then makes it harder for us to hang with him. Amazing, Miles, where can people find you?
Follow you? What is the working media you've been enjoying? Oh? Find me on Twitter and Instagram at Miles of Gray. If I'm doing anything there, chances are I kind of might be. And also find Jack and I on our basketball podcast, Miles and Jack got Man Massa And if you like Trash reality show, which is where I go to find refuge from this chaotic world, check me out. And Sophia Alexander talking about ninety Day Fiance on four to twenty Day Fiance a tweet I like actually goes
hand in hand love Jenny. Shout out Jenny, She's the home girl. This is actually from at Lisa Cohen, Lisa Takeuchi Coullen that tweeted. A producer told me he heard that all the yacht rentals were booked for the month of June by studio execs who'd long expected a writers strike, and it would be it would be haha funny if a resourceful reporter hunted this lead down. Wow, yeah, that would like. When I hear that, I'm like, oh, that's
that sounds like they're kind of Hollywood cynicism. I'm used to like, Well, there's gonna be the strike anyway, So like, where are we going to go? Chanto Beeck.
Built in vacation for the billionaires?
All right?
Uh tweet I've been enjoying Pessimist Prime Respawn edition tweeted. My editor dislikes my use of contractions.
But it's what it is.
Yeah, yeah, we we We love saying that.
It's it's what you say that all the time. Yeah, it's what it's. Yeah.
You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore O'Brien.
You can find us on.
Twitter at Daily Zeikeeist. We're at the Daily Zeikeeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook fanpage and a website Daily Zekeist dot Comboy post our episode odes and our footnotes. We link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode as well. It's a song that we think you might enjoy, Miles, Is there a song that you think people might enjoy.
Yes, this is a group called the Holy Drug Couple, and there are these artists from Santiago, Chile and their music. Man, their music sounds, it's it's like spooky but cool like i've i've I've described other artists are like if this like the World ended in Aliens sound like an old mixtape and like tried to get the like the tape working, it would sound like this. This is like this is just I don't this is just really their their music
is really really cool. This track is called lu and I think it's from like a it's from an album of like demos from another album they had, so you're getting like so they're even like more low fi than what the album cuts are, but they're just like you know, like any anytime you hear demos, they're really interesting to me just as a musician because you kind of hear these like musical like it's like a musical note that they're just like put jotting down to come back to
and already has so much like texture and flavor to it. It's really dumpe. So this is by the Holy Drug Couple. So check that out, all right, well. The Daily Zeitgeist is a production by Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That's gonna do it for us this morning, back this afternoon to tell you what is trending, and we'll talk to you all then.
Bye bye,